China and Korea seem to be quite similar from the point of view of a rather uninformed european person when it comes to Asia (and I counted myself to those for almost all of my life, i.e. until I was 20 years old). For me it was hard to see the difference until I read more about Korean and Chinese History and then actually went there. However, there are some superficial similarities. Both peoples look “asian”, they eat with chopsticks and korean palaces are inscribed with chinese characters.
In general I think that South Korea is more developed than China. There are more big roads in a very good condition and especially when it comes to education, Koreans might have more choices and chances. Most people in Korea understand English (even staff at McDonald’s took my orders in English, answering in Korean) and still a majority of people in the street speaks English as well (at least enough to give me directions). In China it was an exception if anyone spoke English or any other language but Chinese. Even in a big business hotel in 昆明 (Kunming) there was no-one able to communicate with me without using their iPhone for basic translation. People who actually spoke some English were very proud of it. When I approached someone and talked to them in English they gave me weird looks and were embarassed and in a seemingly very uncomfortable situation. After some days I stopped trying to talk to people and instead learned some phrases in Chinese which was really hard but worked better still.
While in Korea there are loads of public wifis available, there are hardly any in China. If one happens to find one, there are so many restrictions on its use that it is impossible to use it. Furthermore the login site being written in Chinese only doesn’t exactly help. Especially in western China there is no necessity seen to write anything in any other language but Chinese. I think that this is natural to a certain extent but it makes life harder for foreigners.
Since the Korean War, Korea is very much inclined towards the West and especially towards the US as it seems. There’s a huge embassy with numerous security staff at one of the main squares of downtown Seoul. In China, I did not see any embassies or other clear signs of the presence of other nations in important places.This is only normal when one thinks back in History: european nations de-facto colonized parts of China and commited the indelible crime of burinng down the summer palace of the Qing during the Opium war. Meanwhile, Korea got help from the US in the war against the communists which results in a more positive relation.
Talking about History, Korea was a peaceful kingdom (or several kingdoms) most of the time, while in China there were more wars and later revolutions (1911 and then the communist revolution ending in 1949). Both countries have in common that they were invaded by the brutally fighting Japanese who seeked for imperial expansion until 1945 when they were heavily bombed by the US.
Thinking of the people themselves, Koreans are much more polite than the Chinese, generally speaking and of course from a european point of view. In China, the word for “Thank you”, 谢谢, is much less used than the Korean 감사합니다 (kamsahabnidaaaaa!). Chinese only say “thank you” if someone did something exceptionally nice, i.e. something apart of their “natural duties”. In Europe, a shopkeeper would say “goodbye, thank you” to a customer and people would say “thank you” to a waiter who brought their food. In China, it comes across weird if you say 谢谢 (xiè xie) in either of those situations. In my opinion this comes from the fact that you are expected to work hard in any case and it is your duty to do your best, so there is no reason to thank you. The advantage of this is that if someone says 谢谢, they really mean it and it’s worth something in terms of gratitude, other than in Europe where it has mostly the meaning of being a polite person. In Korea, saying “thank you” seemed to be more normal. Also, Koreans show a lot more of respect to others than the Chinese. At least there are more rituals showing respect towards elder people, such as turning away when drinking Sozhou with them, and bowing when meeting them. When it comes to moods, Chinese and Koreans genrally seem much more calm than Europeans. While I saw people in China in outbreaks of sudden rage, shouting as something went terribly wrong, I did not see a single Korean behaving like that (but this may be due to the fact that I only spent one week in Korea). Generally speaking I made the experience that in Asia, people showing an outburst of negative emotions are generally ignored and what they say is not taken seriously.
More of my opinons and experiences concerning Asia are soon to come in part II. and I would appreciate your comments so feel free to post below!
很快再见！
The Chinese Lantern 