Perspective on China from an expat working there

[Riddil]

Phew. Where to even start? Quick intro... I've been working in China for 1.5 years, about 7 months in Beijing, and the rest in Shanghai, and I've had the chance to tour the country far and wide, from Xi'An to ShenZhen. And life here is... different that what I think most Westerners may think.

I don't even know how to start with a "biggest", so I'm going to go in an unordered stream of conscious.

Move past the idea that all Chinese are evil, or bad, or lying. Most of them are SIMPLE. It's not that Chinese think it's wrong to use poison paint when making toys. The majority of them have no idea it's even happening because the media is heavily filtered. What it comes down to is a few ultra-rich factory owners that will lie-cheat-steal to get every penny possible. It's basically the same thing that was happening in the US during the Industrial Revolution. The BIG difference here is that in the US the people got MAD about being lied to, poisoned, and abused, so the public forced a change. There are a few things in China preventing a similar movement....
- Filtered media keeps people from knowing the extent of the problem
- "That's the way life is" kind of mentality keeps people from pushing for more
- Without an elected body of government there's no electorate that is motivated to help the public, only to do the minimum possible to stay in power

In my post about the US, I complained about "media-for-the-masses". I'll tell you what's worse... media-to-lie-to-the-masses. It's a JOKE. First, when all the Chinese product recalls were happening world-wide you didn't hear a peep about it in China. Not a word. Finally there was SO MUCH media attention that it started to filter in, so the gov't decided they need to handle it. What you found were a few articles buried deep, talking about how all these foreign countries are afraid of China rising to power, so they're making extravagant and false claims to try to cripple China's growth. And people are more happy to hear the great news about how their country is looking after them, and they will hate the outside world even more.

What's MORE, I read an article where the local government of one of the factories that made toys for Mattel is going to help file a lawsuit against Mattel. They allege it's 100% Mattel's fault because they were just doing the job as dictated by Mattel, and when the problem went public, Mattel pushed all the blame onto them, tarnished their reputation, and now they are losing millions in lost revenue since they can't get new customers. And everyone who reads the article just thinks, "sure, that's perfectly reasonable, I'm sure that's the way it happened".

In my department we hired a new employee who just returned from the UK where he studied for his master's degree. When asked about what he missed most about the UK, he answered, "the sky was so blue". When the rest of the department asked about it, he explained, quite simply, well, the air in UK and other countries is so clean because they don't manufacture anything. Everything is manufactured in China. So the result is they get to have clean air, and we have to live with this bad air. I sat in shock as everyone nodded their heads knowingly, accepting an obvious truth....

(phew, too many tangents to go down.... how to choose one?)

Which brings me to my next gripe... the air, in this WHOLE damn country, is TERRIBLE. Shanghai is decent. Beijing is awful, and most other cities are nearly unlivable. No joke, I'd argue that in Beijing, at least 30% of the days you can't see to the end of the road because the smog is so thick. And in Xi'An it's so bad that the people living there can go for MONTHS and never see the sun or the moon. The only way to know if it's raining is if there is water falling through the eternal haze, because it's impossible to see any clouds.

And what's more shocking, everyone, and I include even very educated people, will tell you, "Oh, that's just the fog. It's China. China has always been foggy". Hmm. Ok. I've been to Ireland. I've been to the blue-ridge mountains in the Eastern US. I know what fog looks like, and that ain't it! At best, what you find from people is the story confirming they're the world's manufacturer, and bad air is the price they pay.

(message too long, content clipped to go to a follow-up post)

[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....

[Clodfobble]

Er... please don't have your door kicked in just for our sake...

[slang]

Originally Posted by Riddil

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.

This is interesting and has been my experience here as well.

People are not overly bothered by people bumping into them and bumping into others.

There have been several incidences where my wife has klobbered someone with her handbag while walking around the mall. It's a non-even for both parties. I don't get it.

Watch people walk down the street in Manila. They walk anywhere, sway back and forth, walk directly out into traffic and it's totally acceptable. If the traffic was a bit faster here there would be many more pedestrian injuries/deaths.

When I first experienced the "dumbass" that just stops right in the traffic to answer the cell phone it was far beyond irritating. Now I just bowl them over. . I'm at least a foot taller than most everyone here and well over 100 lbs more. Is your cell phone ringing? Pull it over to the side of the road before you answer DA.

That whole lack of ability has to be linked to the fact that no one drives cars. At least very few do. If they do they have not started out at 3 years old with a small electric one. It's not second nature to them.

When you drive a car you follow "flow" and safety rules. When you are a passenger on some type of transport, it doesnt matter that you "flow".

Oh, and yes, I have seen more women spit here than the US by what....a hundred times?

Shortly after my wife and I were married we went walking through the Korean section of Makati. We passed a very old woman that very dramatically spit something into the street seconds before we walked by. She was talking to another woman that was sitting with her on the curbside and pulling out her underarm hairs at the same time.

As we passed she looked at me and smiled, and I smiled back.

Then I asked my wife, what did she say?

"I'd look better walking with that American than her"

[slang]

Originally Posted by Riddil

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

Great information directly from the source. Thanks.

[Cloud]

very interesting.

[Undertoad]

This is outstanding stuff Riddil, and thank you for it.

[Sundae]

Thanks Riddil.
Although you realise I now have insider knowledge about another country that I can only explain with the lame response, "Someone I know lives there. Well, someone I know on the internet..."

My previous insider knowledge came from a Hong Kong born Chinese lady. She had family in China but had only been there a couple of times herself and was very critical of it. But I would expect that - her family sent her to boarding school in England to learn English "for the sake of the family" and then moved here when Hong Kong went back to China. Her parents have made an effort to learn English, but generally rely on her as the eldest daughter as a translator and deal mainly with other Hong Kong ex pats. I wouldn't expect a positive report on Communist China from her, but the whole situation proved to me beyond a doubt how strong the family ties are.

[ZenGum]

I haven't been to China but I have two friends who have lived there for 1 and 2 years respectively.
99% of Riddil's post is in complete agreement with everything they have told me.

The only thing I'd question is the historical claim that the current culture is mostly a result of the cultural revolution under Mao.
From what I've read (quite a few sources) about Chinese history, the autocrats have traditionally had absolute power over everyone, and acted accordingly. People kept their heads down and their mouths shut.

This is my favorite story, and I've heard several variations of it:

Zhao Gao, one of the chief ministers of the second Qin emperor [Qin dynasty 221-206 BC] , suspected some of the ministers of being disloyal to him. He had a servant bring a deer into the hall and called all the ministers together. Pointing to the deer he said, 'Look at this fine horse I have brought for His Majesty the Emperor. I want to know what each of you thinks of it.' One by one the ministers spoke. Most of them praised the 'horse', saying what a splendid animal it was and how clever Zhao Gao had been to find it. A few, though, refused to call it a horse, and one even said, 'Horse? What horse? I see only a deer!'

After they had all finished speaking, Zhao Gao gave a signal to his soldiers, who grabbed all those who had not said that the deer was a horse. He had them executed, hoping in this way to terrify everyone into silence.

This has led to a Chinese saying - to point to a deer and call it a horse, meaning, to say something obviously false, to say one thing and do another. This is a useful expression if you want to call BS on a Chinese person.

[slang]

An American friend of mine has a friend that went to China to work with computers in some capacity.

The friend, Dan, I've never met and do not know. The story that I'm told frequently though is that the Chinese are far, far ahead of the US in their computer tech and that they treat foreigners there to work with very high regard.

It seems that Dan has even sent word back to the US that he'd like to have my friend sell his house for him. He's staying there.

I listen to stories and comments along these lines quite often from this friend and I'm always curious about the details. I'd like to talk with him myself but do not know him and don't have access.

The more that I hear from Riddil, the less that I even want to go visit there. It seems to me that yes, there is a big buildup in China but that there is still just a sliver, if any middle class. So there are 1000 super rich men in China and the rest of billion or so of the population is starving and or told to "keep your head down and shut the eff up".

Japan is starting to seem much more interesting.

[Riddil]

Well ZenGum... I do think that the Cultural Revolution had a big effect on changing Chinese culture. There are lots of stories like the one you mentioned from Chinese history. But the difference is that those are told about politicians and people in power. The life and culture of the common man (I suppose) was very divorced from those anecdotes.

Here's how my thought goes...

Up until even only 50 years ago, 99% of the Chinese population lived in villages. The small towns were not much more than a central living point for all the farms that radiated out around the town. Go just a couple miles in any direction and you'd find another radial-farm-town. People would ONLY live in these small towns their whole life, most people were related in some way, everyone knew every detail about everyone else, and everyone worked together to get through life. Marriages were mostly arranged marriages set by elder women who would tour a circuit of these small towns to choose the most appropriate husband-wife combinations. (I'm getting side-tracked here, but this aspect of Chinese history is fascinating... the idea of "love leading to marriage" is a culturally new phenom in China, it's less than 100 years old. Most marriages were all arranged matters. The first time a man would see his wife was as she rode into his village on the "marriage donkey" with her family shouting and singing as they rode in. This is also a reason why it's considered SUPER taboo in China if anyone has more than 1 sex partner their whole life. Sex before marriage, OK as long as it's your future spouse.)

Anyhow, my point is, small community, lots of trust and working together, and a very SIMPLE existence.

This is the reason why Communism was able to take such a strong hold in China. Simple people latched on to Mao's version of communism. What's more, is that it's that same simple, trusting, work-together spirit that pushed China so far into the hole as they implemented more and more desperate and ill-conceived ideas in "The Great Leap Forward", and subsequent policies.

People trusted and trusted and trusted, and they all put their whole effort into actually making it happen. They didn't just sit by while "government happened", they went whole-heartedly into ACTION to enact the new Communist manifesto. (Southern Chinese less so... the Guangdong / Cantone is really a separate culture from Han Chinese). But what eventually happened is that you can only abuse someone's trust for so long until they lose all trust.

And that's where the culture is today. Here's a great example to point out how bad it is: My wife and I went on a guided tour into a rural Chinese temple, and had lunch arranged by the tour group (consisting of only local Chinese and us, about 12 total). We were served several big dishes, two types of soup, and rice. But each person was given only one bowl. We overheard one guy complain to his wife that it'd be impossible to eat properly, you'd have to make a choice, either you eat a rice based lunch, or one of the soups. I noticed several other folks around the table nod in agreement.

The place was totally empty aside from our group, and every single table was fully set with place-settings, which included a single-bowl at each seat. My reaction... I immediately hopped up and started collecting all the bowls off the table next to us, and put them in 3 piles of bowls around our table. I sat down, happy I could help everyone.... my wife and I chuckled at my industrious solution to the problem and started serving our lunch. The entire rest of the group, and I mean the ENTIRE group ignored the bowls, and ate an inconvenient meal using their single bowl, while the unused bowls sat there throughout the meal. The entire meal took place in silence.

My wife's advice? Stop trying to help any Chinese person: you'll just confuse them.

It's amazing, but it's true. When I talk to a few Chinese co-workers about how bad the situation is working in some factories I typically get the response: why should you worry about it? You're a foreigner.

*shakes head*

It's a sad reality. Maybe it has always been like this, but I hope not. I'd like to think it's a temporary thing, induced by the Communist culture of the past, and they have a way out of it.

[ZenGum]

I agree that whatever Chinese culture was like before, the Mao era made it much worse. That sort of prolonged internal terror leaves a society collectively traumatized.
And I guess that it will take a very long time to recover the socio-cultural strength that was smashed in the cultural revolution. Social cohesion is an organic thing that grows slowly and can be ruined quickly. Like a tree that takes thirty years to grow and can be cut down in one day.

On the Japan/China relationship, the Japanese side is one of at least disdain and at times contempt.
Japanese culture greatly values hygiene and politeness. Hence the Japanese view of China is one of extreme dirtiness and rudeness.
The Japanese press focuses on the involvement of Chinese (or any foreigners) in any crime. So Japanese people also perceive Chinese as being more likely to be criminals.
Meanwhile Japan is still denying war crimes like the massacre at Nanking and the forced prostitution (the "comfort women" - a phrase I hate as much as "ethnic cleansing") and glossing over how Japanese forces came to be in China in the first place.
Good news for worried westerners, then, is that there is very little chance of these countries uniting against the west.

[Riddil]

Originally Posted by Clodfobble

Er... please don't have your door kicked in just for our sake...

Eh, it's not so bad for foreigners. First, they won't worry about it much because I'm posting in English, not Chinese. 2nd, it's on a foreign discussion board, (as far as I know) no mainlanders read it. Third, typically they just scare foreigners into silence, or worst case for the political die-hards they just kick them out.

*shrug*

There's some advantages to being a foreigner working in China... as opposed to say... a local born journalist posting through Yahoo.

[TheMercenary]

More good news about China!

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2..._growth_8.html

[classicman]

Thats just great. I don't usually eat seafood I don't catch myself, but Tilapia is big around here and has become a common alternative to flounder.