Wednesday, May 3, 2017

Living in China as a Foreigner - An Honest Review

DISCLAIMER: If you work for the government of China and are reporting this blog as not following China's Communist Party Philosophy. I would like to sincerely apologize. In my country, It is legal to report my subjective opinion and publish it without consequences. Thank you!


I haven't written anything for awhile now and that was mostly due to the fact that I have moved to China in order to become a "Native Speaker/Teacher" which is a very desirable job opening here in china. China is very different from the west and describing the various differences in just a few paragraphs wouldn't do it justice.



Communism is a failed western concept that China tries hard to show in a different light.



I want to start by giving an honest background of how i got to work there in the first place. A long long time ago, my life was boring, i got bored of my girlfriend, my job, my friends and pretty much everything around me. I have always blamed movies and video games for building an innate sense of adventure in me which cause me to never be able to remain in one place. I could try to fight it, but it would only lead to depression, alcoholism and occasional marijuana consumption. So my sense of adventure took over and I got my paperwork ready to join the Middle Kingdom's workforce (What the chinese call China).

They provided me with free accomodation and a decent salary (about 2000$ US salary + free appartement). The reason 2000$ is a decent salary is because China is dirt cheap. We are talking eating at restaurants 5 times a day for less than 10$. Anyways, I arrived and got welcomed to work at this school called "Spotlight International English". Upon arrival, i was greeted by the staff and thats where i started analyzing the essence of China. Im just going to enumerate, because the list would be too long.




In China, everything is shrouded in mystery. Mystical or Non-Sense!



The Good Things:

- If you need some change in your life. China is 95% different. Its like literally joining an Alien race for a few years. After awhile you get used to it.

- An interesting language with symbolic characters. So many dialects and ways to pronounce. It feels like china is a jungle language without any grammar rules. Everyone speaks as if they learned from cavemen. You rarely find someone with good clear mandarin. Your Chinese could be fluent, and you will still have problems understand certain people. Chinese fluency is determine by the individual and his background. It gives a very deep insight into the languages of the world.

- In china, everything is symbolism. It feels as if you are told a story for every character, saying or situation in China. It gives china a very mystical feel that has pretty much disappeared in the civilized world.  Example: If you have a child the year of the rabbit, he will be more clever.

- Chinese people really know how to garden well. Flower and parks are very well groomed and cared for.

-The food is delicious, cheap and accessible everywhere but too oily and unhealthy (I guess thats a Con).

- People stare at you and bother you quite often (they have barely ever seen a foreigner). People will take pictures of you and invite you to their homes. Generally, you will know how "Johnny Depp" feels like in America.

- People are very nice to you and are interested in anything you do.

- The girls are really slim. The beauty standards are a much different. Chinese men prefer girls that are "Nazi-Concentration Camp" slim with literally no humps, which leaves plenty of girls that fill our beauty standards being fairly easy with low self-esteem (not being able to match the beauty standard).

- In china you join a Servant/Slave Hierarchy. Since there are more people than jobs, the average Chinese person is treated as a servant without free will, but as a foreigner you get a somewhat "Celebrity status".

- You can travel around china quite easily.

- China is safe and you will rarely have issues with the law. Nobody will directly deal with you. If you get arrested the cops are going to let you go, because the government encourages law enforcement to treat foreigners well in order to give the country a good international opinion. 
If you get robbed, the cops are going to try extra hard to find the culprit.

- Every province, every city has its own dialect, Cuisine and sometimes culture. China has never really been united like most countries in the west. The government is still struggling to unite the whole nation under one language.

- Old people have the happiest and most active life I have ever seen in the elderly. They exercise in the morning and their sense of community is incredible. I seriously think that older people would have more friends on face book than any young person.

- Big cities are super well developed. You can find archery clubs, dancing clubs and even snooker clubs. It has everything, since there are so many people in china, you are bound to find a small amount of people interested in anything.

- The nightlife is cheap and interesting, but Chinese girls are only flirtatious in bigger more developed cities and 90% of the time its just guys drinking beer and eating BBQ skewers. As for the dance clubs, there is no dancing, its just big shows using foreigners as dancers and loud trance music that leaves little or no room for dancing or anything order than showing off money.

- Chinese people love shows. With every event there is always some kind of show. Dancing, magic, music, singing or comedy.

As a foreigner with foreign currency you live like a king in China. Things are really really really cheap. 


A beer is 50 cents. 
A pack of cigarettes in 2 dollars.
A meal in a restaurant is 3 dollars.
An apartment is around 300 dollars per month.

- The best environment to learn a language since literally nobody speaks English (even after a solid 10 years of English at the public schools). French, Spanish and German are non-existent. The most dominant group of foreigners are "The Russians".

- Nice architecture and a really interesting scenery and a real authentic culture setting with people still riding horses and throwing rice at the groom and bride.





They will produce anything as long as they can keep producing.


The Bad Things:

- The government is manipulating everything. Controlling the news in order to make China look good, and make other countries look bad. They even go as far as to hire millions of workers to post fake comments as to build a nationalistic sense of brotherhood among the Chinese people. Everything you read including comments are fake. Western news is also controlled but it feel genuine in comparison to what you read in china. News basically make fun of the west every time we make a mistake, and promote the little things in China as being bigger.

Example of things you read in China.


Brilliant Chinese Minds have discovered plastic that can withstand 100 degrees Celcius.

Is Barack Obama increasing the american national debt?

Example of things you will never read in China.

The US had already discovered this plastic in the 1970's.

China's economy is at a record low in national growth rate.


- The pollution and the overcrowdedness of mega metropoles are a massive problem. Sometimes the pollution was so bad, they cancelled flights and street visibility was 0 (worst than a Silent Hill Movie). Eventually after years of living in China, Cancer will get the best of you inhalling PM 2.5 and PM10. They compare the pollution in Beijing to smoking a pack of cigarettes a day.

- Some people want to scam you, because Chinese people believe that all foreigners are stinking rich.

- Nobody speaks foreign languages. Only chinese and other related dialects.

- Coffee is super expensive.

- 99% of foreigners in China are teachers. The government refuses to hire foreigners to do anything other than teach. They don't want foreigners to take jobs that would have otherwise gone to the locals.

- Your stomach will literally explode the first few months. Chinese street food has no standards of quality or hygiene. Diarrhea is going to be quite common.

- China's entertainment industry is oriented towards couples and families.

- Anti- Japanese War movies play on TV 24.7. The story usually involves a young chinese villager killing plenty of Japanese with traditional martial arts. Chinese TV is by far one of the most boring I have ever seen.

- Most Chinese people you will encounter or attempt to make friends with have little or not topics to discuss. You will find that speaking to Chinese people pretty much ends at "Family" / "Kids" / "Marriage" and your love or hate for their culture.

- The beer is bad. Watered down Pilsener. Tsingdao being their best beer is tolerable, but Laoshan and its counterparts are literally piss.

- Lots of rich people and a ton of very poor people.

- Some of them want to use you, some of the them want to be used by you. Some of them want to abuse you, some of them want to be abused. (replace some with "advertising firms" and "single girls".

- I think 90% of everything is fake or a copy of something. There is so much fake stuff that you just buy fake stuff and call it real.

- Nobody can fight, and Martial arts are more for foreigners than the locals themselves. Shaolin Temple is basicly a business and has nothing to do with our Childhood kung fu movie memories.

- People spit, smoke, piss and shit everywhere (literally). I saw kids taking huge dumps in the middle of the central city square with their parents encouragement.

- Everyone is pressured to be married and stay traditional. It blind sights people from realizing the truth that there is more than this out there.

- The internet is monitored and banned. VPN is needed to get around online.

- The fact that my blog is probably censored in china for having even mentioned something negative about china.

- People have poor hygiene.

- Rich places are very pretty indeed, but poor places are litteraly towns built of cardboard boxes reminding us of indian slums.

- Chinese people's duality towards foreigners. A sense of admiration and prestige with frustration and subjective nationalistic hate hidden in the back of their minds due to jealousy, frustration and ring finger to middle finger ratio.

- Everything is about saving face. If a boss promises high earning, the earnings don't come, he will pay the difference with his credit card and show them as earnings in order not to "lose face".

- Their inability to be direct in conversation and how they hide in dialogue, mistranslation and cultural details as to "save face".

- Common sense and logic don't apply, everything is tradition or because the boss said so. If problems occur, they will shower you with money in order to correct the wrong (which i guess is good).

-No sense of quality. people will literaly repair your car with duck tape.

- If you do something wrong. As a foreigner its always your fault. Chinese people will gang up on you saying that "its the foreign devil's fault". He doesn't understand us blalblabla...

- The inability of people to hear critic. If you tell them that this is wrong, and sometimes it obviously it. They will be in complete denial using the "You don't understand our culture" argument.
99% of foreigners in China are English teachers.


The Conclusion

In my opinion, china is an interesting country with much to offer, but in the end you must ask yourself "What can I expect from China in the end?".

In China, foreigners will never have any rights, or freedom or any control over their environment. The pollution will slowly kills us and the healthcare system will not provide adequate resources to save us.

China is a place where you live for a few years, earn good money, enjoy the magic of its mystical and ancient culture. Enjoy the "celebrity status" along with the government and its xenophobia.

Earn as much money as you can, learn the language and go back to your country. You could end up staying, and I have met plenty of foreigners who have, but ask yourself, is it worth investing money in China that could be taken away by a communist government?

Unfortunately one thing that China lacks is to offer foreigners peace of mind......