Albert777

CHINA 

SURVIVAL GUIDE
How to Avoid Travel Troubles
and Mortifying Mishaps

Larry and Qin Herzberg
Stone Bridge Press • Berkeley, California

Published by
Stone Bridge Press
P.O. Box 8208
Berkeley, CA 94707
tel 510-524-8732 • sbp@stonebridge.com • www.stonebridge.com

Book design by Linda Ronan.
Front cover ilustration by Lloyd Dangle.
Text © 2008 Larry and Qin Herzberg.
Allrights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission
of the publisher.
Printed in the United States of America.
2012 2011 2010 2009 2008

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

L BRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG NG-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Herzberg, Larry.
China survival guide : how to avoid travel troubles and mortifying mishaps /
Larry and Qin Herzberg. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN978-1 933330-51-8 (pbk.)
1. China—Guidebooks. I. Herzberg. Qin. II. Title.
DS705.H47 2007
915.104'6—dc22
2007014401

Contents
Welcome to China! 5

 1
 2

A User’s Guide to the Chinese Restroom 15

 3

How to Stand in Line and Not Have
a Cow 28

 4
5
 6
 7
 8
 9
  10

What to Expect (and Inspect) at Your Hotel 31

Never Take a Black Cab and Other
Taxi Tips 23

AWalker’s Guide to China’s Streets 57
Shop till You Drop 73
Medical Emergencies 84
Encountering the Unusual 100
Mass Protests and General Mayhem 125
The People 134

  11
  12
  13
  14
  15

A Basic Guide to Chinese Etiquette 139
Restaurants 156
English Made in China 162
Learning Chinese 169
Going Home 179
So Why Go to China? 189
Topic Index 191

Welcome to China!
Everyone we know isgoing to China these days. Or so it
seems.
There are the business people who now travel frequently
to China for their jobs, dealing with everything from office
furniture and shoes to Amway products. There are the staff
members at our college, who are heading to China to adopt
a Chinese baby. The Women’s Chorale from our school just
returned from performing at Christian churches in Beijingand Xian. Four of our fellow professors, with several of our
students to assist them, are about to head to China this summer to tutor English teachers from the Chinese countryside.
Each summer we continue to arrange work opportunities
for our students in China, that range from teaching English
to working in a Chinese company. And then there are the
countless friends of ours and parents andgrandparents,
uncles and aunts of our students, who all either just came
back from a two-week trip to China or are just about to go.
When we began to teach Chinese at our college in the early
1980s, almost no one was headed for China. Now going to
China has become almost as common as a trip to England or
5

6 • China Survival Guide

France. China has captured everyone’s fancy like neverbefore. As kids, we were told that if we dug a hole in our backyards, sooner or later we’d end up in China. This always
made us pause and wonder. Thanks to the miracle of airplane flight, you can now make it to China from anywhere
in the United States within 24 hours. And you can arrive
without sand in your britches.
Thinking of traveling to China? You’re not alone. China
now ranks as the thirdmost visited country in the world
(up from the 200th or so most visited country in 1970, when
China was still “closed” to most foreign visitors). Well
over 100 million people from all over the world traveled to
China in 2006. Only two million of them were Americans,
but that’s two million more than went to the “Middle Kingdom” only one generation earlier. After decades of internal
andexternal conflict, China was a geographical and political
hot spot. It wasn’t until 1971 that President Richard Nixon
visited the country, met Mao Zedong, and captured the interest of the West. Economic reforms under Deng Xiaoping
just a few years later finally helped open China to American
tourists—and McDonald’s.
Every culture has its own undisputed contributions
to world history of which...