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Q: You know you're in China when...
I'll start;
You know you're in China when...
...the toilets are knee deep in piss and the cleaner is standing right next to you.
...a mother gets out of her Porsche to let her kid shit on the pavement.
...you're trying to relax at home and you hear people spitting in the corridor.
...no matter if you were the first in the queue, you will still be the last person to get on that bus.
Any more?
......When your hotdog order was taken quite literally.
..... When the hottest girl the club has hairier armpits than you.
...... When your neighbor in the million dollar house with the million dollar car washes his feet in a bucket every night to save on the water bill.
.... When someone says " Thank you" your very first thought is to try and guess what country they come from.
......When your hotdog order was taken quite literally.
..... When the hottest girl the club has hairier armpits than you.
...... When your neighbor in the million dollar house with the million dollar car washes his feet in a bucket every night to save on the water bill.
.... When someone says " Thank you" your very first thought is to try and guess what country they come from.
... when people speaks in Mandarin around you
... when your old friends talk about movies that are never on display in the cinemas near you
... when intellectual conversations are virtually unknown
... when hairs come in any colors as long as it is black
... when a deep blue sky is a rare event to celebrate
... when ebikes goes counterway and nobody gives a damn
- When the neighbour is using an electric drill at 4:00 am.
- When the shop assistant compliments your genius because you have just added 20 yuan and 10 yuan together quicker than she can do it on her calculator.
- When everyone in the office is playing computer games or chatting on QQ.
- When you see police officers giving lifts to their friends and family in a marked police car.
- When you get apples at Christmas instead of socks.
- When the most interesting thing on the TV is the test card.
When people constantly stare at you and talk about you
When a pm 2.5 level of 100 is a clean air day
When people walk in front of you and steal the taxi that was stopping to pick you up
When a fun night out can be had for 2
00 rmb or less
When It's normal to see a chicken walking around in a large city
When you can make a decent salary by showing up to work sober and dancing
When people keep asking invasive personal questions
When you start appreciating everything you once took for granted.
Stiggs:
Is that ever true ! One thing I'll take away from China is a new appreciation for things I never thought about back home, like being able to walk around outside without everyone staring at my shoes, or going to a restaurant and wondering if the beef I ordered is actually beef.
laowaigentleman:
When I get home, I'll attend all the local school board meetings and the council hearings about sanitation and arts funding.
Freedom is precious and it isn't free.
- when you hear the DEFAULT Apple ring tone and 90% of the people in the area pull out their phones.
- when police are waiting at your destination airport because someone on your flight opened an emergency hatch or decided a fight at 35 000 feet would be fun.
- when you are slowly dying in a sea of people but they are all too busy recording you on their phones to help
- when being white automatically means you are "mei guo ren" or "ying guo ren" and EVEN after you tell them you are not, you are still somehow "mei guo ren" or "ying guo ren".
....... when you hear the creepy 'helloooooooo' after you have passed someone by
You might be a redneck if you... have at least three relatives who expect to get rich selling clothes.
You might be a Red Guard if you... buy foreign milk powder instead of breastfeed your baby.
You know you're in China when... nobody looks like they're comfortable around each other, and everybody gets giddy when there's someone with different appearance/behaviour to gossip about.
You must be a Chinese when ... you complain about all the bad things people do that hurt you, hypocritically do the exact same things yourself, and somehow have no awareness of the connection between the two.
--You have a polite, 5 minute conversation with a guy on a bus...now he thinks you are his girlfriend.
--Your neighbors are glued to their smartphones until aabout 10:30pm. Then, it's a good time to crash around their apartments.
--The younger people bitch and moan about elderly people who expect to sit on the transit system.But they will shove their freaking 8 year old in your face if you are sitting and there are no available seats.
--You post a classified ad offering your services as an English tutor on your city's online magazine. You are sure to include your email, your education, and your work experience. All the locals who read and respond to it seem to think it was a friend request....just for them...because they are so special...
--Someone will give you an unsolicited lecture about the fact that you want neither husband or child. You are so selfish! They then piously zombie-walk into busy traffic, pounding furiously on their smartphone with one hand, clutching their one and only child in the other.
Samsara:
Spot on!
I once had a five minute conversation with a girl sitting behind me on the bus. Then she asked me if I could get her pregnant, because her ambition was to watch TV while someone looked after her. I said no.
Regarding English tutoring - this has happened to me three times: I've been at some kind of family gathering. Then someone disappears for half an hour and comes back with their 6 or 7 year old niece, sits her in front of me, and prompts me to teach her English. And then they all sit there in a circle staring at me and this very shy six year old girl. Waiting for the learning to begin.
Regarding not wanting to get married or have children: Same, though I suspect you will receive more judgment/pity/incredulity because you're a woman. After all - what is your purpose in being alive after 30 if not to incubate babies and look after in-laws? What could a woman even do with her time at that stage in her life? It's never been... I can't even... (goes cross-eyed; has stroke)
when a kid standing in a store entrance pisses as far as he can into the street and you're the only one who notices.
When people DON'T believe you when you say you don't eat at McDonald's every day.
When people tell you Chinese food is the best.
When a huge army of peasants and their sprogs come trawling into the gym and play on all of the expensive equipment and no-one bats an eyelid while the owner of the apartment complex sticks a sign on the plastic slide in the playground telling people not to put their dogs on it because they don't want to have to replace it if it gets damaged.
You know you're in China when Monday becomes Saturday and Sunday becomes Friday and the only response from the masses is that China is great and Chairman Mao is number one.
When you hear "drink hot water" even if the temperature touches 40 C'...
Strawberry66:
I guess it may not applied to foreigners' body system but it is applied to Chinese body system todrink hot water.I felt sick to drink and touch cold water in my girl period sometimes even it was hot summer time.The reason might be Chinese's body system got used to hot water while many foreigners aren't. Remember lots of Native American residents died before the white people from Europe arrive at the continent.The Native Americans live in a land which is far away from the Europe.Diffrent weather,vegetable,food,life style.,etc Even in normal days,drink lots of cold water after eatting warm food may make me sick too.I guess my body system hasn't got used to cold water that much.The Chinese may think all humans have same body system.They told you guys to drink hot water just a way to care people.Do not get annoyed.Just explain to them patiently.
ScotsAlan:
You just don't get it Vicky. Do you?
It's stupid superstition. It's right up there on the same level as Boka Haram "warriors" thinking a necklace will protect them from bullets.
This is the reason the cultural revolution was embraced so wholeheartedly. Because people knew the superstitions were stupid. And when someone said "lets get rid", everyone jumped at the chance.
Ok. To cut you some slack... I'm impressed you know that a monthly "sickness" coincides with your period. Believe me, I have come across women here who were somehow incapable of making the connection....... I know one who went to the hospital every month and complained of a fever. And the doctors put her on a drip, sold her medicine for bird flu, and never once told her it was "period pains".
Next you will tell us we should eat cat and dog meat in the winter because it will keep us warm.
DrMonkey:
@Strawberry66 For the Native Americans... Europeans, without knowing it (no knowledge of what germs are), brought germs, microbes, viruses... that were common in Europe, and for which Europeans developed some resistance. Bad luck for the Native Americans, who's never been exposed to those germs, and no natural defense agains them. It's have nothing to do with different food or "body system". The human body works the same across the whole human specie.
Here, in the story of the Native Americans, it is a difference of *immune system*, which is the mechanism to fight infections : the immune system is a able to remember past infection and improve its answer through trials and errors. If you expose someone to common cold infection regularly, then it will be fought better and better...but the first time recovery will be really long and painful. Had a poor food intake, and your first common cold can be deadly.
Feeling bad during your periods is not a "Chinese body" thing, it's normal and universal. Feeling really cold while you are bleeding (ie. period) is a normal consequence of bleeding. And that still not explain why even men drink warm water in the middle of the summer...
dongbeiren:
Agree with everything Dr M and Scotsalan wrote above. In addition, why is it that Chinese Americans, Chinese Australians etc. have no problems when drinking cold water? I went to school with lots of Hong Kong Chinese too and they drank cold beverages all year around. They have the same bodies as mainland Chinese genetically. It's pretty obvious that mainlanders are just superstitious. I've seen it again and again, little kid wants to drink cold water and crazy grandmother chastises him and says he will get sick. When people hear this again and again they start to believe it.
WeiJJ:
@DrMonkey And the fact is that for some Chinese people who have grown up often drink hot water no matter they were forced to do so or they trust it is the right way. Some of their body just get used to it.Someone mentioned some Hong Kong people get used to drink cold water, it is just because Hong Kong has a subtropical climate, they drink cold water when they were babies, and they just get used to it.Actually my mom is a pediatrician,she often has some foreign patient,those little patients always get sick when they go back to China which ex-motherland of their parents, often because of the polluted air, or water.But Chinese children may get used to it, and seems very healthy even though some of them may exposed in a much worse sanitation condition.Actually long-term living habit can make a real change to your body, that's it.But yes, definitely it is not a good idea for anyone to drink a cup of hot water in a scorching summer day
.....when you are told "Chinese bodies are different"
.....when 'you don't understand' or 'you think too much' is sign that the conversation is over
- - When, despite insurmountable evidence to the contrary, you're told, ""The Chinese body is different." (Thanks, sorrel)
- When you're constantly reminded of 5000 years of history.
- When you're constantly reminded of how evil Japan is.
- When you witness children STANDING UP @ 40 MPH on a scooter, on the highway, while their parents think nothing of it.
- When you see two-headed fish for sale on the street vendors.
- When girls don't request protection during sex, and just have an abortion afterwards.
- When everyone says "No why" when asked why.
- When you're told you think too much. (thanks sorrel)
- When you want to marry your girlfriend and her family demands money in exchange for her.
- When you see underage prostitutes being sold on the sides of the road, and a swat team guarding them to make sure that if someone calls the police, the police are there to "investigate." Yeah, the authorities are in on it.
- When you're in Guanxi province and can buy fully automatic weapons, assault rifles, handguns, sniper rifles, etc. in the black markets.
- When the pharmacists constantly recommend "Traditional Chinese Medicine," in place of western counterparts which work.
- When the "western medicine" is poisoned/fake, and it makes you sick.
- When everyone is taking antibiotics for no reason.
- When everyone needs an IV drip for no reason
- When almost everyone is cheating in school
- When nobody has any regard for human life.
- When women have forced abortions
- When girls are abandoned because people want a son
- When money and education are the gods of society
- When there are nearly 200 million men who will never find wives
I could go on and on..
-your plane lands and everyone is already standing, yelling into their phones, and retrieving their luggage from the overhead.
-you finally proceed to the jetway and everyone is smoking on the walk to baggage claim.
-you go to a restaurant and the waitress hovers over you for the whole 20 minutes while you search a menu that has 1001 items.
-you finally order and the fu wu yuan says, "Mei you," to your first five choices.
-you check in to your mid-range hotel, assured your room is non-smoking, only to find a snuffed out cigarette butt on the window sill.
-you walk on the sidewalk(when possible) only to have cars honk at you because they are trying to drive on the sidewalk. You walk in the street.
and on and on and on and...
- When you buy food or drink in a fast food restaurant/coffee house but you cannot sit down because every seat is taken by people that have no intention buying anything - just in to use the WIFI or have a rest.
- When you are enjoying the peace and quiet on a train then somebody on the next seat decides to watch a movie or play games on an i-pad without using headphones.
- When the central aisle of the bus is filled with baskets of smelly fish, rotting vegetables or live animals.
- When you are enjoying a meal in a restaurant and a drunken idiot comes up to you with BO, bad breath, beer belly hanging out and blowing smoke in your face.
estern:
Haha, I love the first one. I'm currently sitting in a Costa Coffee doing some work. It's relatively early in the morning and the place is mostly full, yet I am the ONLY person who has bought a drink. Most of them are sleeping! You are spot on...
RachelDiD:
I feel the second one...when I made the grave mistake of seeing the Angkor Watt during CNY, throngs of Chinese tourists were zombie walking around all of the temples, blaring shitty pop music from mp3s clipped to their belts for all to hear.
when you spend tooooo much time on Echina
When you cross the road you look left you look right and then down to see what you might step in
When your stress level goes up
the bar tab is higher than at home
you count the day to you fly out
the first thing you smell a you leave the air terminal is piss
the first thing you hear is HEEELLLLOOOOOW
the first ting you see is the vendors and cab drivers rubbing their hands while thinking how much they can charge you
The first thing you taste is best left unsaid
the first thing you feel is the urge to go back to the ticket counter
and this is why you will start to Drink
When you step off the plane and into the airport, or maybe just outside the airport after arriving back in the country and you hear that familiar sound... the sound you haven't heard since you flew out of the same airport a couple of weeks ago... it fills you with revulsion, and disgust and sounds a little like a pig being waterboarded, then the guy responsible spits what looks like a half digested frog on the ground near your feet and you are the only person there who bats an eye.
That's when I sigh, and realize where I am again.
hi2u:
I'll give you a thumbs up for the waterboarded pig. Such an accurate description.
Shining_brow:
two thumbs up for a water-boarded pig... (although, not literally... for either)
When you go to the bathroom at a restaurant and you see someone stand up and walk away from the squatter without flushing or washing his hands. Then you see him walk back into the kitchen where he came from.
when you see kids pooping and peeing in the mall's trash can...
when you see poo in the wall or outside the bowl...
when you see someone eating while pooping to save time in a public toilet...
when no one offers a seat to a pregnant lady or elderly...
when you saw a trash beside the trash can...
when you have to be careful every now and then if there is a flying trash coz some chinese thinks that they are michael jordan...
when you enter in mcdo or kfc you will see some people sitting there without ordering and worst some are sleeping...
when they spit almost anywhere...
when they wash hands without using soap...
when they can't take their eyes off on their iphones...
when they are posting their meals...
when the people are used to shower at night.. and if you shower in the morning they will think of you as weird..
when you can see lovers quarrel in every street corner..
hehe.. so many..
You walk into a store and everything becomes more expensive just because you are foreign....
You see crap on the sidewalk and you have to wonder "is it human crap?"
You walk outside and everyone stares at you...
Beer is cheaper than Pepsi or Coke.....
When I'm paying 700 rmb/night in hotel where the air conditioning is still off (in the whole hotel) because it's only April 18, despite the 29 degrees in the room.
(I'm nearly homicidal tonight...).
RachelDiD:
I know exactly how you feel...it's why I don't pay for quality anymore here. These people are too lazy and cheap to be able to deliver quality...even if they could grasp what it was.
