Something different between China and United States --- SHENG LU

Hello everyone, my name is SHENG LU coming from Nanjing, China. Today I’m going to share something different in humanity I have met in America during this month.

First of all, I have to say Columbus is a very beautiful city, so are the people here. The most impressive thing I ever met in Columbus is the hospitality of people. At the very first few days after I arrive in Columbus I found that everybody here will feel free to talk with somebody else even though they are totally not familiar with each other. But, however, people in China would hardly communicate with strange people in public, which is relatively individual. Here is an example, just a few weeks ago, while I was pacing on N High Street to meet with my friends, an old man who was walking his dog coming by and said “good morning, gentleman” politely with smiling. All of sudden, I was so confused who he was talking to that I don’t even know what to do. After that, a friend of mine told me that that’s the usually way people do to express best wish to anyone; similarly, people will wish have a good day after shopping or people will say “bless you” after sneezing. Indeed, human being is a creature with feeling; maybe we should express some beautiful part of it rather than separating apart from others.

Additionally, I was impressed by the highly strong feel of social responsibility which people have nearly in every aspect in everywhere especially near campus. For instance, the cross road on the N High St and W lane Ave is always busy and full of vehicles waiting for crossing the road, and to my surprise, not like what some chinese impatient drivers did, every driver here hardly honk the horn to urge pedestrians, even when they were supposed to cross, which presents very harmonious social atmosphere without panicking others. While in the city center in my city, those noises were really piss me off. Another example here is that intelligence copy right is emphasized everywhere, in textbooks; game shop; and campus of course, just like in the first week of this quarter, not violating academic norm is the first we were taught in every class, there is paper material about the rules; there is video advertisement; there is also quizzes about academic misconduct. Nevertheless, in china, people could always download music; books; software online without paying for it.

Furthermore, food is always a clear point to show differences. To be honest, compared with chinese food culture, I think American food style is a little bit single or sometimes less creative to some extends, because I found fries and soda are the irreplaceable element to the American-style food. For example, whatever fast food restaurant, like Wendys; Buckeye Donuts; McDonalds around campus, they usually encourage you make it a combo, which means the hamburger or sandwich plus the classical fries and soda. Generally speaking, it does taste good sometimes. But it is really hard for me to imagine eating these every day! Whereas, the famous Chinese eight cuisine styles which includes Sichuan Cuisine; Guangdong cuisine; Shandong cuisine; Huaiyang Cuisine; Zhejiang Cuisine; Fujian Cuisine; Hunan Cuisine and Anhui Cuisine provides with hundreds of thousands different matches and styles combining with intelligence; culture and creativities from various parts of china. As a people born and raised in Jiangnan, Huaiyang Cuisine is definitely my personal favorite.

Lastly, I am really excited to have the opportunity here to experience the diverse campus culture in OSU, as well as the challenge from academic life in engineering. Welcome to Ohio State University, best wishes to all of you.