10 Things I miss or do NOT miss about China
By Shakil Khan
It’s 7.40am in London and I thought I’d do a post before heading out for the day, so here goes.
10 Things I miss about China:
- 90 minute massages at Dragon Fly for around £10
- Real Chinese Food
- Free WiFi in Coffee Shops
- Maid to tidy up after me
- Security Guards at the entrance to my apartment complex
- Happy Smiling Faces
- $2 a pack Marlboro Lights
- Taxis everywhere (most of the time)
- 24 hour spas/bathhouses (jacuzzis/Hot tubs etc)
- My Chinese Lessons
10 Things I do NOT miss about China
As a follow up to 10 Things I miss about China, here is my list of 10 things that I do NOT miss about being away.
- People Spitting and Picking their Nose in Public
- Bad Quality Western Food
- Lunatic Taxi Drivers
- Dvd, Rolex and Massagee hustlers
- Pushing and Shoving for taxis, in shops etc
- Chinese Customer Service
- Menus (in Chinese only)
- The Laowai stare as if I am from another planet
- Slow speed of the WWW
- Chinese Timekeeping and Punctuality
To be honest it was so much easier doing the list about what I miss and there were many more I could add, whereas the list above had me struggling for a bit.
Shakil Khan, http://www.chinawhite.net/
November 7th, 2007 at 6:14 pm
I totally agree with your list. However, I’d like to embellish on the negative ones a minute:
- People spitting. For the reader who’s not been to China, their take on spitting is hocking up a big green one as loudly as possible… and this is whether you are young or old, male or female. Yuck.
- Pushing and shoving, especially in crowds. Why can’t they learn to queue? Getting a train ticket at rush hour is something between a rugby scrum and a mosh pit.
- Staring. A casual interest in tourists is to be expected, but not a crowd of 15 guys all standing still and staring at my girlfriend. She got very annoyed by the end of the trip.
- Western medicine. It’s just better, no matter what the hippies might say.
- Train stations. Miserable experience.
- Lack of diapers. Little children have crotch-less garments to get round this issue.
- Alcohol (especially spirits). The chinese take on vodka is utterly evil. It’s a kind of mix of paint stripper, methylated spirits, petrol and body odor.
Otherwise, a really interesting place.
Keep up the great posts.
Jof
(found this via Blog Friends by the way)
November 9th, 2007 at 4:04 pm
These lists are interesting. My wife and I did a year teaching at Fudan U. - MBA students. We rode our bikes everywhere averaging about 30 miles everyday…so we covered the city many many times over.
The “miss” list almost makes us sad…. We basically never ate out so we miss the markets and being able to get around so easily. The super friendly people. etc.
On the negative lists… what can I say? None of that stuff really made an impression on us. The negatives to us were the air quality and the dubious nature of fish we wanted to buy and cook (we did not). I guess we were stared at as the only people on bikes using helmets and being (me) so tall, and sure there was pushing and spitting but they do not stand out for us. The very few times we ate out I took a long list of translated items and pointed to things we wanted and they would “may-yo” or “yo” the item and that would do it.
Everyday we wish for at least a few minutes that we were there again.
November 9th, 2007 at 7:29 pm
It is nostalgic going through your “things I miss” list. Might I comment on the “Things I don’t miss”. Customer service- Why can’t frontline people speak a little english. One would have thought that for a country receiving global attention speaking a 2nd language would be advocated. Did you also notice that they choose when to understand and when not to understand you. We were at the airport to catch a plane home and were told our seats had been cancelled cos we did not re-confirm it. We told them it was a return ticket and besides if re-confirmation was the rule, how come it was not written on the ticket? “No speak English” was all the manager could say and zapped! My advice to all tourist/Visitors ” PLEASE ALWAYS RE-CONFIRM YOUR BOOKINGS WITH YOUR THE AIR LINE 72hours before departure.
May 8th, 2008 at 8:48 am
Things I Don’t Miss:
* Spitting (happens even INDOORS)
* Shoving/No concept of a single-file line
* EXTREME staring (Once had a “staring contest”
with someone 3 feet from my face. Seems to be
the only way they get the hint)
* Strangers sticking their faces into my shopping
basket to see what I was buying
* No diapers for babies
* Air pollution (and I’m from LA!)
* No train reservations allowed more than 3 days
in advance
* Wimpy Chinese pop songs (rock is fairly scarce)
* Deodorant virtually non-existant in the markets
after summer
* Rats in restaurant kitchens
* Dog meat
* Squat toilets and WESTERN toilets (because the
sewage system in our town couldn’t handle
toilet paper, the foreign teachers were
supposed to just throw it away in the trash.
Needless to say, that was one rule the foreign
teachers didn’t follow too well)
Things I Miss:
* Cheap hotpot restaurants
* Cheap bootleg DVDs
* Cheap massages
* Historical sites
* Friendly people
For me, it is much easier to list the things I didn’t like about China, and YET, I would still go back to visit every year in a heartbeat (I’ve already been back once). That’s mainly because of the people. I’ve had college students I met 2 hours ago buy me dinner, someone on the street I met 2 minutes ago invite me to her birthday party. Even if I did feel I was being a little “used” to help them practice English, their kindness and generosity were always sincere. I have many friends in China I still chat with today.
May 9th, 2008 at 5:19 pm
This is a list a got from a friend , also very recognizable if you live for several years in this mad City Shanghai..have fun with it
You know you have been in China too long when…
• …a June 2001 Great Wall Cabernet (mixed with Sprite) is your vintage of choice
• …you get your haircut on the sidewalk
• …you walk backwards in the park listening to a transistor radio
• …the China Daily is your source for hard hitting, fast breaking, investigative journalism
• …badminton and ping pong are your main forms of exercise
• …all white people look the same to you
• …open spaces make you nervous
• …you find state-employed retail staff helpful,
knowledgeable and friendly
• …people with bright white teeth look frightening to you
• …you no longer need tissues to blow your nose
• …you throw your used toilet paper in the basket next to the toilet
• …you draw characters on your hand to make yourself understood
• …you ask people in what animal year they were born
• …you think you speak Chinese fluently
• …squatting becomes your favourite position, anytime,
anywhere
• …you think a 30 year old woman carrying a Hello Kitty
lunch box is cute
• …you can’t put a proper sentence together in your native
language
• …a sexual pervert is a man who prefers women to money
• …you throw rubbish from your 18th-floor window
• …you aren’t aware that you’re supposed to pay for software
• …you are not surprised to see 85-year old ladies pushing tons of garbage up the streets of the financial district.
• …you use the word “Ah-yyooo” every few sentences to convey surprise, pleasure, pain or anger
• …you believe you are really tall when you are only 5′8″
• …you watch an American movie on HBO, with Chinese subtitles and try to read them
• …you eat a kebab on the street, call it “Cat on a stick” and keep eating
• …you see a stray cat and think “Hmmm… Kebab!”
• …you think that a $7 shirt is a rip-off
• …when in the office on-line chatting takes up more of your time than working
• …you have no reservations about spitting sun flower seeds on the restaurant floor
• …you have no reservation about spitting everything else on the table
• …when you’re fine with your Chinese girlfriend cleaning your nose and ears in public
• …you have a pet bird… which you walk
• …you stop at the top or bottom of an escalator to plan your day
• …you try to get on the lift before anyone gets off
• …you’re no longer surprised when three men with a ladder show up to change a light bulb
• …you honk your horn at people because they are in your way as you scooter down the sidewalk
• …the idea of seeing how this place will look at Expo 2010 and the Olympics actually appeals to you
• …you have a pinky fingernail an inch long
• …you burp in any situation and don’t care
• …when you jump the queue because the foreign idiot left an inch between himself and the person in front
• …you eat family style at any restaurant
• …you prefer using chopsticks
• …you go to the local shop in pyjamas
• …pollution,… what pollution?
• …you see three people on a motorcycle and figure there’s room for two more
• …there are more things strapped to your bicycle than you ever put in a car
• …you wear out your vehicle’s horn before its brakes
• …in the summer you roll the legs of your pants up to your knees and your shirt up to your nipples
• …you always wear a suit, no matter whether your cleaning the streets or going to a wedding
• …you’re not surprised that your locally made leather shoes grow mushrooms during the wet season
• …you make the appropriate sign when saying a number
• …other foreigners give you a funny look when you tell them how long you’ve been here
•you are the last of your first group of friends still in China
•the only foreigners who have been here longer than you are buried here
May 9th, 2008 at 10:51 pm
These things are bad, but it’s a static picture. Think about China in a dynamic view.
The moving to modern China began only 3 dedicates ago. Before that I would say the education system is totally ideologically oriented. People were caring more about filling stomach, caring less about how to interacting people with grace manners.
China has very high population density especially in Shanghai. A lot people you see on the street are new immigrants from rural area, typically with very little education, and they are not aware of social etiquettes. Probably you don’t know that the usage of water toilet is quite a new things in rural area in China. for remote and less developed area, there is no such things. Students in poor family even don’t have enough pen and paper for school. Not to mention white and soft tissues to below your nose.
But time will change everything.