just going through my notebook for some nuggets ....
i know i emailed some of you this one, but can't remember if i posted it. it's worth a repost if i did ..... we passed a restaurant in zhuhai that featured neon pictures/signs of all of the animals it serves in its restaurant. there was a neon cow .... pig .... goat .... and (stop here if you are reading lori e.) ...... a cat. meow, indeed.
same day, saw dog on the menu. it was one of those picture menus and it looked like a stew of some sort. (note to self: no more stews). rumor has it they prefer black lab.
umbrellas are used in all kinds of weather. rain of course, but they are also handy in the sun as a shield! everyone uses they, and you are likely to see more of them during a hot sunny day than rainy one.
in driving through the agricultural regions in the south of china it looks like they are using the same methods they have been for years .... it was like a bus trip through time.
men in china will grow fingernails long .... not all of them .... usually just a pinky but sometimes more than one ... as a status symbol type of thing to signify that they are not manual laborers. no one else thinks it's gross.
most often seen fast food chains, in order:
1. KFC
2. McDonalds
3. Pizza Hut
4. Subway
not seen:
taco bell (in fact, no mexican food anywhere!)
burger king
questions asked to me by students at jilin university:
1. are students allowed to ask questions in class in america?
I exlained that not only are they encouraged to ask questions, but often class participation is part of one's grade, so if they don't ask questions, they get lower marks. it seemed like this was a big rumor to them, that i just confirmed to be true. he was astonished. see, in china when the professor or any teacher lectures they ask for questions at the end, but you're not suppsed to actually ASK any ... that is considered rude and insulting to the professor, as you are implying that he was not clear in his presentation and that you are questioning his research when he is mighty prof and you are little student.
2. how did you get your family to allow you to come overseas?
this was hard to explain, and they didn't really understand that my family really has no say in when/how i go overseas! i mean i told my parents i was going ... but i didn't *ask* them if i could go. the guy who asked this one said his mother would never permit him to to overseas because she would fear for his safety. and he didn't understand why my parents weren't as equally concerned .... it was just a foreign concept to him. it actually made me sad, because you could see he really wanted to travel.
they are proposing building a bridge from zuhai in the south of china to hong kong. it would take about 30 minutes to travel ..... can you imagine a 30-min bridge? they are really trying to promote south china (when i say south china i mean the area across the water from hong kong) as a tourist destination ... more affordable than HK, but still close ..... many of the students in college are majoring in tourism, as china is getting ready to surpass france as the top tourist destination (ACCORDING TO USA TODAY). and the thing is, a lot is focused on domestic tourism ..... the middle class incomes have tripled in the past few years in china, and the countries economic growth is in like it's 15th year of steady growth (def. at a rate way higher than u.s.!!!!) and they have like 18 billion people as potential customers! oh, did i mention hong kong disneyland is opening in september?
