Xiamen Surprises

Why surprised? Because who the heck travels to Xiamen? If not for a business trip, we would have known very little about Xiamen. So with little expectations, we thought what we would find was "old china" but were very surprised at an ultra cosmopolitan city, with all the trappings of the best urban dwellings around Asia. However, in as much as the city's aesthetics was impressive, the people's culture was obviously much more backwards and was not at par with their surroundings. Often we would find locals spitting, picking noses, peeing, squatting, taking off shoes in public and generally with little sophistication that betrays its chic infrastructures.