From some day on, there is a Germany guy, who always grab a beer, sit at the bar and have a chat with me after he finished his daily trip.From the talk, I get to know that he is right now pursuing his doctor’s degree in Germany, and he is on vocation here while visiting some friends, I asked about his major, he said he is a scientist specializing in biology. The interesting thing is that he has already been learning Chinese for a few years back in Germany, but he didn’t realize that he learned a lot of wrong things until he came to China. I think it’s just the same as Chinese people who have been studying English for years but feel totally lost when going abroad.(ABOUT HOLIDAYS) I always think that western people have a long holiday during Christmas, ‘cause I always met people who is on vocation, but actually, for them, it’s just a three day-off, and one day offon the new year’s day, which is the same like us. But I wonder why they can travel for a long time? He said they usually get a 30 days-off, which is about 6 weeks, I interrupted and said no, it’s 4 weeks, he said yes, it’s 6 weeks, ‘cause the weekend doesn’t count. Maybe you can’t take day-off whenever you want, but you finally get one-and-half month holiday. Not like in china, 7 days holiday is our biggest holiday, with most people can not even take the whole week off. You can never get a holiday as long as one month while you are employed. That’s why if you met Chinese people who are traveling for a long time, they must have already quit their job.(ABOUT WORK) I told him, it’s pretty common in the big city like Beijing, people spend almost 2 to 3 hours on the way by subway from home to work. Some people work 6 days a week, 12 hours a day. He said back in Germany, people also work 8 hours a day, but no more, if they really can’t finish their work, they work extra hours, but instead they will take another day off after the work is done. After work, don’t bother them with anything, it’s their free time. I kind of know this from my former job in Beijing. I used to teach kids English drama with foreign teachers, apart from teaching, we also need to keep in touch with the parents regularly, always ready to answer any questions, help them solve problems, and communicate with them. But it never works in that way for our foreign teachers. Some of them will not do anything during their free times.(ABOUT FREE TIME) If you value your free time this much, what do you do in your free time? I asked him. “I am a musician”he said, I got three bands back home, we play musics at the bars sometimes. Chinese people may find it’s quite shocking that a biologist can also be a musician, these two things seems totally unconnected. But it’s quite common among foreigners, ‘cause work is just part of your life, you must have free time for your interest. He told me that one of the guys in his band is a writer, so they create music depend on his story. One of the bands is doing mental rock, and he showed me a video about his bass solo, which is amazing. He can also play guitar of course, keyboard, harmonica and some others which I don’t even know about the name. He found it’s so funny that when asking people about their hobby, they answered like listening to music. Listening to music doesn’t count as a hobby, if you ask what kind of music do they like, they don’t even know about music. Likewise, when people say their hobby is watching movies. People say that just because they don’t want others to think they are actually boring as hell if they say don’t have a hobby. Besides music, he is also into cards, climbing, running and so on.(ABOUT HOBBY) I explained to him that we dohave hobby when we were little, but we have to abandon them to spare time for study when we grow up, ‘cause the kids in China have a lot of pressure from their parents, school, and the society. I shared a story with him which when I think back, I found it’s so stereotyped. Back in my middle school times, all girls have to cut their long hairs. Only very few of them can keep their long hair because they are art students, who are regarded as underachievers. He thinks it’s so ridiculous, but this is the true story. I love dancing and I had learned dancing for 6 years before I get to middle school, but I stopped after that and I have never picked it up again in the later days. Luckily, I found other interests in university. However, a lot of students feel totally lost when they graduated, because they don’t know what they like, what they are suitable for. They just find a job for a living, then get married and have kids as their parents’ expectation, which is so sad.(ABOUT STUDY) What I did not tell him is our huge pressure from the society since we are still kids, and we nearly study overnight for the college entrance examination, which is a horrible memory. The result is when we finally get to university, nobody can force us to study any more so that some people waste their four-year college time playing instead of learning things. To tell the truth, I learned English mostly outside school, the knowledge from textbook is not practical in everyday life. But it’sdifferent in the universities at abroad, it’s much more difficult to graduate from university than to get in. Students have a lot of projects to do, a lot of presentation to give. The first and only times to give presentation is during my exchange experience in Taiwan. We never do things like that back in my university, all we do is listening to our teacher’s speech. However, in Germany, giving presentation is like a basic skill you must have if you want to work in a company, especially for management level. Listening to teachers’ speak is just part of their study, the other part is to practice the knowledge by doing projects, which is clearly more important.I was planning to share a story about one of our guests, but it turns out to be an article about different cultures between China and western countries. The reason why I like English is because this language is a tool for me to get to know the outside world. I can get alot of new and different ideas by simply talking to people, reading articles, and traveling around. I am not saying any idea is good or bad, I don't succumb myself to any cultural ideology, what I do do is to form my own values which ares uitable for me.All the above is just from my own experience, PLZ do not take one part for the whole. I do not make any comments either positive or negative. I just share you with different ideas from different cultural backgrounds, hopefully you can at least think about it. Most people think my English is good and I have been travelled a lot of places, but what I am actually interested in is different cultures, you can never know that if you don’t open your mind to the outside world. The way I travelled is to live in a different place for some time, put my whole self in a different culture, always keep an open mind to everything. This article is just a start, I will share more about different cultures with you guys later, which will not as serious as this one. Hope you like it :)