In general, Chinese people don't look exactly like us, they have a different shape of eyes, different skin, different height, etc etc.
In the same way we are interested by their looks and culture, they do feel the same about us.
Although China has been receiving an increasing number or tourists every year, somehow we still are subject of interest.
Its common to see them looking/staring at us, sometimes giving us a big smile, waving, pointing etc. Somehow while walking around in hefei, i could feel like an exotic specie.
My experience so far makes me thing that chinese people are shy, curious, and kind.
yesterday in the center of hefei in a very busy walking street, while asking for directions, people stopped to look at us and others trying to help giving directions, at some point there was already a quite big group of people surrounding us.
In the first bar we went, the music was very loud and most of the chinese seemd to be playing drinking games. In the second one the manager at the door received us speaking english, his name was turbo kong and lead us to the bar. here also most of the people was playing the same drinking game.
He explained that the game consists in rolling a set of 5 dice, the person that has more dice with the same number wins. (the game is a bit more complicated since one can cheat and lie about the result, but if you are caught you loose).
In both bars, We were the only 'whites', the bar 'No 88' was decorated with lamps and red laser lights. most of the people was ordering strange drinks served in big jars, that all the people from the same group would share. time to time people would come and cheer with us.
The music in the bar was ok, and a few times some performers came to sing (like karaoke) to cheer up the whole crowd.
They played the best "Happy Birthday" version ever :). I had never seen so many people dancing to 'happy birthday'
It was fun.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Being a turist in hefei
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I agree! When my mother and I walked down one of the main streets in Beijing, but one a little bit off the tourist paths, people would stare, smile, children point and laugh. I took this as a positive thing. I understand them completely, we must have looked like aliens to them - taller than many of the men, me very blond, my mum with white hair, we look so different.
ReplyDeleteTo tell a short story, not so many years ago, approx. 30, when my cousin then aged 5 moved to Paris with her family, she soon decided to wear a bonnet the whole year around as people wouldn't stop touching her very blond hair. So if Parisiens behaved like this seeing a Swedish very blond child 30 years ago, it seems very logicial that the Chinese stare 30 when seeing European people 30 years later. And at least they are well behaved enough not to come up and touch our hair!
As for the friendliness, we encountered it almost everywhere! From the taxi driver who couldn't understand our map (tip: get a map with chinese characters on it as many people do not seem to be able to read a map but the taxi drives know what different streets are called) but tried his best to help us, even getting a police man to come with his map so that I could point out the right street there, to the hole in the wall restaurant in on of the Hutongs where the staff only spoke Chinese and the menu was in Chinese, but where they found someone they knew to come and help us order and we ended up having on of the best meals for hardly any money.
Sure there were some rude people around. And yes, we did walk out of one restaurant where we didn't really feel welcome. But people being rude to us happened perhaps twice in 8 days, while when in Paris in August this happened at least twice in 2 days!
I loved Beijing, and I am longing for the day I can go back and visit Beijing again and some of the rest of the country! Enjoy the cultural differences as much as you can! puss