I knew that China would be different but Wow!

I knew that China was different before I came but not this different. Even the name of their language. When we were talking about coming here everyone wanted to know if June spoke the right Chinese, Mandarin or Cantonese. Here even the third year English students, who have a very high level of English, have not even heard of these terms. We had to teach them the names for their languages in English.


Yesterday our friend wanted to buy a cellphone. How hard can that be? You choose the model go up to the cash and pay. Well it is not that easy! First of all remember that there is NO ENGLISH here at all apart from the occasional hello. I'm not just talking about clerks who can speak English. I mean signs, descriptions, manuals, price tags or anything else that you would normally use to decide on a purchase. It came down to the color and the price for us. As we had no way of knowing or even finding out the features of each model. It would have come down to some form of coolness scale to decide. And we wouldn't even know if the phone would have any English menus.

So we needed help from one of his students . The selection here for phones is vast, mind numbing and even intimidating. We went to 4-5 different stores all with more cellphones then all the Rogers and Bell Centers in Ottawa combined. It was dizzying. One of the stores had glass display everywhere and behind every inch of the displays were clerks. There was at least the 50-100 clerks and they all wore suits. After a successful shopping day for our friend we went out for lunch.

Well the shopping must have triggered our appetites because we wanted food! Of all the types of Restaurants available here, albeit mostly different types of Chinese, our new friend chose in her words "western food". You know like the old joke "What do they call Chinese food in China? Food." We ended up at a Brazilian BBQ with all you can eat roast meat on a skewer. Yummmm! There were no chopsticks there and we noticed that the poor girl appeared to be struggling. When asked she said it was because she had never used a knife and fork before. She is 20 - 21 years old!

To my friends in Mexico you know that it took a long time for me to feel comfortable hugging and kissing my female friends and students. Now that I am more or less comfortable with it everything changes. In China when I greet my female students, co-workers or friends there is no hugging, kissing or even shaking hands. That kind of contact just doesn't happen here. I tried originally to just shake hands when introduced but that was awkward and uncomfortable for the Chinese so I stopped.

Speaking of Mexico. We saw a place with the name Mexican. We were full of hope that it was a restaurant but no it was a store selling purses and wallets. Oh well it still made for a good photo op.
Talk to you all real soon.
Don