So every week, we go as a class to eat lunch with our teacher. They call it Chinese tables. During this time, we only speak Chinese and learn things about China. Our Chinese teacher is able to speak Shanghainese which is unique to Shanghai. It uses the same characters as Mandarin Chinese; however it has a completely different way to pronounce them. For example, 你好 is pronounced “nihao” in Mandarin, but with Shanghainese, it is “nonghao”. Only people from Shanghai typically speak it. Most of my coworkers speak it yet my boss can only understand what they are saying when they speak it. She comes from a different part of China so it wasn’t passed down to her through her parents. I can tell when it is spoken but I do not understand it at all. I thought it would be easier to pick up on, but at this point in time, I’m only going to focus on learning Mandarin. If I were to travel outside of Shanghai, knowing Shanghainese would not be very useful.
Going off of that, I’ve been fortunate enough to get an internship at The Study Abroad Foundation. My coworkers are so friendly and helpful! I’ve noticed a few differences thus far between doing business in China compared to in the USA. For example, answering a phone call during the middle of a meeting or presentation is not shocking. Chinese think that if it is important enough to make a phone call about, they will answer it. This can also be said with our Resident Director as he will answer his phone in practically every situation.
The building of the company that I work at is well kept and has a nice environment. There is free coffee, tea and hot water, and the bathrooms are so much better than I ever would have expected (They are American style & they have seat warmers!). Also, on the first floor of the building, there is a nice casual sitting area. If I ever arrive at work early, I always sit down there for a few minutes and read. They have workers on each floor that act as secretaries and the ones of the first floor bring you hot water as well. The perks of this building are nice and I wonder if every business center like this has these amenities.
I have decided that I will do my capstone paper for my Economics class based on my internship. I will be researching and analyzing the main reasons that Chinese students want to go abroad to an English speaking country, what they plan on doing after they receive their education, and why more and more students have been doing this in the past few years. I am excited to look deeper into this topic and will keep you updated with how it goes.
As I have been to more and more universities in China, I have noticed a few differences. To save energy, some colleges will turn of electricity around 10 or 11 pm which means that they have to be in the building before then in order to be able to sleep in their room. Luckily, this is not the case for our campus. Another difference is that oftentimes there will be a central shower room for many residence halls rather than have showers in each bathroom. I found this out because I noticed people walking to and from buildings with their towel and shampoo one day and asked my boss what the reason for this was. I talked to my Australian friend about this and she said that they do that as well so I am not sure how bizarre this custom is or if it was just something I was unaware of.
Lastly, I have noticed that China has different features than the USA when it comes to accessibility for people with physical disabilities. All throughout the metro and many sidewalks, there are bumps on the road indicating whether or not the sidewalk will continue on or if a turn is coming up. At first, I had no idea what they were, but it makes sense now although they are extremely uncomfortable to walk on. In general though, I would not want anything to happen to my legs during my time here because getting around on crutches let alone a wheelchair would not be a fun task to have to deal with here. It is not like the USA where the buildings have to have an elevator and ramps are strategically placed around to help these people.
Oh and don’t think that I have forgotten to mention guan xi. Don’t worry, that will be one of its own blog posts in the near future.
Want to learn some Chinese? 不好意思 (buhaoyisi) literally “I’m embarrassed” in Chinese but is used like we would say “Excuse me” in English.
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