Friendly and funny ... but their sense of humour can have an edge. The boss once threatened to bring a ceremonial knife into the office and watch me ritually disembowel myself. Stiff punishment for a human error. :)
I liked them but, of course, I accepted them the way they are.
They're no more brainwashed than anybody else. I once had to do a telecommunications job for the charge d'affaire of a communist embassy and one of the guys who was working with me asked, "What sort of rubbish do they tell you about us over there?" And his reply was nothing but the truth. "About the same kind of rubbish your people tell you about US."