If you don't like the Chinaman's driving, stay the hell off the sidewalk.

China's Culture Clash>>

Driving
The driving conditions is probably one of the biggest differences between good old Perth and China.

There are little to no line markings on the grounds, but it doesn't really matter because no one uses them anyways. If you can squeeze between two cars, go for it! Also, using the car horn is synonymous with driving. It's used at least every 30 seconds (seriously). Traffic lights are sparce at best and there are even less road signs, so cars are usually all piled up in random fashions at intersections inching forward whenever possible. Car indicators could be removed from the features of a car. It is common to just park on a two-way road and thus take up room, so that no two cars can pass side by side. Yet it's still a two-way road. Hence the frequent horn usage. Also, on top of this, motorcycles are more common than cars, and the pedestrian sidewalks are evidently made for motorcycles too.

Ironically due to all this, Chinese drivers are probably amongst the most skilled in the world. Otherwise, there's no way on earth anyone would have the confidence to drive there. Like hooning? Go to China.

Food
First dish on the first day was chicken. Sounds good so far. Except when the plate came, they included the entire chicken. As in, everything. Particularly important to note was the chicken head placed proud centre of the whole plate. Like the chicken was decapitated. It's two beady black eyes stared out blankly, it's thing on top of its head (forgot what it's called) waved slightly as it was being rotated on the big centre plate.

Dinner included duck. And the duck head.

I'm really weary of soup now. This is from the first day only. The soup all contain really er interesting things, like white fluffy things that look like what you might find under a staircase and in dark corners. Soup for dinner contained something that looked like a brain (though it actually wasn't) and had a chicken leg sticking out of it. Both soups were, according to mum, "very expensive". Soup before bed was made up of bird saliva. I'm serious. The bird saliva is manually collected from birds nests, and is subsequently very very very ridiculously expensive. A bowl of it (say 250mL) is easily 200 China dollars, which is the equivalent of about $40AUD. It did taste good though and it's really good for your health, so I suppose it's fortunate I didn't know before I drank it.

I've always been a bit squeamish though.

Toilets
Damn those holes in the ground.

Pollution
Yeah, not much more needed to be said. Woo, constant fog!

Hey Pretty Girl
This is a perfectly acceptable (and maybe expected) greeting to any female, regardless of whether you know them or not. It is more commonly used by females to other females though- to waitresses, shop sellers, people in the street. Guys generally use it when they want to sell you something...or want something from you...yeah.

Mah-jong
China style. I'll teach you all when I get back. It's pretty fun- fast games, no points, little rules. Flowers are wild cards. Great for those of you that don't like playing with points/don't know how. Basically a race to create a winnable hand.

I find it amazing that China is the most rapidly industrialising country in the whole world (and wow, they had the Olympics here last year?!). Great for a holiday to meet all the relies I didn't know I had but either way, I wouldn't want to live in China permanently, even if it's where the future money earning potential is. Give me our peaceful, built-up, clean Australia any day :).