Five Things I Don’t Like About China
I’ve been sitting on this list for a while, trying to pinpoint exactly what it is that’s been bothering me. Yeah, after 16 months of straight China, I’m in serious need of a break. Now before I get bombarded with comments telling me I can go home whenever I want, keep in mind that I’m still here by my own choosing, and there are still things I like about being here, too. But you don’t always get a positive post from me.
1. The attention
No matter how much I try to put myself in their shoes, I still can’t accept the staring and pointing and giggling and obnoxious “Hallooooo!” calls as anything but condescending. People have suggested moving to a bigger city, like Shanghai, to get away from the attention, but then the locals treat you like a tourist or a language opportunity, and you still don’t feel like you’re being given much respect as an individual.
2. The traffic
This is something you just never get used to. It is so unbelievable how drivers have no regard for the well-being of pedestrians. I seriously never feel safe, even when I’m using the crosswalk with the lights in my favor. Drivers (particularly e-bike drivers, who are the worst) carelessly break all the rules and still have the gumption to honk at you for not getting out of their way fast enough. Oh, it gets better. At night, they’ll even flash their brights at you.
3. The crowds
I’m from a small town in rural Utah. I find it hard to adapt to big cities, and China definitely pushes the envelope. It’s tiring and a tad frustrating having to put up with so many people everywhere you go. It’s impossible to squeeze onto the bus after 8:30, and weekends and holidays jam up the trains so much, it’s better to stay home. Unfortunately, people have taken the crowded factor as an excuse to be pushy and inconsiderate.
4. The smoking
60% of Chinese men smoke. 59% of Chinese men don’t care whether or not it bothers you. Smoking is everywhere. It’s part of the culture. Some people are convinced it’s even good for you. So very few places have no-smoking rules, and of those places, very few actually enforce them. The Chinese smoker is a persistent bugger, though, and he’ll just hide in the bathroom and make it smell even worse. Thanks, but I don’t really like dry-heaving and urinating at the same time.
5. The Internet
I didn’t want this list to become too political, but, honest to God, the Internet censorship drives me crazy. As a web developer and overall computer junkie, I’m on the Internet a lot. Some of my most frequently visited sites, however, like Youtube and Facebook and Blogspot, don’t work in China. Plus, Google periodically blocks a random search, making it hard to do something as simple as looking up teaching ideas. Workarounds exist, but I just want normal Internet.
Harry Potter Now Playing… on DVD
Yeah, Harry Potter is big here, too. No, I haven’t gone to the theater yet. What’s the point? It’ll be dubbed in Chinese with Chinese subtitles, and several scenes will be missing. Since there is no rating system in China, movies (particularly foreign movies) get “edited” down to suit the general public. This would explain why, when I saw Quantum of Solace and Night at the Museum 2 in the theater, there were so many abrupt transitions and odd cuts. I’m not sure what’s getting cut, though, because the Chinese blockbuster, Red Cliff, still had quite a bit of violence.
To avoid the trouble, you could always go buy the DVD instead. Those bootleggers are pretty good about getting a copy of a new release on store shelves within a few days of a movie’s premier, regardless which country it played in first. It used to be that movies took a while to come to China, but now I’m seeing the bigger names show up nearly the same time as they do in the US. We even got Dragonball: Evolution a few weeks earlier. Sorry, guys, I should have warned you.
I suspect distributors have started taking the Chinese market more seriously, because they realized if they waited too long to bring a movie over, everyone will have already seen it on DVD. Of course, airing a movie in China just makes piracy easier, but when the DVD and the movie experience come out at the same time (and the movie experience is only a few yuan more), some people are bound to choose the latter. Plus, initial DVD prints suck.
Block Facebook Succeed!
I see ridiculous Chinglish signs so often, I don’t really look for them anymore. Now, I get this greeting every time I log onto my hotel’s Internet service:
But the Internet hasn’t been full of succeed today. Due to recent riots in Xinjiang province (resulting in an unfortunate death toll), the PRC is itching to put a lid on free speech again. Considering every other notable social site has already been blocked, the only thing left to do was axe Facebook. Yep, Facebook’s down. I can no longer stay in touch with people I hardly know. On the plus side, I don’t have to put up with any more “Jeremiah took the quiz What Disney character are you? and the result was Hannah Montana” notices.
Happy Tiananmen Square Day!
At the risk of having my blog pried from my cold, dead fingers, I’m going to draw attention to the day the PRC wants everyone to remember as the day…
nothing happened.
How can I possibly ignore this, though, considering the Chinese government blocked Youtube at the end of March, Blogspot about two weeks ago, and now Flickr and Twitter. Even Hotmail got the axe, although temporarily. It’s back up now, but man oh man, for the time it was down, I was horrified. This is how I’ve been communicating with recruiters! Totally unfair, guys!
Luckily, Gmail has this cool feature where you can import e-mail messages from another address without actually logging into that account. The downside is that I already had Gmail set up to forward all incoming messages to Hotmail. So when I imported my Hotmail inbox, it sent everything back to Hotmail again and created a nice, big mess for me to clean up once the ban was finally lifted.
Blogspot Blocked in China, 2009 Edition
I am not amused by the Chinese government. Blogspot has been blocked in China again (where the word “again” implies that this has happened multiple times in the past) and joins Youtube as one of my most visited sites I no longer have access to. Well… you can use a proxy server to bypass the block, but it’s a hassle, and I don’t feel very comfortable sending passwords through a proxy. I guess I should just digest my filtered Chinese news like a good boy and be happy nobody’s pulled the plug on my own blog yet. I’d better ensure this never happens with some positive chanting:
I love China! I love China! I love China! I love China!
I love China! I love China! I love China! I love China!
I love China! I love China! I love China! I love China!
I love China! I love China! I love China! I love China!
I love China! I love China! I love China! I love China!
I love China! I love China! I love China! I love China!
I love China! I love China! I love China! I love China!
I love China! I love China! I love China! I love China!
I’m not sure if this has anything to do with censorship or if it’s just a mind-boggling coincidence, but sometimes I’ll do a search that shuts down Google for the next several minutes. At any given time on any given day, as soon as I search for “zhenjiang attractions,” Google goes completely blank. Is there something in Zhenjiang I’m not supposed to know about? Oh, right, I should be minding my own business. I love China!
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