She lived in Lisbon for a year, and it was in Portugal that the pandemic found this young Chinese woman. For a while, this undergraduate student in Portuguese from the Shanghai University of International Studies was afraid to go out because of her Asian appearance and responsibility for the new coronavirus, which many attributed to her country.
He likes Saramago, but prefers to read it in Chinese “because of his own comma and dotless writing style” – he considers a Portuguese breakfast of bread, coffee or milk to be “monotonous” and he likes “modern” Lisbon. Despite nostalgia for his homeland, Chong Qing, one of the largest metropolitan areas in China with over 20 million inhabitants, Luoheng Zhan sums it up in good Portuguese as “a mountain city that combines antiquity and modernity.”
She came to Portugal on an exchange program with the Universidade Nova de Lisboa and is studying Portuguese on the advice of her parents, who saw a promising future for their daughter in this language. Portugal was Luohan’s “small but very developed” country, “famous for its football.”
Luoheng is 24 years old, and in this he is no different from many other young people, Portuguese, Chinese or other nationalities. Smiling, she says that in Portugal she is being asked “some strange questions about the Chinese” and that the Portuguese she met are “very interested in the politics and political regime of China,” which she admits is not very well known to her.
“The size of your country and the distance helps explain some of the prejudices,” says Luohan. “Since we have a very large population, it is normal for foreigners to think that any Asian is Chinese.” But Konichiwawho many greet her with is not Chinese. It’s Japanese.
Luoheng also wants to take this opportunity to explain, “Most Chinese people do not eat dogs and are very critical of dog consumption.” As for the mystery of the Chinese funeral – “some friends are very curious because they have never seen a Chinese funeral in Portugal.” -, his limited experience in the country does not allow him to answer. “To be honest, I don’t know how it works either.”
