Meet Teacher Alex
Our Thursday topic last month was about mindfulness. One of the biggest responses we had was on the importance of pursuing other passions. So we thought, why not interview teachers for at least the next month who have awesome hobbies and side gigs?
This week, we spoke to Alex!
Alex and his family are living an amazing life and really maximizing their time in China. They moved to China almost 8 years ago from Romania and haven’t looked back. As a family, they have lived in 5 different provinces and visited over half of the 55 UNESCO World Heritage Sites!
Us: Hi Alex! So how did you end up in China?
Alex: My wife and I moved to China in July 2012. I had been a high school teacher in Romania for four years. I decided to become a career teacher after taking a group of students to English camp in Harrogate, the UK, where I had such a blast that I got hooked on this fun and energetic way of life. My wife was a corporate ‘drone’ who was looking for a way out. China seemed really exotic and off the beaten path, so I used the connections I had made during the Harrogate trip to secure a job teaching IELTS to college students in Yantai, Shandong. My wife just walked into a training school and got herself a job in half an hour. Lovely!
Us: What do you like to do in your free time while living here?
Alex: In our free time we like to travel, try out new dishes, I like to do bird watching (I have photographed more than a third of China’s approx 1380 bird species).
We have sampled a dizzying amount of Chinese dishes. Standouts include Beijing duck with dark Belgian beer at Quanjude restaurant in Beijing, spinach dumplings at Wuyuan hotel in Wuyuan, Fujian, Dongpo pork in Hangzhou, hundred year old egg porridge in Foshan and Dai-style lime chicken in Yunnan. Plus loads of others!
Also, after visiting many tourist sites, I came across the UNESCO sites list and started using as a guideline to narrow down the options. It really helped find some unique places.
Us: What is the most recent place you’ve visited?
Alex: Latest site is maybe the least interesting one from a tourist’s point of view: the Archeological Ruins of Liangzhu City, near Hangzhou. It’s a newly inscribed site (2019) and it’s a fascinating open air museum that offers proof of the existence of an early regional organisational structure from 5000 years ago. Basically people cultivating rice in the Late Neolithic. Great for history buffs, less so for photography/selfie enthusiasts.
Us: What are the top 3 sites you recommend people visiting?
Alex: Wuyi Mountain in Fujian is definitely one of our favorite places in the world, not only China. Mellow atmosphere, great hikes, no crowds during national holidays, world class tea (the tea from the Boston Tea Party apparently came from here!) and a myriad of great photo opportunities are some the highlights here.
Hongcun village in Anhui is one of the quintessential Chinese villages, wonderfully preserved and teeming with art students honing their craft all along the cobbled alleyways. Best tip: go on the hot air balloon ride, our 3-year old daughter still remembers it after more than a year.
Lhasa, Tibet is without a doubt one of the top traveling experiences I have ever had. I went solo, visited Everest Base Camp and the explored Lhasa for 2 days. Potala Palace has an uncanny grandeur about it only matched by some Indian forts and my favorite building in the world, the Taj Mahal. But the way it dominates the city standing on that rocky outcropping, the austere yet strangely welcoming white walls, the surprising pond behind it, and the Himalayas surrounding it are breathtaking.
An extra place I would also like to recommend the Fujian tulous, which are round, fortified earth buildings which serve as communal homes. Some are hotels now, a unique experience vaguely reminiscent of spending a night in Hobbiton.
Us: Where is next on your list?
Alex: Dazu Rock Carvings in Chongqing might be next, because we haven’t visited that monstrous metropolis yet. Top of the list but hard to do are Tianshan mountains in Xingjiang and Dunhuang caves in Gansu (where you need to pre-book a long time in advance due to daily visitor limits).
Us: What is your all time favorite province?
Alex: Yunnan is our favorite province in China, by a long shot. First the weather is fab, especially autumn and winter, summer a bit rainy. Then, the mountains. Meili Snow Mountain is probably one of the most beautiful mountains in the world, an almost perfect cone, best time to see unclouded is October. Then, Yunnan kicked off my bird watching addiction, as it is home to more than 900 species, so about the same as the whole of Europe. You can find wild elephants in the jungles of Xishuanbanna, the biggest rice terraces in the world in Yuanyang county, karst landscapes similar to those in Guilin, the second largest Tibetan lamastery in Shangri-La, great food, laidback atmosphere in Kunming, whose Green Lake Park is teeming with black-headed gulls from Siberia and ethnic minorities dancing in their spectacular traditional attire every weekend.
Thanks for speaking to us Alex! We really appreciate you telling us your story in great detail, inspiring us to buy some train and plane tickets ASAP to visit these incredible places!