They have those in their homes?
Yup.
100% of the homes I’ve been in have western style toilets. Yeah, anecdotes, data, social circles, tier-cities, etc., but I see a lot of western toilets in homes than I do in public.
Definitely something that varies regionally. In Sichuan, at least a few years ago, it’d be normal for a new apartment to have one western toilet and one squat toilet. My host family in Chengdu had a squat toilet and shower in their main bath, and a western toilet and bathtub in the master bedroom.
A couple of us Peace Corps volunteers only had a squat toilets in our on-campus university staff housing.
To the best of my knowledge, he’s had no trouble figuring out the toilets here :).
Our first weekend we wound up with a houseful. One family had to go out of town for a funeral Wednesday through Friday, and another had to go out of town from Friday through Sunday - so we hosted one extra boy for 2 nights, and a girl for the next 2 nights.
The only “bad” thing was the spare boy: he was very quiet and didn’t want to do any of the activities. I asked his regular host family later and it turned out his mother MADE him come on the trip, he wasn’t interested at all; she filled out the paperwork for him and put down interests he did not actually have. I feel bad for his regular host family.
Our second full weekend (last weekend), my husband and I were out of town picking our daughter up after her summer college program. Spare boy’s host family invited our boy to spend the weekend with them, but he really didn’t want to go - so he just hung around here with our son Dweezil and our housemate.
We’ve gotten him several small souvenirs (some treats from our weekend in Maine, a moose-themed T-shirt from there) but I thought it would be nice to get something small for him to take home to his parents. Any suggestions?
Where are you located? Local anything would be appreciated. For example, a bottle of local wine or distilled spirit, maple syrup, cheese. Anything kinda famous locally will do no matter what it is. It’s the thought that counts. Definitely a bottle of wine as I’m sure like everywhere in America there will be local wine of “some” sort. A lot of Chinese (and Asians) have a booze collection that can be eclectic. And that $10 bottle of wine might have a pride of place with a $1000 dollar bottle of french wine or 50 year old single malt scotch.
If they like whatever you gave, then it’s highfives all around. If they don’t like it back home, then it’s fodder for endless rounds of mirth and belly laughs. "You mean to tell me that they eat this, and they like it " type banter. Hours of fun. It’s all part and parcel of the entire overseas experience as a teenager. And it’s all good.
Happy to hear he bonded or at least happy to hang out with Dweezil.
Having hosted many Chinese business colleagues as well as having traveled though out China for 20 years, it’s not a bad generalization but also understand people are all different. I had several Chinese friends tell me that Chinese view cheese as the product of rotting milk, but one colleague who loved Pizza Hut…yeah, Pizza Hut in China is the same as it is here in my experience…
In general, they come here for the American experience, amusement parks, sightseeing, (I had one who wanted to see the Pentagon as he’d heard about it in the news his whole life), etc.
Also expect a gift, the Chinese are very much into gifts as signs of appreciation. Likewise, random gifts of their travels will likely be cherished by him when he goes home - someone mentioned a hat from a ball game. I took one colleague to an Oriole game and bought him a hat. He genuinely became an Oriole fan as he had experienced a real American experience. (OK, no bashing the O’s, they’re doing OK and hanging in the AL East!)
LOL! That reminds me of a story…when I was working back in Baltimore, we had a sales manager from Hong Kong that would come twice a year for sales meetings. My boss at the time would insist we take him out for steamed crabs because, of course, we’re in Baltimore. He would politely go, wipe all the Old Bay off the crabs and quietly eat them. One time I brought a old high school friend who had studied Chinese in college, had lived in Taiwan for the last 5 years, was fluent in Mandarin and spoke a good amount of Cantonese. (He’s lived in Taiwan for the last 25 years since). The two of them sat there chatting all night. I asked Jack as we were leaving, “Hey, what were you guys talking about?”, Jack laughed and said, “He hates these crabs, can’t stand the spice, and wonders why you guys insist on bringing him here every time!” He was too polite to tell us, but I bet he told everyone back in Hong Kong how people in Baltimore destroy perfectly good crab. The next time he came over, my boss said, “Let’s take Douglas out for crabs tonight, he really seems to enjoy them”, I said, “Yeah, about that…”
I don’t know that wine would be acceptable, as the summer program has strict rules about the kids not drinking alcohol and of course he’d have to lug that around the bus (they’re leaving Sunday for new york). We’re going to a baseball game tomorrow, maybe I’ll get them all caps or something. We’re DC suburbs, which means there is no one typical thing, except maybe a pileup of toy cars or a balloon filled with hot air!
That’s interesting because last year during the 25th anniversary, NPR’s Louisa Lim, in an unscientific survey, asked 100 students at four Beijing universities if they could identify the story behind the Tank Man photo and only 15 could (or would). Maybe it’s an age thing. Lim suggests that todays students just don’t care that it happened; they’re more interested in getting jobs.
My students (college students in a small inland city), by and large, were unfamiliar with the events or had a vague notion that something happened but didn’t know any details and likely though it was about foreign agitators. People in politically oppressive environments have a well-tuned sense of how to not know things.
But it’s also worth noting that it actually was quite a while ago-- well before any of my students were born. And a LOT has happened since. While Tiananmen Square is a seminal event in how Westerners think of China, from a Chinese perspective it’s just one event in a long and turbulent history, and it’s one that doesn’t have a huge impact on daily life for young people.
Since 1989 the chinese economy has doubled more than 3 times. It’s a far different world from 1989 on some many levels. And as Even Sven points out, a 25 year old college grad working in an upwardly mobile job wasn’t even born with Tiananmen took place.
In my experience, it’s primarily “stinky” cheese that Chinese people don’t like (e.g. blue cheese vs. mozzarella).
Final update:
I think all went well enough. He stayed in his room most of the time except for meals, which was unfortunate - we didn’t really get to converse with him much except for then.
We were lucky at least in that he actually wanted to be here. I had mentioned hosting another boy for 2 nights, who was not a willing traveller. The girl we hosted for a couple of nights was much more outgoing. We took our kid, and her, to the NASA Goddard visitor center Saturday (a bit underwhelming), then down to Luray Caverns Sunday which I think both enjoyed. We saw her with her host family at the goodbye session on Sunday and she had really bonded with their same-age daughter.
Our housemate planned a meal one evening while we had our guest: Salade Nicoise (can’t make it do that cedilla on the ‘c’). I tried suggesting that (as you all said) they don’t eat much salad, but the salad had enough real stuff on it that she thought he’d enjoy it. Well, that was the one meal he actually mentioned when I asked if we’d fed him anything he really didn’t like. Oops! To give him credit, he ate it without complaint at the time.
He went downtown a couple of times by himself on the weekends. This past Saturday I took him up to Baltimore to the aquarium: their group was supposed to go but canceled it, deciding it made for too long a day. Well, considering they were going to load all the kids up on the commuter train then light rail, and have barely an hour and a half at the aquarium, that WAS a huge hassle for not much benefit.
Transit was a major annoyance for all the group events, actually. The kids took Metro too and from the organization’s offices every day but when they went to other places, the organizers were scrounging people to come pick the kids up (including in Georgetown, which is ridiculous; I told them our kid could just walk the few blocks to the Metro), Six Flags (slightly less so), and the Nationals baseball game (drive to the stadium? after a game??? No way!!). I suggested to one staffer that next time, they really should organize a limousine/bus service for the big out of office trips, it would save huge amounts of time and give the kids more time to enjoy themselves. This would have helped a lot with Six Flags and Baltimore.
In fact, on numerous activities, the kids had pretty much zero time to see things. The detailed schedule for the visit to the National Zoo, for example, gave them 90 minutes. Ditto the National Aquarium. An hour at most of the museums (admittedly, that may have been enough at the Holocaust museum, as it would have very little meaning for this group).
Gifts to go home: I bought him a Pac Man Moose T-shirt when we were in Maine, and some maple sugar candy; I got him a baseball cap at the aquarium (along with two beaded sea creature figures to take home to the family).
One thing that surprised me a bit: I hadn’t paid attention to the gender mix of the group, but it turned out that of 12 kids, only 4 were boys. Somehow that surprised me - I assumed it would lean more toward males given the general population makeup we keep hearing about (boys preferred over girls) and the one-child policy. I know that’s eased up a bit, and the families who send their kids on such a jaunt probably can afford more than one kid if they wish - plus families with girls might be more invested in enriching the girls to make them more self-supporting, more marriageable, or something (or I could be full of baloney on that).
Are you under the impression that the Holocaust only has regional relevance?
Not at all!! But bear in mind, this is a 16 year old from China - geographically, culturally and temporally distant from the European part of World War II and the atrocities against the Jews and other groups.
Any intelligent person would be horrified, but I would not expect it to affect him as deeply as someone my age (mid 50s) with strong family and cultural connections to that part of the world.
By comparison, I might go to a museum commemorating the victims of Japanese war crimes, and of course be affected - but it would not strike home the way the Holocaust does.
Bumpdate, a year later:
We did the hosting again this year. It’s a shorter time frame (2 weeks instead of 3) and we wound up with a girl this time. Her English is not as good as last year’s student, and there’s a fair bit of looking things up on Google Translate and the like, but we’re getting on pretty well. Last year’s student pretty much stayed in his room except for meals, and we were away one of the weekends, so even with a shorter visit we have more time to spend with her.
We were going to host a Japanese student for the first part of the school year (in August) but that fell through - the district turned him down which was bizarre (his English test scores were better than most European students in the program - and the school he’d go to has a Japanese teacher on site who could have helped if needed).
Any thoughts on a good going-away gift to send home with her? In the past we’ve gotten them little wooden puzzle boxes that look a bit like US flags - US-made, cute, small enough to travel, and a reminder of the country… but the shop doesn’t seem to sell them any more - boo.
Might Cracker Barrel have a similar wooden item in the store attached to the restaurant? It’s been awhile since I’ve been in one but I seem to recall them.
Amazon will have a puzzle. Personally, I’d get her some real cheesy touristy Americana from your parts of the woods. A t shirt, local delicacy or something along those lines.
For example, I’m going to China for business and I’ll be bringing some smoked salmon “from” Washington State for some colleagues
Glad to hear it went well and you did it again this summer. 2 weeks of hosting seems about right and 3 weeks gets a little long. We had a french exchange student last fall.
Well, to be fair, there ARE no local delicacies 
- the closest thing to a “regional food” we have here is a half-smoke (a kind of sausage) which I don’t think would travel that well. If we’d taken her to Hershey for a day trip I’d have gotten some chocolate (or maybe not - it’s a bit hot for that to travel well).
I actually wound up going to the same shop that sold those flag boxes, and got her a small glass heart paperweight, two glass “fortune cookies” (clear glass, colored ribbon with a saying inside), and a regular small wooden box. Very pretty but not quite as “perfect” as the flag puzzle box. Amazon actually had something similar to those but they really looked cheesy.
The frustration we had with the program this year was that it was not well organized, there was really no weekend time, and they extended the stay on us after we’d committed, meaning we had to find a way to get the kids to downtown DC - WITH LUGGAGE - this morning, as in, ON A WORKDAY. Ugh. Last year, with 3 weeks, at least there were opportunities for weekend trips and activities - and the departure was on a Sunday so we didn’t have to drive in the city on a workday.
The kids arrived late on a Saturday night (on a different flight than we’d been told, no less), and we had to be downtown for an orientation session with them late the following morning. The first whole weekend, Saturday was free but Sunday was taken up by a baseball game (in miserably hot weather). This weekend, we had to be there Saturday for a couple hours which blew THAT entire day, leaving us just Sunday. And our guest wouldn’t pick from the list of day trips we suggested no matter how we urged.
So we wound up just taking her to the Udvar Hazy center (big branch of the Air and Space museum with things like a space shuttle and a concorde), then we splurged big-time and took her to see Cirque du Soleil.