The Friendship Factor

Lesson #3: Make Chinese Friends

The most important thing you can do when going to China is to come with an open mind and a positive attitude.  If you find yourself continually disillusioned about the fact that things aren’t just like they are at home, then you will have missed the whole point in coming. 

The second most important thing you need to do when coming to China is to make Chinese friends.  It’s one thing to be an outsider and make visual observations about what you see and what you think Chinese culture is.  It’s another thing entirely to live within that culture and have a personal guide to lead you through the labyrinth of traditions and cultural norms.  Though there are many reasons to become close friends with some of the locals, the three benefits that have been most significant to me are food, traveling, and love.

Food:  As in many other cultures, one way the Chinese express their gratitude or care is through food.  They will want to take you out to a nice restaurant and I guarantee they will order things you would never dream of trying on your own.  Because of this, if you are a vegetarian I suggest you adopt a very lenient policy.  I prefer not to eat meat, and my Chinese friends know this, yet even so they still cooked meat for me when they invited me to dinner.  Since being here I have sampled pig trotters, eel, a bizarre salami looking type of meat, duck, and a fish eyeball (though admittedly that was on accident and I promptly spit it out). 

One of the best things about the way Chinese eat is that it’s essentially buffet style.  You order several dishes as a group and they are placed on a spinning bit of circular glass in the middle of the table.  You are then able to serve yourself little bits of whatever you want to try.  This is a much more communal way of eating, and I know that when I head back to the states it will be frustrating to have to settle for ordering only one thing for myself at a restaurant.  Another added benefit of eating meals with your Chinese friends is they will help you learn Mandarin because most of them don’t speak English, so a large portion of the time you are simply listening and trying to pick out words here and there that you recognize. 

Traveling:  If at all possible, try to make friends with Chinese people who have a car.  The first Chinese friend I made only had a motorcycle, but he knew I wanted to see some ancient villages so he got a hold of some friends of his that had a car and arranged for them to take me and my roommates out for a day of exploring some mountains in the region.  It turns out that an entire group of them decided to come along, and the only person who could speak any English was the 15 year old daughter, Julie.  What I thought was going to be a very awkward day turned out to be one of the best experiences I’ve had since coming to China.  Not only did we get to see some incredible places, but everyone in the group was so much fun and after a while I started to forget that there is even a language barrier at all.  When you’re having a good time, certain things don’t need to be translated. 

The first stop on our journey was a place called Egret Island.  This was a relatively new National Park, with a lake that is really just a man-made reservoir and where the forests are all planted in perfectly linear rows and the trees are still in their awkward gangly teenage phase.  On our way home we made an impulse stop at a Liangya mountain.  Famous poets have been coming to this site to gain inspiration for hundreds of years, and both the stones and trees in this forest proudly exhibited their scars and stood with a stooping solidarity that let you know they had been guardians here for a long, long time.  On this journey with our new friends, we saw the juxtaposition of old and new, and got treated to a day of near perfection.  Even the weather Gods seemed happy and warm, and cooperated by lifting any traces of the standard Anhui haze.  We climbed the stairway to heaven and when perched on top of the pagoda at the apex I could almost swear that we really had climbed to somewhere beyond the bounds of this heavy, gravity-ridden earth.

 When you start a friendship off with a day like that, it is very easy to maintain, and many more happy memories have since been made with my Chinese ‘family.’ 

Love: Many Chinese friends have a limited ability to speak English, so they pick only the most basic and important words.  Often times this means they say things like, “I like you”  “you have beautiful heart” “Today I am very happy with you”  “I am happy you are beautiful friend.”  You don’t need many words to express love, appreciation, happiness, care and thankfulness.  As you spend time together swapping your cultures and your languages back and forth, you start to realize that those treasured feelings of warmth and love that you left behind with your family and friends are suddenly found again amongst a group of strangers.    

Summary: If you come to China, make friends with some local Chinese people as quickly as possible.  Though the people may seem standoff-ish at first, you quickly learn that they are very giving.  Not only will they give you food, gifts and the occasional free vacation, but they will also give their hearts. 

*Extra Credit: When you go to China or anywhere with a vastly different culture, one of the values of making friends with local people is that you get to experience their culture.  An added bonus is that you have an opportunity to share special parts of your culture with them if you choose to.  In an upcoming case study we will learn how to host a Thanksgiving in Hefei!