Chapter 71
Chinese People Are Very Social
They love to go out to eat and talk. It is a big part of their culture. They are happy and excited to see their friends, eat together and talk loud. They don’t just sit together and talk about things, they are very loud. They will even tell you that. If you go to a restaurant in China, don’t be surprised when it is loud. Not all restaurants are noisy, some are quieter. It all depends upon the kind of restaurant that you go to.
I don’t know if it is the same now as when I first went to China in 2002 but I would often be asked if I was lonely being I was single and living alone. Sometimes people would ask about family and I would tell them that I had many relatives but I was not married and I lived alone. They couldn’t understand how I could do that. Being they are so social, family oriented and close as a people, it was hard for them to understand.
To go along with that, the years from 2004-2010, hundreds of tall buildings were built in the New District (Luolong) of Luoyang. This is on the south side of the Luo River. Many of them are apartment buildings with thirty-two floors. There were so many of them that it would take time to fill them of course. Some of the first people that moved in and didn’t have neighbors got lonely because there weren't other people to be social with and they left and went back into the city of Luoyang on the North side of the Luo River.
Chapter 72
Drinking in China
Drinking in China is a big social part of their culture. There isn't an age limit on drinking. That is part of dealing with business ventures, closing deals and just being social. How business is done in the US and China are two very different things. I only know what I have heard from friends. You would have to talk to a business person that has done business in China to know exactly what it is all about. When a business person goes to China to deal with a business or company there, they would have to know how it works in their culture. It would be the same for the Chinese coming here. Many times when there are business meetings in China, you would go out to eat first and drink and then talk business. In the US, we sit down, take care of business and then maybe go out to eat and drink or you may deal with the business only.
Drinking is how the Chinese show their respect to a foreigner or an older person. There can be a lot of toasting. There will be toasting from the beginning to the end of a meal. Usually it is with baijiu, rice wine, their liquor, sometimes beer. For baijiu, you have to acquire the taste. That’s for sure. Kids are introduced to it when they are young. They don’t have age restrictions like we do here.
I didn’t go to bars. I should say bars like we have here where you drink and have loud music. The word is used differently in China. I had friends that would say let’s go to a bar. The places that we went to were places where it was mostly just eating, you could order something to drink also. Only one time in a restaurant where there were four ladies together did I see them drink beer. To see ladies drinking and smoking was very rare. I would have had to go to other places to find that. It goes on there of course but not in the places that I went to with friends. It is more common to see ladies in a bar drinking and smoking in the bigger cities.
Drinking is how the Chinese show their respect to a foreigner or an older person. There can be a lot of toasting. There will be toasting from the beginning to the end of a meal. Usually it is with baijiu, rice wine, their liquor, sometimes beer. For baijiu, you have to acquire the taste. That’s for sure. Kids are introduced to it when they are young. They don’t have age restrictions like we do here.
I didn’t go to bars. I should say bars like we have here where you drink and have loud music. The word is used differently in China. I had friends that would say let’s go to a bar. The places that we went to were places where it was mostly just eating, you could order something to drink also. Only one time in a restaurant where there were four ladies together did I see them drink beer. To see ladies drinking and smoking was very rare. I would have had to go to other places to find that. It goes on there of course but not in the places that I went to with friends. It is more common to see ladies in a bar drinking and smoking in the bigger cities.
Chapter 73
Saving Face
This is a common term or phrase that the Chinese and the Asian World use. They say save face; we use the word embarrass. We say something is embarrassing or we were humiliated. They don’t want to make mistakes or be embarrassed by saying something wrong so they say they want to save face.
Saving Face signifies a desire, or defines a strategy, to avoid humiliation or embarrassment, to maintain dignity or preserve a person’s reputation. Sometimes I would tease my Chinese friends and tell them it is ok to lose face. Some would say they didn’t mind losing face.
Chapter 74
Spitting
Spitting in public is common in China. Over time, it has become less. Even the government tries to do something about it. You would see men mostly, sometimes I would see women spit, when they walked out of restaurants. Yep, spit and people going into the restaurant would walk on it and carry it in on their shoes. Real healthy. Yes, there is pollution in the air from smoking, industry and other things. You breathe it in, get it in your lungs and then feel the urge to spit, but why would you do it in a restaurant or outside of it or other places and wonder why your health isn’t good? A lot of my friends would complain about this problem.
Chapter 75
Smoking
Smoking is common for men in China. Rarely did I see women smoking. I am not a bar person. More of the smoking went on in bars. My friends and I would go to eating places. It is said that two thirds of the men in China smoke. One of every three cigarettes that are made in the world go to China.
One in three young Chinese men will die from smoking.
(China Daily Paper (online); October 2015)
"A new study has warned that a third of all men currently under the age of twenty in China will eventually die prematurely if they do not give up smoking.
The research, published in The Lancet medical journal, says two-thirds of men in China now start to smoke before twenty.
The scientists conducted two nationwide studies, fifteen years apart, covering hundreds of thousands of people.
In 2010, around one million people in China died from tobacco usage. But researchers say that if current trends continue that will double to two million people, mostly men, dying every year by 2030, making it a "growing epidemic of premature death".
While more than half of Chinese men smoke, only 2.4% of Chinese women do.
Ordinary brands are affordable to all but the very poor, costing just 2.5 yuan a pack (40 cents). China is the world's biggest consumer of cigarettes, one in three cigarettes smoked globally are in China, as well as the world's biggest tobacco producer.
More than 300 million people, about a quarter of the population, smoke with the average smoker consuming twenty-two cigarettes a day."
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