China is quite large. There are huge numbers of people living here, and all those people like expensive cars, trendy clothes and a nice piece of meat instead of dry rice. The economy is working day and night to deliver on those wishes. The factory where I work (I'm doing a chemical engineering internship) produces the necessary chemicals for all kinds of polyurethane products. For the non-chemists among us: these products range from construction foam and yellowish foam in those cheap mattresses to floor coatings. I work in the department where they make the foam for bra padding, which often gives rise to hilarity among the otherwise rather prudish Chinese.

Although China is quite large, the Chinese themselves are quite small. Measuring 1.86 meters I am the tallest in many a shopping street. My height, combined with the fact that the concentration of foreigners in this district is about 50ppm (I will not even try to guess how many of them are blond too!) sometimes makes me feel like a movie star. Chinese mobiles have been taking more pictures of me than I have been taking pictures of China and believe me when I say I take a lot of photos!

In this last paragraph, I want to correct a common misconception about Chinese food: the Chinese restaurants in our country have nothing to do with China! Over the past two months I have seen no ‘bami, nasi, loempia, saté nor sambal’ served in any of the restaurants here. Since they always use chopsticks, real Chinese food is usually cut into bite-size pieces of meat/fish in a sauce/soup with vegetables and rice/noodles. During summer Chinese BBQ is also very popular. The Chinese organize their parties in KTV, the karaoke bars which you can find all across town and because I think most of you already know "Ni Hao!", I will conclude with a student saying also known as ad fundum: "Gan Bei!".