7 Things I've Learned Since Moving to China
1. There’s a Job for Everything
There are approximately 1.4 billion(ish) people now living in China, or to put that into perspective, about the same as the USA, Indonesia, Pakistan, Brazil, Nigeria, Bangladesh and Russia combined. The joint population of no.3-9 of the world’s most populous countries. So, everyone needs a job and it’s no easy feat trying to employ upwards of a billion people. China’s solution is to create a job for everything, anything, and a lot of the time, nothing. We’ve eaten in restaurants that are wallpapered with staff, having lobbies built entirely out of women. You ask where something is in a supermarket and you suddenly feel like you’ve started a small social movement as your newly acquired personal entourage escort you to the soy sauce. The last hairdressers I visited had more staff than I had hairs to cut and I can’t help but feel awkward when clothes shopping under the watchful eye of four glaring personal assistants as they haunt you around the rails.
We are often exposed to the cultural differences in China, some you instantly adjust to, but others you just can’t comprehend. We first experienced the work place warm ups when strolling down the street and a line of flamboyant hairdressers marched out of an innocuous salon, formed into perfect military ranks and began a synchronised training regime that most armed forces would be proud of. As we were in fear that we were about to go to war with Edward Scissor Hands and his well-groomed rank, we didn’t stay to watch. Luckily, it’s quite a regular event. You often see employees in strict lines or parading the streets performing their morning battle cries, perfectly orchestrated by an autocratic manager. The aggressive routine is supposed to motivate and awaken employees but I’m not sure how motivated I’d feel being screamed at before dawn. I think I’ll stick to my morning cup of caffeine.
3. The Toilets are a Hole
It is no secret that the Asian style toilet isn’t a pleasant object. The squat, or in plain English, hole in the ground, is as problematic as trying to befriend an angry wasp. Throughout all of Southeast Asia I have managed to avoid squat toilets, the rest of the continent has seen the light and discovered the luxury of the simple porcelain bowl. China, on the other hand, has not. In the luxury of my own home I have been allowed the classic white bowl that you all take for granted, but that’s where the luxury ends. And this is where I learnt that I am completely and utterly unable to use the dreaded squat hole. It’s not a dignifying way to go anyway, but combine that with a flailing uncoordinated foreigner who is trying to re-enact leg day in the gym, all whilst paying a visit, and you’ve the humiliating affair I regularly have to suffer. To exacerbate this already embarrassing event, I am unable to wear clothes throughout the whole show. For some unknown reason the universe conspires against me and forces whatever attire I am wearing to gravitate towards all of the fermenting lavatory fluids, meaning I have to get naked or else spend the day smelling like an old peoples home. I don’t know why I’m so incapable, I just am. So next time you’re pleasantly relaxing on your white throne, just think of me floundering naked over the festering hole of humiliation.
As Chinese names can be difficult to pronounce for westerners a lot of people in China choose an alternative English name, sometimes with hilarious results. There are various sites in China that recommend English names as people have a habit of choosing inappropriate labels, such as words with meanings they like, their favourite characters, or directly translating their Chinese name; not thinking about the cultural difference or how they sound in English. We’ve taught a Horse, Pussy, Smile, Zombie, Cherry, Kitty, Candy, Spiderman, Monkey, Nana, Ruby (a boy), Tiger; the list goes on. Often choosing your favourite cartoon character is a sure fire way to fail. As is allowing a 5 year old to name themselves when Hello Kitty is plastered all over their rucksack and lunch box. Sometimes when I recite the class names I need to look around to check I’m still in a classroom full of children and not rehabilitating inner city strippers and cartoon characters. It is, however, a great source of entertainment on a slow day.
Being from the UK we are stereotyped as the prude and polite members of society, obsessed by dignifying etiquette and having a love for queueing. China has a different set of rules and formalities, which can be . . . difficult to understand at the beginning. Firstly, the spitting is relentless. It’s like a plague. You see petite women delicately tottering past before thunderously hocking up phlegm to spray around the streets. Porous old ladies loudly leak fluid and gas into the atmosphere as if they’re slowly deflating and furious that you aren’t aware. It’s not just the elderly either, the children have a socially acceptable habit of pooing everywhere. We were in the supermarket, leisurely buying our week’s food, when a mother and large child approached a thimble sized bin to potty-train in. Holding her folded child bum down, she casually shook him off like a wet umbrella once he’d soiled my desire to continue grocery shopping. Next comes the shoving. People become so overwhelmed by the yearning to board public transport that they will go to war with the masses of people departing trains instead of waiting for the 10 seconds it takes for them to get off. This impatience also affects society’s ability to queue. People will simply walk to the front of a 20 deep queue in a flagrant defiance of order. All this would be seen as reckless disobedience towards social harmony in the UK, but there’s a complete acceptance to these minor acts of chaos in an otherwise very compliant society.
There’s a saying that the Chinese, especially from the South, eat anything with wings except a plane and anything with legs except a chair. Whilst we’ve been in Asia we have been exposed to a lot of exotic meats, like dog meat in Vietnam, tarantula’s in Cambodia, and grilled scorpion in Thailand; to name a few. Whilst Chinese food is one of my favourite cuisines, their relationship with meat is like a lonely woman’s relationship with chocolate. As China was a poor agricultural society for so long, a waste not, want not culture blossomed. A highly efficient and resourceful way of living, with gizzards, innards, feet and brains being fried, preserved, boiled and baked, before the bones and marrow made into soup. Nonetheless, I just can’t help but feel nauseous when someone picks their teeth with a gnawed chicken foot, offers to bbq a live scorpion for me or presents a pile of sloppy intestines at the table. Pickiness with meat is a rarity, and it’s probably better than in the West were we mash our cut offs into oblivion and call them hot-dogs or chicken nuggets, but when forced to try congealed blocks of pig blood that taste like a violent nose bleed, I’ll take the nuggets any day. Although there are a range of confusing edibles, a lot of the food here has been incredible. Sometimes the best way approach an unknown meal is to take the approach of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’.
7. No Google, No Facebook, No Instagram, No Life.
Like the other 80% of smart phone owners in the world, I own an Android. Google's love child that has inadvertently taken over the world. Which is great, until you arrive in a Google-less society. The great fire wall, as it’s known, removed Google, amongst countless other things, from the world wide web in 2012. Life without Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Instagram and a free flow of news is difficult and frustrating but manageable. Google, however, has its roots so deeply engrained into my life that without it I was catapulted back to an archaic era, making even the most unassuming task a laborious chore. Ask yourself, how many times a day do you use it, even unassumingly? I stopped receiving emails, the maps on my phone didn’t work, translate was obsolete, and the consistently reliable search engine switched off. Yes, an awakening as to how dependable I am on the world’s favourite search engine, but Google does for me what a globe, city map, yellow pages, world encyclopaedia, dictionary, thesaurus, mail box, travel agent, translator, tour guide, (the list is endless), would do for everybody else pre-1990. With a tight financial budget and a 12kg rucksack I’m not about to start throwing away the sun cream for a 32 book set of the Britannica encyclopaedia.
That’s when it happened; the unthinkable, the absurd, the obscene. I was forced to use Bing. For anyone who has had the misfortune of using Bing before, I understand. It’s that sneaky search engine that tries to take over your browser, the one we mock when it stealthily searches for things before Google does the job. If you’re looking for places to eat you’re shown pictures of dining tables, when’s the next train? After the last one. What is this meal I’m about to eat? Food. It’s like the miserable and sarcastic younger brother of Google, out to spite and annoy rather than enhance and help. To make it worse I only had access to Bing.cn, the heavily censored Chinese version. Thankfully we’ve regained access to the world news, social media and other technological lifelines, for now. But, with the constant threat from governmental changes to restrict our internet access, we could be isolated at any moment and thrust into a world of censorship.
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