I'm Heather and I am Canadian

Hello, my name is Heather and I am a Canadian-born Chinese. I am in Shaoguan right now to teach English at a community center as a volunteer. I am looking to make contact with other expatriates in Shaoguan, as well as make some friends. I have been in China for just over 24 hours now...I hope I meet some nice people!

Hi Heather,

do you know the Sydney Cafe in the city? The owner Joseph Wong is an Australian Chinese guy. He is owns another restaurant in the city, also. He is a pretty good contact to have

Also you are welcome to come to the university. We have students from many different places and Western and Japanese foreign teachers

If you want to meet some nice people, I recommend coming to our English corner, you will be popular

Hi Alex, I do not know where this cafe is. My location is near the intersection of Fengcai Lu and Fengdu Beilu streets. Is the cafe anywhere near here?

I am new to the city and my hosts will not let me travel alone yet. I know you have an English corner tomorrow on Thursday, and that sounds like a great way to meet people. The problem is that I do not feel comfortable traveling at 8pm in the evening, and cannot ask my hosts to accompany me there at that time. Will you be holding other English corners soon, perhaps at an earlier time?

I will try to check out the cafe as soon as possible. I am very eager to meet other non-locals, as it is quite a shock to realize that I am in indeed in China, so far from home!

Also, do you know of any kind of community of expatriates in Shaoguan? I have searched around online and have found a cool website for Guangdong, but almost all the cultural events and activities were for Guangzhou or Shenzen.

Thank you so much for your information! I hope I can make it to an English corner soon.

Heather wrote:Hi Alex, I do not know where this cafe is. My location is near the intersection of Fengcai Lu and Fengdu Beilu streets. Is the cafe anywhere near here?

I am new to the city and my hosts will not let me travel alone yet. I know you have an English corner tomorrow on Thursday, and that sounds like a great way to meet people. The problem is that I do not feel comfortable traveling at 8pm in the evening, and cannot ask my hosts to accompany me there at that time. Will you be holding other English corners soon, perhaps at an earlier time?

I will try to check out the cafe as soon as possible. I am very eager to meet other non-locals, as it is quite a shock to realize that I am in indeed in China, so far from home!

Also, do you know of any kind of community of expatriates in Shaoguan? I have searched around online and have found a cool website for Guangdong, but almost all the cultural events and activities were for Guangzhou or Shenzen.

Thank you so much for your information! I hope I can make it to an English corner soon.

You are pretty close to that cafe. To get there, walk to the walking street and turn right, keep going straight till you come to the end of the pedestrian street. At that T-junction, maybe 10 metres from the corner is the cafe on the right hand side of the road on the 2nd and 3rd floors. Below it is a little foreign food shop. If you walk past the Xinhua bookshop, you have walked 10 metres too far.... the entrance is a glass door. There should be signs around. Ask to speak to Joseph. He is a pretty easy sort of guy.

Shaoguan doesn't really have a community of foreigners as such, there aren't too many here, never has been ha... as the lack of information you could find on the internet probably showed you.

Guangzhou north station is only 37 mins away on the Wuguang train so don't feel too isolated here! Hongkong has a direct bus service too!

There are a very few at language schools, one or two at a kindergarten and most of the rest are either teachers or students at the university. The Wuguang high speed railway had an engineering office in Shaoguan that had a lot of Dutch, Germans and English... but they left a year ago...so it is pretty much teachers and students now. We are starting a small five a side football competition in Zhongshan Park very soon. About 15 of the local foreigners will be playing.

How long are you in town for? There are English corners 'roughly' once a week on a Thursday night. But a few of us are fairly social and we can happily do something in the city.

Some of us are playing a bit of pool this Friday night, but again its near the university. A good 30 minute bus ride from the city. We can organise something near yours if you like.
We can hit a pretty nice Japanese restaurant There is a Henan restaurant near where you are staying that an English guy here loves... I'm sure we'll be there soon ha

I remember the first time I came to China, felt like living in a cartoon that first week! I was staying in Xi'an and the Xianyang airport is far from the city the bus from the airport passes through some pretty rough areas, I was honestly thinking "Will I have electricity and water?" haha ... good times.

BTW, how old are you?

Okay, I will definitely check out the cafe as soon as I can. I'm so glad it's not far!

I am 23 years old and am staying in Shaoguan till January, at least. It all depends on how much I end up liking it here. I have a Bachelor from McGill university, and will be doing another one next year. I would love to go to the university when I have more of a feel for the city, but as I said, for now I don't feel safe traveling alone.

If you guys organize anything near my location, please let me know, as I am eager to make some new friends!

Hi Alex, I wasn't able to find the Sydney cafe! I found the bookstore you spoke of, at the T-like intersection. I will place where I was so that you can tell me where I went wrong: I was on the pedestrian street, at the very last intersection and the bookstore was on my left, around the bend of the T. I wandered around that area but then it started raining, so I called it a day. Is Sydney Cafe written on the sign in English? I tried to look out for this.

Thanks so much! I can't wait to meet some English speaking people!