A long weekend!

The upside of a 6-day working week

Last week we worked 6 days. The reason? There's a long weekend until Tuesday, and because two days of work would otherwise be lost, they decide to work a Saturday to make up a day. Apparently that's completely normal in China. I actually don't mind at all; I enjoy my internship.

The weather was really nice today: 21 degrees and sunny. So we had the idea of going to the Fabric Market. It's a big complex with literally hundreds of tailors who make made-to-measure shirts, suits, dresses and so on. Today was my first time there, and I bought a nice leather belt. I'm thinking of having a suit made to measure too, and maybe some shirts. But that's for another time.

Next we went to Yuyuan Garden, or at least that was the idea when we set off. It was incredibly crowded! Of course all the Chinese were on holiday too, and it was the first nice day in a few days. They must have thought: let's go to Shanghai and see some nice things! So we just looked around the area, but it was very beautiful there too! Here are a few photos I took:

Residence permit and bank account

Tomorrow we're picking up our passports with the residence permit. That basically means we really live in Shanghai, rather than just being here for 90 days to study. With this in our passport we can also simply leave China and come back in, which we couldn't do with our visa before. So I'm planning to spend a few days in Hong Kong at some point, now that I'm here and have the chance!

Once I have my passport back I can also open a bank account. Having a bank account in Shanghai is really useful. You need a Chinese bank account to order online, but also to pay with WeChat or AliPay. These are apps you install on your smartphone and link to your bank account. When you go out to eat or shop and have to pay, you scan a QR code with the app and the money comes straight off your account. Really easy! Something like that would be handy in Belgium too!

A week or two in Beijing?

On Saturday we also had a meeting with our internship supervisor, the General Manager of G2S Creative Workshop. We showed him what we'd built and he was very happy with our results. Out of the blue he asked whether we'd like to go to Beijing some time. We thought: a few days in Beijing, that'd be nice. Suddenly he says: OK, then I'll try to arrange something for a week or two! So if we're lucky, we'll get to explore Beijing for a week or two as well!

Doing my internship here was definitely a good choice!