Chinese people sound like pirates

I'm devoting this blog post to random things about China, the Chinese people, Chinese language and Chinese culture that I find amusing and/or odd and think you should know. A lot of these topics I'll write about later. But here it is in a nutshell!

The first is that Chinese people sound like pirates. Especially people in the north who have Beijing accents - aka the people near me! So... Chinese people add this character:儿 to the end of words that have a "final" (Chinese character pronunciation is made up of two parts the initial and the final) consonant sound that is... soft - I guess. So "wan" (to have fun) becomes "war" and "ben" (the measure word for book) becomes ber "na" (there) becomes "nar." All these "r" sounds = pirate speak! It also just makes people really hard to undertand! Especially because they speak so quickly - TOO quickly. I didn't know it was possible, but Chinese people speak faster than American teenage girls (I know, I just blew your mind).

Chinese people and English just don't mesh well. English is really hard for them to pronounce, hear, understand and the worst for them is our grammar. Sure - I've met tones of Chinese people who have great English and my Chinese is terrible. I'm not being mean to Chinese people, just pointing out a fact. I'm impressed they all learn it! (I'll write a post soon about some of my classes).

Chinese people are REALLY bad at translation English into Chinese. All those books about bad Chinese/ English translations are not exaggerating - the signs are that bad. A few of my favorites are:
"Oliver oil" instead of "olive oil"
"Beware of falling into lake" or "mind hitting your head" (I think these speak for themselves)
Instead of exit one will often see "Way out" which makes me feel like I'm in a horror movie
Instead of entrance "Way in" (not that bad in comparison to others"
Even "Toilet" is awful strange - though not the worst
My new favorite is "Do not throw your trash, show your civilized behavior" this is a mouthful
Also, there are a lot of no spitting signs... not a bad translations, just culturally strange

Yeah, in China spitting in public = very normal. Not like the random spit when no one's looking. I mean full on hocking up a loogie in the middle of a crowded street kind of spitting. I am seen as strange for blowing my nose... but the normal thing to do is snort and spit. I mean, not trying to be culturally insensitive or anything, but ew.

In China most toilets are squat toilets. I expected this. squat toilets are more common in most of the world - we're just those strange westerners who want to but their bare ass on something other people have possibly peed on. Just saying, squat toilets >>>. Though! Having squat toilets in my apartment (yes, I said toilets plural) not so nice! (I'll talk about my place in another blog entry).

People don't have that much clothing so they wear the same things over and over. Again, this is pretty normal in places that aren't the US. When I lived in France I saw this a lot. You'd wear the same pants and shirt and just change your scarf or jacket or something. But in China they wear the exact same outfit. I went on a weekend trip with the teachers from my school (I'll write about this too in the future) and it got easy to recognize teachers because they wore the same thing the whole trip! Three whole days of the same thing. Then yesterday I was in the school cafeteria for lunch and one of the teachers was still wearing the same dress! I don't like any of my clothing THAT much!

Macs are uncommon here. There's a mac "reseller" (aka mac case with a random machine inside) on every corner but they're stills strange for Chinese people to see. They have "iphones" and "ipads" here (again, they are very not real) but mac laptops... none! There's one teacher in the school, the computer teacher who has one. And his is at least four years old. They don't understand macs at all, they tried to treat mine like a PC a lot and got confused when it didn't work like that. Someone tried to give me their internet browser on a flashdrive and I had to explain that you need a different one for a mac. They just have a mental block when it comes to Macs. But they're also super impressed.

Everything in China takes a lot of time. Nothing's easy in China. You can't just tell someone your internet isn't working once - you have to tell them 10 times in different ways and not be mean about it and then eventually they'll ask you about it then that's the opening for them to help you. (My internet's been fine, I just meant it as an example).

Naps! Naps are normal here (be jealous). I have a two and a half hour break for lunch and nap time. The students go home, if they live close by.

If a student lives more than a half hour comute away then they board at the school. This is because The students' first class is at 7 at night and the students have to be at school till 8 or 10 at night. They even have class on Saturdays. So students who have to comute an hour in total don't do it. They only go home for Sunday!

Chinese people eat all the time. I don't think they ever stop. On the trip I took each person brought a grocery bag full of snacks and then would buy food at every place we stopped. But the snacks they eat are better for you than junk food. They eat a lot of vegetables, fruit, nuts, tofu, and jelly. I think they may be so skinny because their constantly digesting.

Chinese people really are as small as the stereotype. They are crazy short and just small. All the stuff in China is small for me. I hit my head a lot here. There's a Queen sized bed in the room they gave me and I think it might be so it's not to short for us Americans. The teachers are the same height as the students. Also - a lot of women who are rich and live in big cities are very skinny. I thought I was going to be seen as fat - but that's not the case. In China the women have stick like figures so when they are "fat" they look it. Even though the "fat" ones are smaller than Americans they all have chubby faces and guts. It's funny. Women here don't have breasts or butts at all. So Americans don't look fat in comparison - to them I just have a figure which they don't. But I don't know how well I'd fit into their ready-made clothing... Probably not well.

They build things FAST over here. One of my coworkers said it was because there are so many Chinese people. I guess that's true... But they're just more efficient than we are in the US. There are so many construction projects but still everything is fast. It's incredible.

I'm going to talk about children in China in another entry but a lot of Americans have huge misconceptions about the one child policy. I knew a lot about it before I got here. But the one child policy is really just for the Han people. So the Han people are the dominant ethnic group. The one child policy is to stop over crowding in China but was also created to make an incentive to marry out of the Han race. Don't get me wrong Hand nationalism is big over year. The chinese language written and spoken is only referred to as the Han language or script. When I say "Chinese"to them (in Chinese) they normally say Han back. But the government wants Hans to marry other ethnicities and have kids with them so Han blood mixes in with all of the Chinese people. Or, this is what I'd assume... It's not like the Chinese government can say stuff like that. So people do have more than one kid. But there are a lot of only children... way too many to be healthy.

From my point of view people do not dress conservatively here. The skirts the women wear are way shorter than ones you find in the US. (For Sluzers- they're like tick toc clothing that girls wear everyday!) But women do cover their chests - but I think that's just because women don't have cleavage over here, so there's nothing to show. Women often wear clothing that is light or lacy so is kind of see-through. Women wear short shirts that show their bellies when they raise their arms. And women wear tight clothing. I have to say, I don't like the "fashion" over here in China. I don't think you can even call it fashion!

Students in China are nothing like the stereotype of Chinese American students in America. They're not obedient, they rarely stop talking, they're late to class, and they outwardly have very little respect for their teachers. The students are interesting.

Want to learn more about Qinhuangdao? Checkout this website my friends made. (There are even some pictures of me on there!) http://qhdconnect.spruz.com/