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Dishonor on you, dishonor on your cow...

Fun facts, observations and gross generalizations that I have made/learned so far (mostly gleaned from reading Lonely Planet China or from sitting in on a class at one of the study abroad programs I visited today)

• In Chinese, every syllable ends in n, ng, r or a vowel.
• The Chinese sayings: "entice the tiger away from the mountain" and "a dragon on the beach can be teased by shrimp" both mean that things are weaker outside of their usual environment, like "a fish out of water".
• Lonely Planet China has a section titled "Visiting the Han, Solo" which I'm pretty sure they wrote just in order to be able to use that title, especially since the content of the section doesn't seem to be focused on travelling alone.
• Due to population control and the preference for sons, there are about 23 million Chinese men (my age and younger) who will never find a Chinese wife. I think this is particularly interesting because when I was in San Francisco's Chinatown in March, the tour guide pointed out that there is a significant population of elderly men in Chinatown who never married or had children because of the restrictions placed on female Chinese immigration. This puts somewhat of a strain on the community, since the ideal situation is that the elderly will be cared for by their children. Maybe China just needs to institute an official policy of polyandry. (There is some culture in Asia that regularly practices polyandry. Is it in Nepal?)
• Rather than central air, most places seem to have individual air conditioning for each room, leaving the hallways unconditioned. This is definitely more efficient than cooling every single place that a person might go, but it does get kind of weird getting all sweaty every time you leave a room.
• When I say "most places" I mean "hotel(s) and classroom/study abroad administration building(s)" because so far that's most of what I've seen of China.
• In a class that I visited today, in describing the difference between US and Chinese cultural values, the US was referred to as a guilt-based culture (based on an internalized value system) whereas China is a shame-based culture (based on adhering to the norms of a larger social network). I think that's a pretty neat idea, because it seems like every religious group (Catholics, Jews, etc) thinks that they have a corner on guilt, but I think it's just an American thing.
• So far since I arrived in China I have eaten: a granola bar, a croissant, a pain au chocolat, black tea that tasted suspiciously Liptony, bulgogi and some kind of kimchi pancake thing. I look forward to actually eating some Chinese food, although the guy in the seat next to me on the plane here was originally from Chengdu and is rather dismissive of Shanghainese cuisine, because it's bland compared to the spicy Sichuan style. He owns a restaurant in the Atlanta area, so if anyone's around there, you might want to check it out.
• Because I haven't reset their clocks, my camera and pedometer both think that a new day begins at noon. I am weirded out.

srah - Monday, 22 September 2008 - 6:53 AM
Tags: china, travel

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