What things do you think of when you hear about travel to China? Is it about the food being weird? Or that the country is overpopulated? Those were the kinds of things I myself was wondering about when I first got to China. Some of the stereotypes about the country are true, like having to deal with many people on a daily basis, but other stereotypes you may have heard from the media are almost always blown out of proportion.
An exaggeration I often heard before was that China is overly traditional, as if the people in China still have the same practices and ideas that they did decades or even centuries ago. This made China seem like a mysterious place. It seemed that people thought the country is not open enough for foreigners and that communication between a Chinese person and a foreigner is extremely difficult. However, through my interactions with locals in day-to-day life, I have come to realize that many are very welcoming of foreigners. People will take their time to learn about different countries and cultures and compare/contrast them with Chinese culture and customs.
One extreme stereotype is about Chinese people eating animals that we consider pets and never food. This is completely untrue.
