Seeing Is Believing

How do you think about China? I didn’t have good images of China because I often watched not so good news of China. For example, poison in dumplings (gyouza) made by China was found in Japan in 2008. Moreover, there were a lot of foods that were rare and unusual like grubs and scorpions for Japan. We don’t have these foods in Japan. Other image was that the air of China was very foul, and the public hygiene was not good. I had these images, so I didn’t like China and I thought that I wouldn’t go to China.

However, I study Chinese in the university, and I went to China and stayed for a month in order to learn Chinese in this summer, as a result, my images of China were changed for four reasons.

The first reason is that there were many buildings and downtowns like Ginza or Shibuya. Last summer, the Olympic games ware held in Beijing, so people there reconstructed many buildings. Before I departed for China, I had thought there were more old and dilapidated buildings or houses in China. Of course, they were many in the town, but there were more beautiful and high buildings, and the towns had such beautiful night views. It surprised me and made me change my image of the towns in China.

The second reason for changing my image is the population of China. Do you know it? It is about 1,345,750,000, and it is No.1 all over the world. The thing I was surprised was the number of people, cars and bikes, and when I came back to Japan, I thought the number of people and cars was small. In China, because the number of bikes is very large, a wide road for bikes is set. On the road, people and bikes passed without stopping, and it’s difficult to cross the road. In Japan, drivers wait for pedestrians till they finish getting across, but in China, people give way to drivers of cars. When I crossed a street, some drivers often blew the car horns, and this is a frequent occurrence.

The third reason that I changed my mind was Chinese food. Do you like Chinese food?　Moreover, what image do you have of Chinese food? I like Chinese food very much and often eat it. My images were that Chinese food was spicy and very nice. Actually, my images were true. Chinese foods we had in China were very spicy. In my opinion, Japanese likes Chinese food because Japanese food is similar to Chinese that in some points and it is famous and popular in Japan. However, in China I had some dishes that I had never seen before. When I went to the booths downtown, though I found the booths selling a skewered insect, starfish and grubs, I didn’t have the courage to eat those. However, I like Chinese food as I have said in the above. Above all things, my favorite point of Chinese food is that the food is very reasonable. I often had a lunch about 100yen in the cafeteria, and we can enjoy having many dishes at a low price in a lot of restaurants, so you can get many dishes and may be not able to eat all.

The last reason is about Chinese. What images of people in China do you have? In case of me, I thought Chinese resembled Japanese in appearance, and always looked angry. The reason that why they look angry is Chinese language has four tones, and it gave me the impression. Actually, they weren’t angry, but kind. For example, the cashiers of the supermarket and shop assistant were often kind, and many drivers taught us Chinese kindly and merrily. These experiences changed my image of Chinese.

Do you know the proverb “seeing is believing”? The meaning of this proverb is that it is more valuable for you not to hear so many times from people but to see for yourself. In this time, I understood the meaning of this proverb. Everyone often says the town in China is very dirty and the smell is bad, moreover China is not good place to stay. Surely I felt that the town was dirty, and the smell wasn’t good, but I had a very good time. Perhaps, I watched only good faces of China, but it was good because it was evidence that I was satisfied with the time at China with my best friends. I didn’t have good impressions and I had prejudice against China until the day I arrived at there, but I went to there and watched the many faces of real China. And more, I had a great experience, ultimately my ideas changed, my days for one month were very excellent, and they gave me things of great value.