Nǐ hǎo, Namastē and Olá- the fellows finally meet! After months of excitement, facebooking and exams China, India and Brazil is almost upon us and we’re all itching to get on the planes! 

For anybody reading this who doesn’t know me, my name is Jordan and I am fortunate enough to be one of the 40 fellows travelling to China in two weeks time. Following this weekend’s jam-packed pre-departure briefing, I thought what better way to make my debut on the blogosphere!

I arrived at the British Council to be warmly greeted by 99 fellows and the Global Fellowship and British Council team. Saturday’s activities were focused mainly the cultural differences, language difficulties and general issues we will be faced with during our time overseas and how we can avoid them. I particularly enjoyed the 3 hours spent with Holly, the native Chinese teacher who taught us basic survival phrases and numbers in Mandarin! One of the more active tasks, which proved to be hilariously difficult, was Jiànzi- directly translated as “shuttlecock”. The game involved keeping a feathered like shuttlecock in the air by using any part of your body other than your hands, whilst other members in the group count in Chinese. (The official game is played similarly to badminton or volleyball in China). How difficult could this really be? As a footballer I jumped at the opportunity to show off some keep-me-up skills, but however amateur they may be my Jiànzi skills were far worse!! At first I struggled to keep it up more the once and what seemed a relatively easy task, was one of the hardest things I have ever done! After much perseverance and analysis of our teachers technique, I managed to score a championship score of erm...8! A number which coincidently, is one of the luckiest numbers in China. Here are a few examples of the Chinese superstition around the number:

·  The word for 8-八 (Romanized Pinyin: bā) sounds very similar to the word for “prosperous” or “wealth” -发财 (Romanized Pinyin: fā)

·  A telephone number with all the digits being 8 was sold for $270,723(USD) in Chengdu, China.

·  The Olympic games opening ceremony in Beijing opened on 08/08/08 at 8 seconds past the 8^th minute of the 8^th hour (local time)

·  The number 8 is linked with the Buddhist Lotus Flower, which has 8 petals.

·  HSBC requested that there head office in London was addressed at number 8 Canada Square, when they moved in back in 1993.

So as a result, I decided to retire from my Jiànzi career with the luck personal best of 8!

 Other activities included extracting smarties and marbles from a jar using chopsticks which as a trio, Sierah, Katie and I, were runaway winners!

 The day concluded with a meal at Turkish restaurant Ev, which gave us a chance to meet other fellows we hadn’t been grouped with during the day.

 As part of the programme, we are required to focus on a self-chosen aspect of Chinese life which particularly interests us, and produce a piece of work which will aid us in informing schools, friends and families about our findings, when we return to the UK. We rotated around various workshops, which informed us about the best way to take advantage of the use of the technology available to us when communicating our story.  As a media student, I was initially drawn towards using a video camera to capture my journey and perhaps create a small documentary on whichever aspect of Chinese life I choose, however I am also hoping to use this blog to create a detailed account of my findings in China. We were also given plenty of advice on how to deal with the media, anticipating difficult questions that we could face regarding the funding of the programme and its relevance to our work.

 After a long tiring day at the British Council, a small group of us China fellows took the leisurely stroll from Trafalgar Square to China Town! Of course, this was no comparison to the real thing, which we will be experiencing in just two weeks, but it was nice to get us in the mood as we practiced our chopstick skills!

The final day was perhaps what least excited me before the weekend, however in some ways it became the most inspiring. Today we visited our different corporate companies, which we will be guests to in our host countries. Along with four other China fellows and five India fellows, I took the journey from Gloucester Road station to Canary Warf, where we were going to be visiting HSBC. I had no idea what to expect. The day started badly, missing four tubes during the rush hour, however as a reached the top of the escalator at Canary Warf station, I was overwhelmed by my surroundings. Standing next to the two tallest buildings in the UK, I felt like a drop in the ocean but I only needed to remind myself of why I was there to make me realise how lucky I was and what a difference I can actually make. The lift flew up to floor 40 at lightening speed and as we emerged to meet our HSBC representative, we couldn’t believe what we saw. Modern art work covered every wall,  every conference room boasted a touch screen display showing whoever was using it and every window presented a view of London that none of us had ever seen. On one side, the Olympic stadium and London city airport. On the other, the Thames, Big Ben, the London Eye and pretty much every sight worth seeing in London! I can only dream about what awaits me at the Shanghai headquarters in 4 weeks time.

We discussed HSBC’s corporate social responsibilities and sustainability, as well as being advised on the best way to embrace ourselves in an unfamiliar environment, by someone who has worked all over the world as part of the HSBC graduate programme. I was truly intrigued by the work that they do for communities as well as the banking side of it and it has opened my eyes to a career path that I had previously overlooked.

On return to the British Council we were given lunch, discussed our experienced and had afternoon tea with guests from our corporate partners and Vernon Ellis, the Chairman of the British Council.

So the pre-departure weekend was over and everyone was exhausted, but what had I actually learnt? I learnt that in China you cannot eat until the oldest person at the table starts and that you should always place your chopsticks horizontally across your bowl, I learnt about how to share my experiences and deal with tricky situations such as language barriers or the press, but most importantly the 99 other fellows, especially those of whom are travelling to China, are going to be friends for life. We will be working together, sharing our knowledge and our experiences and in doing so, we will be strengthening the foundations of our friendships which were laid down during the last weekend.

Our flight may not be for another two weeks, but our Chinese adventure has already begun...

Sorry for the cheesy title, thought I'd try my hand at being snappy though. That go well for me? Thought not. My bad.

...Moving swiftly on, yesterday i got back from the pre-departure briefing weekend which was absolutely brilliant- It was great to meet up with some Fellow Brazilians (see what i did there, right?) as well as plenty of the Chinese and Indians. From the sample of people I successfully mingled with I think this summer is going to be great fun, some real characters as well as some really genuine people.

But the title, relate it to the title... On the second night, left to our own devices the Brazilians decided to go out for a meal together... To an American restaurant. The way it turned out only about half of us made it, and we picked up loads of Indians and the odd China fellow too. Then all got split up on the tube, and the restaurant was too full to fit what remained of us in. So in true Brazilian style we went to a Chinese, where I had my first attempt at grappling with chopsticks... all I can say is that I'm very glad I'm not off to China!

Anyway, feeling that the night was still young, and wanting to keep our night at least vaguely themed, we decided to set off for a Salsa bar down the road. Salsa is at least vaguely similar to the Samba which is synonymous with Brazil. Well i say it's similar, and the sounds are at least a little similar, and they're both mainly South American... But in their roots they're not all that similar. Samba grew up out of the slums of Rio de Janeiro and is played by huge bands up to 5,000 people, wheras Salsa is a heavily Americanized version of Cuban Son music which incorporates elements of Jazz, Rock n Roll and even R&B. This is if my memory of GCSE music is reliable!

It was a really nice place... made of wood, underground, with a great atmosphere and a full dancefloor- and this was only at 9-30! The drinks looked a bit pricey for someone like me who's never been out in London... and then happy hour ended! After an obligatory period of waiting around watching everyone else, we were samba-ing (probably quite badly) well into the night... I learnt to shake my hips! (are they meant to do that?) We also met some very enthusiastic regulars, with Charlie getting rather a lot of attention from and enormous man with braids, and Gillian being whisked away by an Iranian bloke for what must've been about an hour and a half of Salsa lessons. We then made the ponderous but interesting trek back through London, waited ages for a bus and were joined by some Indian fellows, and entered some truly awful tipsy renditions of the gut-wrenching Oasis, the wonderful Eiffel 65 and a 3-verse epic about Yogi Bear.

As for the soundtrack to my summer... Struggling with Portuguese, I've adopted the idea of listening to lots of Brazilian music. I've taken a particular shine to late 70's punk band Aborto Eletrico, and tried my best to take a representative swoop through some other genres of the 80's, 90's and 00's. I'd definitely recommend Thrashcore band Discarga: you can't understand a word they're saying, but that's pretty much the point of thrashcore anyway so you don't have to feel bad about not having learnt enough Portugese yet.