Action: A: Hi, what’s up?B: What’s what?Cut:A feels surprised how on earth can someone not understand this sentence. B feels confused, what’s up there? Maybe in the sky?Action:C -> D Hey, you look very nice in this dress today. Also I like your shoes!Cut:D couldn’t understand why C just sat down and started a conversation by complimenting the clothes.Action:In the elevator:E: How are you?F: Good! How are you?E: Good!Here comes silence in the elevatorThe rest of people who just never could get used to such a greeting culture look at each other and says nothing. Action:G: Why does this Chinese guy keep texting me? I’ve only met this dude in the elevator like once or twice. That’s never how dating works in the States. H: Do guys actually ask girls out for a date? Like in the movies?G: The movies…Do you seriously believe in Hollywood movies?

It’s not hard to go over all these from A to Z, from 0 to infinity if you want. I have more. Food first, Chinese kids of my generation grew up with stuff like 辣条 (spicy strips), 大白兔 (White Rabbit Candy), 包子 (bao zi), 馒头 (Chinese Steamed Bun), 煎饼 (jian bing), 波力海苔 (Seaweed) and so on. Now what are the following? Pringles?? Goldfish?? Pop tarts?? Fruit roll ups?? Nature valley bars?? Are they specialities for aliens? Or mysterious creatures from Mars? No! Non! Nie! Nein! Lo! Nee!, they are for people who grow up with Lizzie McGuire & That’s So Raven. What are these? Can I mix them and eat them as a starter? Oh, by the way, I grow up with 家有儿女, 西游记, 还珠格格, 宝莲灯, 武林外传, 天龙八部, 神雕侠侣, 情深深雨蒙蒙, 亮剑 etc. You can actually google (or baidu) these names if you want but please don’t blame me if once you fall in love with these TV shows and spend day and night floating in it. It can happen since human beings are sometimes emotional. You will never know.Ok, why am I rambling about these things? Am I nuts? Well, maybe I am.Ok, let me be serious. Can I actually be serious? All these thoughts came into shape after I went to the Sino-US Youth Dialogue Radio Show at NYU Shanghai held by the China Radio International, which is the People's Republic of China state-owned international radio broadcaster according to Wikipedia. Sounds pretty serious? Personally I had no comments about the whole event itself. Everyone could have their say.But what keeps triggering me is, what makes so many differences between Chinese kids and kids from a western background, generally speaking? From food to TV shows, from greetings to dating culture, it seems everything. Tons of reasons or cliché can be inputted here. At this stage of an article, it seems an author should come up with some analysis and conclusion to convince the readers or bring up a more heated discussion. Chinese culture has its own complexity with a more than 5000-year-old history heritage, in which, most of the time, the civilization itself never stops. The repetitive cycle of a similar political and cultural system only strengthens its own characteristics onto the people, even till today. So sometimes don’t feel surprised when your Chinese friends don’t speak much. The part of Chinese culture which focuses on peace and harmoniousness may also shape a type of personality that thinks more inwards. Besides, not many truly open-minded communications with other cultures have occurred until the past hundred years. On one hand, this has preserved the Chinese culture identity to a very complete form, but on the other the other hand, it generally makes the Far Eastern culture gradually different from anything else in the world. Probably, now, you already don’t know what I am saying. I actually also don’t know what I am talking about. I guess that’s the feeling when people outside of China feel when they first want to take a peek of China. They don’t know where to start because there are so many pieces. What you see is not even a star in the universe. Worse still, the process of getting to know each other, meaning China meeting the rest of the world and vice versa, in this century, still continues with incomplete reports from social media or maybe words as political gunshots, whatever. This is understandable. There is no such thing as a ‘God’ angle in this issue; nobody can see through the whole picture. But, it would be such a pity and sort of pathetic if the rest of the world only see crazy Chinese aunts 中国大妈 who bring a shopping tornado à la France or huge groups of tourists somewhere. Just the same as Chinese kids worship Hollywood movie heroes and picture a better world. These two categories may look entirely different. But are they?People’s emotions are the same. Purity, greedy, kindness, rudeness, politeness, etc. etc. All these are just expressions of human beings under different circumstances. Probably the way we greet each other, the food we eat, the TV shows we watch, bring our nature different covers. Everyone becomes an agent walking in some sort of n-dimensional space with certain covers. “Who are you?”“I am James Bond.”But James Bond never says that. This article was written by Sunyi Wang. Send an email to [email protected] to get in touch. Photo Credit: Sunyi Wang