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Dec. 16th, 2006 10:26 am
suzhou, shanghai
So every tour guide told us how to cat-call in the Suzhou dialect, and told us that Suzhou was known for both being a "land of pretty girls" and a really romantic city in general. Many go to Suzhou to get their wedding pictures taken because it's so scenic. We did not get a pretty girl for our tour bus, but the other tour bus did. Our tour guide was a baby faced guy with glasses named Ah Jun, who had an equally babyish voice. It was a bit disconcerting.
During our long tour bus ride, Leslie opened up a little about the harsh realities of Chinese life. Leslie just about fell over when he learned that Americans don't pay for public school education at all. He mentioned that he knew one of his friends who got pregnant and decided to abort the baby, even though it would have been a boy, because she couldn't figure out a plan to pay for the child's education. Every year costs about $10k renmenbai. The average, lucky person with a steady job makes about $2k renmenbai a month.
He also told us that if a person needed surgery in China, the family would save to give a $5k renmenbai red envelope to the doctor. He was careful to say that you didn't have to do it, but you'd just feel a lot better if you did. Of course, he horrorified the majority of us with this small detail, because we were so used to having our doctors just follow the law and not take bribes or things that would seem to be a conflict of interest. He then changed the subject, saying something like, "well there are lots of things to like and dislike about China, just as there are in America", and the topic changed to stars that Chinese people love and hated.
Chinese people LOVE Andy Lau, Anita Mui, Roman Tam, etc. He named a number of people that were already dead and I think Andy Lau was the only person who was alive on that list.
Chinese people really hate Zhang Ziyi because they think she's so arrogant. And she has the nerve to go and ACT in ENGLISH movies when her English is so TERRIBLE!
I'm sorry - the Chinese hate for Zhang Ziyi amuses me a lot.
During our long tour bus ride, Leslie opened up a little about the harsh realities of Chinese life. Leslie just about fell over when he learned that Americans don't pay for public school education at all. He mentioned that he knew one of his friends who got pregnant and decided to abort the baby, even though it would have been a boy, because she couldn't figure out a plan to pay for the child's education. Every year costs about $10k renmenbai. The average, lucky person with a steady job makes about $2k renmenbai a month.
He also told us that if a person needed surgery in China, the family would save to give a $5k renmenbai red envelope to the doctor. He was careful to say that you didn't have to do it, but you'd just feel a lot better if you did. Of course, he horrorified the majority of us with this small detail, because we were so used to having our doctors just follow the law and not take bribes or things that would seem to be a conflict of interest. He then changed the subject, saying something like, "well there are lots of things to like and dislike about China, just as there are in America", and the topic changed to stars that Chinese people love and hated.
Chinese people LOVE Andy Lau, Anita Mui, Roman Tam, etc. He named a number of people that were already dead and I think Andy Lau was the only person who was alive on that list.
Chinese people really hate Zhang Ziyi because they think she's so arrogant. And she has the nerve to go and ACT in ENGLISH movies when her English is so TERRIBLE!
I'm sorry - the Chinese hate for Zhang Ziyi amuses me a lot.
