Seeing a Dr in China

Well, I didn't expect a Chinese traditional medicine treatment in German but this setup was a bit special.
Dr only spoke Chinese but had a translator - to Russian...
Another translator then did Russian - English...
Remembering the old game where you let a word pass trough a group of people I wonder what I really had and how much was lost in translation...

Latern festival

Recently we celebrated the latern festival (end of CN NY holiday) by eating sweet dumplings and enjoying fireworks. For the latter it is all about as much and as noisy as possible (while not obeying any safety rules). Within my compound they burn "tons" of it. Consequence - a fire broke out in a neighbouring building. While the fire brigade was here they fired more fireworks...

Chinese new year "holidays"

Similar to Europe, China has a week of holidays around the new year celebration (Europe in December, China in February).

"Un-similar" to Europe, the Chinese holiday isn't really a holiday as the days off have to be compensated on the following weekend, which is declared as official working days...
Enjoying my Sunday morning coffee before heading to work

Are Chinese people different?

A good way for me to better understand Chinese people is to observe them outside their home country. Sometimes I really get the impression that they are different...
On a recent trip to Sri Lanka it was interesting to see to reaction to straying dogs on a beach. While all western people without exception chased the dogs away, the Chinese - who typically don't keep pets and definitively not a dog which is rather on the plate then in the living room - were deeply impressed and took tons of pictures.
It somehow reminded me of India where locals are very relaxed about the cows at the beach while foreigners take pictures of them...