50 Things That Are Different in Mainland China

We found many things to be different in mainland China as compared to the middle of the USA. Here are some. 1. The favorite beverage of most students is boiled water. The water is not safe to drink unless boiled and people develop a taste for it. 2. Water served in restaurants is hot. This is to assure the customer that the water has been boiled and is safe to drink. 3. There will be a pitcher of hot water on the table which will be used to wash your plates, cups and chopsticks. Chinese people fear the plates they are given are not clean enough to be healthy, even when the dishes are wrapped in shrink wrap on the table. The water is then poured into a bucket nearby. 4. Potties are all squatty types. Inland Chinese people believe western style toilets to be unhealthy, even though most of the restrooms are not exactly clean. 5. Everyone brings their own tissues for the toilet and other needs. It is not provided. Special little packets are sold everywhere, bundled in groups of 10 or more. 6. They don't use plates, they use bowls. Plates are an unusual item, considered western. 7. Chinese students will tell you they eat rice but, reality is, they eat more noodles. Noodles in a thin broth was the favorite food of almost every person we knew. 8. Most Chinese inlanders have never seen or tasted macaroni and cheese. That's a western thing. They have also never had a tomato based sauce such as we serve on spaghetti noodles. 9. Chinese women and girls carry umbrellas to shade themselves from the sun and to keep their skin from tanning. An umbrella is a necessity on a sunny day. If you see someone carrying an umbrella on a sunny day anywhere in the world, it is probably a Chinese female. 10. Chinese women want white skin, as white as possible, and use whitening creams to lighten their skin tones. We saw some who were so successful they looked like ghosts. 11. If a building is 8 stories or less, there will be no elevator. Everyone must walk up the stairs. They don't like it any better than any other person but they have no choice. It costs builders less not to install elevators and the law says they do not have to do it. 12. People prefer to live on the higher floors, even though it means walking up the steps. There are fewer mosquitoes up there, there is less noise, there are less street smells, the view is better, and, in some cases, the air quality is better. 13. Bottled water is delivered to homes for drinking and cooking. This is also boiled before using. 14. Tap water is not safe to drink or consume. It is full of heavy metals and pollutants. The water purification systems are not as advanced as in America. 15. Most produce is not safe to eat unless cooked first. The water that it is grown in contains things like bacteria and other such things which is absorbed by the food. Even lettuce is served cooked. Chinese people are afraid to eat raw foods, for good reason, and wonder about those of us who do. 16. Chinese people use whole leaf tea, often grown in their region. They do not use tea bags. 17. Chinese people do not have dishwashers. A few rich people may have them, but not the average person. 18. Chinese people do not have clothes dryers. although the rich might. Everyone hangs their clothes to dry on their balcony or outside of their apartments. 19. Most Chinese people do not have an oven. A few will own a small toaster type oven, but it is not a normal household item. The concept of baking is foreign to them. There are some bakeries, but they are not popular. 20. Chinese people do not recognize lines and crowd ahead of others whenever they can. They seem to be afraid that they will be left out or there will not be enough of whatever. Luckily, while they do push to get ahead, they do not stampede. 21. Chinese children are treasured and pampered by parents plus two sets of grandparents in one child families, and often two child families. They are often spoiled. 22. Only children are under a lot of pressure to perform in school as the fate of the entire family rests on them. They must do well to get into the best schools so they will qualify for the best jobs. The majority of inland families have no retirement money of any kind so the couple must support their parents, and any grandparents in old age, plus their child. 23. In the majority of China, especially outside of cities, boys are valued more highly than girls still. In the case of a two child family, the boy will get the attention and the best of everything while the girl often gets leftovers and negative attention. (There are many families who are not like this, but it is still a major trend.) 24. There are villages in China with only male children, no females. In others, male children greatly outnumber female children. In some age categories, there are 120 males for every 100 females which is why ultrasounds to discover the sex of the child were made illegal over 10 years ago. 25. In China, before a young man can marry, he must own a house and a car, have a good job and be able to give a bride's parents a large sum of money for the privilege of marrying their daughter. Both sets of parents must approve of the future spouse and their family. Parents are interested in the income level of the parents their child wants to marry. If anything does not meet with parental approval, the couple is not allowed to marry and must find someone else. 26. Newlywed couples are expected to have a child immediately, the first year. Parents will raise the child and live in the couple's home while the couple works. 27. Women must marry by 25 or are called leftover women. relatives and "friends" will badger them mercilessly until they are married. Parents will work to arrange marriages for their children if the children are taking too long. Inland and rural girls will do as their parents say regardless of their own feelings. 28. It is normal for many parents to choose what their child will major in in college. Children will obey regardless of their feelings or preferences. The obedience comes with a cost though. The students tend to be half hearted, doing just enough to get by to please their parents. 29. Education and medical care are free only in the town where the Chinese people were born and are registered, usually the hometown of their parents. It cannot be changed but it is possible to pay for these things in other places. Prices are too high for the factory workers and laborers who make up the largest percentage of the population. 30. Parents from rural areas and smaller towns will go to the cities to find work as laborers or in the factories. They cannot take their children so they leave them behind with grandparents. They come back and see their families once a year, for one to two weeks, during Spring festival. Children look forward to this time of seeing their parents. If the parents cannot make it some years, the children are very disappointed. They feel the same as any child would anywhere. 31. Middle school students have class 6 days a week from early morning, 7-ish, to evening, 8 pm or so, plus they have homework after that. Middle school is very intense. Middle school includes high school and anything prior to college. 32. Rural and small town elementary schools may have 60 or more students to one teacher. Parents look for ways to have their child sit near the front of the class to give them an advantage. That may mean gifts and favors for the teacher. 33. The national exam, the gaokao, determines the future opportunities for each student, so it is very important. Students are rated against one another and only the top scorers get the best opportunities. It is highly competitive and studying is intense. This is far more intense than our college entrance exams. There are more students competing and fewer colleges and universities of all kinds, especially top quality schools. The better the school, the less it costs. Students from poorer families with less opportunities for good quality elementary school and middle school educations, tend to score lower, so the poorer families pay more for their offspring to go to college. Students understand this reality and are under a lot of pressure to study very hard. 34. Compared to the pressures of middle school, colleges and universities are much easier. It is the opposite of the western world. 35. Health standards are not as high as in the western world so Chinese people often do not trust the food they buy to be healthy. They are ever cautious. 36. In the rural and small town areas, people buy live fish, chickens, ducks and other such things, then kill them at home themselves so they know the foods they eat are fresh. 37. China has high speed trains that are very nice and good public transportation. 38. People in China do not all speak Mandarin, though, theoretically, all are supposed to know it. People speak their local traditional languages, called dialects. While many dialects are similar to Mandarin, some are very different and essentially a different spoken language. The written characters carry the same meaning no matter where people live but the spoken word for that character is not the same. Therefore, Chinese languages are unique in that all people understand the same meaning when they read but they often cannot understand one another when they speak. They read, but not speak on a day to day basis, the same language. 39. While tea comes from one kind of plant, there are thousands of variations in flavor and quality. The location, soil, amount of water or rain, age of the plant, size of the leaf, season harvested and much more cause variations in the quality and taste of the tea. China has a lot of great tea. 40. Pollution levels are higher in many, many areas due to industry and coal burning. They are working on it. 41. During Chinese new year, people burn lots of fake money and other paper representations of things to "send" to their deceased relatives in the afterlife. They do this every year. They also believe the deceased relatives can hear and see them so they make "wishes" of them for their own lives, almost like praying to their ancestors. 42. Chinese people are very proud of their 5,000 year history though most couldn't explain much about it. They just like the number. 43. The young generation knows very little about what happened in their country between 1944 and 1990 but they do study the current politics. Older folks don't talk about that period in history much and very little of that time period is taught in school. Anything that is taught is positive and glorious. 44. There is an internet firewall in China that keeps the people from accessing certain popular media around the world. They cannot use Google, Facebook, Twitter, and other things, plus they cannot access some news sites like the New York Times. Chinese people must use Chinese alternative media (which has been quite lucrative for the owners of that media I'm guessing). It seems to work well enough. 45. There isn't much grass in central China. Vegetables are grown in every place where there is soil, including the medians of roads. 46. The main sources of protein in China are pork and tofu. "Meat" means pork in inland China. 47. Bargaining is a way of life in inland China. Haggling over the price is part of the culture. 48. The Chinese citizens believe Taiwan is just another province of their country, one they need a passport to go visit. 49. The Chinese people have a tradition when going out in a group. One person pays for everything, usually the person who invited everyone. 50. Chinese people do not tip waitresses, waiter, cab drivers or anyone else.