NorthChina’s life

I couldn’t get into Med school in Pakistan, high merit, private schools asks for a lot of donations, China was the right option to study which is cheap and affordable but there was a problem I needed to face , The temperature.

I lived in a city called Multan for my whole life, never imagined living in an extremely cold climate as my hometown’s winter is just 12°c and lowest recorded was 2°c as far as I know. The winter is short about 2 months give or take. But summer hits hard to this place. In summer, you can fry an egg in sun ..people know Dubai , Kuwait and Arabian areas to give us warm weather but it’s not true. In Multan you can suffer the same or worse climate conditions if you don’t like summer heat, Multan is not your thing.

Well I got into a Chinese medical university, In northeast province of heilongjiang, surrounded by coldest known country Russia, Russia is just 9hr train from Qiqihar , yeah the city I lived in. About 3 hours from Inner Mongolia and 12hr train from the capital Beijing, as we arrived here the temperature was cold as expected (-40°c). We were 4 students travelled together 3 boys and a girl from 3 different cities and never Experienced this cold harsh climate in life. One of us was asthmatic and got sever shortness of breath, as we arrived in Harbin city railway station and we needed to stay outside before getting the tickets. But how can we get them. We don’t know a word of Chinese and we don’t know anyone who can speak English and we don’t know anyway to contact our university because there is no internet connection,No SIM cards just 4 Pakistani people at Harbin airport with heavy cold cutting winds and our clothes were just for the cold we had in Multan. That time we knew we’re screwed. Well luckily our university sent a student to receive us and he helped us getting tickets, and then we entered the railway station. It was huge, but no heating system at that time in 2015. Well we walked and walked to the waiting area and finally got some warm area. We got the train at night 3:00am the slow one. And reached the destination around 7:00am. Right after reaching the hostel we got our room and beddings and we didn’t waste another minute and slept right away.

There were some Pakistani people but we needed to gather our own stuff and pay fees, after that we go out for buying households and eat something finally. The cold is really bothering us that time. Whenever I breath it feel like my nasal cavity is going to freeze. If I have wet hair , there is no need to put gel or hairspray we get the perfect frozen hair outside, well with the time we got used to it first winter was really hard but we stayed inside most of the time rather than going outside and explore the city. With time we had a chance to witness CHINESE SPRING FESTIVAL. Or Chinese new year.

Chinese new year. The biggest and most important celebration. Chinese people work so hard on their working days. They don’t get off during weekdays and there is no possibility of taking a break if there is no national holiday. Well China give so many holidays to their workers. 2 months of new year, then almost every month there is a festival and national holiday for 4-10 days according to the Chinese calendar.

When I was in china it was sheep year. I don’t have any idea what is all that mean but it was so red everywhere. Lights and their songs , traditional songs, traditional lanterns all around the city

It all happened in winter. There is no chance of having new year in summer.moreover we used to eat KFC all the time actually it was our food for 1 month and we spend too much on shopping unti we realize we are getting out of money. And soon we have to ask money again.