Generous to a fault

Chinese hospitality is a wonder to behold: towering, looming, all-encompassing. It lifts you up in its large, fluffy paw, swings you around a bit and squeezes all the willpower out of you before dropping you down with varying degrees of gentleness.

There are many types of Chinese hospitality. The two most commonly seen by foreigners are 'killing with kindness' and 'aggressive hospitality'. The first almost always results in you carrying heavy and unwieldy stuff. As happened when I swung around Sichuan province to visit the school in which I worked as a volunteer English teacher in 2002.

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