Thursday, December 11, 2008

Developing New Stereotypes

I am still studying Chinese at Fudan University. My classmates are from all over the world, which is interesting and helpful in developing additional stereotypes. For example, all the students from Kazakhstan (there are a lot studying Chinese!) seem to be mafiosos in training, often receiving mysterious phone calls which cause them to run out of class; they also all dress in black suits and only speak to each other.

The Russian girls dress like hookers (an extremely short: ie showing underwear: miniskirt (NB it is about 20 degrees right now), 3 inch high heeled thigh-high boots and a fake leopard skin jacket was one outfit today). Yesterday, one Russian girl asked the class if any of the foreign girls wanted to dance in a club that night for pay: outfits would be provided. She said to one girl, "You have a hot body, why don't you do it?" Not surprisingly, she had no takers until another Russian girl appeared. Once this was done, she called up her boss and in Chinese told her that a very beautiful, sexy girl was coming. Later she mentioned that she was carrying toothpaste and a toothbrush in her coat pocket as she didn't know where she would be sleeping that night.

Other classmates are from Korea, Japan (they have many extremely cute mannerisms and all are very polite), Sweden, Norway (the Scandinavians are indeed mostly blonde and blue-eyed and serious), Germany (they are all rude), England, the Philippines, Turkey, France, Poland, Denmark, and of course the US. The Americans are all friendly, casual, hard working, and dress like slobs (also all of them need haircuts even though a haircut costs like $1 here): go USA!

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