你来美国遇到了哪些让你惊讶的事

What are the things that will likely surprise you when you come to the US?

你来美国遇到了哪些让你惊讶的事？

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以下是Quora读者的评论：

Judi Goldstein

The size of the country. For those that come from Europe, where countries are compact, the size is frequently a surprise.

The phrase ‘how’re you doing?’ is a greeting only. No real response is expected.

Most displayed prices aren’t what you’ll actually pay. In most places, you’ll pay more than the price due to the addition of sales tax.

In restaurants, tip is expected. 20% is the usual amount. If the service is terrible a bit less. If the service is great, then 25%. Why? All wait staff are typically underpaid.

In most restaurants, you’ll always get free water. No need to order bottled water. And portions in US restaurants are large.

Laws vary by state. So it pays to check with a local. Some states have legalized marijuana, but not all. Liquor sales customs, rules and laws vary a lot by State. In my state, I can buy beer and wine in my supermarket, but to purchase hard liquor such as whiskey, I have to go to a special store. Even traffic laws vary by States.

美国的国土面积。对于那些来自欧洲小国的人来说，美国的面积大得令人吃惊。

“你好吗?”’只是一句问候语。人们没有真的回答这个问句也不足为奇。

大多数情况下，标注的价格并不是你实际支付的价格。在大多数地方，你要支付比标注价格更高的金额，因为你还得加上销售税。

在餐馆里是需要支付小费的。小费通常是20%。如果服务质量很糟糕，可以少给一些。如果服务很不错，可以给到25%。为什么呢？因为所有的服务员的工资都很低。

在大多数餐馆，水都是免费的。不需要点瓶装水。而且美国餐馆的菜量很大。

各州的法律各不相同。所以最好和当地人确认一下。一些州已经批准大麻合法化，但不是所有州都如此。酒类销售的习俗、规则和法律因州而异。在我所在的州，我可以在超市买到啤酒和葡萄酒，但是如果想买威士忌这样的烈性酒，就得去专门的商店购买。就连交通法规也会因州而异。

I’ve had foreign visitors perplexed by signs before Election Day that say things like ‘Vote for Police’ or ‘Vote for schools’. They wonder do the Police or Schools get closed if we all vote against them. Nope, these are for extra money for these institutions.

The school calendars are set locally. So school holidays may vary between states or even within different areas of one state. University calendars vary even more.

Broadcast TV, what you might see in a hotel, is filled with commercials. There’s one every 10 to 15 minutes.

Our dogs are licensed. We have to provide proof of vaccines to get a license for our dogs. An unlicensed dog maybe seized.

Some visitors have been shocked by the size of American refrigerators. They’re surprised that we don’t shop each day.

在选举日之前，我看到外国游客对写着“为警察投票”或“为学校投票”之类的标语感到困惑不已。他们很好奇，如果我们都投反对票的话，警察或学校会不会关门呢？不，民众是为这些机构筹集资金呢。

校历是当地制定的。因此，学校假期可能因州而异，甚至在同一个州的不同地区也不尽相同。大学日历的差异更大。

广播电视，就像你在旅馆里看到的那样，充斥着广告。每10到15分钟就会有一条广告。

在美国，养狗是需要执照的。我们必须提供疫苗证明，为狗申请许可证。没有执照的狗可能会被抓。

一些游客对美国冰箱的体积感到震惊。他们很惊讶我们没有每天购物。

Joshua Justice

I’m American but my wife moved to the USA with me after we had been married and started a family overseas. She really expected homes to look like they do in the movies (instead of the realistic homes in Breaking Bad) even though I told her that wouldnt be the case.

That wasn’t too much of a surprise but there were things that were surprising over the years:

我是美国人，我的妻子是跟我在海外结婚并组建家庭后，才和我一起搬到美国的。她真的希望我们的房子看起来像电影里的样子(而不是《绝命毒师》里真实的房子)，尽管我告诉她那并非事实。

房子倒还好，没有太令人惊讶，但多年来，有些事情还是有点叫人见怪的：

1. A cereal aisle that’s 100 feet long at each grocery store. I joked about it before we moved back and we went a couple days after we arrived and she took a picture… it’s insane when you think about it.

2. How tough life in the USA can be. She is from the Philippines and the perception is that you arrive in the USA and it’s easy… and she quickly realized a good job in an area with a decent COL area wasn’t easy to come by even with both of us having degrees

3. We’ve been here about 5 years and she’s equally as disappointed as I am at the lack of empathy that Americans can have for each other, especially in the Christian community. She’d be surprised at some of the things said by Christians in our own community - as it’s apparent many fail to read the Bible.

4. How students and people in general treat teachers. She’s been cussed out by elementary school students and they’re simply sent back to class. The disrespect is something that is not often seen outside of the USA.

1. 每个杂货店的谷物商品货架都有100英尺那么长。我们搬回美国之前，我就曾拿这个开过玩笑，我们搬回来没几天，她就拍了张照片……想想就觉得很疯狂。

2. 在美国生活会是多难。她来自菲律宾，人们都以为来美国后生活很轻松……但她很快意识到，即使我们都有学位，可要在一个气候适宜的地区找到一份好工作也并非易事。

3. 我们在这里生活5年了，她和我一样对美国人彼此之间缺乏同情心的现状感到失望，尤其是在基督教社区。她会对我们社区里基督徒的一些言论感到惊讶——因为很明显，很多人都不读圣经。

4. 学生和多数人对待老师的态度。她被小学生咒骂了一顿，结果孩子只是被送回教室。这种不尊重老师的情况在美国之外可很少见。

5. How people can be so lazy and not seek out education (if they don’t work in a trade). We know plenty of people that struggle that could have gotten a degree and improved their situation and they just seem content making very average money. Some have access to discounted tuition or a cheaper way to get a degree and they won’t go for it.

6. How often people don’t think critically and fall for blatant propaganda and outright lies. I’m also shocked by it after living overseas for years but 2020 has left both of us baffled. Her hometown and home country took covid seriously yet so many people we know that barely finished high school are somehow smarter and somehow figured out everything.

5. 人们太懒了，不爱学习(如果他们不从事贸易)。我们知道很多人努力一下就能获得一个学位，改善他们的生活水平，但他们似乎对能赚取平均水平的收入就很满意了。有些人可以享受学费优惠或能通过更便宜的方式获得学位，但他们也不会努力争取。

6. 人们往往不会进行批判性思考，轻信明目张胆的宣传和赤裸裸的谎言。在海外生活多年的我也很震惊，但2020年的魔幻现实让我们都困惑了。她的家乡和祖国都很严肃地对待新冠疫情，我们认识的很多只有高中学历的人，都更为聪明，都通过努力解决了所有问题。

David Sandbrook

Used to work for the Forest Service. We had tourists that wanted to pay us for answering questions. They would come into the visitor center expecting to be charged to get any information. There are racks of brochures about trees and animals, places to hike, etc, and visitors were perplexed there was no charge for these free handouts. “Really, they are free. They are just Word documents we print from the computer when we need more”. There are larger books that have a fee, but the one-page folded brochures are free. They couldn’t grasp that.

One European family came in asking about fishing. The receptionist couldn’t answer the question, so called to the back office for one the Fishery Biologists. He came to the front and answered their questions. It was a Friday afternoon, then he suggested they accompany him tomorrow (Saturday, normal day off), as he planned to go fishing himself. The family later wrote a nice thank you note about how friendly and helpful the Biologist, had a wonderful fishing trip, and that was unexpected ‘from Americans’.

我以前在林业局工作。有些游客愿意付钱让我们解答问题。他们会来到游客中心，希望能付费得到一些信息。中心摆有许多架子，有一些关于树木和动物，徒步旅行目的地等的小册子，但令游客困惑的是，这些免费发放的资料是不收费的。“真的，它们是免费的。它们只是当我们从电脑打印出来的Word文档。”有些厚一点的书是收费的，但单页可折叠的小册子是免费的。他们无法理解这一点。

一个欧洲家庭进来询问钓鱼的事。接待员回答不了这个问题，所以给后勤办公室的渔业生物学家打了电话。他来到前厅回答了这个欧洲家庭的问题。那是个星期五的下午，专家建议游客明天(星期六，正常的休息日)跟着他去钓鱼。后来，这家人给他写了一封感谢信，说这位生物学家非常友好，乐于助人，他们度过了一次愉快的钓鱼之旅，这种“来自美国人”的热情让他们出乎意料。

Then, there is the tragic story of the German tourists in Death Valley. Driving a rough back road in a rented sedan, the car got stuck, and tried to walk out. It was mid July, the temperatures were over 50C and they only had a couple of water bottles between 5 of them. Their bones were found a few years later way off trail in a remote rugged section of the Park. Death Valley is named that for a reason. Summertime can be deadly in the desert. There is no such thing as having too much drinking water in summertime deserts, and services may be over 130 km distance.

As others mentioned, I might have to say supermarkets are the biggest surprise. Food stores the size of warehouses with an incredible array of different foods. One local store routinely has on display has over 15 varieties of apples and 6 different varieties of bananas (I didn’t even know there were that many different kinds of bananas). All available year around. There may be 20 different kinds of mustards for sale. An average US full service supermarket stocks around 50,000 different items.

也有德国游客在死亡谷发生的悲惨故事。他们开着租来的轿车行驶在一条崎岖的乡间小路上，车子被卡住了，于是想要步行走出山谷。当时是7月中旬，气温超过50华氏度，他们5个人只有几瓶瓶装水。几年后，他们的骸骨在公园一处偏僻崎岖的地方被发现了。这就是死亡谷得名的原因之一。夏季的沙漠是相当致命的。

正如其他人提到的，我也不得不说超市是最让人吃惊的。食品商店的规模有仓库那么大，里面陈列着各种不同的食品。一家当地商店的货架上通常会陈列着超过15种苹果和6种香蕉(我压根不知道香蕉有那么多不同种类)。全年都有。可能还会有20种不同的芥末在售。平均而言，美国的全服务超市有大约5万种不同的商品。

Ricky Smith

I've been living in Germany for 30 years. I came back the the states,as an American, and found that the food consumers eat are full of High Futrus Corn Syrup HFCS. You don't find that in Europe. It's usually cain sugar or beat sugar. HFCS is many times sweeter than sugar. It's in soda, jam, cereals, sausages, cold cuts, chocolates and other food items. Then you have all your GMO produce which includes meat products such as cattle. Companies have even manipulated salmon. GMOs are banned in most countries in the European Union. The EU uses 7 kinds of pesticides and herbicides while the U.S. uses 27. Many which are banned in EU. Aldobthe tap water, water coming out of faucets have fluoride and chlorine in them. EU not. Corporations have put cancer causing agents in hygiene products such as talcom powder which they knew about. J&J were fined $402mil. But no one went to jail.

我在德国住了30年了。作为一个美国人，我回到美国，发现消费者吃的食品中充满了高糖玉米糖浆。这在欧洲是找不到的。HFCS比糖要甜很多倍。苏打、果酱、麦片、香肠、冷盘、巧克力和其他食品中都有。然后是所有的转基因产品，包括肉制品，比如牛肉。一些公司甚至对三文鱼进行了基因改造。在大多数欧盟国家转基因生物都是明文禁止的。欧盟使用7种杀虫剂和除草剂，而美国使用27种，其中许多在欧盟是不能使用的。从水龙头里流出的自来水中含有氟化物和氯，但欧盟国家不会。一些公司已经在他们所知道的卫生产品中添加了致癌物质，比如滑石粉。强生因此被罚款4.02亿美元，但是没有人被判刑。

译文来源：三泰虎 https://www.santaihu.com/p/51048.html 译者：Joyceliu

I found making friends is difficult. The five years I've been back I've made just 2 friends that I can trust. It seems Americans mistrust and really don't won't to make friends. I left so many good friends in Europe. But I do Skype with them a few times a month. More racism here in the U.S. which I'm not use to. I had black friends in England to where they also became good friends. Every is difficult.

Health care here is a sham. Many font have it and some do but can't afford. seeing a doctor is even difficult since they require payment. Even getting test made cost out of pocket. Those that are in this situation gets a hard slap in the face of the have a stroke, get into an accident or just any kind of serious life threatening situation. Some have good insurance that covers most of what poor people cannot pay. But for myself while in Europe I had the best if medical you cannot get here. That paying half and my boss pays half. So a total. S0 a total of $800 a month was paid. Go figure.

我发现结交朋友很困难。在我回美国后的5年里，我只交了两个可以信任的朋友。美国人似乎并不信任美国人，也真的不想交朋友。我跟欧洲的很多好朋友分别了。但我每个月都要和他们用Skype聊上几次天。美国的种族主义越来越严重，我对此很不习惯。我在英国有一些黑人朋友，他们也成了我的好朋友。

这里的医疗保健系统就是个骗局。很多人都有，但也有些人买不起。看病很难，因为他们需要付费。就连做个检测也要花钱。遇到事故或者任何严重的生命威胁时，真的是当头一棒。有的国家有很好的医疗保险，能覆盖穷人无力支付的大部分医疗费用。就我自己而言，我在欧洲有最好的医疗条件，但在这里得不到。自己付一半，老板付一半。每月共付800美元。

Doug Freyburger

“What are the things that will likely surprise you when you come to the US?”

If was born here and some stuff is still surprising.

We have what we call “fly over territory” for a lot of our land. Much of it is grain fields. Some of it is too marginal for grain so livestock is grazed there in huge but very thinly spread herds.

What I find surprising is when I drive through so called “fly over territory” there is industry EVERYWHERE. Some random driveway? It leads to a plant that employs hundreds. There are concrete plants on almost every highway I remember. Trucks delivering industrial loads appear out of driveways that don’t even have signs.

“你到美国后遇到了哪些让你感到惊讶的事？”

即便出生在这里，有些事还是令人惊讶的。

我们有很多所谓的“飞越领土”，其中大部分是农田。有些地方太贫瘠，不适合种植谷物，所以牲畜在那里成群放牧，但分布得很稀疏。

令我惊讶的是，当我开车经过所谓的“飞越领土”时，到处都是工业。一些车道通向雇佣人数达到数百人的工厂。在我的记忆中，几乎每条高速公路上都有水泥厂。运送工业货物的卡车出现在甚至没有标志的车道上。

Jack Stalnaker

The biggest thing that will surprise you is that it won’t match your preconceptions. Especially the negative ones. You get filtered media reports that make it look like a wasteland full of guns and violence and stupidity. You get movies that generally take place in two cities. You’re presented a homogenized American culture. But everyday life for nearly everyone here is peaceful and normal. I haven’t even seen a gun since I shot one in a camp when I was 12, except for the ones for sale at a store. And I live in Texas, which movies seem to think is still stuck in cowboy times.

Geographically, the US runs the gamut from hot to cold, deserts to tropics. Rural to urban. There are subcultures, many of whom are proud of their heritage.

Legally, most people not from the US don’t realize the US government doesn’t have much control over your day-to-day life. Most laws you are subjected to are state laws, because the US was originally conceived as a loose federation of independent countries (hence the name United States).

最让你惊讶的是，它与你的先入之见不太一样。尤其是负面印象。你看过经过筛选的媒体报道，美国似乎是一个充满枪支、暴力和愚蠢的荒地。电影通常就在两个城市拍摄。你看到的是同质化的美国文化。但这里几乎每个人的日常生活都是和谐、正常的。自从我12岁时在营地开枪之后，我就再也没见过枪，除了商店里出售的枪之外。我住在德克萨斯州，那里的电影似乎还停留在牛仔时代。

从地域上而言，美国的国土有着从热到冷、从沙漠到热带、从农村到城市的各种地形。还有一些亚文化，他们中的许多人对自己的文化传统感到自豪。

从法律上而言，大多数不是来自美国的人都没有意识到美国政府对你的日常生活并没有多少控制权。你所遵守的大多数法律都是州法，因为美国成立之初，是希望成为一个由独立州组成的松散联邦(因此得名合众国)。