It’s been a year since I packed my bags (14 to be precise.. I have issues) and moved to Shenzhen, China. BAHHHHHHHHHHH WHAT DID I DO?! You know that ‘superzoom’ function on Instagram stories and you pick the ‘dramatic’ one, and it like zooms in on an object three times? Yeah picture that when I say ‘I have been living in SZ for a year!’ and superzoom into my face where my chin is glued to my neck forming a triple chin and insert my right eye twitch. Yeah, that’s how I feel.
Just kidding, but man has it been a year. For those who follow my IGS, OH.YOU.KNOW! From being forced to partake in the annual Baidu company talent show, to being tricked into a jump rope competition, to planning a weekencation with friends, getting on that plane and not being able to land, the stories are endless, memorable, and just all things that I have to shrug and say ‘its China’.
Look, listen, I’m not talking shit about my experience (because #blessed for this experience), I am simply sharing stories that happened to me this past year because its literally comical.
WARNING: this may be a long ass post, so exit now if you wish. To not start a snooze fest, I will only share 2 stories in this post: The Baidu Talent Show and The Infamous Jump Rope Competition.
Before I begin, there are a few shout outs I’d like to make. First and foremost, thank you to basically everyone and their moms for letting my vent to them about my daily struggles (you seriously know who you are). Thank you NP for taking the hit every time I had a bad day and for literally walking through my semi breakdown when I nearly couldn’t get my passport back. Thank you SG for telling me I’m sane (I bet he was lying to me). AP for literally living this life with me (TG LL for introducing). Literally, everyone who’s reading this (or not, because who will read this) because you’ve been part of this with me. Ok I’m making it sound like this year was a struggle city.. which it may well be but it’s been a fun ride- trust me.
Also like EL-O-EL.. like I really moved.. I practically still lived in HK. NOT THE POINT OF THIS POST. Now let’s move onto the Talent Show…
Insert the trickling sound effect…
How the flying flip did I get forced in partaking in the annual company talent show? I still have no idea. Maybe because I don’t know how to say ‘no’ when I’m new to a place? Or maybe because how they translated it to me was ‘every new hire has to be part of the talent show’. And coming from where I come from (aka hello Greek Life), I instantly thought this was like an ‘in’ or initiation for every new hire. Yeah, no. That’s not what it was. They just wanted to see what the foreigner could do. NEWS FLASH.. I have no talent. I may think I’m ‘funny’ and could maybe blab my 5 minute time frame with a standup routine.. BUT OH WAIT.. it would be in English and 99% of the team does not speak English. NEXT. So what did I do? Oh thanks for asking. I Youtubed (Youtube is blocked in China, but we have an automatic VPN in the wifi.. the irony if you get it) ‘how to do a magic trick with cards’. YES, I self-taught myself how to make a card reappear. I forced one of my WBF (work best friend) to come up on stage with me to translate everything I was saying to Chinese. The crowd loved it. How did I pull it off? No flipping clue.. but I did it. And a year later.. *ping*ping*ping* (that’s the company chat aka Baidu Hi) ‘Niki, it’s that time again! What will you do for this year’s talent show?’ OH NONONO NO THANKS. One and done. Thank u, next. This was my first insight of working for a Chinese company and it was not the last.
Now onto…
THE INFAMOUS JUMP ROPE COMPETITION. This one is my favourite- and to everyone who watched my stories, I know you loved this too. This may be the one thing that everyone brings up. OK let me begin by painting a picture. *ping*ping*ping *Side note: no one ever talks to me (in person) or in my Baidu Hi except for my WBF. So when someone @me I literally felt a sense of happiness and excitement (yes my threshold of what excites me is very low when in China). Honestly, I love my coworkers- they try with me. They’re super patient when I try speaking in Chinese and they even try speaking English to me. So this person, let’s call him T, messages me in English- broken English but I still appreciate it.
T goes ‘Hi Niki! Let’s skip’
That’s it. Hmm what does this mean (insert the thinking emoji). I was like ok.. what does he mean? I literally always take a moment to figure out what one could be saying to me. Skip what? Skip work? (that’s what I thought.. like skip work and play hooky).
So I reply, ‘Skip? Um, sure?’
T: ‘Great! Meet us on the 13th floor at 6pm!’
6pm comes, and I happily skip (get it?) to the 13th floor. But wait.. I got lost.. the elevators didn’t even have a 13th floor. Turns out we have this back elevator.. THINGS I LEARN! I meet T and others.. to my surprise when he said ‘skip’ he meant SKIP as in SKIPPING as in JUMP ROPE as in a long piece of rope and you jump up and down when the rope hits the ground. THAT IS WHAT HE MEANT. Oh. Ok. Well, I’m here so let’s see what this is about. Now, ladies and gentlemen, jump rope in China is equivalent to softball, flag football, you know the company sports that everyone plays in the spring/summer and what not? YUP that’s what they do here.. .its jumping rope. AND.THEY.TAKE.IT.SERIOUSLY.
This was a companywide competition. The people that were signed up were put into groups of 11 (8 people will be jumping, 2 will be swinging the rope, and get this 1 will be taking pictures) YES THEY HAD ONE PERSON ON A TEAM TO TAKE YOUR PICTURE. Flabbergasted. #china.
How serious did everyone take it? Oh, serious. Like every day from 6pm-8pm we practiced for a week straight. Jumping.for.2.straight.hours. Did this grow my already massive calves? Yes. Did they help my pancake ass to have a small lift? Not at all.
Day of the competition, Baidu provided the teams with pinnies to wear. Because my team was mostly made of females.. we were given pink pinnies (I have so many opinions about this but this post is already getting too long so I’ll leave that for another day). Now how does one win the jump rope competition? There are 2 categories.
- Your team of 8 stands in a line and the rope keeps swinging and you jump together for 3 minutes. There’s an Emcee (yes Baidu hired an emcee) that count each jump.
- You have another 3 minutes and in a row the people of 8 jump in and out of the swinging rope- like one by one you go in then out. And the emcee counts how many you can get in 3 mins
For the first category, most teams got 250 jumps. My team got 27. For the second category, most teams got 400 + jumps. My team got 100 and I am so damn proud of them. Oh side note.. I ended up not partaking the day of because there was an intern who really wanted to be part of the team and I just couldn’t let her not compete (aka I was v happy to just watch). ALSO NO ONE CHEERED FOR ANYONE. So when it was my team’s turn… I was cheering them on like no other.. and everyone just stared at me. Literally they didn’t know what I was doing. Like is supporting each other a foreign concept? I guess so.
But yes ladies and gentlemen, this is the story of the infamous jump rope competition.
There are countless stories to tell, but I’ll leave it here because probably no one is reading this anymore.
To a year of stories and many more! Remember laughing is a form of exercise so do it daily! Tata for now- xoxoBasicallySingle.
BasicallySingle 