My worldview changed exactly like that of my father's did when he came back from Germany. Not much at all. In China, there are people, they live, they flirt, they marry, they reproduce, they work, they eat, they sleep and eventually they die. There are birds and plants in China, seasons change and there are movies and television. Most of them are cliqued and boring. People like drinking and sometimes they like drinking too much. Men usually like drinking more than women.

Before I came to China I had the stereotype that the Chinese people were very quite and reserved. Anyone who has ever walked down a popular tourist site in Bejing knows better. Over-eager "merchants" shout "Hello", "You buy, You buy" amd "Is very good" along with other very simple yet pushy sentences. Very quickly we all learned to say "BU YAO", which means "Do not want." On one occassion a merchant grabbed a girl by the arm and Ira, a sergeant in the military, had to come to her aid.

Students with very little pocket money like to go to Hot Pots in China. They are an inexpensive way to eat out. Typically, at Hot Pot restaraunt there are two boiling pots filled with a different kind of flavored soup and people add a variety of vegetables or meat into either pot. When the various foodstuffs are adequately cooked they are removed from the soup (with chopsticks) and eaten.