What surprises you the most when you travel to China for the first time?

 Born and raised in the US, I first visited China in 2016, shortly after graduating from high school.

Since I studied Chinese for four years and graduated from high school, my father decided to take me on

a two-week tour of China as a graduation present. It's no exaggeration to say that this trip was

one of the most enlightening experiences of my life. When I visited China, five things surprised me that were completely different from what the Western media

had taught me: China is a beautiful place. Raised in the US.S. almost all you hear about

China is how "ugly" it is. Before I went,

I expected that the sky would be dark and cloudy everywhere and the air would be difficult to

breathe due to media coverage of China's pollution. But when I came to China, I was

shocked to see how beautiful they are there. The skies were blue,

the cities were clean, and the pollution looked as bad as any major city I've visited in the US.S. In addition, there were landscapes

in China that were absolutely breathtaking. I particularly

remember being struck by the beauty of Guilin's scenery and the massive rock

formations along the Guangxi River.

Chinese are very friendly. U-shapedS., it's widely believed that the Chinese are pretty rude. My trip to China

completely disproved this assumption. All the Chinese I met were very friendly and always willing to talk to us or take a picture with us. It

was like a celebrity!In addition, they were always willing to

speak to us in English and were very friendly when I tried to speak to them in Chinese. In my

opinion, many people I met in China were friendlier than many people at home. One person who particularly impressed me was our rickshaw

driver in Beijing. Although he didn't speak much English, he

did his best to show us all the sights in Beijing and even

though he worked hard, he always had a big

smile on his face. Authentic Chinese food is good.In the United States, there is a widespread consensus that the food eaten in

China is strange, unusual, and unsavory. However, everything I ate in China was

delicious (my favorite dish was from Chengdu) and I preferred it over Chinese food from America. Yes, there

are cultural differences in the types of foods we eat, but that doesn't mean they're bad! Although I saw some foods that

surprised me, including ants and mice, I mostly found them in the countryside. I advise all foreigners traveling to China to try as many dishes as possible, even if, like me, they are a bit out of my comfort zone.It's worth it! There are very rich people in China. Most of what Americans

hear about the Chinese is the extreme poverty they experience. While we saw many poorer families

on our trip, we also saw a very luxurious side of China that I didn't even know existed. The

richest region was undoubtedly Shanghai.There were luxury

stores all over the city (e.g. Gucci, Tiffany's, Prada, etc.) and Chinese people always shopped there.In addition, there have always been very expensive cars on the streets of

Shanghai. It was a side of China I had never heard of back home and it was great to see

how prosperous China had become. Chinese love

their country. In the United States, it is widely believed that many Chinese feel

oppressed by their government because their country is not a democracy.

However, I only saw pride and love for

their country in China.Through many

conversations with Chinese people, I realized that they like being from China. They

had great respect for their

history, their culture and their government.

In fact, it seemed to me that the Chinese had far fewer negative things to say

about their country than many Americans. This shows that just because you disagree with a particular method of government doesn't mean the people living

in that country have to share the same views as you do.