Encounters with Chinese stuff

1. First of all, when I was in Madrid with The Mom and her Sister, we went to the Royal Palace and there was a room decorated with in Chinese style, with people in robes posing near plum trees, pagodas and such, and it was obvious that the decoration and artists were European and trying to imitate Chinese art. There was another room which had Chinese tapestries and the placard said they came from China as gifts.
2. I get a couple of ¨Ni hao"´s every week. They tend to come from guys who are walking in groups and younger than university age. I found that if I make the slightest eye contact with them as I walk in streets there´s an approximate 75% chance at least one of them will say it. On the other hand, it´s good to see that Spaniards are culturally appreciative.
3. Then there are the convenience corner shops that are scattered every 10 blocks or so in Madrid, Barcelona, Toledo, Valencia and Segovia. They are almost uniform in appearance; cold fluorescent lights, Chinese pop songs, a lack of ads telling you of discounts, Chinese lanterns and calendars, and the general impression that they just took a bunch of kiosk items like canned food, magazines, drinks and snacks, and brought in some shelves on which to place the items to create a corner shop. In smaller cities you can find a couple of these Chinese corner shops as well as places called "Bazar Oriental" or "Bazar Chino" that are just as minimalist in decoration and sell cheap decor, clothes and electronics. Additionally, of course, are the takeout stores which I'm told specialize in sweet and sour sauces and spring rolls. There is no escape. In Almansa and other cities these places tend to be family-owned, and in some they speak to each other in a dialect that isn't Mandarin or the other three dialects that I can identify by the way they sound: it might be Shanghainese. In Segovia The Mom asked the Chinese corner shop cashier why there were so many Chinese corner shops and if the shopowners of a store tended to be relatives of another store, but the cashier didn't know anything about it.
4. Dia de los Difuntos is similar to both Dia de los Muertos and a Chinese festival that takes place in April. In both Dia de los Difuntos and the Chinese festival you're supposed to visit graves of your relatives and clean them, but the Chinese festival also recommends that you place food and chopsticks on the grave.
5. The Spanish churro tastes almost exactly like the Chinese churro because it is crispier and doesn't include cinnamon and sugar. Both have a crispy outer surface, lots of hollow spaces inside and a doughy flavor. I also had pig ears: the Spanish version is pan fried briefly in an orange oil, while the Chinese version is cold and served with sesame oil.
6. People like to bring up the subject of how China is affecting the local shoemaking industry. On the one hand, China is buying more Spanish shoes and on the other hand Spanish factories are operating in China because of their lower wages. There's this Colombian immigrant Adriana in an advanced English class who says that Almansa probably has 1,000 immigrants out of the total population of 25,000 and that a lot of them are Colombian, Ecuadorian and Chinese. She also said that there are undocumented Chinese people who live in the shoe factories who have to endure tough working conditions and demanding bosses who would send them back to China if they don't comply and such.