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A lot of Chinese spit in the street, drop chewed bones and unwanted food on the floor of restaurants, are chronic smokers and litterers. City rivers are frequently disgusting with all the rubbish floating in them, and the public toilets are like nowhere I've seen in the world. It's hard to feel hygienic sometimes. ************************************** That said, the Chinese have their own system of hygiene, and they consider many of the things we Westerners do to be disgusting. Many people eat in KFC or McDonald’s with a plastic glove over their hand – touching your hand to your mouth while eating, or touching your food with your fingers, is thought unsanitary by many. Chinese believe Western style toilets are unclean (everyone shares that same seat) and so actually prefer the squat style toilet. Stay with a family and you may be encouraged / forced to wash your feet in scalding hot water before getting into bed every night. *************************************** If you come to China expecting a life full of tea ceremonies, traditional music, theatre - you may be disappointed. China often feels like a crude place - full of the same repeated pop songs, shopping, computer games and eating. Chinese people revere their history - yet the country is tearing apart anything old in order to make space for the new. It can be frustrating, to ask Chinese friends about Chinese poets, and always hear vague enthusiasm about Tang dynasty poetry. Are there any modern Chinese poets, I asked? My friends shrugged: Maybe. *************************************** I imagine Beijing would certainly be more of an artist hub, but in general, China feels like a country that has lost a lot of its past, but where there isn't a lot of modern cultural creativity to take its place. *************************************** But, while artistic or classical culture might be not so strong, this is an immensely diverse country, especially here in the south west. One statistic is that 93% of the population is the majority "Han Chinese", but the remaining 7% of 1.3 billion is still an awful lot of people. Non Chinese races in China: Tibetans, living all over the most western provinces as well as in Tibet itself – more than one old traveller claims that western Sichuan province has the most “untouched” Tibetan culture of anywhere in the world. Muslims, the Hui here in Yunnan and the Uighurs in Xinjiang; the minority peoples of the south west - Dai, Yi, Naxi, Mosuo, Bai, Maio... Those tourist hill treks you did in Thailand, many of the same peoples live here, unhassled by crowds. It is an enormous country, and you should have no hope of seeing everything. Beijing and Xian's ancient history, booming Shanghai, mountains and deserts in the far west, ex colonial Hong Kong and Macao in the southeast. *************************************** Parts of Chinese life are very hard to adjust to. It is a place that is just different to the West, both in terms of traditional culture and how life has been so hard here for a long time. Something I think stuns most visitors is how rude Chinese people can be – staring at you, ignoring you if you ask for help (or just grunting “no” or “meiyou”), pushing past you in queues as if you don’t exist. Some Chinese people act like: if I don’t know you, I have no obligation to you at all. Trust between strangers seems very low – Chinese friends were shocked when I said my parents leave spare front door keys with the neighbours. It is a tough
society. Bargaining might sound fun for antiques, but bargaining for the
simplest, daily things (like bottles of water) becomes tiresome. People,
particularly in cheap restaurants, will try and rip you off, saying extraordinary
prices sometimes, and they don’t care if you realise and start shouting.
Nothing you can say will upset them, they will wait for you to pay and
then forget about you. I watch Chinese people just shut down when a situation
gets unpleasant – customers are shouting at a waitress because their meal
hasn’t arrived, she can’t answer back, can’t hassle the kitchen, so her
face just goes grim and she endures everything she has to. A Chinese person
once told me an old proverb, “Bully the weak, fear the strong” – and then
remarked, “This is everyone in China”.
But equally, Chinese people can be incredibly generous and hospitable (yes, there are few dull days in this country). People will see you and offer/demand to buy you drinks, I’ve had strangers come over and casually pay for my meal, if you tell a Chinese person that you’ve got nowhere to go for an upcoming festival, you may well get invited to stay with their family. Giving and paying for things (and what is expected in return) is a very complex part of Chinese culture, and it can sometimes get too oppressive, but overall it’s something I remember with great fondness. I really feel that living in China can teach you how to be generous. And once Chinese people know you and like you, they can become amazingly kind friends. Once I called my language exchange partner to cancel our appointment, as an Israeli friend of mine was in hospital and I was by her side trying to communicate with the doctors. A few minutes later my exchange partner called back: “I’m coming to the hospital, to translate”. She spent the next two hours sitting with us and arguing with the hospital staff, helping a person she’d never met. ******************************************** It’s easy to complain about being a foreigner in China. Visas can be hard to renew; the sense of superiority some Chinese have; children occasionally crying when they see you; strangers calling you “laowai” (foreigner) or laughing about you the second you’ve walked past. But these should not obscure that as a foreigner, you get a huge amount of special treatment – you are a VIP. Chinese friends say: If you ask the man sitting next to you on the bus not to smoke, he may well, just because foreigners seem special. I’ve had the experience of a junior doctor walking me over to the hospital specialist, taking me to the front of a huge queue of locals. Business men want to take you to tea houses for chats, everyone seems to want to know how much money you made back home, if you like China / like Chinese food / are aware China has a five thousand year history / think Chinese women are beautiful. English speaking foreigners can get teaching jobs everywhere in the country with no qualifications, and earn enough to live in serious comfort. ********************************************** Prices are very low, especially in the western provinces. I paid about 600 RMB (US$72) in monthly rent and bills for a room in a seriously nice apartment (I shared with two others – the whole three bedroom, two bathroom place would have cost about 1900 RMB a month, and there are many far cheaper options in a city like Kunming). A freshly cooked plate of food in a cheap restaurant might be 3 or 4 RMB (50 cents), a big bottle of local beer around 2.5 RMB. *********************************************** This is not a free country. Many parts of the internet are banned (the list includes this site, all blogspot blogs, the BBC). More importantly, the media and education system are controlled, and Chinese are subjected to government propaganda from birth. Almost everyone I met in China expressed near identical political opinions – always pro-government and its policies. “I hate the Japanese”; “Taiwan is part of China”; “Tibet is part of China”. Uneducated Chinese talked proudly about the coming war with Japan, educated Chinese talked about the coming invasion of Taiwan. This is not a country hungering for democracy, they are not waiting for the West to come and save them. In fact, listening to many people talk, Chinese people see themselves as free. People compare China today to China of the Cultural Revolution, or to North Korea. One of my students, when I was discussing how, compared to the Chinese, Thai people frequently don’t like to argue or have confrontations, she suggested, “Well, the Thai people live in a monarchy - they aren’t free to say what they think like we are”. Possibly everyone I spoke to was worried about being reported, and kept their rebellious hopes silent – that wasn’t the impression I got. ************************************************ I find, to bring this collection of thoughts to an end, China a constantly fascinating place. There’s this intensity in the air, from the huge pace of change, from the hardness of life. China is rushing around, rebuilding itself, destroying itself, getting rich or staying desperately poor. No one seems to know what is coming, the new middle class seems to have no idea what to spend their wealth on, people will tell you how great China is in one sentence, and say how everyone wants to be a Westerner in the next. It is an empire with, like they tell you, 5000 years of history, yet the whole country looks like a construction site - come back to a place a year later and it looks completely different. Happy to answer any other questions you have. Daniel Wallace To contact Daniel Click Here The following are Daniel's previous articles for the magazine:
My online diary
of living in China: www.suitcasing.com
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