[Riddil]

And before it seems like I'm blasting all Chinese, I honestly think that this mentality is a product of the "Cultural Revolution". Which, if you don't know anything about it, head to wikipedia (which I can't do in China), and give it a read. Basically it was a country-wide brain-washing period and life turned to complete and utter shite for everyone. After years and years of this oppression most people came to accept the fact that you DON'T ASK QUESTIONS. But more than that, it's the idea that if something doesn't directly affect you, it's best just to shut-up. (Otherwise the police will bust down your door for asking too many questions).

IMHO, the Chinese regime was SUPPOSED to fall after the Tiananmen massacre in '89. The only thing I can guess is that since we're in a modern world, the gov't was able to act quickly enough to control the spread of information and silence the movement. Most Chinese today don't even KNOW there was a massacre. When I first moved to Beijing everyone was shocked that I'd actually heard of Tiananmen Square. When I tell them, "Sure, everyone in the world knows Tiananmen. Super famous. Who could forget 1989?" And normally I get blank stares... 1989? What happened then?

*ahem*

Anyhow, this is already getting way too long, and I haven't even really started. I'll cut to my rapid fire comments:
- I HATE the majority of Westerners living in China. The foreigners living in Japan are great. But in China you get a bunch of egocentric pricks.
- Spitting. Seriously, it's everywhere, and it's gross
- The crazy slit-in-the-back-of-pants instead of diapers for your babies. Unbelievable. You can be walking in the middle of the biggest city in China, and you can turn to see some woman take her kid over to a patch of grass to let them "do their business". Hell, I've even seen what looked like a 14 year old girl run behind a tree (or more accurately, a sapling), in the middle of a crowded park to drop trou and do her business. Remember that scene from Borat? I've seen it.
- &&#@*@(@# I hate the stupid toilets. They predominantly still use hole-in-the-ground toilets. No sit-down potty, no sir, you've got to be a yoga star to get yourself over the hole so you don't get crap on your pants.
- Chinese ONLY eat Chinese food. They don't see any reason to have any other style, because there's just sooooo many different styles of Chinese. Hmf.
- Chinese really do hate Japanese. Even otherwise rational people can't stand them. It's been ingrained into them from childhood, and they can't escape it.
- CORRUPTION is crazy. EVERYTHING can be bought or sold. They build layers and layers of departments to fight corruption, but that only means you have to bribe more people to get anything done. Government, business, EVERYTHING has built-in graft. I know this is supposed to be my rapid fire section, but this is crazy enough to give an extra blurb...

You go to any major shopping mall in any city and what you find is that stores rarely have cash registers. You take a ticket, you find the register for the floor, you pay them, then you take the ticket back to the store to get your stuff. What you don't realize is that these cash registers are probably "black registers". They're fine for you to pay, but what you don't know is that they don't report your sale to the government as earnings. If you actually want to get a legal receipt (which means they pay taxes on your purchase), you probably have to go down to the basement, hunt around, and THEN you find the real, legal cash register that the mall owners hid away.

- Hospitals are crazy. I've found doctors that believe, I mean believe in all their hearts, that if a woman drinks cold water while she's pregnant the baby might develop a birth defect. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.
- Speaking of pregnancy... man, there is no such thing resembling the debate about pro-life or pro-choice in China. Not only is there no debate, but you can get an abortion faster and easier than you can get the oil in your car changed. And I mean that in all seriousness.
- And back on the subject of graft... EVERY product of foreign origin costs double the price compared to anywhere else in the world. The reason is because the politicians controlling the import make sure to get lucratively rich off every shipment
- But, that's not so much a problem, since EVERY product also has a locally made knockoff. Not only DVDs, you can get every watch, bag, line of clothing, shoes... anything you want, all on the black market, and no matter what it is, it'll probably cost you about 10 bucks. (Except DVDs, which are about a dollar).
- There's money in China. Crazy money. But most people don't see a drop of it. But I know, dammit I KNOW there are rich bastards out there. But I don't know where they are. In the US they show off their bling, and appear in all the papers. In China they're invisible. They take their huge wealth and live a life of luxury far out of the public eye. Which is probably for the best considering national stability.
- And about the poor... you should see the life of some of these "farmer-workers". These poor displaced farmers come into every major city, normally to earn less than $50 a month to live in a dank, disgusting hovel, and work for 15 hours a day, 6 days a week.
- Back to lighter a lighter topic... people have ZERO spatial awareness. When you walk down the street you've got to constantly jump out of the way of people meandering any which direction they want, or some person walking in a busy sidewalk who just STOPS so he can take out his cell to answer it. ARG.
- The exchange rate of RMB is a sham. The "real value" of the RMB I'd estimate is closer to 2 or 3 to 1 US dollar. No where near the $7-8 it's currently at.
- The Chinese people are proud. They feel bad because they KNOW there are problems with China. But no one wants to admit their problems. So as a foreigner it's impossible (and rude) of me to mention most of these things to any Chinese person. Even if they may agree with me, they will fight tooth-and-nail to defend the reputation of their homeland
- Speaking of which, it's really SAD to consider that communist China is less than 100 years old, and it's done so much to erase the REAL Chinese history that is thousands of years old. It makes me wonder what Chinese culture is really like, because I'm betting that traditional culture is nothing like what you find in China these days.

Phew. Anyhow. I'm done. I'm posting this through a proxy, so hopefully I've avoided the filters for saying things that could get me into REAL trouble. Oh, I guess I'll make that my final point...

YES, the filters in China are VERY real. I've seen a lot of news lately saying that the filter is not so bad. Oh ho no, you've got it all wrong! China isn't so much worried about what other people send into China. But they CLOSELY watch anything going on inside of the country, and anything that originates in China and goes out. Normally they don't out-and-out filter, but they catalog, record, sort and otherwise monitor each and every scrap that goes anywhere. I'm betting they would put Google to shame with the sheer volume of data mining they're doing.

Blah, anyhow, enough for now. I could really go on for days about this stuff....