The very first day of being a host family has passed. I have met Jonas Rudnick from Germany and we have talked a lot. Needless to say, there has been some impressive moments. Most of them are basically about stereotypes.

Since Jonas has never been to China before, he has lots of questions to ask. When we're in the car back to my home, he asked about whether we have do's and don'ts. Well, I can hardly think of any don'ts in our family! It seems that from his perspective, the Chinese has lots of rules to follow.

What happened next when we were having dinner has confirmed this stereotype. While eating, he suddenly asked, 'Is it impolite for me to finish up the dishes?' After a while he asked us again, 'Is it true that the Chinese eat dogs?' And here are my mom's answer.

These questions are hard to answer because China is so big and every part of it is different. Your questions are based on stereotypes - especially the stereotype that the Chinese are dog-eaters. We all have stereotypes when we don't really get to know the culture, like an Englishman is reserved, an American is arrogant, while a German lacks sense of humor. What we need to do is to communicate to break these stereotypes.

And Jonas has actually done a great job breaking them. Despite his 11-hour flight, he stayed awake and kept talking with us until he went to bed after 30 sleepless hours.

By Jason QIU, March 20 2017