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Lee and Barbara are colleagues and they both had a very busy schedule. Their boss didn't seem to care about working hours and called a few times the girls back to the office when they had just arrived at home to rest. We told Lee that in Finland their boss would be in jail for slavery, but Lee was happy that she got an opportunity to learn new things as she had just graduated from university. It's not hard to imagine that this kind of attitude could be one thing attracting foreign companies to China.

Barbecuing and cooking

Lee was energetic and spared us time despite her long working hours. She organized a big barbecue party together with her friends. The event was in a park outside the city and it took the whole day. There was all kinds of activities: card playing, hide-and-seek games, barbecuing, and boat riding. We saw the other face of China that we would have never known about without Lee. Knowing Chinese people takes time, but after the Chinese wall of ice is crushed, they are overwhelmingly hospitable and nice people. One thing that seemed to be impossible is trying to share any costs. Chinese hosts just won't allow you to do it no matter how hard you try. It almost seems to be an insult for them just like not sharing the costs is for us.

Language is obviously the biggest barrier between Chinese and foreigners, and probably the root cause of misunderstandings and prejudices. World looks different in Chinese eyes and it is shaped by the government controlled media and Internet, but people are curious and they have an obvious desire to explore the unknown and search for concealed realities. One funny thing we discovered during the games we had in the park was that Chinese embarrassment is related to public humiliation. In some games the loosed had to yell "I'm supergirl", or kiss her boyfriend in front of others, or go to say someone that he is handsome or she is beautiful, the de facto compliments of Chinese people.

While Lee was at work we continued writing a book on customer service, played a new computer game called Neverwinter Nights 2, and cooked. Chinese love noodles, but we had had enough of them and enjoyed some more exotic, very hot food with which we also tortured our hostesses. They were patient with us although everything was not at all to their liking - too much spices, in general. It is just another myth of China that everybody likes spicy food. Just like the idea that there are a lot of Chinese restaurants and everyone of them offers fried bananas with ice cream for dessert. At least that is the European conception of a typical Chinese dessert.

Chinese cooking varies a lot between regions, of course, being a huge country. We were most into Sichuan-style cooking with lots of chili and other spices which many Chinese seem to dislike. There are two Carrefours in Fuzhou so we could also buy ingredients for European-style cooking such as cream for garlic potatoes, which were equally exotic for Chinese as dairy products or butter are not part of their normal diet. Lee liked ice-cream so we could share at least one liking, though Chinese ice-cream was not really made of cream. Most of the time our cookings proved to be too exotic.

We cleaned the house a few times as the girls were so busy every day. Also, it seems that Chinese girls are more relaxed with cleaning than their Finnish counterparts. They don't stress much about other things either, which we found great. Or maybe one thing, though: finding the right husband, getting married, and making one baby to make their family happy.

Fuzhou is a non-touristy attraction

The city of Fuzhou itself is business-oriented and doesn't offer much for tourists which was fine for us. There is one must-see sight, though, a statue of Mao. We tried to find it, but soon gave up as we forgot our map at home and the statue was quite well hidden. The photo would have been a nice addition to our collection of Lenin statue photos from all over Russia and Mongolia.

Fuzhou is quite modern and clean. New big apartments are being constructed and old ones demolished. There are still many typically Chinese neighbourhoods left like the one where we lived. We caused some curiosity especially when arriving and leaving with our huge backpacks. There were practically no Westerners unlike in Nanjing, excluding one blond woman we saw when we were walking to the bus station and leaving Fuzhou. We felt privileged for the taste of Chinese life we had for a couple of weeks.

Random encounters with locals

We stayed with two Australians, one American and two Korean-American guys. All the places were very different, but equally fun. We had a great time in getting to know our hosts and their expatriate lifestyle in China. The city itself we didn't explore, as usually. All the big cities in the world resemble each other. Therefore we usually prefer smaller cities with less sights. Another obvious reason is, that coming from Finland, we are not used to big cities' noise, pollution, and crowded rush hours. Nanjing was, however, bearable in this respect. The city died for the evening and it was nice to walk along the streets. One good side in writers' and loiterers' life is that you can choose when to go out and take care of your, well, non-businesses.

There were no Chinese Couch Surfers in Nanjing. It was a pity because expatriates seemed to socialize with each other like everywhere in the world, and there was minimal interaction with locals besides random daily encounters in shops and taxis. And expats use a lot of taxis in China. We wanted to walk, like always, and caused curiosity. Nanjing's city centre is quite small for being such a huge city of two million people, and one can really easily walk everywhere and avoid all the hassle with taxis, which are all the same around the world.

Maids of dishonour

Our stay had probably one long-term influence on the expat community. Staying at people's places during the daytime when maids come to work is always revealing. This time it led to one maid getting fired because she misused her position. When you are at home you will notice how badly they do their work - or, as in most cases, leave it undone. Päivi was amused to see how some of the maids came to work wearing clothes that were seemingly unsuitable for cleaning, and every single one of them was all the time carrying their fancy handbags. They arranged things a bit, covered all dirt, and did some washing-up, but rarely any real cleaning.

The maids didn't seem to care about their foreign employers at all. For example one hand-bagged lady left the laundry to the washing machine for a few days, after which it caught a puke-like smell. We actually heard an explanation to this disrespect from one of our Taiwanese friends. She said that Chinese have two faces. One face is for the Chinese, the other one for foreigners. The latter doesn't count so everything goes, even bad work. You see, one cannot loose the second face unlike the first one. We were remembering warmly our maid, Dominga, in Buenos Aires. We could happily have a siesta when she came, and when we woke up, the whole house was shining. She was a rare treasure.

Nanjing's weather was getting chilly during our stay which was one of the reasons to move on. Autumns and winters tend to be very humid in the city so the weather always feels colder than you could expect just by looking at temperatures. We were lucky, though, as it only rained a couple of times. We were waiting for more after reading our American friends' blog last year about their tour around China. It seemed to be raining almost every day. Either they had an exceptionally bad weather or we had an unbelievably good one.