This blog is in two parts due to a large size. Part 2 will be out in a couple of days. 

-Nicholas 

People

I decided it’s about time I wrote blog about the people here at Tsinghua. It also works out because clubs just started meeting this last week . Lots of new people. Lots of experiences. Lots to tell.

Everyone here at Tsinghua  is very friendly, welcoming, and warm. It’s a little surprising to me, Beijing being such a large city, I excepted to run across some rude people. The normal thing for a large city, but I have yet to see any of this. No one has gotten frustrated with my Chinese. No one has disliked that I am a foreigner.  No one has taken offence to anything I have done or didn’t do. The worst thing you ever run into is people either ignoring you because your just another person of millions, or people staring at you because your foreign.  Everyone I have meet has  gone to great lengths to be very friendly. People on the street will give very detailed instruction or simply show you. Often people have helped me with some task, without evening be asked first.  Of the people I have come to know well, they are always willing to help me with favors, offering to do things with me, and the best they always want to buy me food.  In fact food and exchanging food is a large cultural thing here. I’m really happy I brought a lot of American junk food to give out, because it’s always makes friends and I’m always receiving some local food in return.

There is however some bad with the good when it comes to the Chinese. This bad comes in the form of some cultural edict differences.  Things like everyone smokes, in and outside, everyone spits,  blows snot, and coughs without cover their mouth.  I have seen men peeing in the street, babies pooping in the street, sewage being dumped into the river. Trash is everywhere.  Cars drive wherever they want, including sidewalks. Most of this however has not bother me too much, it just reminds me how I’m not in the western world.

 Besides the bad and good, there are some just plain weird things. One is everyone sings to themselves.  A guy or girl walking down the street alone will just be singing away.  People will be in parks signing, talking walks around campus singing. Anytime anywhere, the Chinese just like to sing. Along the same line of vocalization, people love to use horns and bells here. It’s never meant to be taken offensively, they just want you to be aware of their location. As a result of this there is a constant hocking of car horns and binging of bike bells in the city. Tsinghua who wants the campus to remain quite for the student body has enacted laws against horns on campus. You can see this decree everywhere posted on signs saying “You are entering the zone of quietness.”  I will send a picture at some point.