3rd Week in Beijing
I'll be heading to Yingkou - 营口 and Qingdao - 青岛 (home to Tsingtao beer) for the next 8 days (National Week), so here's a quick update before I disappear again.> I always thought I look younger in the Western world like any other Asian person, but it seems that people in China also think that I look much younger than 25.
> Whenever I go abroad for more than 2 weeks, I start missing Montreal's food diversity. Korean, Cantonese, Vietnamese (Pho dac biet. Now please), Greek, Scandinavian, Lebanese, French, Polish, Indian, American, Caribbean, etc. The dishes are probably not 100% authentic with all the right specific ingredients but our city's cultural mishmash does allow many opportunities to try new kinds of food.
> Growing up in North America, English seems to be the language that everybody on Earth should try to master. Even when I was travelling or backpacking through Europe and Southeast Asia, people coming from different countries would still know a little bit of English. Globalization, I thought. Maybe because I have chosen a smaller university in Beijing with only about 60 foreigners, but the common language here is Chinese. My fellow classmates are from Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Saudi Arabia, Mongolia, Australia (1), Austria (1), Gabon, North and South Koreas, Equatorial Guinea, France (that's Briac) and Russia. So there aren't that many Westerners. As Briac has noticed, many of these countries are China's neighbors and commercial partners. Of course Chinese is more important than English to them in this part of the world! It makes total sense but somehow, I'm still amazed by my foolish assumption.
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| 2nd line is "Hi, how's your health?" in Kazakh. One of my Kazakh classmate is fluent in Kazakh and Russian. He understands when I speak English, but mostly answers in Chinese. |
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Very interesting and enlightening! I had the same assumption about English.
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