What's something awesome you've noticed about Chinese people?
I’ll mention four things that have stood out to me the most so far:
- Always looking for things to learn and ways to improve themselves.
As with all of these, it doesn’t apply to everyone, of course; there are lazy Chinese, just like there are lazy Americans or lazy Europeans or lazy people anywhere else in the world. I’m not trying to make a comparison here or say everyone is like this. But, I would say that for a lot of Chinese I meet, they seem to have this in common. For example, if I ask someone if they like their job, after normal things like whether it’s busy or not or if the pay is any good, they usually comment on whether they are able to learn something from the people they work with or improve themselves in some way through their job. I think that’s really cool. Just look at how many Chinese use Quora because they really want a place where they can practice and improve their English. I find a lot of Chinese to be curious and lifelong learners. I think that’s awesome. - Hospitality and helpfulness.
Sure, sometimes it’s fake or just for show, but a lot of times, it’s really genuine. Making a Chinese friend can take time, and you have to learn to tell the difference between who is a real friend and who is just putting on a show for ulterior motives (Chinese learn to do this with each other, too), but when you make a real Chinese friend, they’re worth their weight in gold. And I can’t tell you how many times people have taken me out for a meal or helped me with something just to be nice. Tong Xin Catherine’s answer does a good job describing this. Generosity, helpfulness, and hospitality really are traits that all well-mannered Chinese seem to share, and it’s a cool thing. - Singing
Chinese people like to sing. Even in public. Of all the traits on here, this one may be the most universal. One of the most popular things to do with your friends in China is to go do KTV, which is the Chinese version of karaoke; while, granted, that differs from Western karaoke in that it’s just in a private room with you and your friends still, with a little coaxing (or sometimes even without), it’s not too hard to find someone in a group (or several people in a group) who are willing to sing in front of other people. Singing is usually something you do when you’re happy—and when you’re not, it’s still usually cathartic in some way—so I think this is a positive thing any way you look at it. - An indomitable spirit.
I taught for two years in a Chinese high school (高中) in the Lintong District of Xi’an. Of course, anywhere you go, in any country, there will be people who work hard and people who, well, don’t put in as much effort. But middle school in China…man, it’s rough.
Most students live at the school and spend almost the entire day in class. A typical day’s classes might start at about 8 a.m. and keep going until a lunch break for about two hours from noon to 2 p.m., but sometimes it’s not even that long, especially for 高三 students (seniors)—they might take a full half hour for lunch, but more often they bring their food back to their classroom so they can keep working. After lunch, regular classes resume until dinner, which is usually either 5:30 or 6 p.m., and again only lasts for about an hour (unless you’re a senior). After dinner, you have to go back to your classroom, where you either work on homework or sometimes have extra lessons or makeup lessons if anything happened to disrupt the normal class schedule that week. That goes at least until 9–9:30 p.m., or at least that’s usually how long the students are required to stay before they can go back to their dorms. After that, sometimes there are clubs and activities or free time, but as often as not, there’s more studying to do, because the amount of homework is usually pretty tremendous.
As for teaching styles and class discipline, it can vary a little from teacher to teacher, but I think it’s fair to say that many teachers (particularly the class teachers, who are responsible for supervising and disciplining a given group of students) can be very, very strict. Once, at my school, one of my students told me that after some boys in the class had been playing around with a basketball at the back of the classroom between classes, their class teacher made them line up outside and spent a half an hour yelling at them and smacking them across the face for goofing off, even though it was not during class time and they were in one of the highest ranked classes at the school. Another common form of punishment: taking away the chairs of students caught sleeping in class, so they have to stand the rest of the day for all of their classes. (I stopped punishing sleeping students in my class once I found out about that).
And then there’s the pressure. Pressure from parents, pressure from teachers, pressure from your peers. Competition is extremely fierce to get into good universities, and the only way to get into a better university is to get a high enough score on the dreaded 高考 (gaokao, the university entrance exam). Every single point counts, and every moment of your life is leading up to the fateful day when you take that test. Everyone tells you that the entire rest of your life hangs in the balance of your performance on this test.
So. Like I said—it’s rough.
But despite all that, I taught a lot of really incredible kids. I was amazed at how hard some of these students would work. And not only that, but how they would still keep their spirits up as much as they did. How they would still be really kind, genuine, funny, interesting people, despite being in such a tough situation with so much pressure day in and day out. It would be easy to give up, get frustrated, or be depressed—and, of course, for some that does happen. Probably many. But I was impressed by how many didn’t let it get to them—how many chose to do their best, and still keep up a good attitude and a positive, hopeful outlook. There were a lot of smart, talented, warm, and passionate students that I had the privilege to teach at that school. Maybe I was just lucky; I know different schools can have different characteristics, but I still think those qualities are something a lot of Chinese share.
In my last weeks of teaching at that school, I let my students use the entire class time to ask me any questions they wanted. I got a lot of questions about sports, or food, or my plans for the future and if I have a girlfriend or not, but there were some really interesting questions, too. One student asked me, “Are you worried about the future and what will happen?” If memory serves me, there had recently been a terrorist attack in the news, and I think that may have been what prompted the question. My answer might sound cheesy, but it was sincere. I told him that students like him and others at that school are what give me hope for the future. I genuinely think that, as depressing as problems in the world can be, people like him and his classmates are going to be the ones that make the world a better place.
Wang SisuoUpdated Apr 8, 2017Environmental pollution? Aging society?
OK. Let’s use them as opportunities to develop an industry: green economy, green technology, electric cars, age friendly tools, old age services, old age housing, old age friendly communities. You do not even have to be rich to be a part of these.
In a similar vein, the service industry is incredibly varied. If you have a demand, there will be some businesses which supply.
Slow economic growth? OK, let’s build infrastructure and it will pay back in the future. Then you see road and railway networks expanding.
2. Ready to try new gadgets, new apps.
Every time I visit, there are new life transforming innovations, or innovative ways to use existing technology. I visited China several days ago, it was amazing. WeChat literally turned the economy cashless. Even when you buy roasted sweet potatos, a dirt cheap street food usually sold by poor people, you can pay with WeChat. I first realised that in China, even the poor can afford to have a smart phone. I then realised that it is empowering. You can scan a QR code and get a public bike. You can scan a QR code to pay in restaurants so that you never have to be harassed by fake smiling waiting staff who cannot even get their eyes off the bill when you write the tip, or having to wait for hours to get your bill. You just scan, pay and go. Everything is sorted in 20 seconds.
3. The innovative spirit, in particular in the food industry.
Yes, American professors like to say that the Chinese are not good at innovation and the Chinese just nodded and agreed because they do not know how to think independently. Wooo—hahahahaha. Seeing American professors swamped Chinese universities during their teaching break, you kind of understand why they need to say so. They can be invited to Chinese universities to earn a second salary. No disrespect, they are great people, especially at the dining table. More adventurous than some of the ignorant Quora questioners.
Cooking technology is revamped almost every several years in China. They do not pay so much attention to colourful cooking gadgets, they change the way the industry works. Just think, what is special about a hotpot restaurant? It does not need a chef. The restaurant just washes and cuts the ingredients and the customers cook themselves. The new trend is steamer. You get everything steamed on your dining table. You can see the ingredients, fresh and clean. You steam it yourself. Just put the food on the steamer and set the timer. In a couple of minutes, the food is ready. You do not need balanced weight losing diet or formulas. You are not going to eat a big chunk of red meat which will give you a heart attack.
In some restaurants, food is cooked and served by robots. The following picture is from the internet as I have not been to one myself. (Please remove if it has any copyright issue.)
4. Inferiority syndrome. A lot of Chinese tend to be overly respectful to westerners. As a result, the latter often get spoilt. These days, as the Chinese economy gets better, people are more confident, especially in larger cities. Even so, when you see some of them greet the westerners, you still wonder why they are soooo hopeless. You do not have to be so cheap, do you? This gives some westerners the illusion that they can get away with anything. The reality is that China is a society where people respect good working ethics and delivery of results. Ultimately, if you do not perform, you will be seen through and you will still get superficial respect, but…
The ability to do the asian squat. Five years in and I’m still in awe (and quite jealous) of the general population’s ability to go chair-less at any moment for extended periods of time. The buttocks rests upon the heels and this allows for hours of Wechat moments swiping or checking your ZhiHu queries without ever having to sit on a less than sanitary surface such as your local guangchang which has probably been the recipient of more than a few lung cough ups or less desirable actions…
It has been theorized westerners generally cannot do it correctly because of a shortened achilles tendon due to sitting in chairs regularly and wearing shoes where the heel is raised above the toe.[1] Children can generally do it because their flexibility is still intact.
Try it for more than a couple minutes, likely you’ll be uncomfortable or you won’t even be able to fall back into this position at all.
Square dancing!
No, not like that you noobs…
Like this! You gotta be outside in full view playing the music extremely loud so everyone around can enjoy it. It’s said more than 100 million people around China participate and the dancing usually occurs in the early morning or evenings if you are interested in catching it. Go see it, I promise you will be in awe.
Learn more about it here: Square dancing (China) - Wikipedia
**Update**
Took this one coming home last night. Simply awesome.
Footnotes
Having lived over here for the last 12 years, I often feel disadvantaged in the fact that my observations of China and Chinese people has over time just become “normal” in my eyes. Often times it pays to get an outsider’s perspective or fresh eyes on the situation from an objective point of view.
That’s one of the main reasons I decided to host a virtual summit on investing in Asia this past month. I knew Asia was the “land of opportunity” a decade ago…it was why I moved over here to begin with. But was that still the case?
One of my investing techniques has always been to watch and observe the actions of brilliant investors and try to “piggy back” off of general trends that I see.
So over the last four weeks I hunkered down and spent most of my waking moments personally interviewing over 40 global investing experts including fund managers, economists, traders, startup founders and early stage investors.
And let me tell you…my findings were nothing short of eye opening. Every single one of the experts I interviewed were super bullish on the future potential of Asia and their comments all echoed the actions that we’ve seen being taken by investing legends such as Jim Rogers (legendary investor who moved to Singapore), Ray Dalio (largest hedge fund manager in the world) and Gary Vaynerchuk (prolific angel investor) are taking in Asia right now.
But most fascinating was this article written by Peter Diamandis (chairman of the X Prize Foundation) which talks about the “9–9–6” work ethic of Chinese. Basically what he says is that in China…people work 9am to 9pm, 6 days per week which is why Americans should not underestimate China as the next future hub of innovation.
I realized that the 9–9–6 was something that I had just “taken for granted” since having lived here for so long. I was fully submersed in it and thought that was just normal.
The sheer work ethic of Chinese people is awesome and it’s one of the reasons why all 40 of the global investors that I interviewed this past month were super excited about the opportunities that are available in Asia.
If you are interested in hearing more from summit guests and learning about the exciting opportunities in Asia you can attend the How To Invest In Asia Virtual Summit for free if you register here before Sept 25th!
I do not know where to start, I have worked with oversea Chinese at various levels in Canada for close to four decades. I had them as classmates, professors, co-workers, reports and service providers. At my present business in a Canadian university town, I have scores of contact with them.
A short answer: The Chinese showed my family and me how to eat tons of vegetables, I, our sons, our daughter (in law) and our grandsons will be indebted to you forever. An extremely high consumption of vegetables is one of the most “ awesome” things we observed here in Canada from our Chinese friends and during our visits to China. Thank you for our Chinese friends.
A long answer with explanations:
Here are some awesome facts about Chinese people:
Dietary habits: Highest producer and consumers of vegetables in the World:
The Top 5 Countries that Produce the Most Vegetables( year 2013)
Country: China, number 1, Production 583,321,399 m/t , % of the world production: 51.3 percent,
Other 4 countries are India, 10.6 percent, U.S.A. 3.01 percent, Turkey 2.49 percent, Iran 2. 08 percent.
Source: The Top 5 Countries that Produce the Most Vegetables
Chinese great eating habits of vegetables:
The Chinese are without a doubt the largest consumers of fresh produce. In 1961, 62 percent of the daily intake consisted of fruit and vegetables. That equates to an average of 537 grams per person. Root vegetables took up 35 percent of the diet, followed by vegetables with 25 percent. Fruit consumption accounted for 1 percent. Twenty years later, the consumption had dropped to 41 percent, which corresponds to 400 grams. Fruit consumption remained low with 2 percent. In 2001, fresh produces resurfaces as a major part of the diet. Chinese ate an average of 1027 grams per person, accounting for 55 percent. The percentage of tubers dropped to 11 percent. The consumption of fruits and vegetables increased to 37 percent and 6 percent respectively. Ten years later, little has changed in the diet. Chinese people still eat lots of vegetables: 56 percent of the daily intake. Especially vegetables were significantly more consumed and make up 39 percent. Fruit consumption rose to 9 percent.
Chinese consume most fruit and vegetables
- China: 332/kg/per person per year.
- Armenia 311/kg/per person per year.
- Albania 251/kg/per person per year.
- Iran 250/kg/per person per year.
- Montenegro 242/kg/per person per year.
pictures of chinese vegetables:
pictures of chinese vegetables:
Mrs Arora Author’s wife and Author took these pictures during their trips to China.
My and my family totally switched to Chinese way of eating tons of vegetables in our house hold: Following pictures are from our kitchen.
Thank you my Chinese friends, and you showed me and my family how to eat tons of vegetables, this is what my wife and I learned from you. It has changed our lives, my sons and grandsons are also indebted to your wisdom. Hats off to great wisdom of the Chinese.
Stir frying, steaming and salads are new mantra at our home now, these following pictures are from Author’s kitchen.
Ca
The following pictures shows Canadian food guidelines, Two parts vegetables, One part protein, and One part grains. But our Chinese friend taught us to cut grains even more to almost nothing, may half part or less. We observed very carefully in Beijing/Shanghai/Xian/ Chongqing/Wuxi/ Suzhou/Hangzhou area most of the Chinese did not eat much rice/noodles/past kind of food. They ate lot of vegetables and a little bit of meat.
China plays a very importand role in our western civilization. Without it, a lot of it's inventions would've been discovered by us a lot later. China has a very big history as it's the oldest continuous civilization on earth! Enjoy :)
Thank you for this wonderful answer! Those kids were really lucky to have you as a teacher.