Life and Travel in China

Imagine that in China, food and lunch/dinner times are very important. At 12:30 or 1:00 p.m. everyone goes for lunch, 100% of companies have an hour break for lunch. It also happens that it is a topic for conversation, something like "how are you?". In China, they say, "Have you eaten yet?", that's how you start a conversation. In the evening, dinner is prepared at home, everyone eats at 7:30 p.m., there is no question of eating at 8:00 p.m. or 5:15 p.m. It must be 7:00 or 7:30 p.m. There are queues outside some of the better restaurants at this time of night.

My fiancée recently told me about a Chinese woman from Shanghai, they both work in the same company. This Chinese woman is a typical "fly that flies to white" - as my friend from Hong Kong once put it. This girl just goes crazy at the sight of a white guy. And she's not the only one. This is amazing, of course I'm not a supermodel myself, but I look fit and I'm young and slim. It shocks me when I see young Chinese women in their 20s going with a fat, bald, sleazy white guy of 40, and I even saw a 60-year-old grandfather with a girl of 28-30. Would you say it's for money? And let me tell you, not always. Sometimes these Chinese women who have a good job, have their own money, or even their own apartments fall in love with such white guys because they are different, original, interesting and, above all, white. They're crazy! Such a guy usually has a wife in his home country, or he is a divorcee, that's my guess!

I come to Poland every other day... but only at night, in my sleep. I meet my family, friends, classmates, sometimes I even go to school. In reality, I visit less frequently, so sleep compensates for my visits to my homeland.

Today I met a white person on the street... I'm already at the stage where white people are a curiosity for me, because there are only Chinese around. When I see a white person, I stare at him like a Chinese person, and I am white myself. I saw a really original guy today. He had jeans so big and loose that he could carry his purchases from the supermarket, a bag on his shoulder in a feminine style, a bald head, a long beard, a leather jacket with the words "fuji rock festival" on it, he was about 30 years old. He stopped on the sidewalk and looked at the intersection. Terrible freak! But there are plenty of weirdos, individualists and random tourists here. I feel weird sometimes too, but at least I don't look that weird.

On every bus (be it a sightseeing or long-distance bus), or sometimes in a car or train, you will encounter a Chinese man or woman who considers themselves karaoke stars. There is nothing worse than when they get a microphone and torture us with their singing for two or three hours. I experienced this again yesterday during a trip. Another time, near Hangzhou, a Chinese man drove me and two other Poles to the hotel. We laughed at him because he kept playing songs from one CD and either humming them or singing the choruses at the top of his lungs for an hour. His friend finally summed him up: "today is Friday, so maybe he has a competition at the karaoke bar tomorrow and he has to practice today." In China, it's hard to find bars or discos, karaoke is everywhere, they're crazy.