What the Textbooks Might Not Tell You

Since the reform and opening up, the number of college students coming to China to study has increased every year.  And so has the number of lists Americans make to give advice to others traveling to China for the first time.

I do not have any advice to give that has not been said before, but the following are small, day-to-day lessons I have learned this year.*  Hopefully, at least some of them are things that take you by surprise and make you say, “Hm, interesting, you learn something new everyday!”

• There are rarely trash cans / recycling bins on the streets

• The first thing your waiter asks when you enter the restaurant is how many people are in your party

• After you order, he promptly asks if you want the spicy or the normal version

• Chinese girls wear what they want to wear when they want to wear it.  Ex. flower sprouts to a karaoke bar, high heels to the Great Wall, leather pants to the gym

• 下车 is basically like saying “open sesame”

• It is perfectly acceptable to ask your waiter to bring the food faster if you are running late

• People take the plastic bag ban seriously and do always charge you extra if you ask

• There is no open-container law

• Wechat is amazing, and not just because of the stickers

• There are huge gaps between this generation and the last, men and women, the city and the countryside, and the south and the north

• If a student is sick, the teacher will make a visit.  And then he or she will advise the student to wear warmer clothes and drinks more water.

• Choose Skype or VPN, you cannot have them both at once

• People are quite willing to talk about politics and religion

• They also have no qualms about staring

• The cars will not hit you, but the motorcycles might

• You can buy anything on taobao… and if you can’t read characters, there’s baopal to help you make your purchase

• Even if they act like they cannot understand English, they probably can.  In particular, the young people have a very impressive vocabulary.  I have found they usually know what is being said, even if they do not join the conversation.

• I have yet to meet a person who actually asks 吃包了吗？ as a greeting.  Actually, every young person I know first says “hello” or “hey” instead.

• If you are trying to access a password-protected wifi network, try the name of the restaurant or 88888888

*Check out this song:  “This Year” by Cooper

Why have normal raisins when you can have nuclear raisins?

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 31st, 2016 at 3:14 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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