This is gonna be a long post but when I went to China last year, I noticed several things that I thought was weird compared to the way we do things in America. I hope that this post prepares you for your visit to China. FYI, this experience is form going to Chongqing and Nanning, which is not quite as westernized as Shanghai or Beijing.
Girls and Girls, Boys and Boys
Well, this took some getting used to. In China its customary for
girls to hold hands or walk arm in arm with other girls. As well as it
being customary for men to walk arm in arm or with arms around each
other’s shoulders. Its not uncommon for men to dance with men and women
to dance with women as well. In America, this may not seem weird at
all, but it’s viewed as a gesture of love, rather than a gesture of
deep friendship as in China. There seems to be a rarity of gay
population in China and from the people I’ve spoken to, most Chinese
heterosexuals don’t view gay people as lesser beings or discrimminate
against them in any way. They think everyone is entitled to their own
life.
Religion
You’ll notice, that even though there’s a huge amount of Buddist
temples and whenever you go to them you’ll see many Chinese locals
praying and lighting candles, the common religion in China seems to be…
no religion at all. Chinese people seem to be happy with the concept of
living a healthy and well ordered life without having to worry about
where they end up when they die. Some Buddists even only use the
Buddist teachings are guidlines of how to live a proper life, and not
necessarily of how heaven and hell play out. Just because they don’t
have a religion, don’t expect them to be hellions or sluts over there,
Chinese people seem to be naturally repressed and very mindful of
family values and public perception.
Who’s next in line?
There is no concept of “next in line” in most areas. I can’t count
the number of times I arrived at a window to pay something only to have
3 or 4 hands shoot past me and shove money into the window area. The
ticket lady calmly serves whoever she sees in front of her and doesn’t
care where they come from. As an American, I thought this was
ridiculously rude. People squeeze you out of lines like crazy and the
only thing you can do is squeeze back. Luckily I was much bigger than
most Chinese guys and gals so I just calmly pushed a few people out of
the way and slapped some money down a few times. The people I pushed
out of the way seemed like they didn’t even notice me. Must be pretty
common. I didn’t start doing this until my second to last day. Normally
I would just wait for the line to die down and eventually get my turn.
Americans will find the pushing very hard to do at first, its
completely against our instincts.
Face
When I first went to China I read all these articles about how
important “face” is to Chinese people. Where they would do anything to
avoid embarrassment or confrontations. YEAH RIGHT! I have never heard
so many people raise their voices at each other in my life!
Furthermore, beggars are ridiculous there. In America, beggars will ask
once and you give them a nifty little “no, sorry” and that’s it. There,
you say, “no” and you have to put up with them continuing to follow you
for 20 minutes accross several blocks until they finally give up or you
finally cave in and give them money. It feels a little like rape when a
little kid does this to you and you have to cave in. Sheesh! Also,
never ever take something that’s handed to you! Never ever ever! Most
of the time, its garbage, the rest of the time its someone trying to
sell you something and once you realize this and you try to hand it
back to them, they’ll constantly refuse to take it back and keep asking
for money.
Traffic
Traffic is bad. Not “Los Angeles” bad, where you are just sitting at
a dead stop on the freeway for several hours… its China bad.. where
there is no concept of “stop”. Taxis and buses are crazy and constantly
pulling out in front of each other. The whole time you’re in a cab
you’re grabbing ahold of anything that seems sturdy and praying to God
it will be over soon. Pedestriants are running out of the way
(remember? No stopping!). I once made the mistake in assuming that the
crosswalk I was in would protect me (CLEARLY MARKED CROSSWALK!) until
my Chinese friend pulled me out of the path of a speeding cab, just in time!
Most roads in Chongqing are clearly marked with three lanes, but that
doesn’t stop the cars from piling into them with 4 or 5 lanes of
traffic! There doesn’t seem to be any concept of traffic police, its
every car for itself. I’ve been on buses to arrive at stops with doors
open and don’t even stop completely. People are running to jump on and
off moving buses.
Food
The Chinese food in China is nothing like the Chinese food in
America. The reason? Its because Americans won't pay money to eat half
of this stuff! Delicacy snacks I had on the first day is watermelon
with this squishy white stuff on it. Liver on a stick and some meat
that had these hair-looking glands on it. And most of the meat is
chalked full of bones that you have to spit out on every bite. So
American restaurants had to be “Americanized” or else they would go out
of business. I must tell you, when you are in China, don’t be picky.
Eat everything. There are some meats and vegetables that you will put
in your mouth and simply can’t finish. I did this to some kind of root,
it burned my mouth so bad I couldn’t eat anything else. In those
instances, its ok to spit it out, but 90% of the stuff is edible and
although it may not taste great, it definitely doesn’t taste bad. Also,
get used to having a small “tea” cup as your only source of drink at
most dinner tables. It is very common in China to consider the soup
that is served as the “drink” of the meal. The tea is just to sip on
until the soup and other food is served. Also, don’t be afraid to order
rice if you’re having trouble eating something. Every restaurant has
rice, but most won't give it to you unless you ask for it. The reason
they do this is so that the rice doesn’t take away from your main meal.
Its very common for Chinese to order rice mid way through their meal or
at the end. Also, everything is cooked, even lettuce. I tried to
explain the concept of “salads” to my Chinese friends and they just
made a weird face and said “Isn’t that dirty? Eating it after only
washing it with water?”. I think in larger cities in China it's more accepted. Also, all fish is chalked full of bones so be prepared to take your time eating it. One last thing, if you order
rabbit expecting something great, get ready for a let down. I have a
standing rule that any meat that you need to take a fork and knife to
in order to eat should never be served cold. Chinese foods have many
cold dishes and rabbit is one of them. If you get past the cold meat
and the chewey cartilage, you may like it.
Beds
Picture a slab of cement with a thin sheet nicely pulled over it.
Night and day difference between my bed at home and the one in the
hotel. Its not just this hotel, all beds in China are very hard. Some
other travelers even posted that they sometimes sleep on the carpet on
the floor of their hotel rooms because its softer. From experience,
I’ll tell you that I had no trouble sleeping on the hard beds. You
don’t notice it after a while.
Wal-Mart
If you’re in China and you see a Wal-Mart, don’t say, “Bah, we have
those in America, lets go somewhere else.” These Wal-Marts are NOTHING
like Wal-Marts in America. I think Wal-Marts in China more closely
resemble a mix between a zoo and a haunted house. You will see rows of
live animals waiting to be scooped up and eaten. Everything from HUGE
bullfrogs to eels to snakes to chickens to lobsters to fish. All alive
and breathing and waiting for a home in someone’s cooking dish. When
you get past the live animals, you’ll get to the dead ones. These are
frightening. They have these massive bodies and heads of animals that I
have no idea what they are strung up everywhere. Like a dried up
monster octopus here, some dog or cat there, etc. Wal-mart’s come a
long way. Enjoy!
Showers
Showers are neat there but they seem to all be walk-in showers and
they’re built with the concept of being able to splash water everywhere
in the bathroom with no problems. There’s drains in the bathroom as
well as the shower and its not uncommon to have walk-in showers with no
doors or curtains. Its as if the whole bathroom is, in fact, the shower.
Cleanliness
I thought this was interesting. Whenever I wanted to pose for a
picture, I always tried to put down whatever it was that I am holding
but my Chinese friends would NOT let me put anything on the ground or
sidewalk or anywhere for that matter. They say its “dirty”. So every
picture I must hand all of my items to someone and it got pretty
ridiculous to the point where three of us would pose for a picture, so
the 4th person was so loaded up with shopping bags and purses and
backpacks and jackets they’re trying to take the picture as well! I
thought this was very odd, as I have no qualms about tossing my jacket
on the sidewalk for a quick pic (granted, I would pick a clean spot to
toss it).
Shopping
The malls are amazing here. 100 times better than any mall that I
have seen here in Phoenix and the service is incredible. Since there
are so many Chinese and they work for, like, 10 cents per day (jk), the
malls can afford to staff a different person in every single section of
the store. I mean… there are litterally these cubby holes with clothes
in them and a new person to serve you every few feet! They all say “Qua
ling, Guan Ling” or something like that… so it gets kind of annoying
when you walk down the center isle to the far end of the store… because
you hear it around 20 times from each side. Anyways, the best part
about it is that when you buy pants there, there is no specified
length. This is because all pants are pretty long and they make
alterations at the store (maybe 15 minute wait) after you buy your
pants. Pretty neat.
Chinese TV
Well, this is probably a bad example but the TV I watched from the
hotel room was quite interesting. They have one English channel and all
it has is news, documentaries and history about China. All of the
Chinese news anchors and what not on this channel spoke with a British
accent, so I guess that’s where they learned their English from. The
Chinese channels were nifty too. They had an MTV-like channel with
Chinese stars, I actually saw a Coldplay music video on there too, so I
guess it’s not entirely Chinese oriented. Chinese pop stars look just
like our pop stars. Doesn’t seem like there’s very much rock and roll
though. Many of the channels have “old school” Chinese soap operas.
Like, back in the Tang Dynasty or something, with Chinese guys in robes
and long hair. The acting is about as bad is our soap operas so at
least we have that in common. Another thing I wanted to note about
Chinese TV is that there is an awful lot of commericals about different
skin creams or lucky pendants that will make girls look more beautiful,
so I guess Chongqing women care about their looks quite a bit.
Diet Soda Anyone?
No one drinks diet soda anywhere in China, the only place you can
find it is pretty much at major grocery stores but restraurants don’t
carry it and neither do little shops on the street. Also, its not
called “diet” soda in China, its soda “light” and even labelled as
such. Also, in China, Fido Dido (the 1980s 7-up mascot) is still alive
and kicking!
Piracy Empire
I wanted to buy a few movies and games while I was in China and
Nanning actually had a “piracy mall”. Its a huge 3 story building with
about 30 or 40 piracy stores in it. They even have pirated gameboy
games (which I thought was amazing since they used cartridges). But
these gameboy games are basically a little flash memory card of some
sort inside a phoney clear cartridge. Pretty clever. So, just walk in
and buy illegal software for a fraction of the price. Not bad but you
have to be careful of the quality. A few movies I bought skipped
ridiculously and a couple said they had English subtitles but they
didn’t. Booo!
English Signs Suck
While walking around China I was happy to see many shops adorning
English signs but all the while I figured I could make a pretty good
living just going around to shops and correcting their signs so that
they are written in a way that westerners would actually understand as
well as fixing all of the spelling errors.
Other than the spelling, the problem with alot of Chinese signs is
that they simply use the dictionary translation for their Chinese text
and put that on their sign… and some of these signs are very nice
looking and probably cost quite a bit, if only they were correct or
more meaningful. On my way to the great wall in Beijing we past through
some smaller cities and I saw signs for things like “Vegetation
Midpoint” (which I assume is Agricultural Center) and a “Vegetable
Department” in a grocery store (which I assume they mean “Produce
Section”). All in all, very cool.
Beijing 2008
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you will know that China
will host the 2008 Summer Olympics. The Chinese marketing department
decided to advertise this by releasing a bunch of these cute little
monsters as the symbol of the olympics in China. There’s 5 of them, all
a different color and they have names that mean, like, Swallow and
stuff (the green one), because they have animal looking things on their
heads. I thought they were cute, but they were ridiculously expensive
and it seems like Chinese people, in general, hate them because they’re
not cute enough. Oh well.
Look foreign? Get money!
As everyone is well aware, China is doing anything it can to try and
lure in foreign English teachers. They’ll even pay for your room and
board as well as give you a monthly salary way higher than that of the
school’s headmaster. Your job will be to teach conversational English,
which means you don’t need to know Mandarin to do it, just go to class
and start talking. Hehe. Sounds liks a dream, eh? Well, there’s a
catch. There are many Chinese people in China that speak excellent
English, but the schools don’t want these people. They want foreigners.
The more foreign you look, the more money you can make. Australians are
a very popular choice for Chinese schools because they have blue eyes
and blond hair, however, we all know that Australia isn’t really the
epidome of accent-free English. But before you go off buying a plane
ticket to China to teach English, just remember that while the salary
is substantial in China (you will be living like a king there), it is a
fraction of what you can earn at a minimum wage job here after you
convert it from RMB to USD. So if you plan on going there to teach,
make sure you have someone (friend or family) who can support you when
you decide to come back… or you’d better decide to stay there for a
long while.
Motorcycles
Motorcycles are illegal in almost all major cities in China. Why?
Thought you’d ask. Well, its because everyone and their mom had a
motorcycle of some sort and it caused way too much polution. So now,
motorcycles are illegal (banned 10 years ago in Shanghai and Beijing
and 3 years ago in Nanning) and cars, which generate more pollution
than motorcycles, are not. Someone once told me that if every most
adults living in the major cities of China decided to get a car… the
world would be screwed!
KTV
If you ever take a trip to China or any Asian country, do KTV! It's great! Go there with your friends have a ball. KTV is a large hotel-room-esque type facility but in every room there's a karaoke machine, TV, couches, strobe lights, microphones.. everything you need to have a fun singalong. These are wildly popular in China, but I hear this concept bombed when they tried to introduce it here. Alot of the KTVs in China will have English songs, although only a select few and you'll find yourself limited to Spice Girls, Backstreet Boys and Britney Spears mostly. Don't get carried away here, you'll find yourself spending more money here in a few hours than the rest of the week out and about!