What's the difference between the living habits of Kazakhs and those of China?

The supermarket products in Almaty are very rich, but the prices are extremely expensive. There are pirated VCD movies and songs on the roadside, and the price is 400 tenge (about RMB 16 yuan), while the genuine ones in the supermarket are several thousand tenge. Whether it's a hotel or a restaurant, the charges are amazing. My collapsed Almaty Hotel costs 120 dollars a day, just a single bed with a width of 80 cm, an old TV with a width of 14 inch, and the wooden floor and tiles are crooked, using the same materials we used 20 years ago, which is actually equivalent to a small hostel with a width of Urumqi 100 yuan. The meal fee in Almaty is also 3-5 times that in Urumqi. It rained heavily, so I had to buy an umbrella in the underground supermarket. It is very common. It costs about 65,438+00 RMB in China, but its price is 65,438+0,400 tenge, which is about 65,438+0 USD. I said to a friend who just went to China: After changing the tenge into dollars here, treat 1 dollar as 1 yuan, or you won't dare to buy anything. How dare you spend thousands of tenge, fifty or sixty dollars, and change them into RMB? At present, Kazakhstan's per capita GDP has exceeded 3,000 US dollars, some people say it is 5,000 US dollars, which seems to be rich, but the per capita monthly income is only 200 to 300 US dollars, and my doctoral salary is 250 US dollars. How to live with such high consumption? I'm confused, too Without in-depth understanding and investigation, it is likely that many people have done other things and earned another income. For example, there are so many private cars in Almaty that you can hire people without a business license. Just stop one on the street. Just negotiate a price acceptable to both parties when and where.

In the past two years, Kazakhstan has concentrated on checking and expelling foreign businessmen without passports or with expired passports. Almaty used to be a street full of China businessmen, but now there are very few. China people must carry their passports with them and be checked by the police at any time. Ordinary business and personal passports must fill in the entry card, and the visa on arrival should be completed within three days. I hold an official passport, which is visa-free according to the regulations. When I entered the customs, the border inspection officer confiscated my entry card and said it was unnecessary. However, Kazakhstan National University was very worried that my professor would be detained by the police because he didn't have an immigration card, so he quickly changed it for me. I think they are carrying coals to Newcastle. But on the night of May Day, I saw a China man with an official passport and no immigration card. He was detained by the police and stuffed into a police car. As a result, the man had to pay a tribute of one hundred dollars to solve the problem. In this environment, the business of Chinese businessmen is of course very difficult to do. But I also met two successful Fujian businessmen. Mr. Lin speaks Russian with a difficult Fujian accent with his mobile phone on. Mr. Chen is better at building materials. He doesn't speak a word of Russian, but he has trained his Kazakh employees to speak Mandarin with a strange Fujian accent. I asked him the secret of his success. Mr. Chen replied: honestly, pay taxes according to law. For example, the tax law of Kazakhstan may never be understood, but it is natural to invite Kazakh tax officials sincerely to check the tax payment situation every month and entertain them. If there is any omission, they will make it up on the spot, so they have become good friends with tax officials while becoming tax pacesetters. On the other hand, if you evade taxes, you will be fined and lose everything, and you will be deported immediately.

Almaty is a rather European city with a high degree of civilization. Although there are many cars on the road, they always give way to pedestrians. Public places are quiet, and restaurants are not very noisy. Don't make any noise while eating and drinking soup. Xiao Hu visited and studied there for a year and was very familiar with it. Whenever I accidentally drink something, I will remind him quietly and seriously, which makes me lose face and nervous. A Kazak from Xinjiang said disapprovingly that you can only eat happily if you hiss. How to eat noodles without making any noise?

On the eve of Kazakhstan's independence, it was decided that Kazakh was the national language and Russian was the language of inter-ethnic communication, and Russian was still spoken in formal occasions, such as international conferences we attended. But the new generation of young people must learn Kazakh well. I asked Nourjan, my doctoral student, which language is more proficient, and she replied: I am proficient in both, but after careful observation, Russian is better. In Kazakhstan, people occasionally ask: Why do you speak Russian instead of Kazakh? Only once in a taxi, the brother said rudely: Don't come to Kazakhstan if you don't speak Kazakh. But few people are so unreasonable.

Kazakhstan has a population of150,000, but its territory is vast, which is roughly equivalent to the area of Xinjiang plus Qinghai and Gansu. This is a young and vibrant country, not a backward, turbulent and right-and-wrong place that most people think. As an important neighbor, its economic and trade relations with China are getting closer and closer, especially in energy cooperation, so we should know more about it.