One of my foreign friends want to improve his Chinese. actually, he can speak smooth and frequent PuTongHua now. but his reading and writing skills are not that good. I think most of Chinese can recognize he is not a native Chinese speaker from his writing materials. and he cant understand exactly what the Chinese’ real meaning is sometimes. So he let me be his Chinese teacher. Then I became his teacher, this happened 2 years ago. It is different now, I believe his spoken Chinese will impressed every Chinese. but still, there are something he cant understand well. and sometimes he still have a difficult feeling, maybe because of cross-culture affairs. OK, let me give you some advices when you want to try to understand China and Chinese.

I’d like to tell 5 things you should know here. but firstly let me tell why I choose 5 things, rather than top 10 or something like that.

Well,the digit 5 has some meaning in Chinese culture. 5 means 五行:金，木，水，火，土.  in English: The five elements: Metal, Wood, Water, Fire, Earth. in Chinese theory the 5 elements are the basic components of the whole world. There are some mutual restraint and mutual influence between every 2 of them. it is quite complex（see the pic belows, explains the relationship among the 5 elements）, I must make other posts to explain it. ok, in summary.  This is the basic rule of the nature. and the same rule control the human beings. when you talk about 5. It seems you are reaching the core concept, or you are going to get the point. Let me know if I missed some of them.

1 the car is dangous

He, my Chinese learning friend, told me the car must stop in front of the pedestrians in his country. and they can easy cross the road without dangerous. I believe him. and I tell him this is no way in China. He admitted it of course. On the contrary, the pedestrians must let the car cross first, otherwise you will easily pissed off the drivers. and maybe it will cause some hurt to yourself. The more expensive car is, the worse hurt you will get. so, it is smart to act as humble in front of the beautiful cars in China. You never know who are the drivers and whom they works for.  remember it all the time. be careful when you cross the road. and walk slowly even there is no car at all in the road.

2 not all Chinese can KO you

KO? If you play video games, expecially some of the fight games. You must know the KO means. Bruce Lee and Jet Lee and Jacky Cheng are the famous KungFu actors in the world. They are Chinese. and I bet you know more Kungfu masters around the world. But in China, not all of them know what does the Kungfu means. Say, Taijiquan, only a few people know the Taijiquan, and only some of them know the difference between Chen’s Taiji quan and Yang’s Taiji quan.  and only some of them can practrice the real Taiji quan, only a few of them can get the real Kungfu finally. A common people who didnt have Kungfu, how can he KO you?

3 Beijing and Shanghai is quite modern than you expected

When you come to Beijing or Shanghai for the first time. I bet you should immediately update your original impression of China. The cities are just the same damn as the cities in US or some other main cities in the world. It is weird to arrive in another commerical-busy-modern city after over 10,000 miles flight. unfortunatelly, China is the runner follower of the globelization. and China can imitate produce anything you know after some localization. including the cities and economy. so it is common if you see the high developed industries and has the China characters. anyway, China is changing every day, you should update the impression of China every day too. otherwise you will get lost. Dont blame anyone. China is China, not any other country at all.

4 many NGOs than you expected

I know the word of NGO came from western. From the 1st NGO in China regestered in 1996, nobody can tell how many NGOs in China today. Environmental protection NGOs, Poverty alleviation NGOs, Education NGOs,  Care for vulnerable NGOs, Women NGOs, and some other NGOs on animals protection and Children and some social affaires. You can get more info from the website for the Chinese NGOs. During the past earthquake relief activities. Many NGOs plaied an important role. But most of them didnt have the regesteration. Maybe the word grassroot group is fit for them better.

5 Chinese didnt tell the whole thing

It is hard to tell. because I am a native Chinese. I dont notice it is a problem until I met some problems. Well, When Chinese talked about money, they feel it is somthing make them embarrassed. and to some extend they didnt like to talk about money. even for business. They didnt like to talk the money doesnt mean they dont like it. There is always a standard in their heart/mind, when you give  them the less money they will say something. But they didnt tell you the amount of money in the begining or they just tell you only once. You should ask for them times to tell you. The money is one of them, and there are lots more. You can leave a comment if you have other ideas.

This is the 5 things the Laowai should know in my mind. I bet you have more advinces for the foreign friends. I will let you leave your comments below.

From China Travel 2.0 Blog.