Chinese Movie Theater: On one of my free days with my host family, Jason, the student who is hosting me, took some of his friends and I to see a movie. We saw the new Resident Evil movie. I’m a big movie fan, but I had never seen any of the other movies in this series and I never really wanted to. But I never thought I’d have such a strange experience watching a movie. First, Chinese movie theaters do not show trailers. When my ticket said the movie started at 2:40, it started at 2:40. Just from black screen to movie without ads or anything, which I thought was a little odd. The next surprise came when I found out the movie was in English. While it is an American movie, I thought there would have been a Chinese dub or something, but there were only Chinese subtitles. It gets more interesting after the movie ended. The movie finished at 3:50, which was very odd to me because that means it was only a 70-minute movie. I didn’t care too much because I wasn’t enjoying the movie anyway, so I just shrugged that off. When I got back to Jason’s apartment, I was still trying to figure out the plot of the movie, so I looked up a summary online because I’m the type of person who needs closure. While reading this summary, I came across descriptions of scenes that I know I had not actually seen. Turns out the full movie is actually 35 minutes longer than the version I saw, and the Chinese government makes content edits regardless of how it affects the movie’s plot. They do this for all movies too, and it turns out a good amount of American movies won’t even be released in China because the government fears it sends a dangerous message to their people. I guess we’ve got to watch what we put in our movies!
Chinese Driving: I never thought I would miss driving. It was always kind of a chore, and whenever I drove there was the constant stress and worrying about being in an accident (I’ve never crashed). But seeing how people drive in China has given me a new appreciation for driving myself, and how Americans drive in general. I’ve been driven around a lot by many different people during my time in China, and each time I get in the car I face yet another near-accident. I have to force myself to look at the car floor whenever I’m being driven, because if I look out the window I know I’ll see someone coming within 2 feet of the vehicle I’m in and not slowing down. I’m amazed I haven’t been in an accident yet. I have traffic to thank for that. When there is traffic on the roads here in China, I’m actually relieved. I know that if there’s traffic, people will drive just as recklessly as they usually do, but at 7 mph instead of 30 mph. So if I get hit while in traffic, I’ll be fine. Another thing about China is that they don’t really care for seatbelts. Some of the cars I’ve been in have had the seatbelts removed in the backseat, so I’ll always reach behind me to buckle up and end up finding nothing. That’s not the most reassuring thing to me, especially when people here drive the way they do. People drive on the sidewalks, and not just in cars. For people on mopeds, the sidewalk is the road, so as long as I am outside, I’m in danger of being run into. In short, driving in China has been a life or death experience, and I can’t wait to return to the comfort of my Subaru.
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