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Sign up with Google Sign up with FacebookQ: What would be the WORST place for a Chinese person to live in North America or Europe?
I was thinking of taking a job in Saskatchewan. It is a good gig, and we'd be there for a year or two. I'm BARELY okay with it, so I don't know if the wife could handle it. She says she can...but....she's never been in a Canadian prairie town in the winter. The Chinese food there would be awful too. And getting Chinese ingredients would be hard.
Got me thinking. What would be the worst place you can think of for a Chinese person to live?
With no predefined order here, just IMHO : (a) the Red Neck Evangelical Belts of the Deep South and the Appalachians; (b) Bedford-Stuyvesant, East New York and parts of non-gentrified Harlem; (c) the South Side of Chicago, particularly the high crime areas; (d) most of Detroit, particularly the neighborhoods less than 10 km from city center; (e) Newark ipso facto; (f) Irvington, New Jersey ipso facto; (g) certain parts of Yonkers, New York; ( a good many parts of Inner City Baltimore; (i) North Philadelphia. That's just a tentative list, based upon personal safety, crime, reception of Chinese by the locals, etc., etc.
mattsm84:
The south side of Chicago would actually be one of the nicer places for them, really. Especially the near south side along the red line. That way they could easily get into armory square (Chinatown) for some of the things that they'd miss back home. And actually, now that you mention it Philly's Chinatown is also located on the north side of that city too.
981977405:
Actually no, MattCMD, the main street of Philly's Chinatown is not located in North Philadelphia by any means, by any means at all...it's located not too terribly far from City Hall. There isn't much in North Philadelphia except a lot of crime, drugs, gangs and burnt-out buildings.
As for Chicago's South Side, true, perhaps, the little enclave around Chinatown on Wentworth Avenue might be OK but the rest of the South Side is one of the worst crime-plagued areas in all of the United States.
mattsm84:
It's north of Arch, that puts it in the northern half of the city. As for Chicago, I'd say that its probably safer for your average person than say Beijing or Shanghai. Drug and drug related crime typically only affect people involved with some aspect of the drug trade or other. Remember it is a clandestine criminal enterprise. You'll still get the odd robbery, but its really nothing compared to what goes on here and just gets suppressed. Trust me, I've spent a lot of time there. As a point of contrast rape has become so common in Beijing that hospitals don't even bother reporting it. But then that's the problem with a society that values the abstract notion of stability over actually functioning.
Anyplace in canada.....!!
nevermind:
Nah, Vancouver and Toronto have massive populations. Almost half of Vancouver is Asian, so there's loads of creature comforts for them as well as chinese tv and radio and such.
The worst, probably Yukon,NWT or Nunavut. Isolated, cold long winters and dark. Dogs run wild, not girls. I don't know how many Indians live where you are thinking of going and will assume Sask to be like Man. I find rural Man to be friendlier than rural Ont. The prairies were drying up, everyone moving to bigger towns. Land prices were dirt a few years ago. Now people are moving back, maybe because of cheap prices??, House prices are up now. Sold my grandparents farm 600 acres for 40K and my dads house for 5K before. Yes 5K furnished.
I live rural, it's quiet, maybe too quiet sometimes, I don't meet enough people, depends,,,, on a summers day relaxing can't be beat, no travelling to a cottage, no noise. Small towns Ont has alot of welfare rats, most brighter people move on, so alot of white trash here.
I would take your wife and visit the Sask town and let her get a feel for it. Many jobs way way way up north are 2 week gigs and they fly you out for the third week, that flight can be to Florida. If I wanted to work, I'd look at that, moneys great.
nevermind:
Well it'd be Regina, not Melfort or anything. I sure agreee with your summation of small towns though, lived in enough of them myself!
Real Chinese,, not ABC ?
I would agree rural Louisiana or MS. I doubt the locals be mean to the Chinese person,,, but Chinese person would maybe never fit in. I also doubt locals would extend the kind of welcome to help him/her fit in. Just very different worlds.
In my hometown of London, i'd say Chinatown. I mean, apart from a few extra quid, what would be the point? If you're gonna move to another country, you might as well go the whole hog. Moving some place new just to try and recreate your old home seems silly to me.
Otherwise there are a bunch of places to avoid. Violence is a way of life for many there.
I have some Chinese friends that live in Huntsville, Alabama. They hate it there. And the main reason they hate it there is because there is nothing there for them. There is 1 Chinese restaurant and it doesn't even serve good Chinese food according to them.
It is like expats in China. The worst places tend to be where there is no expat community and nothing that serves as a link to our home.
I should also add perhaps some of the more redneck parts of Canada, like the Okanagan Valley where they murdered those two French Canadians several years ago for being different and places like that. Better to stick with the big cities, more tolerance, more acceptance, less small-town bigotry.
nevermind:
I couldnt' find a record of that murder. But the Okanagan is FULL of immigrants, Indian, Chinese and otherwise.
+1 for all those mentioning the deep south. While there are pockets of livability (eg, Atlanta, and the big cities in Texas) for the most part it's going to be just like a big city westerner going to live in bumf*ck China. I sometimes worry what might happen if I bring my gf home to visit or even get married and then bring her home, as I live in red country. I live in a decent size city (a million or so), but the 'rents are truly in another world: small Appalachian city with a population of about 3000....maybe. Even to see a black person there is like seeing a foreigner in a small Chinese village. But at least then maybe she'd have a much better understanding of my situation in China