Only one more day until the weekend =) More people should be interviewed today so that we have more data for our survey And once again, we encouraged our exchange partners to ask questions. They were a little hesitant again at first, but over time this subsided and they gained confidence. Because they realized that nothing bad was happening. I think with this exercise/task we were able to show them that they don't need to be afraid just because they are disabled. Society is slowly changing and we were happy to be able to show this to our Chinese friends, happy to be able to encourage them and happy to be able to give them self-confidence.
Bargaining is part of the shopping experience
While doing our survey we ended up close by a few shopping stalls. You know what I love about shopping in Asia? You can always try to negotiate. You can negotiate on the market and even in the stores. It is not proscribed to ask for a cheaper price. In fact the salesperson might expect that the buyer will start to bargain. It is a common thing in Asia to do so. Most of my German team mates were very shy about bargaining, because it is not widespread in Germany. Luckily I learned from my mum and so I could get things for quite a cheap price. Of course you should start with a low price because the seller will start with a high price, like this you can meet each other slowly in the middle. If you buy a lot of things from the same vendor, you should insist on a discount because you are buying so much from them. After collecting enough data, we returned to school and reviewed all the information.
Making contact with foreign Chinese
As it became evening and got darker, the school day ended and we were free to do whatever we wanted. I’m such a typical Asian tourist, so I wanted to see as much as possible. So I went outside with someone else of the group in the evening and while taking a walk, we ended up knowing a small group of young Chinese’s. Of course they were curious about why I sat in a wheelchair, so they asked me a few questions. Unfortunately their English wasn’t so good and neither was our Chinese. But they showed me a pretty cool app, where you just say something in English and the app would translate what you just said in Chinese and vice versa. Like this we tried to talk to each other and we even exchanged numbers. They were undeterred by my disability and we just hung out together without understanding each other’s language. There was that one girl, she had Inline-skaters on and suddenly started pushing the wheelchair around. I guess they were curious too. But it was cool and I would end up meeting them a few times the next days.
Small vending carts
What I also thought to be pretty cool were simply the people with their little vending carts. Today I discovered a cart selling freshly squeezed pomegranate juice. The day before I discovered a cart with fresh sugar cane. What was the most unusual stall you've ever seen?
Three things I learned today:
1) Chinese society is becoming more open-minded
2) You can sometimes haggle in normal stores
3) Translation apps are a must when traveling abroad
