Friends and hospitality in Hangzhou

Friends and hospitality in Hangzhou

By Francisco Lucero

I would like to mention some very interesting aspects about people in Hangzhou. First of all I have to highlight the hospitality of people here since the moment we received the invitation to come untill now. Chinese people it seems to be very friendly since the first moment they share some activities with you like a lecture, course or another academical issue which is my case. They introduce themself from their will to be friends and not just casual people who meet over the circumstances. I can remeber clearly when Prof. Zhang said in the first class: “I want to be your friend and I want you come to visit us”. That situation it’s a revealing one itself cause people in western societies usually do not do that. The western people promote the formal conditions and respect in a sort of cold and distance relation most of the time. But this time with the chinese professors delegation it was different. They promoted a warm and closely relationship between professor  and students which can be a little disruptive for most of the western students. I have to admit that it was not my case. Then, when the chinese course at Germany goes to its end, the invitation to visit China it started to become true. Few weekends later three of us who had a good performance in during the course, received some e-mails with the formal invitation. Now here we are and I can say the expectation were absolutely exeeded by the reallity.

First of all, they were concerned about solving the basic conditions of wellness, providing us with confortables and well located dormitories and financial support for all our basic expenses during our stay at Hangzhou. After this we started to meet very friendly people who shared their pleasant company with us. Now, abandoning at times the style of writing presented untill this lines, in order to be more specific in the argument, I would to briefly explain some aspectos of great importance to try to describe some identity and culture aspects of the chinese people we met this days.

• They show a great willingness to share a long time with their guests to make them feell comfortable just like at home. In this sense, we can say the food plays an important role because most of the time they invite you to share dinner or lunch as part of the common activities we are planning to do.

• They express explicitly their friendship from the moment you begin to express your gratitude explicitly as well. In that way you realize you are taking part in a relationship of reciprocity where there are no debts or need of compesation of any kindness sample.

• They are open to tell you anything about their culture to the extent you require it. And that is the especific moment when most of them express a very deep knowledge and respect for their cultura, society, traditions and values.

• They have a very high level of assertiveness when they must to explain their own point of view on some critical discussion topics. This aspect is so far away from other parts of the world where is very common to find people who tend to be evasive/passive or aggresive or violent depending on the situation.

• They feel the need of recognizing and expressing you when you do something appropiate or visually interesting with a gesture or a smile anticipating in this way the language barriers that may exist.

• They promote a mutual trust ambient in common activities where the honesty can be expressed without problem in the framework of respect and order.

Clearly I can extend the list of attributes of chinese people but I think the point is already stressed. Those aspects I have mentioned it’s depend on some material context which I also warned which rests in part on the fact that most of the chinese people I’ve met and consider into this insight they belong to the university environment. This context has important elements which support and foster the values and attitudes they have.

When I mentioned about the context I’m taking about a wide variety of factors just like:

• They have a huge intrastructure which contemplates large and well-stocked libraries, housing complexes for students, beatutiful green areas and resting places, dining rooms with several and tasty menu options, sport complexes to practice badminton, tennis, basketball and many others sports, music rooms equipped with many different instruments, and so on.

• The services like food, shopping and others it works every single day, included Sunday.

• At a certain time of the day they played beautiful piano pieces in the public places of the campus.

• They have a financial support tha seems to be enough for their monthly expenses.

• The architecture of the campus it combines modern designs with a broad perspective of space.

• They have efficient and technological services such as card or smartphone payments.

   

Considering this material basis for daily life, the students in Zhejiang University can reproduce the best values of their culture and foreign students like me can be part of this special and admirable community.

My most sincere thanks for: Professor Zhang, Miss Q, Cao Zheng, Victor, Scott Xu, Liulu and many others great persons I’ll meet in the next days of my stay in Hangzhou.