A List - Top Ten things I love about China

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An old friend from Rome, Rena, once wrote the top ten things she loved and hated about India after spending 7 months there. Here is your top ten lists for china.

What I love about China.
10. Street food. No matter what it is (pig ear, dog meat, or ???) is always good and cheap and just want you wanted.
9. Communal eating at meals. Gone are the days of order envy. Whatever your friend orders, you get to try too. Theres always too much food and you if you don't like something, just go ahead and spit it right onto the table. No hiding anything in a napkin here.
8. Lack of copyright laws. I know this is bad to say... With pirating Angelina and Brad won't have enough money to adopt their 10th baby, but I'm sorry, there just can't be anything wrong with paying $0.75 for the Spiderman 3 movie. Granted sometimes it's in Russian....i guess that's my karma.
7. I could make the Best Dressed List. Hands down, we foreign teachers in jeans and a t-shirt have better fashion than 99%!o(MISSING)f all chinese. If its weird, their wearing it.
6. Get past the smog, and it's a beautiful country. Once outside of the cough inducing smog, China is dramatic. Gone are the rolling plains of Ohio, China is majority mountainous and its is landscape just unique and amazing. It's a true shame that each day parts of it are disappearing.
5. Hong Kong. enough said.
4. the students. In a group, they are frustrating....but even then, they posses more respect and self-control than I see in many students in the U.S. It's protocol for a student to salute as a teacher passes them or when a student walks into the teacher's office them must salute and ask permission to enter. Most times their gestures are not even recognized or acknowledged, but nevertheless each day....without fail I see many of the students respect their teachers. That is something I wish I could pack up with me....
3. McDonalds. I would never eat their in the States, but in China, mcdonald's is fine dinning. Ever order is perfection. Service is supreme. Its ridiculous.
2. the Tailor. They are each their own perfect little sweatshop reproducing your favorite dress or shirt for next to nothing
1. It is completely different. I'm sure Africa would be more challenging and
there must be other places in Asia that are farther detached from the western culture, but for China being one of the most important and global countries in this world, they are completely sheltered from the world. Yes, they have starbucks and walmart and kfc, but they are completely chinese. My friends and I are the only ones who order coffee, chinese only order the sugary drinks or orange juice. The bags say Walmart, but too often they are carrying chicken feet or pig ears and KFC serves corn as a side dish. corn?? You can't find bread. Everyone, I mean everyone is skinny. No one watches the news, I guess why would you? Pregnant women don't come to work or answer their cell phones for free it will hurt the baby. Your chinese friends will give you everything and you can't say no. No one has email or voicemail, but everyone has a cellphone and answers it even while they are peeing or driving on a very small dirt road on the side of the cliff of a gorge. I can go on forever and most teachers and I have......I have never felt so different, but in the same breath never felt so that I learned so much in such a short time. About America. about china. about them. about me.

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my first true love
hong kong