Culture shock

THE WORD along the street is that the new Mrs B, our next door neighbour, has left home and gone to China.

And I, for one, don’t blame her.

Seems that living in England is too much of a culture shock for her.

She is Chinese, of course, and only recently arrived over here, brought back by her new husband, an engineer who works in the Far East and who is away for months at a time.

He brought her here, and then left her to it: a young woman who speaks precious little English and who finds our customs and traditions completely alien.

For example, the house she lives in here could house five or six families back home, and not just two people. In China, families often live in one room houses – they cook, eat and sleep all in that room. Whole families, too – children, parents, grand-parents, even great grand-parents. (She is deeply shocked by how we treat our old people – putting them in homes and such like.)

She has found English weather just a bit too cold for her, too, especially since she believes in keeping windows open, front and back – the front to allow good spirits to enter and the back to let the bad ones depart. She regarded the gas fires in the house with deepest suspicions: such things are not known back home, it seems.

Anyhow, being left alone after just five weeks here, was too much, she’s packed her bags and returned to a more civilised country.

And like I said, I, for one, don’t blame her.