I don’t know if it’s just me, but it seems that people the world over are far more adventurous than ever before.
Maybe it’s the availability of cheaper flights or the greater knowledge of foreign places that people now have owing to the vast amount of data on the internet, I’m not sure.
Whatever it is, China is now a favoured destination and, for some, still remains a country shrouded in mystery; an exotic land of diverse culture, adventure and excitement. More and more, especially younger people, are travelling there, maybe for a short holiday or, increasingly, to work and settle down.
Therefore, we spent some time thinking how we can best help travellers in China and came up with some ideas. Firstly, if you are one of those people thinking mid to long term and are planning onlooking for Chinese friends, or are just interested in learning more about mainland Chinese orTaiwanese women in general, you can take a look at our website.
Secondly, we came up this infographic! It was created by one of our writers from mynewchinesewife.com and its aim is to help the newcomer or even people who have been in China for some time assimilate and blend in easily with local people. We hope it will help them get familiar with the right ways to do certain things and also offer caution about the wrongways!
Using our infographic will make it that much easier to get by and enjoy your life in the country as it provides 10 of the top tips for getting by in China with pointers about social and business practices.
Much thanks to Timo for letting us to share the infographic at his blog. Take a look and see, we’re sure you’ll be glad you read it!
I have written all kinds of articles about my Chinese family and how I think that they might be a bit crazy. But how about that they are not crazy but it is actually me who is wrong in the head? It might be I am just delusional and all the crazy stuff they do is pretty normal and I am the oddball.
This idea popped into my head sometime ago and the list of things might indicate that I am perhaps not normal is adding up daily. To spare you from an overwhelming list of nonsense I picked up the biggest indicators of my craziness/ why my in-laws think that I am the crazy one.
Cold Drinks
I drink cold drinks all day long, no matter if its cold outside or so hot that the asphalt on the streets starts melting. When visiting in China and having once again a wrong order in the restaurant turning my meal into some mixture of noodles and lava I need something cold to drink. The usual hot tea served in the restaurant is not doing the trick for me, no matter how much it would help with my “inner fire”上火 according to my in-laws. Cold soft drinks or better yet a nice chilled beer is doing wonders for me. But then there is one hot drink I can’t get enough of, which is another oddity in the eyes of my in-laws and brings me to the next point.
Coffee
I need coffee for breakfast, after lunch, before dinner, after dinner and before going to sleep. This might be also due to the fact that I am partly from the country which has by far the highest coffee consumption per capita in the world. However my coffee consumption is down to a bare minimum for me to survive in China as there are just no good places to get coffee. Sure, we have close by a Starbucks but first of all the coffee there is very overpriced and second of all it is the worst coffee I had in my life (my opinion). This pushes me so far that I have to get instant coffee from KFC which still can’t be called coffee but at least it tastes better than in Starbucks and it is a great deal cheaper. Especially creepy it is for my in-laws that I get tired after drinking coffee in the evening and sleep very well afterwards.
Sports
My best friend in summer time
I do sports, a lot. If it were up to me there is always enough time to do some kind of sports. The need to do some sport every day is so high that I feel disappointed every time I can’t do at least some short exercise. I just need to go running, bicycling, swimming or do random workouts everyday and this again no matter how cold or hot it might be outside. Each time I take my running shoes with me to China and each time they stay packed in the suitcase as my in-laws think that either it is too dangerous to go running or it is too bad for your health. Due to this I am always a pitiful mess looking forwards to the few times we go the open water pool in the city.
Sun and getting some color
I am the pale thing with the red wristband
One of the main reasons I look forward to when going to the open water pool in the city is not only that I can do some swimming but also to get a bit tanned. By no means I mean the leather color many Europeans seem to strive for when going to get baked in the sun but just a bit darker than my usual ghost appearance. As a child I was often so pale that my parents were scared that I have some kind of sickness that we had several appointments with doctors to determine that my facial skin is just a bit “thicker” than usual bringing up an even more pale complexion than others during the dark months. Whenever I am proudly showing some tan lines after swimming my in-laws just shake their heads.
Food
I eat too less. I should be able to eat heavy breakfast, then all food placed on my plate during lunch by MIL and then easily shrug of the combined efforts of MIL, her sister and granny of filling up my plate during dinner, but somehow I fail in this. I am not just too thin according to MIL but also according to any other person she knows. It seems elderly females in China not only prefer babys to look like Michelin Man but their son-in-laws as well. Actually I am so pathetic when it comes to eating that I skip breakfast completely and don’t even manage half of the food piled up on my plate.
Conclusion
As you can see there are already enough points to show that I am the strange or crazy one in the family. I mean, how much more weird can a person be? Furthermore I am actually so weird that I really do enjoy my daily ice cream, even when we do have -30°C/ -7.6°F. So yes, it seems that all the crazy stories of my in-laws are actually not that crazy but pretty normal.
My wife’s childhood or to be precise: What I actually know of it.
That round thing would become my wife 25 years later
Roughly 27 years ago my wife was born in the small town known as Xi’an. I write small because this is how my wife described it to me when we started dating over 4 years ago. Back in the day her mother was still a model and her father a taxi driver. Now my lovely mother-in-law is retired so she can go shopping whenever she wants and sleep as much as she wants. Father-in-law is still driving but not a taxi anymore, no, he drives government officials whenever they need to visit some interesting place. Because of this he has a lot of free time in the office and uses it daily for table tennis practice. He actually plays very well, as he managed to win several time the city political bureau championships.
Due to her fathers love for this sport she played in her early years some table tennis until her mother got scared that she wouldn’t manage school well enough anymore and got her out of the training sessions. However because her mother had sometimes some hopes that her daughter could also do some modeling work she got her daughter into ballet to improve her posture. This was also canceled relatively quick by her mother due to before mentioned issue and she also gave up on her daughter ever becoming a model.
How long she begged for this tricycle?
According to my wife her father was the generous person and her mother the demon who forced her into all the school work and extra study activities. Because of this they still have sometimes few heavy arguments which are pretty amazing for me because of mother-in-laws impressive ability to form reality/ truth according to how she sees it. For example my wife told me that she had to beg her mother for a very long time until she was willing to purchase a computer (my wife told her that she needs it for studies but actually she used it mostly to hang around forums and play games). MIL remembers it completely different, according to her she was feeling at some point so generous and surprised her daughter with a computer so she could do her studies better! As you can see, quite a different view towards the past.
This blog wouldn’t be called “My Crazy Chinese Family” with just so few weird stories, so I give you some more craziness. As said before, MIL is fairly good in bending the truth to her wishes, accidents never occurred, she never did anything wrong and besides, her daughter managed everything only due to her generosity. To be fair, she is mighty proud of her daughter but still it is sometimes creepy how she sees the world. Few years back we were looking through my wife’s childhood pictures and there was one particular photo of three children sitting on a sofa. MIL looked at it and said she wouldn’t know who those children are but then my wife said that she is one of them resulting that her mother looked at it again without result, she was NOT able to point out her own daughter – Mother of the year!
Her school life had its ups and downs until she graduated. Due to some miracle she was able to convince her mother for a very special thing: Not to do the High Exam in the last year of high school because she had other plans. Instead of doing that exam she studied English, a lot of it to do the IELTS Exam to study in a foreign country. Through this she ended up in Finland and few years later we met, but this is again another story for another time.
I believe it can be said that my wife had a pretty average Chinese city childhood. Days filled with a lot of studies, strict mother, less strict father and nothing really out of the ordinary. Of course there is al lot more to her childhood however I do not remember all the details of other stories she told to write about it. It is actually really amazing what I know of her childhood as it is nearly as much as I remember of my own (I don’t even remember my school time anymore besides that I was not really fond of it and much more!).
P.S. Note the full hairs of my father-in-law in the second picture, he reminds me of some gangster from an old Hong Kong movie
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Crazy Chinese Family 