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| Meeting a local near Meili Mountain |
I spent roughly eight months in the country, six months working in Shanghai, and two months travelling in other cities. And I must say, China was difficult for me- probably the most difficult country I’ve traveled in so far. So I’m writing this blog to explain life in China. The good. The bad. And The Unbelievable.
THE GOOD
1. China is safe.
There is very little violent crime, and the only violent acts I ever personally saw were (a) parents hitting kids- sad, I know, and (b) police roughing up some people they were arresting. There are the rare muggings- two people I know were robbed, one rather violently. But that is very unlikely, and can happen anywhere in the world. I never once felt unsafe while walking alone at night. (This may have something to do with me being a man- I don’t know how a woman would feel in this circumstance.)
2. China is cheap.
I had eye surgery in Shanghai, with four doctors working on me, in a very professional surgical room, and I only paid $75.I routinely paid $1 - $3 for most of my meals. I paid $160 a month for my tiny Shanghai apartment. A comfortable sleeper train that crosses the country will cost about $100. The same trip will cost almost half that if you’re willing to forego the bed and travel in a hard seat like this:
3. Chinese people are very kind.
I was BLOWN AWAY by the level of kindness I received in China. No other country has been so accommodating. So many strangers gave me free meals, free drinks, or just engaged in pleasant conversation with me. Once I was running late for a job interview in Shanghai, and couldn’t understand the directions I’d been given. I approached this random, young guy in a suit. He looked up the directions on his phone, found the place, got a cab for me, then paid for my cab fare! |
| Two girls who bought me lunch near Meili Mountain |
Another time, also while in Shanghai, I found myself homeless. My landlord kicked me out of my place with 6 day’s notice. (not all Chinese people are nice). The two women who ran the school I worked at let me live at the school, in a back room, for five weeks. For free. They gave me free food too! I cannot find words to explain my gratitude to Aiqin and Lisa. They are truly wonderful people, and they helped me when I really needed it.
4. China is beautiful.
China is the most beautiful Asian country that I've been to. Its national parks, its villages, its countryside- this is the stuff of fairy tales. My two favorite provinces to visit were Yunnan and Guilin, both in the south. Yunnan has the name, “land of eternal spring,” for its great weather all year round. It boasts amazing places like…Tiger Leaping Gorge:
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| The very end of our two day hiking trip in Tiger Leaping Gorge |
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| At the bottom of Tiger Leaping Gorge. I saw the gorge, but not the tiger... |
Meili Mountain:
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| The holiest temple site in China, people make pilgrimages to this temple from far away, and circle the temple, spinning these prayer wheels. |
Dali:
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| Dali is famous for this huge lake. You can rent an electric scooter and ride around it. You may have to stop once or twice to charge the battery at a restaurant. |
Duoyishu,
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| Duoyishu has rice terraces that are 2,000 years old. The place has almost no tourists, and when there you know that you're really in China. There a handful of villages there, and nothing else. No ATM's, convenience stores, or anything else. I had to hitch hike to get around the area. |
... and so much more that I didn’t get around to seeing. In Guilin, I really enjoyed a small town called Xing Ping, which was not touristy at all, and had stunning natural wonders. I did have some problems with the a**hole river police, and a crappy ferry boat driver who wanted foreigners to pay more than locals. This is Xing Ping:
5. China has great infrastructure.
The roads are nice, the winding mountain passes feel safe, and there are street lights everywhere. Riding on a bus through mountainous countryside genuinely feels safe, unlike in so many other countries where the roads are crumbling.THE BAD
1. Don't say that!
China does not have free speech, and it has
these incredibly vague offenses such as ‘engaging in secessionist activities.’
This can cover anything from inciting a riot, to simply saying, “Hey, I really think Tibet should have more independence.”
Because these offenses are so
poorly defined, police can arrest a person for pretty much whatever they want, and just file it under 'endangering the State.'
During the 1990’s a kind of exercise and meditation, with a spiritual focus swept the nation. It was called Falun Dafa. The state had banned these exercises as they were immensely popular, and brought people together, across different cultures and backgrounds. The state feared it might unite the people and cause an uprising. Many people caught practicing Falun Dafa were arrested,
tortured, and some 3,000 murdered by the state.
People in
China, and especially the minorities in the West, really have to watch what
they say. There are still forced labor camps in China, and saying the wrong thing to the wrong person could land a person in one. As I got to know some Chinese people better, and they grew to trust
me, they opened up and talked more honestly about their feelings toward China
and the government. But they were always aware of the danger of speaking candidly.
2. What social media?
Many websites are banned in China. These include: pornography websites (not that I look at that), Youtube, facebook, dropbox, Line (a texting App I was using), Twitter, Google and all google owned products. This includes the Google app store, (so that Android users CANNOT download apps) Google maps, Google translate, this blog that you’re reading. I was forced to use the Chinese equivalent of all these things, such as Baidu (China’s version of Google), which is heavily censored, slow, and blocks access to most foreign websites. Yahoo.com and Bing.com work, but most websites they link to are blocked.3. China is dirty.
Many Chinese people (mostly the older ones) have several habits that foreigners find repulsive. The government is trying hard to curb these habits, but it’s a slow process. Here are some of the gross things I’ve seen:-They (mostly men and older women) spit. They loudly gather phlegm before letting their saliva loose wherever they please, and they do spit EVERYWHERE. In restaurants, crowded trains, hotel lobbies. You can hear them gathering phlegm from twenty meters away, and it is nauseating.
-Little kids pee and poop in public. Babies rarely wear diapers in China, as the custom is to simply cut a hole in their pants, and let them pee on the street. I have, to my astonishment, watched kids pee in restaurants or crowded trains, and watched countless people walk through the urine. I saw what was probably a ten year old boy, take a rather large poop in the middle of a crowded sidewalk in the heart of Shanghai’s financial district. This habit is slowly disappearing, but not fast enough.
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| A hillside covered in garbage. |
4. Chinese people can be very rude.
During China’s Cultural Revolution, one of the things to be killed (aside from millions of people) was politeness. Seriously. Saying "thank you" too often, or being too gentle, could get your family labeled as a “rightist conspirator,” or a “bourgeois intellectual,” and subjected to beatings and harassment. It’s interesting that Taiwan, which is a sort of time capsule of Chinese culture before the Cultural Revolution, has incredibly high levels of politeness.Anyway, here are some of the most frustrating things I dealt with:
-People will cut in line, ALL THE TIME! They cut in line at bathrooms, or to board a subway. They (mostly the older people) will go to a line of fifty people waiting to buy a bus ticket, and just walk right up to the front as if no one else was there. I can’t tell you how infuriating this is! (I’m told this is also due to the Cultural Revolution. During the famine and ‘Great Leap Forward,’ roughly 30 million people died. There wasn’t enough food, and those who were too polite to cut in line, risked starving to death.)
-People are horrible when it comes to subway etiquette. The train arrives and the people all crowd on at once, shoving and pushing to get a seat. To exit a train requires struggling against a river of human beings. And if you really want a seat on a train, you have to face the gauntlet, and become one of those shoving, pushing, rude people. When I visited Taiwan, I found I was so used to China that I boarded the train, fighting for a seat, pushing past people. But the Taiwanese stood in perfect lines, and gawked at me as they all waited patiently for people exiting the train. (In Taipei, Taiwai, the train stops, people get off, and the new passengers wait for a special sound that tells them it’s ok to board the train. It’s very polite.)
-There’s no such thing as a 'no smoking area.' Men (Chinese women rarely smoke) will smoke on long distance trains, where there are no windows to open and let out smoke. You’ll be waiting in line at a restaurant or a cell phone store, and the guy in front of you will be puffing away. People in my dorm room at hostels smoked in the room. Over 60% of Chinese men smoke, and an estimated one million of them will die each year as a result. But 60% of all men, with a total population of 1.4 billion people, means that you will encounter A LOT of smokers, in a lot of busses, trains, and restaurants.
-Chinese people (mostly the older generation) tend to be loud, and have no concept of noise pollution. Imagine sitting in an empty restaurant, talking quietly with your friend. A Chinese man walks in, orders food, sits down to eat, and then gets a phone call. He answers his phone, yelling into it, as though speaking to a person across a crowded stadium. He maintains this level of volume for the entire conversation. Now imagine sitting on a crowded train; it’s 3 am and most people are sleeping. The old man, six rows behind you, begins watching a movie on a portable TV- some war movie with guns and explosions- at full volume. You wait until 4 am before you finally walk back and ask him to shut it off. (This actually happened to me on my way to Shangri-la.) Now imagine it’s 6 am and you’re sleeping in a dorm room with several other people. One guy wakes up and begins watching a TV show on his phone- at the maximum volume, even though everyone else is sleeping! I looked to the guy and yelled, “Oye!” and gave him a look like, ‘what the **** is wrong with you?!’ He turned the volume down to almost nothing, and seemed genuinely surprised that I was upset. Like I was the one acting inappropriately.
THE UNBELIEVABLE
China has a lot of good and bad to it, but some things are just absurd.
1. Are you famous?
People here LOVE to take pictures with foreigners. I got a lot of pictures taken of me in China, and when they approach you in groups, and the girls get all giggly and excited and nervous, it really makes you feel like you’re a famous actor or musician. I once had a mother and daughter come RUNNING up to me and my friend, brimming with excitement, as though they’d just gotten the last ticket to an Elton John concert. (Sorry, I don’t know any modern singers) But they were so excited to get a picture with me, and I could see in their faces that it really meant something to them.While in Kunming I was staying at the same hostel as a bunch of college kids. We went out together and I honestly believe they, and other people nearby, must have taken a hundred pictures of me over the course of the day.
2. Hail to a mass murderer.
China’s current government has the position that it inherited control of the country from Mao Tse Tung, so in order to legitimize their own control over the country, they must legitimize his. But it’s REALLY uncomfortable to see Mao’s face everywhere- on statues, on all the money, in many restaurants. I mean, more Chinese people died under Mao’s rule, than during all of WWII. Imagine visiting Germany and seeing Hitler’s smiling, paternal face on all of the money, and on almost every street. It would be gut-wrenching.Thirty million people died from ‘The Great Leap Forward,’ alone. This number does not include the civil war with the KMD, or the incredibly violent ‘Cultural Revolution.’
(Sidenote: I do realize the hypocrisy of this paragraph as Andrew Jackson, architect of the ‘Trail of Tears,’ and mass murderer of Native Americans, is on our own twenty dollar bill.)
3. China is intense.
While I was in Shanghai, China set a world record for fastest sky scraper completion. 19 days. That’s 19 days to complete a 57 story, 200 meter tall sky scraper. (Don’t hurt your brain trying to understand the physics: they built the parts in a factory beforehand, then pieced them together like Legos.)From 2011 to 2013, the Chinese used up as much cement as the US did during the entire 20th century. A ridiculous feat.
China tries to not only be the best at things, but to be the best by a landslide. Sometimes this patriotic zeal can get annoying.
While in the city of Wuhan I asked a local resident if he liked living in his city. He said, yes he did like living in the city, because the city had been so pivotal during the fight against Japan in the second world war, and his grandfather, who was born in the city, had fought so valiantly against the Americans in the Korean war.
“Ok, calm down, dude…”
This type of robotic, propaganda machine of a person was rare in China, but did pop up every now and then, and really seemed to embody China’s ‘We’re the best there is,’ mentality. Most Chinese people were really down to Earth and relaxed, but every once in a while you encounter the propaganda machines.
Sum it all up:
China was really hard for me. At times I loved it, at other times I hated it. I loved the people, and the food, and the natural wonders. I hated the annoying, rude cultural norms. I hated the feeling that the police were always watching me, and the fact that people always got nervous and frightened when talking about politics. I don't blame them.
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