Chinese people and Taiwanese people in London

[lilongyue]

Well, the reason all the Taiwanese don't make an issue of being any different from Mainland Chinese, while in Mainland China, is probably over concern for their safety. If you haven't had much contact with Taiwanese outside of Mainland China, then I suppose you might be surprised at Taiwanese taking offense at someone assuming their are (Mainland) Chinese. Don't make the mistake of asking any Tibetans outside of China if they are Chinese. You're sure to get an even more negative reaction.

I'm guessing that the reason for Chinese and Taiwanese stick together in groups while abroad is for the same reason foreigners in China do it: having common culture, language, viewpoints, background, etc. Besides the other reasons just mentioned, extreme nationalistic attitudes inculcated from childhood probably play a role. Most Chinese studying abroad have probably never been outside China before going to the university in the West that they are studying at. They get plunged into an alien culture, where everyone looks different from them, acts differently, eats different food, listens to different music, wears different cloths, after a lifetime of being surrounded by other black haired, yellow skinned people who all conform to pretty much the same standards. It's bound to be shocking for a Chinese to be a minority.

[skylee]

wears different cloths

hmm ... really?

[lilongyue]

hmm ... really?

Yeah. There are several notable differences in fashion in the West and Mainland China. Besides things like what is considered decent (Western women clothing that is wear a lot more revealing than Chinese) there are punks, goths, neo-hippie types, people into various kinds of metal who have unique styles of dress, and many other subcultures whose style I'm sure would cause a commotion among Chinese who have never encountered it before.

[HashiriKata]

Yeah. There are several notable differences in fashion in the West and Mainland China.

So let's welcome some of my Chinese friends:

[Lu]

(Western women clothing that is wear a lot more revealing than Chinese)

Not really, they're just revealing different parts of their body. Western women where I am reveal their cleavage, while Taipei women reveal their legs.

The whole 'different clothing' seems a bit generalising. Chinese dress a lot like westerners these days.

[adrianlondon]

Good photo and example, HashiriKata. Every single Chinese person I saw in Beijing looked just like that.

[roddy]

How odd. I've attached a representative image of all the people I know in China.

We could post extremes at each other all day, won't do any good. Personally I'd think it odd if there weren't differences in clothing - variances in fashion, money spent on clothing, social mores are going to be a factor between a university class in say, Beijing and another in London - like Lu says, one group might prefer low-cut tops, the other short skirts. Walk into random lecture halls on in both cities on any given days, rob the students at gunpoint of their clothing*, make two big piles and I bet I can guess which city which pile came from.

*good luck with this, by the way

[imron]

make two big piles and I bet I can guess which city which pile came from.

The thermal longjohns will give it away everytime.

[BJ220051]

chinese dont like western style cloths that much. it does not look good, just look more weired so that I thought whether people have mental disease or not. I have never think wearing bizzare looks how much good. Indivuidualism is not popular here. obviously, you know chinese culture too little. At most, you just know a little bit what you saw. Chinese culture is much more spiritual, much more than what you saw in your eyes. westerners basically dont understand it even though you live here for many years.

in terms of Taiwenese I have met, some dont care about the question, some mind this questions.

[imron]

chinese dont like western style cloths that much.

Really? That's a surprise to me, because I almost *never* see a Chinese person wearing Chinese-style clothes. Everywhere I look I see people wearing suits, shirts, jeans, t-shirts etc. Even in smaller cities and towns this is the case.

obviously, you know chinese culture too little.

Obviously you can't tell when someone is making a joke which seems to be caused because obviously you know western culture too little.

[lilongyue]

Does anyone here remember what culture shock is like? Most of the people on this forum have traveled abroad, some rather extensively. But if you can remember back to the first time you left your country, and went to a country very different from your own (and not from one Western country to another, like France to Germany, or the UK to Australia), do you remember some of your first impressions? This may be harder for Europeans to remember, as opposed to an American like myself. American and China have a lot in common, as both are big countries. In the time It would take me, or a Chinese, to get from one end of our country to the other, we would have crossed several countries were we in Europe. I think Americans may be in a better position to understand what it is like for a Chinese to go to the West for the first time, than it is for a European. Little things stand out as much as big things. Personally, I think the kinds of suits guys from the Chinese countryside tend to wear look stranger than if they were wearing some kind of traditional clothing. Those seemingly ubiquitous dark blue, pinstriped suits, which to me never seem to fit right, with the long pointy dress shoes, despite being "Western" because they are suits, stand out to me more because they resemble Western style clothing, but in fact are very different.

I would not include Taiwanese or Hong Kongnese in these statements regarding clothing, as both places are very Westernized, have had contact with foreigners for much longer than the Mainland, and the clothing style in both countries reflects this. One of the things I noticed when I first went to Hong Kong after more than a year in the Mainland was what people wore.

Western style clothes, meaning pants (slacks, jeans, shorts) and shirts (T-shirts, dress shirts, etc.) are pretty much the norm everywhere in the world now. Aside from some Middle Eastern and African countries, and maybe India (but only the women), I don't think traditional dress is commonly worn on a day to day basis in most countries. But that wasn't my point. The style of clothing a lot of Chinese wear is based on Western clothing, but as this is China and not America, for example, and Chinese and Americans have different tastes, the clothing is designed differently. There are many kinds of clothing that I could spot right away as being Chinese style. This is a problem when I try to go clothes shopping with my Chinese wife. She'll take me to a place where after I take a quick glance at the merchandise I can tell the clothing was designed for the Chinese market. My wife doesn't get it when I don't want to wear a shirt that is brown and blue, with little flashy bits sown on here and there, a few zippers sown on in strange places, and some Chinglish written in big letters across the front and back, something like, "All Nihtg Baybe!" If I want to buy American style clothing, there are only a few places in Hangzhou I can go to find them. That being said, there are a lot of clothes worn in Hangzhou that I could also see worn in the States. But on a daily basis, if I look around me while I'm out in Hangzhou, the difference to me is obvious.

Clothing is not the biggest contributor to culture shock, but it can be shocking at times, especially when added to all the other things that can overwhelm a person who just left their country for the first time.

[studentyoung]

I don't know any Chinese - I have never met any Chinese - who have a positive view of the Arab world or Islam. Maybe you need to speak more Chinese to know that.

Sigh~ ~! Do you know why Islam is called 清真 in Chinese? During Ming and Qing Dynasty, some Chinese scholar thought that Islam is “the purist and the truest”, so they called “Islam” as “清真教”.

清真先贤古墓位于解放北路兰圃西侧。元代以来，中国境内的穆斯林被称为“回回”，因而这里亦叫回回坟。明清中国学者称伊斯兰教义为“至清至真”，因而伊斯兰教又被称为“清真教”，其墓地理所当然地称之为清真先贤古墓了。

清真先贤古墓是以赛义德•艾比•宛葛素为首的40多位阿拉伯著名伊斯兰教传教士的墓地。相传宛葛素于唐贞观初年到广州传教并建清真寺供侨民礼拜。他归真后，教徒为其营葬于此。墓建于贞观三年(629年)，至今已逾1300多年，是一座名正言顺的古墓。

(the translation of the Chinese texts above is translated by studentyoung )

Islamic ancient sages’ tomb is located at the west side of Orchid and Cymbidium Garden on the North Jiefang Road. Since Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368 ), the Moslems has been called as “Huihui”, so the tomb is also called as “Huihui’s Tomb”. Some Chinese scholars in Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1912) Dynasty thought that Islamis “the purist and the truest”, so they called “Islam” as “清真教”. Therefore, the tomb is naturally called as “Islamic ancient sages’ tomb”.

“Islamic ancient sages’ tomb” is a tomb buried Arabic Islamic missionaries who were led by Mr. Thabit Ibn Qays. From the first few years during “Zhenguan” Period, in Tang Dynasty, Qays came to Guangzhou and built a mosque for local Muslims and Arabs in Guangzhou to worship. After he had passed, his disciples buried him in that tomb. It has more than 1300 years, since the tomb was built in the Third Year of “Zhenguan” Period, i.e. 629. Therefore, it’s an ancient tomb in deed as well as in name.

http://cache.baidu.com/c?m=9d78d513d9d430aa4f9a93697b11c0111d4381132ba7db020ed3843995732b4a5321a3e52878564291d27d141cb20c19afe73605615873ebd993d41fcabbe57972d73a752a41c45c12d41fafcb4726&p=882a9541969500ee0be29120504b&user=baidu

If none Chinese had a positive view on Islam, “先贤ancient sage” shouldn’t have been used on Mr. Qays and other Arabic Islamic missionaries. By the way, even nowadays, a lot of Chinese Muslims in Guangzhou go to this “Islamic ancient sages’ tomb” to worship and read Alcoran on every Friday.

Many of the friendly smiling people in China are actually teasing (or even mocking) the foreigners they meet - and as far as I know most Chinese people would react very differently to a Middle Easterner than to a Westerner. Maybe you don't understand what they are saying behind your back. China is a friendly place, but there is a clear "us and them" here.

Well, you see, foreigners usually have different cultural & social backgrounds, for this objective reason, “us and them” is here. If they smile at your living habits or culture, it simply shows that they don’t understand your culture very well. Well, to reduce the sensitivity, I just tell you some words a Xingiang girl once told me. This Xingiang girl told me that she once couldn’t believe that people in Guangzhou need to wear so much and so thick in winter, because Guangzhou is considered as a southern city. She said, “I once thought it was too exaggerated and ridiculous when I saw Guangzhou’s people wearing so thick in winter. But since I lived in Guangzhou for a whole year, I have understood completely why they do in that way. In Xinjiang, the winter’s weather is usually cold but dry, while in Guangzhou is cold and wet. In winter, I feel even colder in Guangzhou than in Xinjiang.” You see, I am that Xinjiang girl are both Chinese and we’re both the Han nationality. Just because we live in different places, some misunderstandings still exist.

Everything you do will be put down to your being a foreigner, whether positive or negative. Behind the smiles, the prejudice is probably more deepseated here than in any country in the world.

Sigh ~ ! I feel really sorry for how you feel in China. However, I still hope that you can be patient so that those local Chinese can have more time to understand you as who you are.

Cheers!

Edited September 10, 2008 at 03:00 AM by studentyoung

[renzhe]

some Chinese scholar thought that Islamism is “the purist and the truest”, so they called “Islam” as “清真教”.

Just a word of caution, try not to confuse "Islam" with "Islamism". The first one describes the religion, while the second one is usually used to describe the most extreme and fundamentalist (and often violent) interpretation of it.

[studentyoung]

Just a word of caution, try not to confuse "Islam" with "Islamism". The first one describes the religion, while the second one is usually used to describe the most extreme and fundamentalist (and often violent) interpretation of it.

Ah, thank you so much for telling me this, renzhe! According to your words, I have revised me post above.

Cheers!