Being able to go to China this summer has allowed me to open my mind towards other cultures. Previously, I have traveled to European countries where the culture is a little easier to understand with respect to ours, but China was a completely different experience. The culture shock was the main barrier I had to cross at the beginning of the trip. It would be hard for me to pick one event that was my favorite, but for the sake of the blog, I will choose one.
While staying in the rural village in the Shandong province of Buyuang Zhuang, we got a chance as a group to play one of the local basketball teams. We were told that in the past years that this Chinese team has beaten the Americans every time. This was about to change. We got there expecting to play a 20 or 30 minute pick-up game only to be told that we were playing four 15 minute quarters! We started off the game strong, taking an early lead. But as we got further
into the game, we began to get tired and they had a surge and took the lead at the half. Since we were limited to the number of people who could play basketball in our group, we had to stick to playing 5-6 players while the other team had around 10 or so.
During an epic second half we began to come back. The entire 4th quarter was a battle, with many lead changes. After a controversial call by the ref as the clock ticked through its final seconds the score was tied. So we broke the streak of Americans losing in basketball in Buyuang Zhuang with a 76-76 tie.
All this to say that my trip to China was a great experience, and I have many more stories beyond this one. I p
lan on continuing my study of the language through college and hope to return to China whenever I get the chance!
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