Study Ireland – Stories & Guides from International Students

In this personal blog, UL Global Student Ambassador Xi Kong explains the culture shocks she experienced as a chinese student studying in Ireland.

I arrived in Ireland on September 2nd and have been living here for over a month. For a Chinese girl who has never experienced Western culture for 22 years, everything here is so fresh to me!

Irish people don’t use umbrellas when it rains

As a rain-rich country, the Irish are accustomed to rainy days. In more a month of living here, I observed that Irish people rarely have the habit of carrying umbrellas. Every rainy day, it is rare to see Irish people walking in the rain almost without an umbrella or wearing a hat. Sometimes they choose to wear a raincoat, but they rarely choose an umbrella. Perhaps with the wind blowing every time it rains, it is more troublesome to open an umbrella, so they rarely use an umbrella? This is so strange to me.

Cards shops are still very popular

Trust me, no matter which supermarket, shopping street, bookstore or even convenience store I go to, there will always be a card shop at the entrance. In fact, few people in China choose to use greeting cards anymore. However, in Ireland, festivals, anniversaries, birthdays and even thank-you cards are all available, and this old-fashioned and traditional form is still very popular in Ireland.

Expressing feelings is more direct

China is an implicit nation, so the way we express our feelings is also very implicit, for example, we rarely express our emotions directly, but indirectly convey our emotions through what we do. In Ireland, however, people have always expressed their emotions directly, they usually speak out their feelings, while in China we may choose a more implicit way first.

Dress freely

The freedom to dress is one of the things I feel most in Ireland. What I mean is not that we can’t wear clothes “freely” in China, but maybe it is because of the influence of some bad traditions, if a girl wears some clothes with high skin exposure or strange characteristics, she will be looked at and even judged by other people. In Ireland, people are not in the habit of staring at women’s bodies, and they don’t care about what the woman is wearing, and to a large extent they only care about their own affairs, so here I don’t think about “whether it is appropriate to wear something”, just wear it.

Irish people don’t like spicy food

As a girl from North China, I prefer spicy food. But coming to Ireland, the locals don’t seem to like spicy food. The hot sauce I can get in the supermarket doesn’t even seem spicy to me. In China, the chili oil we like is also difficult to buy here, you have to go to the Chinese supermarket to get it.

Work-life balance

It is obvious that Irish people pay more attention and care about work-life balance, and they will not deal with anything related to work during non-working hours, it is their principle. However, in China, Chinese people often work outside of work hours. I think we need to learn this habit from Irish people and pay more attention to the happiness of life.

In fact, there were a lot of culture shocks I didn’t get to mention. But overall, it was all so much fun and I enjoyed embracing the different customs of all the different cultures. Irish people are so free, happy, friendly, and at the same time they grow like wildflowers, there are not too many rules and regulations in life, everything depends on their own will to live out the most beautiful color of life.