Chinese Mysteries
The Chinese have incredible confidence in themselves…and consider themselves unquestionably the most superior people in the world…mostly due to their long history. We Westerners are the barbarians. (So we don’t need to think we are “all that” as my teenage Latina friends would call it.) And in China, Jana and I have noticed that we are continually being hidden in the rear of the restaurants, buses or whatever.
Hacking and spitting; bad hair on the men who hold cigarettes between their teeth and between their fingers like we hold a pen.
Why is the huge sign on the number 11 Middle School written in English? Because China has recently joined the World Trade Organization and it wants Western tourists to come visit their schools?
What is the Chinese Welfare Lottery? Never found out.
Old rusted framed-in but unfinished buildings…often covered with sheets of dirty canvas.
Internet everywhere…the Chinese ISP is even free on my laptop…love the sound of emailers giggling at their funny messages in the internet cafes.
Signs Everywhere…English Teachers Needed
Conversations…Guy in CD shop with university education; didn’t know what I meant by the term Communist Party…but later found out that he probably just didn’t want to talk about it. He said it was not true what westerners think…that people can say what they want and can talk. The people are told by the Communist Party that the Falung Gong is a cult that leads people away from conforming to their country (they really mean the Communist Party). They are also told that Falung Gong makes some practitioners commit suicide…and when I told one waitress that those people are committing suicide to protest against their government I saw a veil lower over her eyes but she didn’t say anything.
Western Tourists
Met a Canadian couple in Kunming that travel to Mexico every year and stay in bordellos where they can park their recreational vehicle in a fence enclosed area ($2) where they feel safe to sleep at night. I wondered how they tell where the bordellos are…
Chinese Tourists
60’s clothes; smart sophisticated looking girls…probably from Beijing. Platform leather; tennis shoes with stretchy upers, ankle length leather boots with leggings or long skirts-many of them leather. Sweaters to rival those of the Europeans.
Cultural Guffaws
Jana remembered a story about her husband John’s grandmother and grandfather in San Francisco’s Chinatown in the 1950’s. His grandfather asked a Chinese man on the street a qustion…”do-ee youee knowee whereee weee can….” when the Chinese man turned to John’s grandmother and said “lady, what’s wrong with your husband that he speaks so funny?”
A Chinese word we learned: OK is Koor Yi
Tags: China, Culture, Funny Experiences, Language, Travel Tips, Yunnan
Zoe