Physical contact

These post belongs to the new category, called Chinese myths, where I will comment on some stuff that for us, Western people, are a typical expected trademark for Asians. Now, this is only from my own limited personal experience!!! Very possible I will change my mind with after more time here, and I will of course appreciate comments from real Chinese or laowais that have lived in China longer than me!!

How many times you have heard or been told to avoid physical contact with Asian people? They are not Western, they do not cope well with had shakes, too familiar touching behaviours even with people you have been knowing for some time, or things like that.

After these first months in China I have actually been surprised to see that the physical contact among Chinese people is something completely different from our Western idea: especially among males, they have much more contact than, say, Norwegians! It is very common to see at work, for example in the laboratory, or even around in the streets, boys or man that hug each other, or put an arm over the shoulders of a colleague when talking, or when working closely. Same thing among girls, and a few times girls lay closely on men at work, with no other meaning than just friendship or pure working collaboration.

I mean, Norwegian are usually an extremely homophobic kind of people. Rarely you see two men in physical contact, except for homosexual relationships! Italians, Spanish, French, for us latin people many things are normal among friends. I must say that many of my Norwegian friends changed and accepted our ways, but I am pretty sure it was quite awkward at the beginning to accept a hug from another man (no bottom squeeze, unless they are very hot friends! Kidding!! 😉 ). But I would not push the cheek kiss among men to Norwegians (except a couple of really good friends that I know for a very long time and have been immersed in South European culture for even longer time!)..

Friendly kisses are still tabu among the Chinese I saw, but when you see three adult men sharing a motorbike seat, squeezed together, you realize they are not homophobic!

FUNNY THING OF THE DAY – Once, when working in clean room (NASA, not my work!!), where all the people look about the same (and I got some colleagues as tall as me if not more and a few also as big as me!), a guy there put his arm around my shoulders in one of these familiar and kind gestures.. when I turned and he realized it was the laowai, not a Chinese colleague, he first jumped for the surprise and then apologized at once retreating immediately his arm!! 🙂 I had no idea how to explain him there was no problem!