We have two coworkers from China visiting at work this week, and i’m their primary host. It’s been a whirlwind week, and while i personally haven’t gotten much done, it’s been rewarding to see them making connections with others.
One of our guests who i’ll call D has visited the US twice before, but the other is experiencing American culture for the first time. So far he’s taken everything in stride.
One of the topics that hasn’t yet run out of discussion points is how American and Chinese culture differ. Here are some things i have learned.
- There is no drinking age in China. D was absolutely flabbergasted when i told him our drinking age was 21. He asked if you also had to be 21 to be in the military. When i said no, that’s only 18, he just shook his head in disbelief.
- There is no blood-alcohol level in China that is allowed when driving. Any alcohol in your system will get you taken to jail. The US allows a blood alcohol content of .08%.
- D noticed that in the cafeteria, everyone puts ice into their drinks all the time. This is not done in China. And in fact, beer is served warm or lukewarm as well. The thought of warm beer got a wrinkled nose from me, and he just laughed.
- There was a dancing & karaoke night for our division earlier this week. A few people sang, but not many. D asked why not? I don’t know, i guess in general Americans are shy. He said that karaoke is extremely popular in China, and there would be a line for the karaoke machine. It’s so popular that many places charge money to those who want to sing.
- Most families in China have one child. I asked how the government enforces that and learned that the second child has no right to public schooling or certain identification documents. Also there are fines. Wikipedia tells me that the rule actually does not apply to everyone, but D tells me most people abide by it anyway.
- Children in Chinese families do not have such things as sleepovers. I had read some of this in Amy Chua’s book, but D reinforced it for me. He played the clarinet as a child, and practiced four hours per day.
- Michael Jackson is very popular in China. At the dance party, D’s face lit up whenever one of his songs was played.
- The city of Beijing has terrible air pollution and no blue sky.
- D was amazed at how many people have cars. In China, a family may have at most one car, and only rich families have multiple cars. I told him i had a household of two people, and we each had our own car, and that this was normal in America.
- The subways are very crowded. D rides the subway for a 90-minute commute to work each day. He says it is too crowded even to play a handheld game like a 3DS.
- The NBA is very popular in China. They were surprised i knew nothing about the NBA. I told them a lot of people like college basketball but not the NBA, and their only response is “Why?” I couldn’t really answer it.
- Despite working for a great software company and having good technical skills, D says he is not “middle class” for Beijing. Maybe for the overall China population, but Beijing is a very rich city, and only rich people live there. He lives way outside the city, and feels generally lower class when in Beijing. I told him that pretty much everyone in America thinks of themselves as middle class.
- It is illegal to build anymore golf courses in China because of the land it requires to build one. And only very rich people play golf.
- Chinese people do not like many sweets. Well, at least not the adults. We had cake one afternoon in a meeting. Fairly boring-but-decent cake. They could not eat it because it was so sweet to them.
- Their impression is that Americans like candy and we are all very fat.
It was pretty fascinating to have them here and to learn from them. I was glad they were willing to talk about the differences in culture and were just as interested in American culture as i was in Chinese culture. I had been worried about offending them all week, but luckily that was not an issue with these two. I hope to get to visit them later this year and experience the culture myself.
