Chinese Stereotypes Tag

Hello everyone. For today's post, I was completely stumped (again) for what to write about, so I went onto Youtube to find a tag to do. Low and behold, I came across the "Chinese Tag Game" and thought it would be perfect to do in the form of a blog post!

I'm sorry that the panda looks slightly deformed.

• Do you have pressure to get straight As at school?

• Yes, of course. Unlike the Chinese stereotype, this pressure is mostly from myself rather than from my rents- sometimes I don't even show my parents my reports or exam results, unless I want to flaunt it in their faces when I get annoyed. But I suppose my inner pressure is from my parenting and upbringing to always achieve, so yes, I have pressure to get straight As.

• What part of China are you from? 

• I was born in this country, but both my parents are from the north-east of China. My dad is from Heilongjiang and my mum is from Jilin. However, my mum did spend most of her childhood in Sichuan, Chengdu, and our ancestry does go back quite far there, so I don't really know what she'd count herself as. I suppose I'll say the north-east, but I only have one relative left living there.

From the head of the chicken.

• Do you fit into the Chinese stereotype?

• No:
• "East Asian women have been portrayed as aggressive or opportunistic sexual beings or predatory gold diggers using their feminine wiles."
1. Okay this came up when I typed Chinese stereotypes into wiki, and that definitely doesn't apply for me...
• I am not a master of martial arts, although I wish I were!
• I hate K-pop, J-pop, XYZ-pop...
• I don't wear glasses.
• Yes:
• I am very short.
• My eyes are squinty - but that's not a stereotype, that's a fact.
• I do like maths.
• I have eaten dog before. 
• This was when I went to Changbaishan mountains on holiday once when I was 7 or something. It was by the China and North Korea border, and the local delicacy was dog meat. At this time I was very young and I didn't really know what was going on, so I just ate it! Before you guys freak out and call RSPCA, very few people in China still eat dog meat - this restaurant was pretty much purely for tourists, so that they can "experience" the entire authentic culture. In their culture, dog is seen as a type of meat rather than a pet, just as pork and beef is in our culture, so I don't think we should judge and discriminate, simply because it is a cultural difference. (Before you guys all run off and tell everyone that ALL Chinese people eat dog, this is NOT true, as it was literally only a small ethnic minority that eat it - in fact most Chinese people are against it as I discovered when most of the rest of our tour group refused to eat it. It's only when the line between livestock and pets starts to blur, that is when we should start to be worried.)
• I like to save.
• Yes this is true. Us Chinese are love saving. Why? Since China is such a vast country (it is 37x the size of the UK and houses 1/5 of the world's population), so having a "nanny" state is simply not an option. That is why the Chinese always have vast savings, in case if one day disaster strikes, there is no safety net of a government that can afford to give out endless benefits, like in this country. Saving is just part of the culture. 
• I am a bad driver. 
• Well, I technically don't know this yet, but I can't imagine myself being very good at driving.
• I play a musical instrument. 
• You should see my orchestra, about 50% of the 1st violins are Chinese. 
• I had a bowl cut.
• Oh yeah, rocking the mushroom hair!

Teheh, it's me... oh dear!

• Rice or chao mein?

• Hmm, I don't like this question as it assumes that all Chinese people eat rice or fried noodles, which isn't true. There is a north/south split within the country though. Northerners have wheat as their main food source, since conditions are drier and colder. It isn't as humid and hot as the south, where conditions are perfect for growing rice. Since I could be seen as a "northerner", noodles would be the logical choice. However, the dominance and importance of rice in China is so significant, to the extent of the character for "cooked rice" (饭) is also means "food" in general. This is just like how the character for "home" (家) also means "family". It's quite interesting learning about how characters are derived. Anyway, I would go for rice.

• Does your future partner have to be Chinese too?

• I suppose I haven't thought that far into the future, but I suppose there is no pressure for this to be the case.

• Do you speak Chinese? Say something. 

• Ah, this is where I encounter a problem with having this as a blog post instead of a Youtube video. So instead I think I might type something for you guys who speak Chinese, or have the initiative to copy this into Google Translate.  

大家好! 如果你读不懂我写的中文， 你就是一只臭猪. 

但是, 如果你能了解这两句话，我爱你. 

• Ahaha, even though my Chinese is not that great, I can even tell what I just wrote is written so terribly. Sorry guys who are fluent Chinese speakers for my poor linguistic skills.   

I tag all my Chinese friends who have blogs to do this tag! (Just realised all my friends who have blogs are Chinese...)

1. Yingcen
2. Kevin
3. Wendy
4. Natalie 
5. Andy
6. David
7. And whoever wants to do it!

That is all,


Rebecca x
P.S. Check out the new tabs I made for my pages under my header! I have sorted everything out into 3 categories: Style (fashion, hair etc), Music and Life.
P.P.S I realise that this post is a day late! I'm trying to no break my BEDIE (Blog Every Day In Easter), but it's hard. I will write another post tonight to compensate, so look out for that.

Coffee Obsession

How do you start a day? For many, it is with a cup of coffee - each morning commences with the routine ritual cup. Whether you prefer it dark, white, a latte or a mocha, coffee is far more than just a warming beverage - it is has a crucial role in today's society. Even in a country where it has been historically classified as more of a tea-drinking nation, the prevalence of coffee is still widespread and deeply felt. The whole persona of being a swanky, high-earning business man with an overpriced bitter coffee match suit their personality, in one hand, and the "Financial Times" in the other, is very much glamourised and stereotyped by the media. In many restaurants, a meal is never complete without a cup of it. Look around your hometown, and I bet there are more coffee shops than you can count on one hand. 

King Coffee

The most obvious reason of why it is one of the most beverage in the world is because of it's stimulating effect on humans due to caffeine content. Moderate caffeine consumption equates to increased attention, memory and physical performance. Many people find themselves reliant on the drink to combat the hardships of modern every day life.

Ye Olde Days of Coffee 
However, its energising effects have been documented ever since the 15th Century and even lead Johann Sebastian Bach to pen the miniature comic opera: "Schweigt stille, plaudert nicht" meaning "Be still, stop chattering" and is commonly known as the "The Coffee Cantata". the cantata amusingly tells of an addiction to coffee, a pressing social problem in eighteenth century Leipzig, where this work was premiered - and it appears not much has changed since then! It features lines such as "If I can't drink my bowl of coffee three times daily, then in my torment, I will shrivel up like a piece of roast goat" - a problem I am sure many people can empathise with. Moreover, in East Africa and Yemen it was previous used for religious ceremonies, but it appears that nowadays, it is drunk religiously ever day.

Why is it so precious?
Perhaps it is because I haven't reached the age to fully appreciate the wonders of caffeine, but I personally think that coffee bought from coffee shops is beyond extortionate and do not comprehend how so many people can justify regularly buying coffee which costs £4 a pop. However, something I am beginning to understand is many people do not go to cafes simply to buy a coffee and leave, but instead see it as a place where you can socialise, work on laptops or tablets or simply relax for a few minutes or even hours for some whilst slowly sipping the calories and listening to the terrible mood music that they play. The worse offender in the market is most obviously Starbucks.

The Power of Starbucks 
Coffee is the world's second most traded commodity behind oil, with 7 million metric tons traded annually. A kilogramme bag of coffee beans sells from the farmer for $0.23, but in a Starbucks coffee shop, it would be worth a staggering $230. Of course there are various middlemen involved, but the profits that are made in that one cup is absolutely humongous, and considering the sheer quantity of coffee sold by the chain - they have a total of 19,435 stores in 58 countries. Some may say the amount of profit made is unjust to the extent of being exploitative, but there is no denying the founders are entrepreneurial geniuses. Last year during my holiday to China I experienced how social power that a mega brand such as Starbucks can have.

China and Coffee
China and tea go hand in hand, like salt and pepper. Tea drinking is deeply routed in Chinese culture, as it has been part of it since 3000BC. It is considered one of the seven necessities of Chinese life, along with firewood, rice, oil, salt, soy sauce and vinegar. Yet this is all being shaken up by globalisation and in particular, the growing increase of coffee houses. The young Chinese (especially in the cities) are seeing the Westerners drinking their coffee, and of course, are trying to emulate this as drinking coffee is "cool", "modern" and "fashionable", when drinking tea is only for the old generation. Starbucks (or 星巴克- pronounced xinbake) cafes are spreading like some sort of pandemic disease, but this time the government can't simply isolate it away in a quarantine.

Here is a Starbucks in Kuan-zhai Lane, Chengdu that I walked past last year on holiday. Kuan-zhai lane is a conservation of old architectural buildings, which has been converted to tourist hotspot with the housing being converted into restaurants, pubs, tea houses, coffee shops, stores selling souvenirs and crafts, etc. Of course, there is the obligatory Starbucks, which I think sticks out like a sore thumb amidst the Qing Dynasty architecture.

 What I found the most surprisingly though was that in the UK I think Starbucks is expensive, but in China - even though retail prices are soon catching up with the Western world - a standard beverage from Starbucks is in some cases, more than 10x more expensive than anything else sold in any similar calibre Chinese cafes. Yet, many young people are willing to waste away their money, spending large amounts of money at Starbucks when, then could have the same thing for far less, simply because they see being able to drink at 星巴克 as almost a status symbol. If you are seen sipping a drink from Starbucks, you must be cool, young, on trend and rich. This can be seen similar to the Chinese obsession with  Burberry and Nike- the young and incredibly wealthy generation that has grown up in newly industrialised China have no idea how to spend such vast amounts of money, so they simply do what they see portrayed in the media to the extent of becoming almost obsessive over branding and consumerism - one of the many problems of modern day China.

Of course, when something like Starbucks comes to China, there will always be a counterfeit version of it. In this case, when we passed a "Teabucks" it certainly made me chuckle. Lots of Chinese business fusing the relaxing and socialising atmosphere with the traditional tea house, to create a hybrid store which combines both aspects of coffee and tea houses with some harmless plagiarism - true Chinese style.

So yes, that was my long rambly post about coffee; it slightly segwayed into a few of my views on modern day China, but oh well. I was going to write a gripping and enthralling ending to this blog, but I'm tired now so...

Goodbye and drink good coffee,


Rebecca x
P.S. So glad to have finally have completed this post - it has taken me a long, long time. 
P.P.S. I like to listen to classical music whilst watching "University Challenge" to kid myself that I am well cultured and sophisticated. Here is some coffee related music: