so most of my direct interaction with chinese people happens on my bike (a 21-speed mountain bike) or on the football pitch (yeah i use international english). some of my conclusions:
unlike Americans, chinese do not learn to look both ways before crossing the road
there is not a uniform rule for which side to pass on
bike lanes usually (de facto) go both ways
people love to walk in the bike lanes, pull handcarts, overload their bikes with tables and any other furniture they can, deliver computers, etc. this is quite annoying
i seem to be the only one with somewhere to go, im constantly passing people
in football, (these are generalizations, by no means true in all cases) chinese hate contested headers, think they can score from distance like steven gerrard, love to beat people off the dribble and cant stand up to a physical challenge.
i love my football team here, its a great mix of foreigners and chinese. last weekend we had a xmas dinner, with many toasts, way too much drinking and excellent camaraderie. i really felt at home and loved chatting with my teammates in their native language. my semester is almost over, cant wait to have some time off and learn a lot of the words in my notes, maybe find some kids chinese book to read or something. characters are great though, like the character for the verb to count is the character for rice over the character for a woman, ie what does a woman do with rice? well, she counts it. its cool to see how the characters combine and also what they reveal about chinese society and culture. time for me to go have a social class about education, then a small class, bike home, and go out for drinks with friends who are leaving. thats all for now.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment