Just the other day I was teasing a student in an adult class I was substituting about being a tour-guide. I asked her if she made them all wear hats and follow a flag – she did.

Sadly the end bit where the tourist from Shandong is talking about the Chao Phraya River in Thailand dividing Thailand and Vietnam sums up Chinese tourism. Like a kid that just got the keys to his parents’ car, they’re not sure where to go and they’re very likely going to look stupid or get hurt if they don’t take some time to de-ignorantize themselves.

I don’t mean that to be a slight at the Chinese, they’ve been stuck indoors for the last … well… 3,000 years or so – it may not be their fault, but as much as Westerner tourists have quite jokingly realized that Chinese people don’t all sport the Manchu haircut and wear bamboo hats – the Chinese tourists are going to have to take babysteps in realizing that must places and cultures aren’t actually how they are often described in the media/textbooks here.

There’s an interesting article in the NYT about the growing number of Chinese travelling abroad.

I thought it was interesting and thought I’d pass it along:

http://tinyurl.com/m7dcg

Cheers!

Derek

And until this moment I had never bragged about Canadian inventions, but some of the finer are:
Basketball
The CPR Mannequin
Electric Light Bulb (suck it T. Edison)
Instant Mashed Potatoes
Lawn Sprinklers
Plexiglas
Standard Time
Trivial Pursuit
Walkie-Talkies
and the Zipper…

Basically, I hear day-in day-out how great China is from basically every Chinese person I meet… and I’ve just got one question – who you trying to convince?

2) So, was it another “clusterfeck of confusion?”

3) Canada has spectacular scenery, mountains, hockey, and pretty nice people. So it’s all good.

Cheers Ryan!

Derek

culture?

It’s funny that I went 27 years without having any clear idea what the Cultural Revolution was, I feel ashamed that I was ignorant about it… but how does the average Chinese person feel when they think about their history and it’s just sorta this out-of-focus, full-of-holes image.

Meh. That said, I’m not real clear on a lot of Canadian history – so perhaps I shouldn’t be too critical; though, Canadian history isn’t half as interesting, or half as lauded as Chinese history/culture…

Again, meh.

There was a report about it on BBC world today, but – surprise surprise!!! we lost the signal.

I’ve had my own ‘Hundred Flowers’ campaign today and planted 100 petunias – aaaahhhh!