Articles on Chinese Culture and History
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Culture shock is a term that is easily available out there. Well, it basically refers to the feeling a traveler gets when s/he visits another place or country and finds that local customs are quite different from his or her area of origin. Culture shock comes in a number of stages depending on how long a visitor decides to live in a foreign country. Most foreign visitors to China admit experiencing at least some form of culture shock. As far as I know, the best way to enjoy your travel abroad is to have a certain amount of tolerance stored somewhere in your mind prior to arriving in a foreign country. With tolerance and keeping an open mind, your experience abroad will end up being more fun and a great learning process.Most foreign visitors, especially visitors from western cultures, will be greeted by several dissimilarities in culture from day one of arriving China. Even more so if they are not visiting those highly developed and westernized cities like Shanghai, Shenzhen and the Hong Kong semi-autonomous region. On this site we have provided you with basic cultural tips and life in China, to make your experience a rich and rewarding one when you visit the country, or are in the midst of Chinese. Business travelers will find this especially useful as cross-cultural communication plays an important role, more than ever in the global world of business and travel. As you probably know, China is fast replacing the west as the most popular travel and business destination of the 21st century. In 2005 China was the world's 4th place, most traveled, with over 56 million visitors. There has been a geometric increase in the number of students, businessmen, job seekers and tourists heading towards China. With the upcoming Beijing Olympic games in 2008, the number of visitors is expected to quadruple before and after the games.
China has a climate that varies greatly between the country's different regions. In coastal areas, the climate can broadly be divided into northern, central and southern zones:
- The northern zone (which includes the capital Beijing) experiences hot summers, and extremely cold and harsh (almost Arctic) Winters.
- The central zone (which includes the city of Shanghai) experiences a temperate continental climate: hot Summers and cold Winters.
- The southern zone (which includes the city of Guangzhou) has a subtropical climate, with very hot Summers and mild Winters.
Other regions with their own climate include:
- The Gobi desert, which experiences little rain due to the rain shadow effect of the Himalaya mountain range. While known as a "cold desert", and even though it's not at all unusual to see snow on the dunes of the Gobi, the climate actually varies greatly throughout the year. In Winter, chilled by cold winds from Siberia, temperatures often fall to -40°C (-40°F) in Winter, but in Summer, the temperature can rise to +50°C (122°F).
- The Tibetan plateau, due to its high elevation has very thin air, and thus heat is not retained at ground-level. As a result, even though day time temperatures can be warm in places - 28°C (82°F) - the temperature rapidly drops below zero at night. Northern regions of Tibet tend to be colder all year round, and have little seasonal variation, whereas in southern parts are warmer with more pronounced seasons, and may experience rain between April and September. Visitors to Tibet should be aware that because of the thin air, the sun is more powerful than it might seem, and take appropriate precautions - the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, is known as "sunlight city" for a reason.
With a simple listen and speak communicative language approach you will learn and become confident with using simple basic survival Chinese. Download the mp3 files and take along with you. Listening repeatedly to these lessons on your ipods and multimedia players will help you learn seamlessly and effortlessly while you travel. The following are some of our survival Chinese lessons. Right click and take Save as target to download the file.
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