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So as you may know a few days a go i was in Beijing China and i was lucky enough to come across many Chinese people. It was their celebration of the New Year and from what i learned most of the days that i was there the people had days of and a huge number of Chinese people visited the capital from their hometowns and villages. Literally, the ''western'' tourists were only a few and the analogy was 1 western tourist out of 10000 Chinese.

During these days i experienced a lot of things and witnessed a lot of behaviors the Chinese had both good and bad and i am here to let you all know about it because some of you maybe biased about it and i want to clear it out. Note that even my personal experience isn't 100% representative as each person is different and as i mentioned even in Beijing a lot of Chinese people that i came across were tourists for other parts of China.

The Bad

I wanna start with the bad things first as i believe there are only a few compared with the good ones and just wanna finish quickly with them. The first thing i immediately noticed is that Chinese people spit all the time. It doesn't matter if they were males or females the majority of them just spit on the streets. I don't know if there was an inner meaning behind it or is it just a bad habit but everywhere i went i could see the same thing going on. Even in their subway some of them spit all over... That was very gross. Imagine if you have food in your hands and eat and someone next to you spit on the ground. Anyway, a good thing was that they never spit in their temples. 

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The second thing and the most important to me was that a lot of them passed the red light like it was nothing. You know in every street there are pedestrian crossings and the logic says that when the light is green for people and red for cars we can walk to the other side. Yes try to think again. In China you always have to look as a lot of cars didn't care a lot about the red light they had and just passed by. To make the matter worse even the Chinese people that walked on the pedestrian line had they eyes looking in every direction and passing as quickly as they could in order to prevent any accidents. At least 2-3 times a car stopped a second before it hit someone.

Be assured i was informed that the government will use cameras in these roads to avoid these things from happening

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The Good

Where shall i begin... Hmm let's start with the most important thing. The people there are extremely kind and helpful at least to us ( i can't tell generally). Since day one they helped us find our way even though they couldn't speak English they were still willing to help us out. Because i like to use examples, i wanna share this experience on our first day. 

We wanted to go to our hotel from the airport with subway and by foot and don't pay for Taxi (because we were afraid of the prices). We searched a bit for the subway and we figure out that we had to take a free bus that takes you there. Entering the bus we were only me, my friend @unshakeable and a Chinese person so we weren't that sure if we were on the correct one. We asked the Chinese person which later on we learned his name ( Lee) and even though he couldn't speak English he understood our question, asked the driver in Chinese to confirm it, show it to us on map on Chinese :p and when we arrived he asked again other people in Chinese and guided us till the final stairs to subway. 

Note that he wasn't for Beijing, he was a tourist too, so he could easily say ''i don't know i am a tourist'' but still he helped us out till the end.

The same attitude and kindness we faced all the time. People just by watching us checking maps, they offered their help freely and tried to guide us. They used whatever means they had, from sign language, few words in English or by showing us on phones the roads. I have been in a couple of European countries and never a person helped me without asking him. That was truly amazing.

Another thing that impressed me was that they really loved their children. You can argue and say who doesn't but the feeling there was they really love them. Everywhere you would see small kids from 1-5 years old with their winter cloths, food,sweets and toys in their hands and parents that played with them all the time. I guess due to the regulations that China has a couple of years ago with the 1 child restriction may have played it's role.

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I will end it with this one, i can write more but are minor things and the post is already too long. It was so easy to speak with them. Literally the people seemed so opened and if you asked them something everyone would reply or tried to help you out as i mentioned. In my country most of the times if you go and speak to a random person chances are that they will pass by you and leave you but once again i think the part that we are tourists and foreigners may played it's role. If any Chinese reading this please let me know if that's true or not. 

Bonus

A bunch of Chinese people wanted to take photos with us, something that was quite entertaining and made me feel like a superstar but soon i learned that those people did it because they were from villages that never actually seen any foreigners up close. Still i was a pretty fun experience. 

Last Words

I definitely liked the people there and i was very biased as i have heard a lot of bad things about Chinese, like they are scammers, they lie all the time and try to take advantage of the foreigners. I don't know but the image i have in mind is completely opposite. I may be lucky, i don't know but i was really impressed in a good way by their behavior so much that i wanna visit again China!

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