Observations
- CHINA is a SUPER safe country.
Even police officers are unfamiliar with
the word "POLICE", even though it´s written in
plain giant letters on
their patrolcars ! Once for a whole 60 seconds I tried to make an
officer
understand the word POLICE (followed by "station"), but I might as
well have been asking for Santa Claus.
- Peking is all cars now, problem is, people drive their cars & buses as if they were still on their bicycles.
This, combined with their famous "no sense of space" = very entertaining !
unless you´re driving of course.
- CHINA does indeed have an awesome spitting, farting and screaming culture
plus a serious lack of
good manners & civilized behaviour, but the 3rd
world "superstar" syndrome (you´re a westerner, you´re different)
is even
more annoying in China, because as opposed to southeast Asia where it´s
mainly limited to kids & teens flocking
around you, inspecting you
like some space monkey, here it´s adults too, hellbent on invading your
space
both physically & mentally, in the most obnoxious ways.
- When you do finally meet an English speaking person, it often becomes
painfully clear that the government
propaganda machine is still alive &
strong, sometimes bordering on the absurd, as you often become witness
to
bizarre misplaced illusions of grandeur such as;
"We are linguistically superior
to all the world, having by far the most advanced language"
The painful
reality is that Chinese has NO grammar, and that English has a far greater
vocabulary.
Chinese is admittedly difficult for a European to learn. This
is simply due to extremely alien pronunciation,
as opposed to Chinese
being too advanced. This point being very clear as I often have a hard time
understanding
the Chinese trying to speak English, an equally difficult (impossible) language
(for non-Anglicans) to pronounce correctly.
"Our food is the freshest and most gourmet in the world".
Nobody will doubt freshness as restaurants & markets do have the look of pet shops,
this I think is mainly due to a traditional lack of access to refrigeration
as opposed to quality consciousness, and once you get past the general blandness and sliminess
of the majority of Chinese dishes, one often finds most spices, textures and gourmet qualities missing anyway
Very tasty everyday food though !!!
"Japan was colonized by 500 men and 500 women from CHINA"
The gruesome truth of course is that Japan has no connection to China either historically or linguistically.
"CHINA is BIGGER than the US" (I guess size matters, even in China)
Hardly true, even if you include occupied territories like Tibet.
etc.etc.etc...
And the whole time the party is developing China at a stunning pace to keep the people
happy & ignorantly believing the propaganda.
- CHINA will rule the world economically within our lifetime mainly by
monkey see monkey do mentality coupled with industriousness.
Let's hope we all speak Chinese by then.
- There are some extremely cool people in China (despite all the ghastly Cat eating freaks).
FOOD !
Always the most popular place in
town, regardless of continent............y otras opciones...
China IS FULL of tasty Chinese food !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Using any conceivable edible ?? ingredient.
The goofy signs section, a Chinese specialty !
A sign for a cable car basically saying don't take the ride if you're insane
or have an inclination toward Molotov cocktails...all in perfect English, as usual.
That's my wife !
They can rhyme......and like cool signs in hotel bathrooms !