The Odd Top Five China (English)

Top 5 Chinese Typical Odd

During our trip crossing China we experience ‘the good, the bad and the ugly’ from China. In any case we must stress that our visit to China was an overall extremely pleasant experience.

The Chinese are very warm, lively and above all, curious people. The country and its people have a great ambition and will do nearly everything to fulfill their dreams the right way. China’s extremely fast development is still difficult to grasp; only one generation sets the offspring from the Cultural Revolution (a time when Mao ordered to seize all education in its country for a period of 6 to 7 years(!)) and the self-conscious youngsters in their twenties and thirties who are educated, driven and have an appetite for more. Without doubt, the Chinese can display a number of more extreme behaviour, but that’s not the point of this short-list. Let us just give you a sense in which way China can prickle your senses;-)

1.) Spitting and gorgelling
Well, we hope that 'gorgelling' is the right word for it, but it rarely comes to mind to use this English word – except than in China. The Chinese have profoundly mastered their spitting technique. They spit as an alternative to brushing their teeth and convincingly apply gorgelling to scrap their throat from anything – yeah, anything – what's left in it. Surprisingly, China has a lower-than-average rating of people with throat-cancer, and you can probably grace the gorgelling for this. But we never actually get used to the odd 'WWWWRRRRRRAAAGGHHWWWWWROOOGGHHH... ...SPITTT!!'..

2.) Loud – harder – scream!!
China prickles the senses. But we guess that when growing up in China, the senses get 'over-prickled'. Most of the people just seem to be partly def; shouting at the mobile phones, without holding the phone to their ears and constantly trying to raise the volume of the device by keep purging the volume button. Without satisfying result of course, so they keep on screaming the hell to the phone! We even experience incredibly loud techno music in a Buddhist temple (!) in Dali. The music was so loud that Lisanne and I nonverbally had to point how we wanted to make the next picture of each other.
Carefully examining our taxi-drivers, most of them have an alleged eye-sight of an elderly spider; i.e.: none. Taxi-drivers just wander around, never gaze at their mirrors, cause we guess they just don't see anything in them.. ..and it's not because the mirrors are dirty. To compromise their bad sightings, Chinese just love very screaming colors. A plethora of colours, screaming lazers and mirror-balls casting of a wave of disperate little and large beams first makes you startling, than dizzy followed by looking deeply into your beerbottles – sometimes too deep;-)

3.) Railway behavior.
Probably this happens across-the-board, but Chinese just do not repect the lines. Nine-out-of-ten times when you are standing in front of the ticket office, people – from out of nowhere - just jump right in front you and start talking (shouting..) to the office counter clerk. This non-respect for queuing up is especially daunting when you cross the security checks at the railway station entrance. At the security check you have to put your bags on a conveyor belt which pulls them through an x-ray machine. If you're lucky, you can put stowe your bags together in one piece. But often a small Chinese comes pushing in an starts to offload his or her luggage right on top of yours; than starts running to the other end of the conveyor belt to pick up his/her stuff like a bull steaming towards a red rag – not noticing a giant Dutch feller paramounting the tiny Chinese often with to heads difference in length.. ..they just don't care. They want their bags NOW and leave of with them as swiftly as they appeared. Which on itself is remarkable, cause often our fellow railway-Chinamen are as strong as ants: they can – at minimum - lift up their weight two times(!). Lisanne and I were startled by the type of load (anything that comes in the ranges of carton boxes, bags, suitcases etc.) and the weight of the load when we kindly offered to help carrying; it's a definite hike for a hernia!

4.) Celebrating Christmas in February / March
The Chinese still celebrate Christmas, even until March with decorations, music and the occassional Christmas souvenirs. In Xi'an for example, we were welcomed at the receptiondesk with Mariah Carey's 'All I want for X-mas is you' writen on the wall behind the reception clerks. When we went out for icecream at the Haagen Dazs to celebrate Lisanne's birthday (24th of February!) we were listening to good old Christmas classics like 'Jingle Bells' and 'I'll be home for Christmas'. We guessed that the Chinese just love that oldfashioned charm that hangs around the concept, but have no idea what it exactly means – at least it draws customers in. Additionally the Chinese fancy red and yellow decorations and this corresponds neatly to the Christmas decorations spotted.

5.) Speaking calculators
Maybe not so odd at first sight, but Chinese clerks at restaurants and shops – across-the-board – use speaking (sometimes shouting) calculators. At first the clerk will try to explain the amount due using hand gestures, i.e. the right hand finger crossed with the left hand finger meaning 'ten', but soon – Chinese are extremely patient when you wait for them, but absolutely not the other way around – they purge their calculators. This is absolutely normal when you don't speak each other's languages and want to do business. But the Chinese calculator is default equiped with a loud speaking voice, re-itterating the numbers. Especially at busy restaurants this turns out that you can't hear the background music anymore, but is constantly listening to the “WA-DI-PU-WA-CHIWA-DUR-MA...” rap of the odd Chinese calculator.