Cai Wei is 22 years old and comes from Beijing, China. She arrived in Christchurch two weeks ago for an intensive English language course. Cai Wei discusses her initial impressions of New Zealand.
Note: Although all of the interviews we publish are edited for better flow, our interview with Cai Wei has been edited heavily. We needed to do this because Cai Wei is here to improve her English and it usually took several attempts before she understood our questions and several more attempts for us to understand her answers. We have preserved to the best of our ability the meaning of what Cai Wei intended to say.
ENZ: Why did you come to New Zealand?
Cai Wei: I wanted to improve my English and it was cheaper to study here than the USA or the UK.
ENZ: Why did you choose Christchurch?
Cai Wei: I wanted to go to Auckland but the agents in China said there were already many Chinese people there and I should go to Christchurch to be amongst more native English speakers. I'm not sure now if this is true.
ENZ: Why was Auckland your first choice?
Cai Wei: Auckland is a bigger city and I felt there would be a better chance there for me to spread my wings.
ENZ: What was your first impression of New Zealand?
Cai Wei: I had to fill in a form on the aeroplane before I landed and as you know my English is not very good yet - I'm here to improve it. I had food in my luggage - but it was only food that I knew was allowed in NZ. I had checked this before leaving China and I had no fruit, vegetables, meat or anything like that.
The mistake I made was crossing instead of ticking a box on the Customs Declaration Form about food in my luggage. The customs officer at the airport fined me $500 for this. A very kind New Zealand man who had sat next to me on the aeroplane told the custom's officer that I do not speak English well and that it was partly his fault that I had made a mistake because he had helped me to fill in the form and he had not understood me properly. They changed the fine to $200 which I had to pay at the airport before being allowed into the country.
I would recommend that anyone coming to New Zealand is very careful about filling in forms and bringing food. I've now heard that a lot of people get fined at the airport.
ENZ: What impression have you formed of Christchurch in the short time you've been here?
Cai Wei: I live in a house in the suburbs. The suburbs are very empty of people compared with Beijing. When I'm travelling in the bus to and from my language school, I see hardly any people outside. They seem to be in their houses or in cars. The city centre is busier - I see plenty of people there.
I expected that Christchurch would be much cleaner than Beijing because there are much fewer people in Christchurch. It is certainly cleaner but not as clean as I expected. There is some litter on the streets and I see cigarette ends lying on the pavement in the city centre and I don't like this. Also in Beijing it is very windy in spring and autumn and these winds can blow dirt about making the city dirtier. The winds in Christchurch seem very calm so this is not an excuse for litter in the streets.
Christchurch is very green. Everywhere there is grass, trees and parks. I really like this. In Beijing there are only buildings, roads and people. The green here is very nice. I think that the environment in Beijing will improve though because the government has started to plant trees to make the city look better for the Olympics in 2008.
In Beijing everyone lives in big apartment buildings. Here everyone seems to live in a detached house with a garden. The homestay house I'm living in has wall-to-wall carpets - my house in Beijing has a wooden floor. The apartments in my building in Beijing are all heated with hot water from a single, very large, central furnace. All of the houses here seem to have individual furnaces or electric heaters.
ENZ: What do you think of the shops and supermarkets here?
Cai Wei: I find them very expensive. Everything here is very much more expensive than in China - except for cars and computers. Cars especially are much cheaper than in China. I think this will change when China joins the WTO. Many of the language students studying here buy and drive a car because they cannot afford to in China. They seem to spend all their spare time talking about cars.
The supermarkets here are similar to China, but in China there is a far wider range of vegetables. Chinese farmers are very poor, they earn very little money, and this means that vegetables in China are very cheap. Although there is a great choice of vegetables in China, in New Zealand I have discovered a vegetable I had not eaten in China, the potato. My host family find it difficult to believe that I had not eaten potatoes before I came here. They eat potato with almost every meal - as we do with rice in China. I don't like potatoes, and my hosts now cook rice for me and potatoes for themselves.
The only thing that is not cheaper in Chinese supermarkets than in New Zealand is shampoo. It costs about the same here as in China.
I have noticed that many of the clothes in NZ are made in China. I think the clothes sold in NZ are of lower quality than the clothes I would buy in China but cost much more money. That includes branded goods such as Adidas or Nike.
ENZ: What advice would you give to a Chinese family emigrating to New Zealand?
Cai Wei: I can't see why young people would want to come to NZ. I think it would be a very nice place to retire to - the suburb I'm living in is quiet and clean and very appropriate for retirement. I think that for young people though there are more opportunities in China or in other industrial countries. China has much more manufacturing industry than New Zealand. One of my teachers at the language school has two children and both have left NZ. One is working in Australia and the other is working in the UK.
If people are going to come I would tell them to bring everything they possibly could because everything in NZ is more expensive than China. China uses 230 V and NZ is about the same so bring all your electrical goods - there is a very big price difference here.
ENZ: Cai Wei, thank you very much.
