East meets West, with difficulties!

Another day has begun for all of us. Just to different times and of cause that is something you must get used to. After a while the jetlag disappears and you get up, do your stuff the hole day and then go to bed as usual after 12 - 15 hours. Everybody does that, so what’s the point, somebody might ask. The point is in this case that we come from Europe, and want to communicate with friends and family there, but when we get up; they mostly just went to bed and visa versa. That means if I, for instant, want to share something with a friend in Dresden in the morning, he or she just went to bed, and when it would be appropriate to try again, here it would be at 4 o’clock in the afternoon, but then I’m busy doing other stuff, and they just started to work or, mostly a like, they’re still asleep.
It is not only the different time zones we have to get used to, the language too. Here it is mainly Cantonese and English, only a very little German. About 98 % of the inhabitants in SAR Hong Kong are Chinese. Either they are born here or they immigrated from the people’s republic of China before the English handed the colony back to China in 1997. So mainly the behavior here finds it’s roots in the Chinese culture, and as westerner one sometimes must take a deep breath, and reconsider your own upbringing and culture. One day I went into one of those common Chinese noodle restaurants in a part of Sha Tin. Those places, and there are a lot of them, are always busy, they are very cheap, and every table was occupied, so the waitress put me at a table together with to an older nice looking Chinese woman, sobbing her noodle soup from the bowl in the Chinese manner, which means really loud. The waitress only spoke Cantonese so I had to point at the bowl of a guy at the neighbor table, to tell her what I wanted. Meanwhile I got my bowl of noodle soup and fish balls, the older woman finished her meal, put her chopsticks and spoon down, took a napkin, wiped her mouth a bit and then, with her mouth wide open, burped so open and loudly like the men at the river Elbe at Männertag, after 17 beers. Then she wiped her mouth again, stood up, paid her meal and went of. I followed her with my eyes and looked around the other tables in the room, but the only one who noticed, looked astonished and a bit upset; was me the westener. I’m not fuzzy person; I often burp too, mostly after a beer or two at night or when I’m alone. Never in a public restaurant surrounded by other guests, but here it is very common and shows that you enjoyed the meal. Maybe that’s why they keep asking us if everything was all right, when we are eating out!