Chinese Culture‏

So after telling you all about the things that I have been doing here, I figured I'd give you all (if your interested) a small lesson in Chinese Culture (if you don't already know), and share with you what I have been experiencing as the little differences. Most of these are no big deal and make me laugh, so there is little stress. In fact, I would even go as far to say that I don't think that our cultures (as far as the younger generation goes) is that much different from my generation back home in America.


First of all, the thing that I find most entertaining, is the fact that there is no need or desire for lines. If you want to order something at a standing restaurant, you walk right up the the counter, regardless of other people standing there, and order. Even if you interrupt her or someone else ordering it's not that uncommon or rude to just yell out your order to the cook and shove your money in their hand. Whoever gets the the counter and gets their order in first, will get their meal whenever the cook is done cooking it. It's also not uncommon for the cook to cook whatever is convenient first rather than in the order of the people who came. I've had to stand waiting for 15 minutes before while other people who ordered after me got their order, and I was served last.

Another thing, which I actually find really fun and exciting, is the streets. People don't have the right of way, at least it doesn't seem that way. Car's don't really have many laws that they really follow (other than the basic ones). Most of the time bikes (bicycles and motorbikes) are in the street, even the freeway. The basic rules of the road are, don't get hit and don't run into anything. Therefore, if something is in the way, you move around it. If you can't move around it, you honk at it until it moves out of the way. I've seen people standing in the middle of the freeway having a conversation, and all the cars just honked and moved around them. This makes driving really exciting. But, it makes crosswalks even more interesting. :) There is no rule that cars have to stop for crosswalks, but they still don't want to hit anyone. Of course pedestrians, at least the Chinese ones, are aware of the fact that if they want to cross the road they need to pick a time when there is a break enough in the cars to walk or run through. Sometimes we will walk halfway across and find that the other side of traffic is coming and there is no break. So you stand and wait in the middle of the two lanes until you can continue. It makes crossing the road really an interesting experience.

Something else that is different is the laundry. I was expecting this but I guess I'm still a little bummed. They don't have dryers, so we have to stick with the good old fashioned concept of air drying. Our room looks really funny during laundry day because of all our clothes that are hanging up around our room.

It's also a little bit weird, because there is limited washers, if you fail to take out your laundry in time the guard will take it out for you in order to give the washer to the next person. It makes me feel a little bit uncomfortable, but I don't mind that much.

It's weird being a foreigner, many people stare at us and talk about us in Chinese. We have even had random people come up and take a picture of us or ask us to take a picture with them. It's a little strange... but funny. One time I was trying to tell a lady that her camera cap was on before she took a picture, and then it ended up (after some language confusion) that me and Lesly (my roommate) were taking a picture with her. So we are going to end up on some random person's facebook page or something and not even know them.

Eating with chopsticks is fun, but the more you learn about how dirty it is here the more you realize the necessity of not touching anything. It's not uncommon when you walk on the street to see children going to the bathroom. In fact, most children who haven't been potty trained yet, instead of using diapers, have a hole in their pants so they can go when they need to. People spit on the streets and litter nasty garbage frequently. Shoes are not to be worn inside for this reason. We have room slippers, and when we visit our classroom off campus we have to remove our shoes before going inside.

These are a few of the things that are different about our culture. I find them more interesting than annoying. I think it's fun to experience all of this (except for that last one) first hand. I promise to stay safe and well. If you have any questions, please email me! (it's megan.elaine.04@gmail.com)

Xiamen

Hey Everyone! Sorry it's been taking me so long to be able to get to do this, but I've been SO busy! So after we flew out of Hong Kong, we took about a 2 hour flight to Xiamen. When we got there it was just about as hot as it had been in Hong Kong, but not as humid (it's hard to believe now, it's seems like so much more humid because it's so much hotter).

At the airport we took a bus to the university, and on our way we got some hawking experience. The teacher that was escorting us to Xiamen University was trying to sell us cell phone chips. You buy the chip and you get a cell phone later and you put the chip in and it gives you minutes. Clever. Then we arrived at the university and we had to walk to our dorm and check in. After waiting for our keys we found our room! Yay! Our room is a suite, meaning it has 2 rooms and 1 bathroom that we share. My suite-mates are Lesly and Tracy, and my room-mate is Kaylee. They both have working air-conditioners, which is really nice. Our room even has a view of the ocean! We got our own TV too, but we can't understand the show so we don't watch much.

We got our schedules and we began to have classes, much to our dismay, about everyday starting at 8am. We've been having classes for a while now so I'll just give you a summary. We take Chinese 1, the teacher is Chinese but she is a very good teacher and I've been learning a lot. We get to put most of the things we learn into practice right away. I'm also taking a Contemporary Society class, which talks about China's government, economy, people, food, music, etc. That one has several different teachers for the changing topics, but we have had one teacher several times over and she knows a lot about the subject. After that we usually have a class with the group about crossing cultures and sometimes about the contemporary society stuff. I'm in the business concentration course, so I have extra classes that I take, such as International Business in China. I really like this class. The professor is really knowledgeable and he is really excited about the subject, so he is very fun to listen to. I did mention that this was our general schedule, but our schedule changes so much we can never be sure about whether or not we are going to have classes in the same room at the same time with the same teacher. But it's fun, you just have to be flexible. Just today, when we went to our IBC class we stopped on 3 different levels before we found our class. An adventure!

We've been pretty busy with classes, but we have had the chance to go and visit various places around Xiamen. All of our meals are eat out meals, and we can eat in the canteen or in any of the restaurants around town. Across the street from campus (about a 10-15 minute walk from our dorm) is a shopping/eating area that we like to go to. They have a little street mall, and some really good standing restaurants, along with some sitting ones. My favorite, which I finally got the chance to check out the other day is a restaurant called "The Loving Hut" (weird name, I know) which is a really good, and nice, vegetarian restaurant. A lot of monks eat there. They sell vegetable buns for 1 kuai!!! (that's about 15 cents) A good meal is 2 buns. Not to mention they are delicious! There are a lot of veggie restaurants here, which makes me really happy. There is another area that has better shopping, we call it downtown, the Chinese call it Dongquian Lu. It's got a little night market and several malls stacked up everywhere. It's really fun, because if you go you just follow the crowd and go into some of the smaller streets you will find a lot of really cool shops. They are the ones that are cheaper cause most of the tourists don't go that far in.

On Monday, September 20th we got our first typhoon! It was really exciting. There was lots of wind and rain, and our classes got cancelled. We all had to stay inside for the whole day. The ocean (seen from my window) was really crazy looking. A very exciting experience.

There was a holiday on Wednesday September 22, called the Mid-Autumn Festival. It's kind of like a thanksgiving. Some of the Chinese who are near their families go home and gamble and share moon cakes. We had some moon cakes, they weren't that great, but it was an interesting experience. We got invited to several parties but I didn't go because I wasn't feeling well at the time. Even though it was a holiday, there was still class on Wednesday because our group had classes that weren't through the university. But then because we had the day off on both Monday (typhoon) and Wednesday we had to have classes on Saturday and we would have had to have classes on Sunday too but our program director got those cancelled for us so we could go to church.

On Sunday we attended a Chinese church where they spoke both Mandarin and Hakka (a local dialect). We didn't understand any of it, but it was very interesting to see. Much of it was done very similar to church back home, worship, then a sermon, then closing worship. They had Chinese hymnals and some of them had Pinyin (the romanized version of characters, which is readable to us) in them, so we could sing along! The church was on an island though, so in order to get there and back we had to take a ferry. There were also a bunch of historical buildings on the island that attracted a lot of tourists (we saw several groups while we were there) which of course attracted a lot of tourist shops. So we went poking around and found an ice cream place. Bethany (the program TA) also bought this thing that she didn't tell us what it was until after they ate it, which ended up being congealed sea worm. I didn't have any because someone told me that it had fish in it.

For class on one of the days last week we went to a factory run by a westerner and got the grand tour! He told us a lot about his operations and what he is able to do for his workers as far as making their life better. He used his business as a way to show compassion for the people of China, it was really awesome. A little weird to see things that we buy in America being made here though.

Another thing that we do, which is required for some credit, is to go to English Corner. That's where we meet other Chinese and chat. It's a lot of fun, most of them are coming to practice their English and make friends. I've already made two! I met Apple, who is majoring in Enterprise Management (which I'm pretty sure is similar to business management), and Eric (whom I named!) who is majoring in something similar to engineering. They are both really nice, though our friendship hasn't progressed much since I've only met them twice... but I'm really excited to have friends in the Chinese community! They promised to give me a Chinese name the next time we meet!

Hopefully I'll be able to post again soon!