In our group we focussed on similarities and differences regarding our free time.
The first striking thing is that we all like to play and watch football. We like Dortmund and the German national team. It really surprised the German students that the Chinese students like German football teams and that they are interested in football teams all over the world. Another similarity considering sport activities is that we all like running. We spend approximately one and a half hours on this activity per week.
All of us are interested in travelling. The German students more often get the chance to travel to different countries. Preferred destinations are England and Spain. We all also like to read novels and we usually spend 30 minutes on it every day.
However, there are also a few differences. For example, German teenagers have a lot more free time than Chinese teenagers because in China it is common to use free time to do homework and to study. Chinese students often have private tutor lessons to improve their grades in certain subjects.
German teenagers also use their freetime to do their homework, but usually they only take about 30 minutes to an hour per day, while Chinese teenagers take about four hours to do their homework.
There are also differences in meeting up with friends. In China ‚hanging out‘ with your friends means meeting up and going out for a walk or going to the beach. Often they order food and eat out together.
The German group members‘ idea of ‚hanging out‘ with friends is sitting in our rooms, relaxing, talking and eating snacks. The Germans very often have sleepovers , which the Chinese aren’t allowed to have.
All in all we can say that there are huge differences in the free time activities of Chinese and German teenagers but we also discovered that there are similarities. We learned that despite the cultural differences German and Chinese teenager aren’t as different as they seem on first thought.
Text written by Rhian, Charlotte, Daniel, Jiaoyang, Neele, Hakan, Zhu Zhi Yao
