The world is a book, Chengdu is my second page

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Umer Khalid is from Pakistan.

Saint Augustine once said “The world is a book and those who do not travel read only a page” and it was to read the whole book that I wanted to travel since my teenage. The opportunity to study in China brought with it an opportunity to travel to one of the most ancient cultures of the world. I grabbed it by booking a ticket on China Southern Airlines and this was the start of my experience. As soon as I sat in the plane, the speakers started some announcement. In our country if something sounds really difficult to comprehend there is a saying that “It sounds Chinese to me” but in that case it was really sounding Chinese to me. I did not understand at all but was surprised to hear “Thanks” in the end. Actually an English translation of the announcement had followed but because of the same tone I did not know when my familiar language had started.

I landed safely in Chengdu five hours later. Everything had changed in just five hours; the language, the people, the food, the culture, etc. I showed the Chinese address of the university to the taxi driver but he took 15 minutes to understand and fortunately took me to a university looking building. (As there was no English, so I had to believe the driver that this is the same university). I entered with almost 70 kg of weight with me. It was the second south gate in front of the stadium. On my first sight, I loved it because of the architecture of the stadium and the vastness of the university. I talked to the guard at the gate (I am not sure whether it can be called talking as he did not understand anything). He called some Chinese students who knew English. They helped me a lot to reach my dorm. They carried my bags and paid my fare on the “golf car”. I could never forget those anonymous students. So the first impression of Chinese was a friendly and helping nation.

After reaching my dorm, I felt thirsty so I went to the shop just below. I did not know what water is called in Chinese. The only language which both I and the shopkeeper could understand was that of signs. I pointed to a bottle of mineral water. He wrote the amount on calculator (Luckily, the digits on calculator were not in Chinese). I gave him the money and came out but when I started drinking, it was sweet. I had bought some type of sweet water/juice. It happened because in our country same type of bottles are used for mineral water. After drinking the so-called water, I returned to the dorm.

After resting for a while, I went to cafeteria with my country mates. We ordered some dishes and when we ate, we were surprised. In our country it is famous that Chinese food has very less amount of spices. Even the Chinese food we eat in our country and the one which I experienced in the plane was according to it but here the situation was changed. The food was even spicier than in our country. I experienced another thing related to food. In the first days whenever I went to eat food at 8 pm, the restaurant was almost closed and there was nothing available except rice and noodles. One of my seniors told me that they eat dinner as early as 6 pm. It was shocking for me as having dinner even at 8 is considered early in my country with restaurants serving dinner till 2 am in the morning.

Another experience I had was something to do with language differences. I once went to a restaurant and ordered a dish pointing to its picture. I asked its price and the waiter said sixteen. I said ok but when the dish came I was shocked. The dish was so big that it could be eaten by 5 people easily. Later I came to know that the waiter had said “sixty” not “sixteen”. I ordered him to pack it and that was my food for the remaining two days. I made a lot of friends from the start but I could not differentiate them as every Chinese looked similar to me those days. Sometimes it happened that I waved my hand to a friend only to know that he was someone else later.

Overall, it was a wonderful and fascinating experience to meet people from another beautiful land. The generosity, friendliness and a welcoming attitude are some of the features I have found here. The second page of my book was so interesting that I hope to read more and then write my own book in the end.

The opinions expressed do not represent the views of the China Daily website.

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