Xmas is one of the most important festival. During Christmas time, everybody is inside their houses with their families. It's the same that during Chinese new year we spend more time with our families, but we also spend a lot of time hanging out in the city center, shopping and enjoy the atmosphere there. Traditionally, parents will buy some new stuffs for the house also for the family and friends. For example, parents used to buy their children a new coat or a new pair of shoes. Because it’s NEW year, everything put the meaning of NEW, which hopefully bring some good fortune next year and a prospect to their children doing fine the next year. It’s also a kind of attitude towards life, because after Winter people looking forward to Spring, that’s also why we called it Spring festival.
During Christmas it's tradition to take candles to the cemetery, if you have relatives in there or just remember someone who has passed away. It looks beautiful when it's dark, thousands of candles. In China we also have our tradition to memorise the people who has passed away, but in a different way. We burn a special kind of yellow or silver colored paper which represent “money”, because Golden and Silver used to be the currency in the ancient. People do this to pray for the people who has passed away to live a happy life in the other world, with these “money” they can take care of themselves there.
On 4th this month, SAMK organized a very nice and warm Christmas dinner in Rauma Unit for all the incoming exchange students. We got a free dinner with a lot of traditional Finnish food. After that all the exchange students singing Christmas songs in their mother tongue, you can imagine the atmosphere. Then Santa Claus came into the house and brought us Christmas presents. I got some lovely candies. The Christmas dinner was great. I had a good time.
One week later, there’s another Christmas dinner for staffs. The host divided us into different groups, each one has to decorate cakes and setting tables. After that everybody vote for the best one. I am happy, because this is my first time decorating a cake. We made a big smiling face by using different kind of candies, though we didn’t win, I really enjoy it. Thanks to SAMK, for everything:D
This week nearly all the exchange students will go back to their home countries and having Xmas holiday with families. I wish all of them and all the staffs here have a nice and lovely Christmas!
2009年12月18日 星期五
2009年12月2日 星期三
Ren
I believe "ren" is one of the most important essence of Confucianism which also play an important role in cross-culture management.
Sun Tzu who is the most famous Chinese military strategist said “Wars are won before they started, and a true leader dose not fight”. I prefer to explain as a good leader knows exactly what the citizens want. He treats both of his own citizens and enemies' the same, like his own family. Of course he doesn’t need to fight and wars are won before they started, because the citizens in other countries have heard the good reputation of this leader, and how he treats his citizen. They respect him and would like to be part of his citizens. Mengzi said “Who Gain the Common Aspiration of the People, Who Can Rule the World.” Chinese president Hu Jintao advocate " Harmonious Society", it is also kind of "Ren", which tells us to try our best to understand each other, to forgive each other. This is the real wisdom.
Sun Tzu who is the most famous Chinese military strategist said “Wars are won before they started, and a true leader dose not fight”. I prefer to explain as a good leader knows exactly what the citizens want. He treats both of his own citizens and enemies' the same, like his own family. Of course he doesn’t need to fight and wars are won before they started, because the citizens in other countries have heard the good reputation of this leader, and how he treats his citizen. They respect him and would like to be part of his citizens. Mengzi said “Who Gain the Common Aspiration of the People, Who Can Rule the World.” Chinese president Hu Jintao advocate " Harmonious Society", it is also kind of "Ren", which tells us to try our best to understand each other, to forgive each other. This is the real wisdom.
2009年11月30日 星期一
"Ying" and "Yang"- The ancient Chinese philosophy
Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism are the three most important philosophies that constitute the Chinese culture. Yin Yang is a Taoist philosophical principle, which represents the ancient Chinese understanding of how things work and how they think about life. Ying represents female elements such as the moon, night, water, weakness, darkness, mystery, softness, passivity, etc., while Yang, male elements such as the sun, day, fire, strength, brightness, clearness, hardness, activity.The curves and circles of the Yin-Yang symbol imply a kaleidoscope-like movement. This implied movement represents the ways in which Yin and Yang are mutually-arising, interdependent, and continuously transforming, one into the other. One could not exist without the other, there’s a black dot in the white and a white dot in the black, which means there’s no absolute black and no absolute white. Each contains the seeds of the other and together form a dynamic unity. Yin and Yang depend on each other, exist within each, give birth to each other, and succeed each at different time.
Ancient Chinese think that every universal phenomenon embraces both Yin and Yang, embraces both the black and the white, and embraces contradiction, paradox and change. Yin and Yang are complementary if life is to be created, maintained, and developed in a harmonious way.
The reversion of Yin and Yang, love and hatred, good and bad, fortune and misfortune is well illustrated by the Chinese proverb Sai weng shi ma an zhi fei fu (“The old man has lost his horse but who knows if this is a misfortune”). Behind the proverb is the story about the “old man” and his “horse”, here is the story:
There was once an old man who lived with his only son at the border of the state. They were fond of horses and often let them graze freely in the meadow.
One time a servant reported to the old man, "A horse is missing! It must have gone into the neighbouring state." His friends felt sorry for him, but the old man was not bothered at all by the loss. As a matter of fact, he said, "Who knows! The loss may bring us good fortune!"
A few months later, a strange thing happened. Not only did the missing horse return home safely, it also brought back with it a fine horse from the neighbouring state. When his friends heard the new, they congratulated the old man on his good luck. But the old man said, "Who knows! This may bring us ill fortune!"
One day, when the old man's son was riding the fine horse, he accidentally fell off the horse, broke his leg, and was crippled. Many friends came to comfort the old man, but the old man was not disturbed by the accident. "Who knows! This may bring us good fortune after all!" he said.
A year later, when the neighbouring state sent troops across the border, all the young and strong men were drafted to fight the invaders, and most of them got killed. The old man's son was not drafted because he was crippled and so his life was spared.
The Yin Yang philosophy offers a dialectic worldview, a paradoxical yet balanced approach to life. It is the philosophical foundation that empowers Chinese people to follow different teachings and behave differently under different circumstances.
2009年10月18日 星期日
Some questions about China
I collected some questions I’ve been frequent asked, but never explain too much as it’s in my blog. One reason is that some of the questions too sensitive. Another reason is that it takes time for me to think in which way people can understand. In the end I made a conclusion about Chinese people.
Q1: Where are you from?
Changzhou, a major city in Jiangsu Province, is located on China’s east coast and neighbors Shanghai. Approximately one hour from Shanghai by train.
Q2: What’s the population in your city?
4.4 million (including floating population, the people who have a job there but come from other cities).
Q3: How many people are there in China?
1.3 billion.
Q4: Why there are so many people in China?
It’s about history and policy. I must declare first, what I said next is all based on history, but no offence to anybody. I just used it to explain this question. Things had passed away, and it’s a problem between our last generation not us. I respect Japan and Japanese people. Now I start. In the past we don’t have as many people as now, approximately 440 million in 1912. Then we had civil war and a war between China and Japan from 1937 to 1945. 35 million Chinese people died of this war. In city Nanjing, more than 300,000 Chinese people killed or buried alive. In my city Changzhou, my teacher told me that there’re only 13 families left after that war. So you can imagine. The Chinese population lessens a lot after this war. Then Chairman Mao, the first president of People’s Republic of China, also the leader of the Chinese Communist party made a policy to encourage all citizens to have more children, those who gave birth to more than 10 children given the chance to meet him. Because he’s afraid that Chinese will extinct if other wars happened in the future. One of my classmates told me that her grandma had 10 children, and then met Chairman Mao. You can’t imagine how people respect and love him and his party at that time. Because it’s him with the Communist party fight for the liberty, drive away all enemies, set all Chinese people free and established our own country. Just like you are so grateful and will never forget the people who once saved your life. That’s also why we have Socialism in our country, and Communist as the first party. Chairman Mao is like the god in people’s mind, no one dare deny what he said, and the one-child policy was introduced in 1979 after Chairman Mao passed. So that’s why we have so many people. I don’t want to say who is right, who is wrong. But I can understand Chairman Mao, because he’s already an old man when he set Chinese people free and established our own country. He has no child, he use to have, but sacrificed during the war. He lives in sorrow like the other Chinese people who lost families during war. He wants to use this way to cheer people up, to forget the sorrow, to show other countries that Chinese people can never be beaten, like the grass can never burned, so don’t bother Chinese people again. For him, he’s so tired, fighting wars from young till old, he just want to enjoy the rest of his life peacefully. I can never imagine the feeling of losing families in the wars, but I can imagine the feeling of seeing new lives. It gives you a hope to continue. That might be the will of Chairman Mao. For me I think it’s a good idea, but Chairman Mao underestimated his rallying point, maybe 5 is enough. But who knows?
Q5: Last week I saw a documentary about China in TV, people in that region are still so poor.
I have to admit that there’re still some people in some region live in poverty, but generally speaking Chinese people’s life is becoming better and better these years. We can not compare our leaving standard with Finnish people. Because we are still developing countries, but compare with the life ten years ago we really take a big step.
Like countries in European Union developed unbalanced. Same thing can also happen in China between different regions. China is too big, even bigger than Europe. But generally, in China south is much more developed than north, and east is much more developed than west. It depends to the geography of the region, climate, population, history, education of the locals and other factors.
Anyone heard of Yuan Ming Yuan (also known as the old Summer Palace), it’s an imperial garden in Beijing tragically destroyed by the British and French troops during the Second Opium War in 1860. More than 1,500,000 pieces of treasures were stolen, now 30,000 pieces in Louvre Museum, and 23,000 pieces in British Museum. This year a French auction house quoted 10 million Euros for one of the Yuan Ming Yuan zodiacs sculptures, which is only one piece of the 1,500,000.
It’s true that China is an attractive destination for foreign enterprises and was ranked the top destination for FDI (Foreign Direct Investment). But it is also true that low cost of labor force is the most attractive thing. It is common that in some companies, especially those labor dense types (no typical technical skills requirement), workers there have to works more than 10 hours a day and 6 days a week. They have no choices, otherwise they might face the possibility of losing their jobs. The truth is that most them in this kind of companies are coming from countryside, whose parents are farmers have none education at all not to mentioned about vocational skills, some of them even don’t know how to control the birth of child. They never consider about the future of their child, with the whole families live in poverty, no money to send children to school. The oldest child in the family always has to leave home to some big cities like Shanghai and Shenzhen to find a job. It’s not very difficult for a female to find a job in rag trade companies and a male in Electronic weld companies, who prefer employees with good eyesight. Because you know eyesight is extremely important when you weld chips like CMOS in the mobile phones. And the salary they owned have to support their living, the tuition fee of the younger sisters and brothers, their parents’ sometimes even grandparents’ living cost and health care fee. The tragedy is that most of them will be fired without any reasons in five years. Because the employers knows exactly that working at a strong electronic radiation environment for a long time might cause cancer, and they don’t plan to pay for the health care fee, because it’s so easy for them to find another group of new workers.
Q6: Do you have human rights in China?
Yes we have, but we have different culture and values. Confucianism is the essence of the Chinese 5000 years’ uninterrupted civilization, which plays an important role in Chinese culture and influence people’s lives. According to the Confucian philosophy, two persons can never be equal. A man is defined by and exists through his relationships with others. The relationships are hierarchical, and social order is based on people honouring the requirements of their role. The world is not in balance without these hierarchical relationships. He thinks the most important relationships are five in numbers: rulers and subjects; fathers and sons; husbands and wives; brothers and; friends.
Here’s an example. Last year, a big earthquake happened in Sichuan, China. It’s a tragedy, a lot of people died. But the Chinese government took the disaster seriously from the start. Fifty thousand troops were sent on the first day. Another 30,000 were deployed within 48 hours. Prime Minister Wen Jiabao was on the scene on the first day and President Hu Jintao got there 5 days later. Compare that to America’s response to Katrina. It took 36 hours for the hurricane to be declared an “incident of national significance”. National Guard units were unable to be deployed because many of the men were in Iraq and President Bush only made it to New Orleans two weeks after the hurricane hit the city. I know it’s difficult for you to understand the Chinese troops, the prime minister and president. Are they nuts? No they aren’t. They did that because of the social responsibility and human nature. They did the right thing, didn’t they? But do you think it’s equal for the soldiers and prime minister went there at all hazards to save the people? It’s equal if they can stay at home with their families and sit in front of TV watching news like ordinary people. If so, do you think it is equal for the people who were buried under ruins struggle with death. Contradiction can never be solved without one side making sacrifice.
Q7: What’s wrong with Tibet? Why Chinese government blocked Facebook in China?
Tibet is always part of China. Dalai Lama, the spiritual head of Tibetan Buddhism wants to depart Tibet from China and made him King. He used his power to lead rebellion against China. He knows how to use the influence of religion to reach his own purpose. Most people there believe in Tibetan Buddhism. Religion and spirituality is extremely important to the Tibetans and has a strong influence over all aspect of lives. There were thousands of monasteries and convents in Tibet, and each Dalai Lama is believed to be the reincarnation of the bodhisattva, in another way a living saint. So you can imagine the power of Dalai Lama. He also has the right to named Panchen Lama, who is ranking next after the Dalai Lama. Then he can pass his will from generation to generation even after he passed away. The point is that most people in Tibet have no higher education at all. Here’s a quote from Wikipedia “A rebellion against the Chinese occupation was led by noblemen and monasteries and broke out in Amdo and eastern Kham in June 1956. The insurrection, supported by the American CIA,[1] eventually spread to Lhasa. It was crushed by 1959. During this campaign, tens of thousands of Tibetans were killed and the 14th Dalai Lama and other government principals fled to exile in India.[2][3].” Have you seen the word “the American CIA”. I don't think I need to explain more. Have you seen the word “fled to exile”, I’ve never seen anyone use this word before to describe Dalai Lama as a living saint. I mean he is a leader and he said he fight for the people.
I don’t know why the Chinese government blocked Facebook in China, but I know some western media biased and distorted the report on Tibet riot. Maybe Chinese government thought it’s a good way to stop other countries intervening in the internal affairs.
Notes:
^ Wonacott, Peter (2008-08-30). "Revolt of the Monks: How a Secret CIA Campaign Against China 50 Years Ago Continues to Fester; A Role for Dalai Lama's Brother". Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on 2008-08-30. http://chinhdangvu.blogspot.com/2008/08/revolt-of-monks.html.
^ Laird 2006, pp. 320–328
^ "Witness: Reporting on the Dalai Lama's escape to India." Peter Jackson. Reuters. Feb 27, 2009.
Conclusion (to understand Chinese people):
Sometimes, you can hardly tell truth without hurting others. I answer all the questions based on absolute truth, a western way. I know somebody feel glad when they know the truth, but Japanese, French, English and American people might upset after reading it. For example, if a Japanese friend breaks up with me for this reason. Am I happy? I told the absolute truth but losing a friend. That’s not what I want. What if I just said I don’t know too much about politics or I didn’t say too much, then everyone is happy.
Some people think that Chinese people like to make white lie to save their faces, but my answer is that not only save their faces but others’ faces, and save the relationships between each other. I know it’s hard to understand, but it’s our culture.
Q1: Where are you from?
Changzhou, a major city in Jiangsu Province, is located on China’s east coast and neighbors Shanghai. Approximately one hour from Shanghai by train.
Q2: What’s the population in your city?
4.4 million (including floating population, the people who have a job there but come from other cities).
Q3: How many people are there in China?
1.3 billion.
Q4: Why there are so many people in China?
It’s about history and policy. I must declare first, what I said next is all based on history, but no offence to anybody. I just used it to explain this question. Things had passed away, and it’s a problem between our last generation not us. I respect Japan and Japanese people. Now I start. In the past we don’t have as many people as now, approximately 440 million in 1912. Then we had civil war and a war between China and Japan from 1937 to 1945. 35 million Chinese people died of this war. In city Nanjing, more than 300,000 Chinese people killed or buried alive. In my city Changzhou, my teacher told me that there’re only 13 families left after that war. So you can imagine. The Chinese population lessens a lot after this war. Then Chairman Mao, the first president of People’s Republic of China, also the leader of the Chinese Communist party made a policy to encourage all citizens to have more children, those who gave birth to more than 10 children given the chance to meet him. Because he’s afraid that Chinese will extinct if other wars happened in the future. One of my classmates told me that her grandma had 10 children, and then met Chairman Mao. You can’t imagine how people respect and love him and his party at that time. Because it’s him with the Communist party fight for the liberty, drive away all enemies, set all Chinese people free and established our own country. Just like you are so grateful and will never forget the people who once saved your life. That’s also why we have Socialism in our country, and Communist as the first party. Chairman Mao is like the god in people’s mind, no one dare deny what he said, and the one-child policy was introduced in 1979 after Chairman Mao passed. So that’s why we have so many people. I don’t want to say who is right, who is wrong. But I can understand Chairman Mao, because he’s already an old man when he set Chinese people free and established our own country. He has no child, he use to have, but sacrificed during the war. He lives in sorrow like the other Chinese people who lost families during war. He wants to use this way to cheer people up, to forget the sorrow, to show other countries that Chinese people can never be beaten, like the grass can never burned, so don’t bother Chinese people again. For him, he’s so tired, fighting wars from young till old, he just want to enjoy the rest of his life peacefully. I can never imagine the feeling of losing families in the wars, but I can imagine the feeling of seeing new lives. It gives you a hope to continue. That might be the will of Chairman Mao. For me I think it’s a good idea, but Chairman Mao underestimated his rallying point, maybe 5 is enough. But who knows?
Q5: Last week I saw a documentary about China in TV, people in that region are still so poor.
I have to admit that there’re still some people in some region live in poverty, but generally speaking Chinese people’s life is becoming better and better these years. We can not compare our leaving standard with Finnish people. Because we are still developing countries, but compare with the life ten years ago we really take a big step.
Like countries in European Union developed unbalanced. Same thing can also happen in China between different regions. China is too big, even bigger than Europe. But generally, in China south is much more developed than north, and east is much more developed than west. It depends to the geography of the region, climate, population, history, education of the locals and other factors.
Anyone heard of Yuan Ming Yuan (also known as the old Summer Palace), it’s an imperial garden in Beijing tragically destroyed by the British and French troops during the Second Opium War in 1860. More than 1,500,000 pieces of treasures were stolen, now 30,000 pieces in Louvre Museum, and 23,000 pieces in British Museum. This year a French auction house quoted 10 million Euros for one of the Yuan Ming Yuan zodiacs sculptures, which is only one piece of the 1,500,000.
It’s true that China is an attractive destination for foreign enterprises and was ranked the top destination for FDI (Foreign Direct Investment). But it is also true that low cost of labor force is the most attractive thing. It is common that in some companies, especially those labor dense types (no typical technical skills requirement), workers there have to works more than 10 hours a day and 6 days a week. They have no choices, otherwise they might face the possibility of losing their jobs. The truth is that most them in this kind of companies are coming from countryside, whose parents are farmers have none education at all not to mentioned about vocational skills, some of them even don’t know how to control the birth of child. They never consider about the future of their child, with the whole families live in poverty, no money to send children to school. The oldest child in the family always has to leave home to some big cities like Shanghai and Shenzhen to find a job. It’s not very difficult for a female to find a job in rag trade companies and a male in Electronic weld companies, who prefer employees with good eyesight. Because you know eyesight is extremely important when you weld chips like CMOS in the mobile phones. And the salary they owned have to support their living, the tuition fee of the younger sisters and brothers, their parents’ sometimes even grandparents’ living cost and health care fee. The tragedy is that most of them will be fired without any reasons in five years. Because the employers knows exactly that working at a strong electronic radiation environment for a long time might cause cancer, and they don’t plan to pay for the health care fee, because it’s so easy for them to find another group of new workers.
Q6: Do you have human rights in China?
Yes we have, but we have different culture and values. Confucianism is the essence of the Chinese 5000 years’ uninterrupted civilization, which plays an important role in Chinese culture and influence people’s lives. According to the Confucian philosophy, two persons can never be equal. A man is defined by and exists through his relationships with others. The relationships are hierarchical, and social order is based on people honouring the requirements of their role. The world is not in balance without these hierarchical relationships. He thinks the most important relationships are five in numbers: rulers and subjects; fathers and sons; husbands and wives; brothers and; friends.
Here’s an example. Last year, a big earthquake happened in Sichuan, China. It’s a tragedy, a lot of people died. But the Chinese government took the disaster seriously from the start. Fifty thousand troops were sent on the first day. Another 30,000 were deployed within 48 hours. Prime Minister Wen Jiabao was on the scene on the first day and President Hu Jintao got there 5 days later. Compare that to America’s response to Katrina. It took 36 hours for the hurricane to be declared an “incident of national significance”. National Guard units were unable to be deployed because many of the men were in Iraq and President Bush only made it to New Orleans two weeks after the hurricane hit the city. I know it’s difficult for you to understand the Chinese troops, the prime minister and president. Are they nuts? No they aren’t. They did that because of the social responsibility and human nature. They did the right thing, didn’t they? But do you think it’s equal for the soldiers and prime minister went there at all hazards to save the people? It’s equal if they can stay at home with their families and sit in front of TV watching news like ordinary people. If so, do you think it is equal for the people who were buried under ruins struggle with death. Contradiction can never be solved without one side making sacrifice.
Q7: What’s wrong with Tibet? Why Chinese government blocked Facebook in China?
Tibet is always part of China. Dalai Lama, the spiritual head of Tibetan Buddhism wants to depart Tibet from China and made him King. He used his power to lead rebellion against China. He knows how to use the influence of religion to reach his own purpose. Most people there believe in Tibetan Buddhism. Religion and spirituality is extremely important to the Tibetans and has a strong influence over all aspect of lives. There were thousands of monasteries and convents in Tibet, and each Dalai Lama is believed to be the reincarnation of the bodhisattva, in another way a living saint. So you can imagine the power of Dalai Lama. He also has the right to named Panchen Lama, who is ranking next after the Dalai Lama. Then he can pass his will from generation to generation even after he passed away. The point is that most people in Tibet have no higher education at all. Here’s a quote from Wikipedia “A rebellion against the Chinese occupation was led by noblemen and monasteries and broke out in Amdo and eastern Kham in June 1956. The insurrection, supported by the American CIA,[1] eventually spread to Lhasa. It was crushed by 1959. During this campaign, tens of thousands of Tibetans were killed and the 14th Dalai Lama and other government principals fled to exile in India.[2][3].” Have you seen the word “the American CIA”. I don't think I need to explain more. Have you seen the word “fled to exile”, I’ve never seen anyone use this word before to describe Dalai Lama as a living saint. I mean he is a leader and he said he fight for the people.
I don’t know why the Chinese government blocked Facebook in China, but I know some western media biased and distorted the report on Tibet riot. Maybe Chinese government thought it’s a good way to stop other countries intervening in the internal affairs.
Notes:
^ Wonacott, Peter (2008-08-30). "Revolt of the Monks: How a Secret CIA Campaign Against China 50 Years Ago Continues to Fester; A Role for Dalai Lama's Brother". Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on 2008-08-30. http://chinhdangvu.blogspot.com/2008/08/revolt-of-monks.html.
^ Laird 2006, pp. 320–328
^ "Witness: Reporting on the Dalai Lama's escape to India." Peter Jackson. Reuters. Feb 27, 2009.
Conclusion (to understand Chinese people):
Sometimes, you can hardly tell truth without hurting others. I answer all the questions based on absolute truth, a western way. I know somebody feel glad when they know the truth, but Japanese, French, English and American people might upset after reading it. For example, if a Japanese friend breaks up with me for this reason. Am I happy? I told the absolute truth but losing a friend. That’s not what I want. What if I just said I don’t know too much about politics or I didn’t say too much, then everyone is happy.
Some people think that Chinese people like to make white lie to save their faces, but my answer is that not only save their faces but others’ faces, and save the relationships between each other. I know it’s hard to understand, but it’s our culture.
2009年9月28日 星期一
Finnish people in my eyes
Before I came to Finland, I’ve read some materials about this country in the Internet. The population, the weather, the invention, the people, and “Quiet” is one of the word that most frequently used to describe the image of the Finnish people.
Then on the plane to Finland, a Finnish man sat beside me. To my surprise, he started to talk to me and introduced himself. He said he had been working in Shanghai for three years. Then he talked about the weather difference between Finland and China. He even talked about his family and showed their pictures to me. This man gave me the first impression about the Finnish people “Nice people, very friendly, and not quiet anymore”.
In the next two weeks, I’ve been to downtown several times. To pay for the rent and open the bank account, every time I have a problem, I always met good people. I was so moved that last week I went to Yyteri, and I lost the way when I was coming back. I rode a long time and came cross a Finnish man. He is middle age. I asked him about the way home. He can understand what I mean, but he didn’t speak English. He tried to explain, but he found it difficult to make it clear. Then he decided to show me the way by his action. He made the body language like “Let’s go together!” We walked 10 minutes until I found the area that I am familiar with. I really didn’t know how to thank him at that time. He’s one of the most kindly people I’ve ever met before. There is another time when I was shopping in the supermarket. I wanted to buy some oil, but I was not sure which one to choose. I stood there for a couple of minutes. Then a Mam passing by and stopped. She didn’t say anything until she was sure that I met language problem. With her help, I found the oil that I want.
What I want to share is that we can’t know people only through the Internet. Only to experience can we really know and look deeper. Just like the air population in China, it is a problem, but do you know how many multinational enterprise of chemical Engineering choose their producing area in China?
Then on the plane to Finland, a Finnish man sat beside me. To my surprise, he started to talk to me and introduced himself. He said he had been working in Shanghai for three years. Then he talked about the weather difference between Finland and China. He even talked about his family and showed their pictures to me. This man gave me the first impression about the Finnish people “Nice people, very friendly, and not quiet anymore”.
In the next two weeks, I’ve been to downtown several times. To pay for the rent and open the bank account, every time I have a problem, I always met good people. I was so moved that last week I went to Yyteri, and I lost the way when I was coming back. I rode a long time and came cross a Finnish man. He is middle age. I asked him about the way home. He can understand what I mean, but he didn’t speak English. He tried to explain, but he found it difficult to make it clear. Then he decided to show me the way by his action. He made the body language like “Let’s go together!” We walked 10 minutes until I found the area that I am familiar with. I really didn’t know how to thank him at that time. He’s one of the most kindly people I’ve ever met before. There is another time when I was shopping in the supermarket. I wanted to buy some oil, but I was not sure which one to choose. I stood there for a couple of minutes. Then a Mam passing by and stopped. She didn’t say anything until she was sure that I met language problem. With her help, I found the oil that I want.
What I want to share is that we can’t know people only through the Internet. Only to experience can we really know and look deeper. Just like the air population in China, it is a problem, but do you know how many multinational enterprise of chemical Engineering choose their producing area in China?
2009年9月17日 星期四
We are the same
It’s been a week since I arrived. I think everything is getting better and better every single day. I still remember how nervous I am when I just arrived. Because I am a foreigner here, and our culture is so different. So I am not sure if people want to talk to me, and what they’ll think of me? I doubt that foreigners from EU countries will have the same feeling as me. Let me try to explain. Suppose, I am Italian or French, I won’t feel a thing, because people can hardly tell my nationality from my appearance. But you can easily tell where I come from, right? It’s so strange to meet so many people totally different from you, not only culture, but also appearance. Don’t underestimate the difference of appearance. Birds of a feather flock together. So it takes time for the birds with different color of feather, find out they are the same species as the others. For me, it takes me a week time to find the feeling that “I am the same as everybody here”. I think you will also have the same feeling like I said when the next time you go to Asia. Of course the best way to approve the truth that “people of everywhere are the same” is to experience.
订阅：
帖子 (Atom)
