外国人这样看中国

外国人这样看中国 Social life of Beijing Ren Of the many aspects of China that are mysterious to foreign eyes is the question of what people do at night. In the West people go to bars and restaurants, they go to the cinema, they do some late night shopping or simply watch TV. Lights are on and people are moving around until the late, or sometimes the early hours. This is particularly true at the weekend. Unusually, in China, it is usually the older people who are loud and raucous in the neighborhood streets in the evenings. Sitting on small stools by the roadside thy chatter and drink tea or beer, and even dance, long after their children and grandchildren have stumbled off to bed yawning with exhaustion. For some reason, in the West, we usually think of older people, such as the grandparents and pensioners, as not having a social life, or at least a very limited one. For some foreigners, there is something ludicrous and amusing about gray-haired grandpas having fun at night. We have a very strict idea of what kind of activities they should take part in. going to the pub is acceptable , the men can drink beer and the women should drink something sweet, such as sherry, or gin and tonic. They should play certain games such as bingo or bowling on a green lawn. They go to church and they are fond of babies, but when the babies grow up they are not so fond of them. They go on holidays together, some grannies chattering constantly as they go from their tour bus to the famous building they are visiting. They stay in neat little hotels with pretty gardens and take clippings for their own well-tended flower borders. We certainly don’t think of pensioners learning new skills—why would they bother? There is a phrase that sums up the Western attitude to pensioners and what they do—“waiting for God”, in other words, waiting to die. It is a callous attitude and now that people are living longer and longer life, there is certainly time for people to do more with their retirement, but the derisive attitude lingers. In China, the pensioners are often the most energetic and fun-loving members of the family. They ballroom dance in the park, practice tai chi and fan dancing, sit by the road and gossip about their neighbors and generally have a lot of fun. They also ignore the unwritten rules about what activities are suitable for people of their age. As I passed the Worker’s Stadium a few months ago I was amazed and delighted to see a line of old men rollerblading in a net figure of eight. Rollerblading is so firmly a young person’s sport in the West that even I would hesitate to pull on the boots, but here in China where most of the youngsters haven’t even dared to try this sport, the pensioners are blazing the path.