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Q: Is there a high percentage of "losers" and "jerks" among westerners in Ch?
Or more precisely, is there a higher percentage here than back home? I don't mean to feed the anti-foreign propaganda machine as there surely is an even higher percentage of "losers" and "jerks" among the local populace, but also kind of snicker about the fact that there are quite a few total jacka**es here who game the system, bang women of a caliber they could not get back home, etc., also we've got the sinophile losers, the living paycheck-to-paycheck alco's, the creeps and weirdos, etc.
I have met more than a few westerns I do respect (including some in the ESL field despite all the naysayers) but for the most part I keep to myself and a couple of (rare and hard to find) local friend.
So you think this is true, or I am just meeting the wrong people?
It takes a certain kind of person to come to China to live/work. Either self-sufficient, adventurous and resourceful or a sociopath.
We are a definite minority here, so any examples of the above are more apparent than back home.
ScotsAlan:
Yup. Sane people stay at home doing sane things. Only nutters or the delusional can stay here long term.
I agree with Sinobear about the two types of people that do come to live here, but where I have been living for the last three years, there are very few of the creeps around. However, this area is not a big city and not known to those who end up taking a job there. So I think there are a lot more of the adventurous types. I imagine that bigger cities are more likely to attract the lesser of the expat community.
mike695ca:
Completely disagree. From my experience, foreigners in larger cities are of a mich higher caliber. Im speaking generally of the ESL field. Someone in lets say Chongqing can go and teach and make 9 or 10K a month, get drunk as hell daily, girls are still excited by foreigners and have zero responsibility for anything as they are the token white guy and will never be fired. Hell even if they are, there will be ten other kindergartens waiting to hire them. These are the kind of cities where i have seen the "losers" we are reffering to. On the other hand, in a place like shanghai, the same jobs salary will be maybe 17-20K a month and with that brings lots of competition. Work becomes a real job. Your not nearly as special and wont be drowning in women because u have blue eyes. You are judged far more on your actions. Even other foreigners are constantly judging you. I think it creates a much more normal environment. Then you get the migration between the two. You have a normal dude in say... Changsha , who says screw this place it sucks, the money sucks and all my coworkers are wierd. Im going to guangzhou to make real money and not live like a dumpster diver. Then you have dudes in beijing who say " screw this place, i didnt come to china to pay a hundred bucks for a steak, and i certainly didnt come here to work 30 hours a week!" Then they move back to some 3rd tier city in the middle of no where and are happy as hell. The interesting thing about this conversation is that i think there will be vastly different opinions about which of my two groups are the "losers". Is it the fake business people in shenzhen trying to pretend they arent teachers? Or the teachers in Chengdu who are perfectly happy staying in that same spot forever?
expatlife26:
@Mike...right on. Yeah people usually will play up or down to expectations. If you can get away with being a fuck up theres not a ton of reason not to be. If somebody balks at the idea of working 40 hrs a week, that's their choice but they can't expect to ever really get ahead in life.
I can't say anybody that's truly happy (and not hurting anyone) is really a loser so that guy in chongqing might not be a true loser even though he's not necessarily somebody I have much in common with.
I know the wannabe type you're talking about...and that sucks for them cause it's fucking awful trying to get ahead. I respect that they want to, but yeah I know the type that talks up their commission only sales job and doesn't mention the teaching job that actually gets them their visa. But hey...there but for the grace of god goes me.
expatlife26:
btw the fact that I read the statement:
" Even other foreigners are constantly judging you. I think it creates a much more normal environment. "
and my reaction was:
"yeah mike 100% agree! it's way more normal cause of all the great judgment!"
kinda scares me haha.
As I have said before, China is the only place in the world where I can easily find someone (expat) that is more dysfunctional than myself.
Nah I don't think so at all. I'll take your average expat in China over your average american to hang out with any day of the week. They can't be too stupid or ignorant/sheltered or would never have thought to come here in the first place.
When I bust on expats here it's for being underachievers. Smart people who set the bar low and settle for stupid shit cause it's easy and then get stuck in it and wonder why the world isn't fair.
There are some creepers here though, but I think it's just that you don't notice them at home. Plus it's a poor country so an old creepy guy can have more success.
As for younger "locals only players" those guys usually suck at life, but remember we also get to miss out on the actual wannabe "alpha" or thug types from the west because they aren't usually able to step outside their comfort zones. We also get to miss the worst of the religious right. So yeah in general the average expat is cooler than the average american.
mike695ca:
Great point about the tough guys and bible thumpers! I completely forgot about all that. Great point.
expatlife26:
Yeah the lamest (non criminal) expats are still just the worst of the best. Theyre still way better than your average. Just underachieving smart people.
China is a far away from home, both literally and figuratively. For a person to come here, outside of tourism, they must have a strong reason. If they stay here, they tend toward psychosis or desperation and they definitely fit certain profiles: I believe that the "loser/jerk" per capita figure is higher among Chinese expats than in our respective countries. I've seen it in Mexico too. In fact, even more so there.
expatlife26:
i think that's selection bias. Your friends might not have been desperate losers, but you're probably associating with smarter people cause you're probably a pretty smart guy yourself.
I have no idea where you're from, but honestly if you're american think of both the stupid fox news/rush limbaugh crowd and the wannabe thugs/tough guys and realize that's a huge segment of america that is almost completely absent here.
Outside of a few creepers we mostly get decent people here who then become lame after arrival if they aren't self-motivated because expectations can be so low.
xinyuren:
This could very well be. I haven't done an empirical study of expats in China. China has a way of sucking the motivation out of the best of us. Others become "superstars" for no reason other than being foreign. A typical foreigner does not thrive here and I feel uncomfortable with using the term "loser" since there are many ways to qualify this.
expatlife26:
It's just a different kind of loser. Like I said if i'm ragging on an expat it's probably cause I think they're lazy.
But like go back home and there are WAY worse things than smart but lazy underachievers.It's just that the US is spread out that you can live a life that's almost 100% free of the kinds of people you don't like.
There are two kinds of awful people that just don't exist here. Evangelical nutjobs and Douchey tough-guys/thugs/guidos. We have almost zero of those here. Both are ultimately way too dependent on being in their comfort zones to go to China in the first place.
What we DO get here are kinda weird, lazy, but usually pretty smart people who sometimes lose motivation and settle into low expectations. And i'll take weird and lazy over aggressively violent and delusional every time.
Just curious, why does "bang women of a caliber they could not get back home" equate to loser or jerk? Do you want to call Hugh Heffner a loser or jerk?
expatlife26:
well, i guess cause it's like going to a lower league to play instead of developing yourself and giving yourself a pat on the back for putting up big numbers.
"I want to go somewhere women are interested in me without trying" instead of asking "how do I become more interesting to the women I like?"
Hugh hefner is not a good analogy. A better analogy would be like a fringe NBA player coming to china, scoring a lot more and then saying that the problem was the NBA was just too stuck up for him.
expatlife26:
Obviously I think the 2nd one because shouldn't growing as a person be preferable to taking the easy way?
Percivile:
I wouldn't touch the calibre of women they're talking about back home either. Who needs a gold digger in any country?
Shining_brow:
I disagree, Expat,
First, it sounds more like trying to take a moral high ground, than any real conviction. Secondly, not everyone needs to become awesome in every field of endeavour they're in. And thirdly, why waste precious time, effort, etc slugging away to reach a certain level of 'attainment' which is only going to be achieved by a few anyway (using the NBA example), when you can just come over here, get treated like a star, and reap the rewards.
I do agree, though... shouldn't bag what was back home (too much) but just acknowledge things as they were... I wasn't they type of guy who could bang half a dozen chicks in one week back home, but I've got what it takes here.. who wouldn't want that?? (some, obviously...)
mike695ca:
Me, i wouldnt want that. You guys can talk all you want. But in a major city, any girl that is nailing you because your a foreigner. I dont want to touch them. From my experience, any girl you DONT need to ask to shave their armpits, isnt much different than any other woman back home. Theu have standards higher than "WHITE" . that doesnt make them a gold digger in my book. Besides, i have seen these girls that you guys are nailing weekly. Ugh. Gross. There is definatly some truth the the chinese memes that laowai like ugly girls. The sad thing is that i dont believe that these guys actually are attracted to them. Just another area in their life where they have taken the easy road.
expatlife26:
Yeah definitely. I have friends who date really cool, sophisticated chinese women; smart ones with stuff going on in their lives. But they had to show up and compete for them. It wasnt just "oh so handsome" and in bed by default. I want to counter with the point that these girls get excited for "white" with the guys just getting excited for "thin" Despite what the bummy local guys think every chinese girl does not want a western "loser" its just that even the most modest westerner living here can provide more than the average zhou. But like mike said the more sophisticated women are no easier to impress than their equivalents back home. Im not saying dont be happy with a woman you fall for regardless of her background. But no its not really cool to sleep around with a bunch of women of low standards. You might have fun and more power to you but you arent getting props for that.
xinyuren:
I'm agreeing with some of you guys. Poor quality girls are the same everywhere. If they are jumping in bed with you because you are a foreigner, they are poor quality (maybe they are pretty, but still...). Maybe some men think all beautiful girls are high quality girls??? High quality girls are the same everywhere. They expect something more than just a white face. You will need to woo them just like you would in your home country. Higher caliber women require work. Easy girls are just easy. Perhaps some expats are able to get more easy girls here, but in the end they are just getting cheap, easy girls. Don't confuse this with high quality, please.
Probably. But I couldn't say for sure since I have rarely been around ex-pats during my 10+ years in Asia.
I know I, for one, am a loser/jerk. Or as I like to say, a Lerk.
|**|
ScotsAlan:
What is a loser anyway?
Ha ha. I can just imagine a conversation in a bar in a Western country.
Drinker A: " Hey, what ever happened to that guy John who used to drink here? "
Drinker B "John? Yeah last I heard he was living in China, teaching in a school or something like that"
Drinker A " Cool."
I don't think drinker A would be dismissing "John" as a loser. 
diverdude1:
I would agree with you. I left a pretty decent medical job (MRI) in the US to roam around Asia and do fk' all for a few years. And I think I know how a lot of people would judge me as being a loser for choosing to do so. Well, as the old saying goes 'to each their own'.
I'M GUNNA SET MY BAR LOW!
Oh, I did that already.
Damn...what can I do now....
I'M GUNNA GRIP MY BAR!
You've set your paramaters too thin my friend. The "jerks" are not limited to locals or westerners, but even the expats that come from this hemisphere too. There's tons of middle easterners that are huge jerks, maybe even more serious in their degree of competition for women than in the example you made.
sam239:
Yeah but I generally do not associate with them. Someone who wraps his wife up in a tent in order to keep other men from admiring her beauty, then heads off to Asia to booze and whore, is a degree above the kind of western jerks I've met here.
It depends on how you see "being a loser". Learning from your mistakes, makes you a winner, always, no matter how much you lose. Bitterness, as a result of too many failures makes you a jerk. Learning to find the sweet taste of bitterness, it makes you a winner. As jetfire9000 says, they are everywhere. It also, depends of whom you're getting surrounded with, that may condition your trajectory leading you to becoming either a loser or jerk. Its up to you to be none of them.
Life is full of jerks and losers, does not matter whether they are in China or anywhere else, but you are making yourself a loser by wasting time in this kind of questions.
Don't worry that you find the women to be high caliber, I'm sure you will find one. The truth is most are messed up. I hate the Chinese propangda that foreigners can't get women at home, yet they can come to China and score. If that was true, then Chinese men would be legendary and thats not true either
The fact that you find other foreigners to be losers and have no friends says something. I never looked for foreign friends, Many foreigners I met looked burnt out and I sometimes had the impression that they felt comfortable in their isolation.
JacobJohn:
"...and I sometimes had the impression that they felt comfortable in their isolation" that's a sad yet a true fact. Isolation it's a self preservation but brought to extremes.
sam239:
There's a flip-side to that propaganda, since it implies that an ugly jerk from a foreign country can come here and have locals going down on their knees. Like it could be an advertisement for hookers here:
"Meet Chong(ette).
She thinks Ch. is the greatest country and Ch. people are the greatest race on Earth.
Is prepared to go down on her/his knees to get the hell out of here."
Don't feel like giving a long drawn-out answer because this question has been asked before. So I will say:
Yes, there is... and that includes myself on the bad days. Many losers, many nut job, many are cool but at least it is a lot more interesting that being politically correct all the time back home. Case closed.
Meh, I did well at home before coming to China and getting laid was never a problem. I initially came to China cause I was bored at home despite a good job and good social life.
What I found in China was that there are a lot of very smart people with demons that prevent them from succeeding in the west. You'll never see the kind of loser here you see in your home country. Think about it. The guy who works at Wal-mart with no education and no desire to get one or better himself. The welfare queen in the trailer park who came from a decent family of means.... these people will never get to China cause they can't.
I think China is like the Island of Misfit toys for expats. And I think a lot of people leave China and go on to succeed in their own countries with the skills and personal growth all that drinking and banging yields.
Most people that ask that kind of question are trying to justifying their place in the world. Trying to compare themselves to others.
Just accept people are here and they're not all like you.
sam239:
Nope not at all, simply an observation, I have lived and worked in over a dozen countries and this is what I have observed, am simply asking if this is other people's experience or just what I'm surrounding myself with.
Percentage is higher because all people really need to get a job most of the time in China is a white face, the ability to speak English without a heavy accent and nothing else.
That leads to the lowest common denominator coming. Lack of background checks for incoming foreigners doesn't help either.
I've noticed a high percentage of losers and jerks among the men and a high percentage of witches and harpies among the women. . .so I keep to myself mostly.
I don't believe this at all. Yeah I am an American, yes I am the everyday English Teacher. But does that mean I am loser, or a jerk because I decided to move some where to make a better life for myself? Bottom line America's Economy is not doing so hot, and granted I am not making much by American Standards but I am doing well here, and looking for ways to grow as a person. Why is it a bad thing to look to different places for advantages. There is opportunity here, in more than just English Teaching you just have to work hard, and want it.
Yeah you run into a weird guy, and a lazy assholes. But you have the same thing in the United States too.
sam239:
It's doing fine as far as I can see. Every single person from my university who wanted a standard follow-the-books-and-work-your-20-years-of-8-5-and-marry-and-kids-and-retire-and-die (nothing wrong with that, it keeps the country alive) career is now in one. That's another thing in favor of "this is a place for losers", a lot of people blame there being here on the economy, but spend their 9,000 kuai paychecks on booze. Nothing wrong with spending it on booze either (I don't want to be a hypocrite) but when they do that they really can't blame their being here on problems at home.
Well, it depends on which kinda crowd you hang out with. If you are only looking for people in a bar or something ofcourse ull find drunks and idiots...thats the alcohol talking...but logically, for eg in canada...a normal professional would make $3-4000 a month on a good job. Here they make that much teaching english...and engineers and technical people professionals make 3 folds as much. the reason you dont find those people in bars is that they are slightly an older age group and secondly they "work". So havent got much time to go out and make new friends....for example in shanghai, the jerk community as you would say is accumulated around the french concession, who's main aim is to hit the bars afterwards and pick up girls and talk crap, but if you move towards pudong or minhang or jiading and songjiang, the expat community is far more sophisticated. These people are either with their families or they have their own circle of friends and in the limited free time they have, they stick to the circle.
and i think the ratio of the crazy ones is more back home than here, cuz of the social security benefits..hahahhah
Shining_brow:
Hey! French Concessions got the best restaurants! Don't you be mouthing off my good eating places!! :)
There are some in China but in Asia the country with the highest number of losers-who-couldn't-make-it-back-home an jerks-who-spend-their-entire-salary-in-bars-then-complain-about-being-broke-and-beg-for-money among expats is by far Thailand.
sam239:
Couldn't agree more, they certainly have a low bar for immigration down there in TH. But I have met more than a few outright a--hats lately, and was curious if others have the same experience here in CH.
Eorthisio:
Well I can talk about Guangdong, here in Guangzhou there are quite a few of them, and no they are not from the African community who's actually working hard (I have heard tons of BS about the Africans in GZ, none are true, they have always been very kind to me).
Shenzhen also has some but it can look like a lot as almost half of the expats over there are living in Shekou, and surprisingly the ones I have met were not young people but old folks who are there with a family and some have been living in SZ for more than a decade.
In Foshan most expats are businessmen and most are in Nanhai district where the concentration of wealthy Chinese is astonishing, the rest of the city is crap.
Dongguan... well that's Dongguan, people who go there don't go for seeing the non-existent touristic spots, except if looking at hot prostitutes is considered as sighting.
Hey, thanks for the responses (including the personal insults), but I should make it clear the single biggest loser I know here is a factory owner who treats his employees like s**t, uses his wealth to f**k young women in a way that appears "creepy" to me, and has now fled to a civilized country where he would probably be arrested for doing the same. Any guesses what country he was from?
royceH:
Perhaps you could give us a hint. There's many countries.
But I want to play...so I'll have a random guess. Mexico?
* Because I like Mexico in the soccer, and especially their goaly.
Not Mexico, but close enough. You might confuse the country he was from with the parts of Mexico destroyed by volcanic eruptions, but those parts of Mexico were rebuilt to the standard, even if you are from a faraway galaxy there should be no confusion about it, it is not Mexico.
royceH:
No, I'm from further away than that.....I'm an Aussie!
And I don't really understand where you mean. Go on, give a hint....is it south of Mexico?
sam239:
No, I was thinking "east" as in that part of the world. I'll give u another hint, e_____cities.
China is shrouded in mystery, rumours and secrecy until you come see it for yourself. Everyone who came here got a shock when they experienced China, and I agree that normal people wouldn't *normally* decide to stay here. But there are circumstances that compel us to stay.
There are about 600.000 expats from all over the world in this country of 1.3 billion. This very low number in a growing economy shows how unwelcoming this place is. Anyone with a lick of sense will observe the severe social problems in the country, and make plans to leave. That is, unless they have other priorities that keep them from doing so. Banging hot chicks. Supporting alcoholism or other costly habit. Enjoying the attention. Saving money rapidly and paying little taxes. Or, just having a Chinese wife (& kid) and not being able to emigrate that easily.
So, how many of us are weirdos? No way to tell. Terms like loser, jerk, misfit and weirdo are highly subjhective. Like the tale of a factory owner sleeping with young girls and emigrating - one person's loser is another (Chinese) person's idyllic dream.
royceH:
You are right, Coin.
In fact, the number (low) of legal expats here is quite remarkable. What % is that?
It's definitely true that we're not welcome here. China is for the Chinese.
Their dreary, drab existence is for a Chinese mentality. I mean...why can't they ever think of something to do!
But anyway, like your good self, I'm still here.
You asked a question that is hard to answer. Maybe we can all somewhat agree when someone acts like a jerk sometimes, but does that mean he/she is a jerk? What is a jerk? As for loser, what does that mean? Is a person losing in life when he stays in China because he can bang hot chicks? I might think so, but I'm sure others wouldn't. So we have a failure to define jerk and loser. But it's interesting to read the different points of view.
"Jerk" is I think the same as "a**hole", someone who has problems and has become a d*ck who enjoys bad treatment of others. Seems like "expat recruiter" has a high concentration of these as talked about before. A "b*tch" is a subcategory of "jerk", not necessarily female but not all "jerks" can be classified as "b*tches" that's all I can say.
"Loser" well there a few different categories of these: the "douchebag", the "arsekisser", so forth. Spending cash in a bar and complaining about not being able to get a better job is loser-ish. (Debatably) asking a question like the OP is loser-ish but it was intended to be a half-bitter rant, just something that came to mind and seemed timely to pose.
One way to distinguish "losers" and "jerks" is the latter generally know they are jerks and quite proud.
OK time to pop another coldy.
edit: although it doesn't outright deal with either of these terms, the little book "On Bullsh*t" from HG Frankfurt gives a good exposition about a somewhat related term.
i think you are just meeting the wrong people. if you concentrate on meeting respectable people, it will probably happen.
