Chicken Wings and Breakfast Rice
My first days in Shanghai: an airport pickup, an unfamiliar breakfast and a disappointing doughnut.
I arrived at Shanghai Pudong Airport on 16 November 2016—a date that would become my “Chinaversary”.
Passport control, immigration and baggage collection were surprisingly straightforward. Finding my driver felt more daunting. Arrivals was crowded with people holding signs, and spotting the letters “EF” brought enormous relief.
We waited for a few more recruits, including Jason and a recent law graduate. Most seemed younger than me, which made me feel slightly behind before we had even left the airport.
I was also far too warmly dressed. I hadn’t checked Shanghai’s weather and had assumed November meant jumpers and coats. At around thirteen degrees, I was already shedding layers.
Forty minutes later, we reached the Holiday Inn. The company was paying for our accommodation, and I understood that we would stay for two weeks. It was late afternoon, so we agreed to freshen up before finding dinner.
That evening, I walked into a noodle restaurant with three of the men. None of us could read the menu.
Their solution was to flap their arms like chicken wings.
The people around us looked bewildered. No chicken appeared.
Jason tried a translation app.
“Beef or chicken?” the server asked in Chinese.
We still weren’t getting very far. Eventually, a bowl arrived. I think it was beef, and I think it cost about eight yuan. Whatever it was, it did the job.
Breakfast presented the next challenge.
Having stayed at Holiday Inns during family holidays in America, I expected something familiar: toast, sausages, perhaps mushrooms. Instead, I found fried rice and steamed buns.
To me, this looked like lunch.
I settled on egg fried rice and decided to be adventurous with a bun. One bite revealed a green filling I couldn’t identify. That was enough adventure for the moment. I turned my attention to the coffee.
Jason sat opposite me, apparently happy to try everything. He was already attempting a few words of Chinese with the staff. I was relieved to have someone familiar at the table, although his confidence made my own uncertainty more obvious.
At around half past eight, we gathered in the lobby and squeezed into minibuses bound for EF’s headquarters.
The office was large, modern and open, just as it had looked in the photographs. There was coffee and even an ice-cream van. Around twenty recruits had arrived from countries including the UK, Australia and South Africa.
An American trainer took us through what we should and shouldn’t do, followed by group activities.
I was exhausted and less enthusiastic than I probably appeared in my interview. Part of me was already finding reasons to dislike things.
“You’re bringing the group down,” I remember him saying.
It stung. I was still adjusting to the journey, the lack of sleep and the feeling that everyone else was coping better than I was.
Much of those first few days is a blur: training, group tasks and a tour of Shanghai’s famous skyline.
But I remember the doughnut.
In a supermarket, I spotted something covered in chocolate. Finally, something I recognised. It cost eight yuan, which my tired brain briefly treated as eight pounds. I was still struggling to work out what counted as cheap or expensive.
I bought it.
It tasted more oily than chocolatey.
I had come all this way for a new experience, and somehow I was disappointed that a doughnut didn’t taste like home.