the nature of the Chinese

so, when i was in hong kong, i thought a lot about the way the Chinese are. at times, i feel great to be intermingling with the chinese and the idea of being in a different culture completely. however, sometimes i can't help but be annoyed with them. i didn't really notice how frustrating that some chinese can be until i went to hong kong. hong kong chinese are totally different from the mainland chinese. hong kong chinese behave like westerners. because of that, hong kong felt more at home than shanghai did. hong kong was like a british city with a bunch of chinese.

the chinese attitudes, from my perspective, towards whites are split into three groups. the chinese always seem to think just because we're white, we have a lot of money. everytime i go to people's square, nanjing dong lu and the fabric market, i always get approached by the men selling watches and handbags off the street and tell a ridiculous price for it. 1000 RMB for the watch that will only work for 2 hours, i don't think so. the three groups i tend to put westerners in: the stupid ones who get ripped off easily, the mean ones and the smart ones. the stupid ones actually believe that the watches and handbags on the street are real and of good quality. they actually pay the 1000 RMB. then afterwards, the chinese man will laugh about it with his other street seller friends on how it was so easy to get 1000 RMB from the white man. i, too, find this a little funny. the mean westerners are the ones who yell at the street sellers for approaching them and asking for an outlandish price. then they will go on and bitch about the chinese and how they never want to associate with any of them. makes me wonder, why did they come to china? the last group, the smarter ones are those who really embraces chinese culture despite all of the street sellers. they truly want to get to know the chinese and not always think that the chinese will not always try to make money off them.

looking at the street sellers selling fake watches and handbags, as well as those who sell copied DVDs. china does have copyright laws that prohibits fake things and burned DVDs; but they do not enforce it. almost everything that you find for a cheap price is probably fake. i actually had a discussion with one of my advanced english classes about the copyright laws and the rich vs the poor. they were all only 13-15 years old but they were incredibly smart. first we discussed imports and exports between china and the united states, particularly rice, wheat and clothing. we got to talking about how the chinese will rip off trademark products such as Apple and Microsoft, copy them, and sell them on the street as the genuine thing. two of my students got into a full on debate about each side of stealing work as one's own. one of them said that ripping off the trademark is completely wrong and taking credit for someone else's work. the other said that he does see that as wrong, but a lot of chinese people don't really have as much money to buy the real product. he wasn't totally against the fake products as it helps some chinese people's lives a little bit more enjoyable to have a computer and to watch DVDs at home. I thought they made really good points and it was a very lively debate. I have never heard this much intelligence from high school kids, let alone debate in another language.

this also helps me to see the gap between the poor versus the rich in china. china's economy has been rising exponentially in the last ten years with the emergence of globalization; as a result the middle class is starting to boom. more people in china now have more money. however, china still has 1.3 billion people, so many are still really poor. now, with the world financial crisis, the middle class is slowly fading in china and the poor will get poorer. like everywhere else, people are losing their jobs.

the country having 1.3 billion people brings up another fact. like i have said in my previous entries, the chinese will appear rude to many westerners due to their public manner. they push and shove on the street and public transportation; and there is no sense of equiette such as when you queue up at a fast food restaurant. chinese people can be pretty sloppy eaters. also they act in such a way that there are so many people and limited resources, chinese people can be quite greedy and selfish to get what they need for living. i can never understand how there can still be 1.3 billion people in a country with the least amount of arable land and still enrich in the world-china was poor until Communism and Mao Zedong came along. I guess Communism works for china. Now china has one of the largest economies in the world.

i learn new things about china every day.