Preparing for the Olympics
While we were wandering around small alleys in Beijing, we saw cute public exercise equipment (like ones for training your stomach muscles, back muscles etc) here and there with posters saying "Faster, Higher, Stronger. Building a Gymnastic Life." We of course tried them too since it looked a lot of fun. I think we should introduce them into Japan and the US too.
Fighting Spirit for Daily Life
One of the new discoveries I made was Michi's aggressive "China mode." No matter where you are from, you have to fight to get a reasonable price and correct information for almost everything. You should gain information of the standard price and learn some tactics beforehand, but it is of more importance to have a fighting spirit. If you show a great fighting spirit, you will be rewarded for it unlike in Japan, where you only gain the standard line "I'm sorry but I do not think we can help you". For example, we fought at the movie theater, showing our foreign student IDs to buy student tickets. The lady there said "we do not accept foreign ones", but still gave a discount to one of us. I saw Beijing people actually enjoying bargaining. When we took a private mini-bus (the fare is negotiable) to the Great Wall, I observed that Chinese people looked very excited and happy during the negotiation.
When I bargain the price, even though I tried to be as aggressive as possible, they usually say "You are so quiet and sweet! I'll give you a discount!" I sometimes pretended that I was from Taiwan (well, it's not 100% a lie), which made them say "Taiwanese girls are so sweet!"
Posted by sayaka at August 5, 2004 12:51 PM | TrackBackthnaks for making good images for Taiwan
haha
but to be on the safe side
you had better not let them know you're a Japanese girl...