Merry!

Happy New Year

it's screwed up man.

this is what i dont understand. the chinese all want to be different or appear different from each other (gain face advantage) but they haven't got the capacity (mentally) to be able to go out there and distinguish themselves from others.

i recently had a chat with a chinese person and her whole life had been planned out for her. she was to finish her studies, go straight into teaching, find a husband, get a kid and that was the end of it.

22 years old and her life had been planned for her by her mother who lives in the woods and rarely enters city life. a woman who hardly understands that outside of china there is an entire universe for her daughter to explore, yet she wants to stop her daughter from being her own person and have her daughter settle and be married by 24!!!

WTF? china is a nation of contradiction. always be friendly to foreingers by shouting "哈咯" to any foreinger you meet/see on the street, but cheat them (charge them double) if they purchase something from your store!!

they say the chinese are always attacking, defending, moving left and right at the same time. to me this means standing still!! the person is neither going forward nor backward, neither left nor right but thy are seen to be making progress??

who do the chinese measure their progress against? each other? with a nation full of clones, how can you measure any form of progress if nobody is making progress but everyone thinks they are making progress?

then you get the guys and girls out there bold and brave enough to break the mould!! get out there, learn a foreign language or do some crazy sh*t, leave the lives their parents planned for them far behind and follow their own hearts and minds. and the kid gets ostracised and 0 support from a family, who has been slaving away 24/7 of their monotonous lives, for a kid who can do it on their own if you just gave that kid the space, time and opportunity to prove to you that he/she can do it (whatever "it" is) by themselves.

这样是给你们面子的！　是不是？　一个独立，　自由自在的儿女，　谁自己会做你不会做的．谁要跟着他们父母的生活？特别是农名的父母！！

rick_SH wrote:The locals are just angry because all the hottest wealthiest chinese women want to marry foreigners

Funnily enough quite often its the foreigners that get the ugliest trashiest women that no self respecting chinese man would touch with a 10 foot pole.

dfoo wrote:

rick_SH wrote:The locals are just angry because all the hottest wealthiest chinese women want to marry foreigners

Funnily enough quite often its the foreigners that get the ugliest trashiest women that no self respecting chinese man would touch with a 10 foot pole.

Funnily enough, although quite often that is the case, most often it is not. Which means, as a percentage, foreigners here are doing rather well in the 'catch' stakes.

dfoo wrote:

rick_SH wrote:The locals are just angry because all the hottest wealthiest chinese women want to marry foreigners

Funnily enough quite often its the foreigners that get the ugliest trashiest women that no self respecting chinese man would touch with a 10 foot pole.

well from what my ugly, trashy, chinese GF tells me, Chinese men just don't measure up to western men.

Where's the Beef

^ of course she tells you that. What do you expect? To tell you that your weenie is teenie?

you cracky. there's a famous radio personality on teh airwaves who often gets ridiculous calls from some of his listeners.
one day he gets a call from a guy who says his dick is only 8cm long when erect!! Mr Radio (Howard Sterne of China) calls him up and says "you stupid idiot, thats normal size for a mans dick, now get busy and make some babies".

i'm not sure if he was trying to give his man a boost of confidence or if he was being serious or if his dick was also 8cm long when arroused, but it made for funny listening.

^sounds like a hoot! Which radio station is that?

91.8, you also see the guy on tele sometimes. they have a pic of him doing his shows "live" with the callers name, the topic of conversation, time taken etc.

man that guy gives his listeners crap.

dfoo wrote:^ of course she tells you that. What do you expect? To tell you that your weenie is teenie?

No what she tells me is Chinese men are so short and thin, that Chinese girls call them Toothpicks.

cheer up, china is still a developing country. its not the end of the world.

the chinese locals suffer a lot more than you do, on a daily bases, have to learn to 'play smart' as the locals,since u cant really change the behavours, not yet. it is like the art of bargining,first make sure the goods and services are good, then learn the market price, last pretend you are unhappy and walk away, at the end if you get to pay them a cheaper or reasonable price they will respect you a lot more.

its like when i was traveling in israel, for example. the foreigners always complain about how aweful the checkpoints are. But in fact the palestinines have to suffer from it on a daily bases, with greater difficulties, and all of them still try and live a happy life.

(btw I still agree it was an unpleasent experience for you )

Lately I've been catching a lot of grief from the locals. It mystifies me. I've lived in hostile places before, but this one town is much worse than anything I've seen in Shanghai even - it's naked rage.

But I look at it this way. In a short time we made a killing here. Now we're going home. When I leave here I'll probably never give China a second thought. But the two realities of my time here - big money and no interest in China other than the price of labor - are not the realities of the majority of people of the People's Republic of China. And due to the compulsively inward gaze of the Chinese, never will be. That is sad.

I think this is true of any foreigner on the board: we will leave.

Have a heart. And be happy to have been born to a place where that means something.

Yes we are guests. No argument there.

But I also pay 40% Income tax to the Chinese Government, do more to support the Chinese economy in terms of consumer spending than 99% of the Chinese citizens, and drop about USD $50,000 a year on the Air Transport and Hotel Industry for my business travel. My job is to help support and grow a Chinese registered diviion of my MNC....which employs about 5,000 Chinese citizens, and has annual revenues in excess of USD$1 Billion. Profits on which are taxed also of course.

And for this I do get treated at times quite rudely and like I do not belong here.
Which is fine....does not bother me.
And I try to always be unfailingly polite to ALL people no matter what the situation.
I like it here, I enjoy my job here, enjoy working with my Chinese colleaques...and will stay as long as they let me.

At times there seems to be a bit of "LaoWai" go home sentiment even on this board.

We may be guests....but a little consideration for the value we bring in that role would be an enexpected pleasure some days when I have been made to feel like an "unwanted" guest.

(Do not expect that to happen anytime soon though! )

good point.

does china really mean cheap labour? or is the market china going to be real important one day.

i think laowai go home attitude are rare, laowai welcome attitude is quite common.

..and after the new "Deng Xiaopeng" reform... North Korea means even cheaper labor

Get a little cold in the winter

ok, I can put you into my firewall~~~~~~~~

NCD22 wrote:[color=purple]
So my question is (I guess it is a lot of questions, but around the same topic) - When are the Chinese going to stop robbing, cheating and stealing everything that they can get their hands on? When are they going to learn that screwing people for all they can is just inherently wrong? And lastly, when are they going to learn basic ethics (how hard can it be?)???

I see how irritating these experieces can be and I have my empathy for you. But it doesn't give you the right to call chinese robbers and cheaters. Ignorant.

TaiShan wrote:it's screwed up man.

this is what i dont understand. the chinese all want to be different or appear different from each other (gain face advantage) but they haven't got the capacity (mentally) to be able to go out there and distinguish themselves from others.

i recently had a chat with a chinese person and her whole life had been planned out for her. she was to finish her studies, go straight into teaching, find a husband, get a kid and that was the end of it.

22 years old and her life had been planned for her by her mother who lives in the woods and rarely enters city life. a woman who hardly understands that outside of china there is an entire universe for her daughter to explore, yet she wants to stop her daughter from being her own person and have her daughter settle and be married by 24!!!

WTF? china is a nation of contradiction. always be friendly to foreingers by shouting "哈咯" to any foreinger you meet/see on the street, but cheat them (charge them double) if they purchase something from your store!!

they say the chinese are always attacking, defending, moving left and right at the same time. to me this means standing still!! the person is neither going forward nor backward, neither left nor right but thy are seen to be making progress??

who do the chinese measure their progress against? each other? with a nation full of clones, how can you measure any form of progress if nobody is making progress but everyone thinks they are making progress?

then you get the guys and girls out there bold and brave enough to break the mould!! get out there, learn a foreign language or do some crazy sh*t, leave the lives their parents planned for them far behind and follow their own hearts and minds. and the kid gets ostracised and 0 support from a family, who has been slaving away 24/7 of their monotonous lives, for a kid who can do it on their own if you just gave that kid the space, time and opportunity to prove to you that he/she can do it (whatever "it" is) by themselves.

这样是给你们面子的！　是不是？　一个独立，　自由自在的儿女，　谁自己会做你不会做的．谁要跟着他们父母的生活？特别是农名的父母！！

good observation. sad but true.

NCD22 wrote: Well, don't trust anyone to do anything, no matter how easy it may be, and if something is actually important, best to do it yourself because people can sometimes bungle a salad fight if left to their own devices...

That pretty much sums up the mentality of a lot of Chinese people. They don't trust strangers easily and equally don't expect to be trusted in return. As one old saying goes in China: You shall never set out to harm other people but more importantly you shall never lose your caution against other people. The thinking has almost become sort of suvival mechanism for lots of Chinese people over the past thousand years. It will be useful for foreigners who deal with Chinese in business to understand this concept.

Back to the topic, in all seriousness FCUK this country of lairs, thieves and cheaters.

Without the 1 billion slaves here, this country would have been eaten up and spit out a long long time ago.

Seriously, take China, subtract the over-population and what do you have left ? Nothing but a small group of lairs, thieves and cheaters. Doesn't make the picture any better, does it ?

It is beyond me why anyone gives any credit whatsoever to this place. Check your integrity and morals at the door, this place is nothing short of a shithole with a lot of slaves.

I see how irritating these experieces can be and I have my empathy for you. But it doesn't give you the right to call chinese robbers and cheaters. Ignorant.[/quote]

I see the danger of over-generalizing and stereotyping whole groups of people, but where we come from, a person should call a spade a spade. Culturally speaking, this makes us feel more comfortable and secure. If enough people rob and cheat, we are naturally inclined to say that they are robbers and cheaters. For many Westerners, the injustices we observe seem to be cultural phenomena with very real effects upon us. It's not necessarily something we just arbitrarily shout out. We base this opinion on real experiences that occur with a certain amount of perceived frequency; thus, such an assessment couldn't accurately be labeled as ignorant. That is unless you wish to assume an air of ignorance yourself.

It certainly isn't a polite thing for people to say about others, is it? However, many Western people feel quite entitled to speak their minds, especially when they are angry and feel they have been wronged. It doesn't matter where they go, they feel they carry this "right" with them no matter where they go. Call them crazy, but it's how they feel.

You can tell them they don't have a right to say certain things, but you'd be hard-pressed to change a lifetime of social conditioning. I think terse responses to life and people in China will only get worse before they get better unless better understanding and more productive resolution of complaints can be established. Simply telling them to shut up or insulting them by telling them they are ignorant certainly won't solve anything.

There's this Chinese saying that goes something like - Whoever holds the cash calls the shots! Be very sure when making any purchases then you hand over your money. Dun be too urgent to pay...

I would certainly hate the UK to be judged on a small (i hope!) minority of hoodie chavs...

right...and that "fact" is based on the same logic that all Americans have mullets and tramp stamps and breed with their sisters...all the french stink of garlic and cheese and all the germans are nazis

not really helpful is it....

i work with plenty of capable, honest, hardworking Chinese folks

becoming disillusioned with a place doesn't mean everyone in it is a crook

pingu77 wrote:right...and that "fact" is based on the same logic that all Americans have mullets and tramp stamps and breed with their sisters...

I'm pretty sure that IS a fact!