Ceylon impression

Sri Lanka, formerly known as Ceylon, is a country with a long history and flourishing Buddhism. 2065438+arrive in Colombo, Sri Lanka at the end of May 2008. It has been more than two months now, and I have never been familiar with it. My impression is as follows:

Sri Lanka and India are adjacent, and their looks are basically the same. It seems that Koreans and China people stand together, so long as they don't talk, they can't tell the difference. But since I went to India twice last year, I was deeply impressed with India. There are many differences between Sri Lanka and India.

First of all, hygiene is different. As we all know, India is a country without toilets at home. To go to the toilet, it is convenient to go outdoors and on the roadside, so there are toilets everywhere except the city. Even the streets in Liancheng town are unsanitary and feel dirty everywhere. Sri Lanka is a country with toilets at home, so there is no need to go out to solve the problem, and the sanitation of public places is better.

Secondly, Sri Lankans are more friendly. Perhaps because 70% of the population believes in Buddhism, Sri Lankans are generally kind and easy to get along with, and feel that the whole society has a better sense of security and safety. In India, armed police can be seen patrolling in public places in India, such as airports, railway stations, parks and many other places. At night, people of low caste can sleep on the street casually and can be seen everywhere. Imagine why the police need to be so vigilant if it is not because of the possibility of extreme public security incidents.

The relative consistency between Sri Lankans and Indians is that children are thin, while many middle-aged people are obese, which must be related to diet.

The staple food of Sri Lankans is rice. Because of the humidity, they also like spicy food. I thought their tropical countries would be rich in food, but in fact, there are very few dishes on their tables, only a few dishes are tossed around casually, and they are all curry and pepper, which are very heavy and have little nutrition.

Food is served on a plate and then eaten by hand, without chopsticks and spoons. And I finally understand why they have few dishes and simple meals. Because their tradition of eating is to grasp with their hands without any tools, it is decided that the dishes must be made easy for them to grasp with their hands and have a good entrance. So in Sri Lanka, they can't invent a diet like hot pot at all, and all the dishes that are difficult to cook will be naturally eliminated by their dietary traditions. This kind of rice, which is basically curry rice, has a single lack of nutrition, which makes their children generally thin, but it is chubby in middle age.

When we came to Sri Lanka, our biggest difficulty was that we couldn't get used to their food. Because it is too spicy and nutritious, we have to buy food and cook by ourselves from time to time, or go out to Chinese restaurants to supplement our nutrition.

Sri Lanka is an agricultural country with no industry. Besides food and fruit, tea and precious stones are their fist products. Clothing industry is also their important industry, but it was made in the mode of enterprise supplement on the third day of China's reform and opening up, and basically it was processed and exported to foreigners. Their aborigines dress very simply. It is estimated that everyone likes to wear white clothes because their skin color is dark, so that the sun reflects heat during the day and is easy to be recognized at night. Because there is no industry, many products have to be imported, plus freight and customs duties, which makes some things in the Sri Lankan market slightly more expensive.

Sri Lanka's infrastructure is backward and there are no overpasses. Except for the main roads in the city, other roads are generally poor. If we want to build roads first, we can't think of their economic foundation under the current traffic conditions. There is no high-speed rail in Sri Lanka, but there are famous mountain railways and seaside railways. It is ok to experience from the perspective of sightseeing, but from the perspective of economic benefits, these railways are too backward and inefficient. Because the roads are not wide enough and good enough, cars in Sri Lanka are mostly small cars. Tugboats are very popular here because they are convenient to go back and forth and the fares are cheap.

Today, smart phones have been widely used in China, and the network is about to enter the 5G era. Some people in Sri Lanka are still using old gray-screen mobile phones, and the network speed is very slow. There is a video store on the street that still sells VCD, DVD discs and DVD players. There is no WeChat payment for shopping here, and there is no convenience for Taobao. Everything is like China in the 1990s.

In Sri Lanka, land is private, education is free, and politics is a parliamentary election system. From the institutional point of view, it is a microcosm of the western social system, but the overall quality of the population is actually at a low level. Because it is an agricultural country, the consciousness of a large number of people still stays at the natural economic level of self-sufficiency of small countries and few people, and they have not been trained in industrialization and intensification, so their sense of time is not strong enough, their planning is weak, their goals are unclear and they are arbitrary. In addition, Tamils in northern Sri Lanka, Muslims and Christians in China, due to their different ideologies, have a very insufficient sense of identity with "Sri Lankans", which restricts their social development.

Now many companies and individuals from China come to Sri Lanka to develop, and many infrastructure projects in Sri Lanka are being done by China people. The two largest ports in Sri Lanka are currently run by China people. I'm glad to see that hardworking China people can make a difference in Sri Lanka.