Chinese language and people

We have now started our language classes which were labelled as "intensive" and they are living up to their name. In each class, probably only a handful of English is spoken during the whole period.

We'll be having a lot of studying to do in the coming few weeks just to keep up.

I also wanted to use this post to confirm a few things about the Chinese that some of you may have already heard, but I can now vouch for their accuracy...

1) Honking Horns - The Chinese love to honk horns when they are driving. The streets are filled with the sound of horns of all tones. They honk when they change lanes, they honk when people are in front of them and sometimes they just honk to make sure their horn is still working. Of course, since everybody constantly honks, nobody pays attention to it anymore.

2) Staring - The Chinese don't have the same cultural norms against staring at people that we do. In the store the other day, the man behind me was visibly staring at my shoes. I looked at him and smiled. He smiled back, then returned to staring at my shoes...

3) Affection - It is very common for Chinese of the same gender to be much more physically affectionate with each other than in the United States. It is very common on campus to see girls walking and holding hands. Couples of the opposite sex will not do this during the day, though at night it is a different story. Once the sun goes down it is not uncommon to see couples sitting on a bench kissing, in plain view.

4) Foreigners - so far I have been surprised that there has not been too much interest in us. Yesterday we were in a public park and spoke with some older people, but for the most part, there has not been anyone approaching us to speak. I guess in a bigger city like Tianjin, seeing a foreigner has become somewhat commonplace. Probably when we travel to smaller areas, we will attract more attention.

5) Bathrooms - I'll keep this one quick. Most restrooms in public places do not have western-style toilets, but instead, just a "hole in the ground." There are also trash cans behind the toilets, where you are supposed to dispose of any toilet paper used as more often than not, the plumbing in not able to handle it.

That's all for now, but I'm sure there will be many more observations to come in the near future...