I just had a very interesting conversation with a coworker of mine. He warned me to not discuss my weekend trips and evening plans with coworkers in China. The reasoning was that they would perceive me as not caring about my work but only focused on vacationing.
After much discussion, I realized that this is a big cultural difference between China and the United States. In China, work is very important and people want to be perceived as work being the most important part of their lives. Second only to their families. In contrast, especially in the Southern US, you work for the weekend.
Now I feel like I need to keep more to myself and almost hide my excitement and wonder about my first trip to China. It would be a lie to say that I am not extremely disappointed. I guess I just have to chock this up to cultural differences. In the end, I guess traveling is really about discovering cultural differences right?
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