The City of Yangzhou is set alongside many canals and has some beautiful parks, gardens and a great Old Town. There are many nearby cities that can be easily explored on a weekend – Suzhou, Wuxi and Nanjing to name a few. The sprawling metropolis of Shanghai is only 1.5 hours by train, which makes for a fun weekend away!
Our life here in Yangzhou is great! We have met many amazing expats who we now call friends. We have a fabulous team of Chinese Teaching Assistants and other local friends as well. It’s a great mix of people from all over the world, including America, New Zealand, England, Australia, Russia, Canada and of course, China. Our weeks are spent Teaching English for 15-20 hours, exploring new corners of our city, working on our website and hanging out with friends.
Dinners out are one of our favourite things to do. We’ll get a big group of us together and go out to a nice Chinese restaurant for a meal. Eating out in China is much different from home. You would never order a meal for just yourself. What happens is that one person will take the menu (preferably someone who can speak Chinese!) and will order a bunch of dishes for the whole table.
One portion of food is massive here and is meant to be shared. Each person has a little bowl and will use their chopsticks to serve themselves some food from the communal dishes in the center of the table. Stuffing ourselves with a variety of food and drinking loads of beer costs about $6/person. Not too shabby.
Apart from dinners out, the nightlife in this city consists of house parties, going to lounges or nightclubs and listening to our friend play live music. We’ve been enjoying our social life here and have been lucky enough to be invited to a Chinese-Australian wedding, staggette party, housewarming get-togethers, going away parties, brunch with Chinese families, numerous birthday celebrations, weekends away and soon it will be time to celebrate Christmas with all of the foreigners.
There aren’t any English movie theaters here so we download movies from the internet and watch them at home. There’s no swimming pool, no bowling alley and no sporting events. However, we are doing more as the locals do – riding our bikes around, spending time in the parks, and trying KTV (karaoke!) We’ve traded in our hockey sticks and pucks for badminton rackets and birdies. We don’t have a car, we have one-speed bicycles. We eat soup, noodles or dumplings for breakfast and we sleep on a 1 inch thick mattress. Oh yes, life is definitely different here in China.
But the best part about Yangzhou is the fact that it’s not even on the foreign tourist’s radar. When we walk around, we’re treated like rock stars. Everyone says hello, everyone looks at us with curious eyes and when we ride our bikes around, we almost cause accidents from people gawking at us. English isn’t spoken here so we get by with the basic Chinese we have learned, using hand gestures and when worse comes to worst, we call a bilingual friend. Many of the western “necessities” and comforts aren’t available here, but we find the basics that we need to make a meal from home if we want.
We wouldn’t want to live in a more westernized part of China. We love the fact that we are some of the only foreigners here. Living in Yangzhou for the past 5 months has been amazing! We truly feel like we are somewhere different and are enjoying every moment of it. We can’t wait to see what the next 7 months has to offer.
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You guys are amazing! I love and miss ya so much. Keep up the awesome work and say a big ni hao to everyone in YZ.
China’s not the same without you…come back! Thanks for the comment xo
You look so happy and thus incredible! Surprisingly, this town of China looks like any other European/American town in few photos!
This story makes me so excited. I just moved to Rizhao, China and signed a 1-year contract. As the only native English speaker, I look forward to experiencing the same cultural immersion that you both did. Cheers from an American living in Rizhao, China!
Trust me, it’s very different from anywhere in Europe or America! But the parks and things like that are the same 🙂 Cheers
The only native English speaker?! At your school you mean, or in the whole city? Either way, you’re in for a real treat. China is amazing. Have a great year!
I found your article because I have a job offer in Yangzhou and wanted to learn more about it from a foreigners perspective. Thanks! Glad you have such enthusiasm about it! – Canadian living in Thailand
Great! Yes, we really enjoyed our time there. We didn’t want to live in one of the more westernized cities like Beijing, Shanghai, etc. Yangzhou was a good choice, I hope you enjoy it…if you go 🙂
Cheers!
Do u remember any English primary schools there.. Wanting to teach English and bring my 3 kids with me!
I don’t actually know of any! I can try to find out though if you are serious about moving there?
Cheers.
Ni Hao!
I found your page while I’m looking for the best apartment to stay at the city center of Yangzhou.
I mean a fully furnished apartment near a supermarket and with restaurant around.
If you know one, please let me know the name and location of it.
I will be located in YZ by February and will stay there for more than a year.
Xie xie Ni!
Hi! Thanks for the great write-up! I am considering moving to Yangzhou for a year but have been hesitant because I can find literally no information on the nightlife there. Obviously it’s not going to be like some of the bigger cities, but you mentioned lounges and nightclubs, two things that I could find no evidence of in my days scouring the internet. Are there indeed bars and nightclubs there?
Don’t get me wrong, I want to see all the ancient landmarks too, but at the end of the week I want to know there’s a club I can go to and have some fun. So please elaborate on the nightlife if you would, thanks!
I will be going to yanhzhou in May. Maybe someone can contact me ahead of time
Hi Byron,
The shops, restaurants and bars are constantly changing in Yangzhou! There was one bar called “Feeling” bar, which was like a club. For pubs, people went to somewhere called Ronnies I think, or we’d all get together and have house parties – big beers are like $0.30 at the shop. I’m sure things have changed and there are more bars now. Also, Shanghai makes for a great weekend getaway