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Q: Have you ever met an expat who doesn't like expats because they are in his city?
One of the most annoying type of people I have met in China are the people who hate other expats n their hood. Maybe they were losers back home, but they were the only white guy in their Chinese city, and felt like the star, but then someone else comes and takes some of their thunder. How do you deal with these clowns?
Well usually you don't have to deal with them, because they avoid other expats!
But yeah I feel a lot of disdain for people like that..
.I mean to each their own, we all have the right to pursue happiness and so if you like native life that's just fine, but I find it hypocritical to overlook flaws in people from another culture (because you're holding them to a different standard) while holding those from your own culture in contempt.
I personally feel like Mainland China at this point is culturally just a deficient version of the west...all of our faults like our love for material goods and money without our good qualities like our earnest idealism and desire to do good.
When I hear someone say that they think Chinese culture is so superior, my instinct is to think that person is either naive or just focusing on the fact they get to feel special here.
I dunno i'd take your average ESL teacher as being a smarter, more open minded person than your average person in the west just by virtue of being open to come here...at least at first. After a while of feeling falsely special they can grow protective of their "territory" and yeah that's loserish.
Yes, I have met one or two. They want to experience the "real" China and being around the other foreigners would tarnish that experience. After some time I just stop reaching out to them.
Generally i dont like expats in general. Not because i want to live native. I work hard to live as near to my standards as i did back home. And i generally despise China as a culture, so thats not it.
I just dont like the idea of "settling" for friends. So as a rule if i wouldnt associate with them back home, i wouldnt here. There are lots of good expats but i dont get out enough to meet them. Im usually in the outskirts of cities. But when i do meet them i look at 2 things.
1 Creepiness. Do they say rude shit to the waitress? Staring at every ass? Its not my business but i find it really offputting. I like a dirty joke as much as the next guy but ... Time and place.
Lose points if old and creepy.
2. Fake. Im not sure why we arent more creative but the same old lies are getting old. Question. If everyone is a school principle or "education director" who the hell is doing the teaching? If they are a rare teacher, then every one i have ever met is officially the richest teacher in China.
I cant be friends with you if your treating me like an idiot.
Example. Recently chatting at a pub with a teacher who is rambling. Not married, no family connection back home. Here for good. Working at a university makes 14 a month max. Thats what he said so feel free to subtract. Complaining about being poor. No savings, school doesnt pay on time.
All of this is fine. But not 10 minutes Later he asks about my car how much, when i bought it ect. Then comes out with gem.
Im buying a car later this year
Oh cool what are you looking at?
Benz GLK .
Ummmm did you just forget that 5 minutes ago you told me your life story? How in gods green earth do you expect me to believe your buying a car for half a million?
Next!
As long as they arent too wierd then im good to go. Some of my best friends in the world are expats here, and we have hung out for years. If live in different cities then well fly and meet up. Or well hook each other up with jobs to be closer. Some real good dudes.
Beautifulsoup:
I never noticed that, but yes they do all say they are directors and what not. Everyone in China seems to be doing a lot better then I am. lol
Robk:
I agree, a lot of foreigners here are shit and I am sorry to say that but they are...
They act like tools, talk like trash and expect China to adjust TOTALLY for them. For example some days I like wearing nice clothes... what's wrong with that? Nothing. But here in China if you dress nice they act like you are showing them up because they dress like Jimbo on the street corner of New York begging for booze money and smelling the same too. Swearing and cussing for no reason and embarrassing themselves.
I would never be friends with these types back home, so why should I here?
mike695ca:
@robk thats wierd. Here in the larger cities you find people dressed up. They want to seem high level or not a teacher so they walk around in cheap suits. Dont get me wrong alot of people in training centers force their teachers to dress like that. But they dont seem to see the humor in trying to be high level while wearing a 100rmb suit, leather shoes from the wholesale market and a fake LV computer bag. If you want a laugh, go see the laowai going through the hongkong borders from GZ or SZ. Going to the real world and gotta look good! Haha im sure im the only one that finds it funny but its easily the best part of the customs process! I look like a huge penis in suit. And people will comment that im wearing a t-shirt and jeans to the office. Bitch, i dont need your ghetto fashion , my tshirt costs more than your wardrobe. Now i work in a factory so anything goes.
expatlife26:
@Mike haha They might be under the mistaken impression that auto loans are easy to come by. If youre making $30K a year in the US you could afford a Benz if you cut every other corner. (like a certain other country does with cell phones)
I don't like phoniness either. If you're a teacher and like it...own it. Fuck what people think. Hell, I didn't think people like..openly looked down on me, it's just not a job that makes people think "Wow! You must be such an exciting young go-getter!" If you don't like being a teacher, then get out of the industry! Don't make shit up to fool yourself.
I wear suits to most work days unless it's super-hot. Linen is good for the heat btw, just wrinkles too easy so its a pain in the ass. The luxury of being an expat is shopping at home and paying sensible north american prices!
@Rob, haha I AM trying to show them up, so if they think that? Good.
China sucks for average people, and also average people here really suck. As much as i'm sure people here don't want to admit it, what's considered nice in China, is nice because it's westernized. Because it doesn't cut all the corners that a culture like this would cut if left on their own.
And I don't just mean nice for us westerners I mean for the locals as well. The more money they have, the fewer "traditionally chinese" things they do. Single family detached homes and luxury high rises are not "traditionally chinese". They also did not invent phones, cars, or computers.
That's one reason I do feel some contempt for the "real china experience" expats. They want to live and do things that chinese people have basically agreed aren't good.
Being a Sinophile gives THEM face, not us. That's how you get walked over.
mike695ca:
@expat I agree. Just own that shit. I would have much more respect for someone that straight up said. I love the hours, teaching is easy and I have a good lifestyle. Am I gonna regret it later? Maybe, but thats later and I like my job.
Or conversely, China sucks, I screwed myself and I feel stuck. Oh well, have another pint.
Who can argue with either of those things? I dont need to associate with business people all day, I just need someone to be real. And Id drink a beer with those 2 dudes any day.
But if someone asks what you do, and you say your opening up a bar.
( with no savings, no business plan, no location, and no reasonable chance it will ever happen , other than a conversation one time that went like " hey I should open up a bar!" Just because you dont want to say teacher.)
Im outta there.
mike695ca:
This post is an amazing example.
http://answers.echinacities.com/question/how-do-you-feel-about-being-teacher-china?type=alatest#lastcomment
Here you have one guy saying, holy hell, What did I get myself into. I am wasting my life.
Yet given the chance to have a real and honest post you see people running the same shit time and time again.
You have one guy claiming to be a school owner, When two months ago he was posting every minute about him coming to China for the first time. So he fell ass backwards into an ownership role and hes the big boss? Im not saying hes lying but..... Its nothing like hes claiming here. Either that company has 4 students and hes hoping for growth. Or hes an owner like Jay Z owned the nets. People dont just hand over lucrative companies to foreigners with zero experience. So either hes the luckiest sunnofabitch ever, or hes not being real. If im wrong so be it.
Then you have another Doctor, who seem incredibly happy now, and I dont doubt that. But previously, when he was a teacher, he was constantly claiming his life was perfect, and his university was great, he had so much time to do research and hes doing a real job. Then he gets out, and his whole life before was shit, no research and his students are a joke, It seems even doctors have difficulty being real sometimes.
Hulk stands out as real to me. We dont always see eye to eye, and he has some messed up stories, but when i called him out, god damn if he didnt shut me down, and one thing remained constant through the years. He loved being a teacher and he loved the lifestyle. Even more impressive, after he got out and back to a real country, he never changed that view.
expatlife26:
Right. Like if you're happy with what you do...nobody can say shit to you about it. Hell some people see "Analyst at ____ Bank" and look down on me for being part of the problem or think "oh another boring corporate drone". Shit I don't care...I like my job so I say it proud. I own that shit.
Hell somebody tells me they didn't wanna work at Target back home so they faked a degree to teach here and found they were good at it?...shit i'll buy em a round myself! That's awesome.
It's the phony rationalizing that I don't wanna hear about. Anybody that's confident and happy is fun to talk to regardless of their job, people that are making shit up are usually insecure and boring people.
That big article i wrote about getting out of esl, what I really wanted to do in that was just shoot down every asinine rationalization that people have. Put a spotlight on all the stupid things people here say to tell themselves and I think that's why some people had such an intense...gut hatred of me. Like that one dude Paul Berger who came at me saying how he was so much more successful than I EVER would be back home and that he was much happier teaching. And then made anonymous posts (which still show up on your profile dumbass!) pretending to be some british guy agreeing with him. Yeah...there's a guy who is happy where he is!
Are you happy being a teacher and think you always will be? Fucking awesome dude! You're right where you need to be and those jobs are easy to get. You should be envied.
Do you think you're magically going to start a business with no experience or money? Then you're fucking naive and don't know how the world works.
Do you think you're proving how tough you are on this extended cultural hardship vacation? Then you're a fucking idiot and insulting to all the people trapped in real poverty (and guess what? your kids will be!)
People either get it or they don't. If they aren't happy doing what they're doing they can either shit "he's right, I gotta get my act together" or they think "Fuck you man! You can't criticize me!" Guess which one ever gets out?
expatlife26:
and one more thing, when you got people saying "oh teaching is great...I should know because I used to be somebody important" that's phony as fuck.
Like they have to confirm that they're not one of those losers that's only been an ESL teacher, so we can be comforatble taking their opinions seriously.
Fuck that, they're the ones being elitist hypocrites.
Robk:
@expat life - mike695ca
For sure, I respect people that are where they want to be and don't give a shit what people think. You faked a degree to get here and teach English. Good! Fucking the system! Universities are in bed with the government and don't give a shit about students these days. Pushing 17-18 year old kids to making a decision they are not ready to make and putting them 100k in debt with a useless degree and no job opportunities... I just read an article on cracked on how the job market is screwed in the U.S. and other countries. 1 in 4 people actually WORK in the field they got their degree in... so if you did all that and managed to work in a job you love, that is amazing. If you said... "fuck that noise, I am faking a degree and going to China" that is awesome too, because you found a way out of the system. If you do your own thing or carve your own way, then I got mad respect because that is tough.
Even jumping on a plane to China alone without speaking the language isn't easy at all. But coming to China to pretend you are a CEO because you couldn't convince people you were special back home, is lame.
I carved out my own business from nothing. No help. I couldn't stand teaching anymore, mainly due to self-respect. When you have self-respect others will respect you as well. People that pretend to be something they aren't to fake self-respect and try to gain the respect of others, doesn't work. People (at least the ones that count) can see through them pretty easily..
You can't fake self-respect... insecurity is a horrible stench that drowns it out. Feeding your passion is what usually creates self-respect and being a productive person. Not talking about it.
expatlife26:
Yeah fuck college...every skill that I actually use at my job I could've learned on the internet for free. That's a big reason I went to a cheap state college...my folks could afford for me to go with no debt. But like if you don't have the degree people won't take you seriously and that's total BS.
People who get worked up over stuff like fake degrees in soft fields like teaching...or basically anything that isn't a lab science or a hard math or scripting based discipline are just being defensive. "I have a degree therefore a degree has to matter or I just wasted my time/money"
Fuck i'll go on record that if I found out a colleague, whose work I respected, had faked their degree...their secret would be safe with me.
95% of the expats I ran into were bottle-chuggers, creeps, cradle robbers, extremely fearful individuals, or people too ashamed to be seen in public.
You say "hi," they look at you, and then put their head down and keep walking fast and awkwardly. Or they turn around, look at you, and start running. WTF?
I'm not saying you're all like that, it's just most of the ones I ran into. I met a few great expats on this forum, and they weren't like that.
iWolf:
I think you are being harsh Mr Hulk. I'd say 10% are not the scum floating on the gene pool.
It's not expats in the hood that is a bad thing, it is the number of lowlives in the expat community that is the bad thing.MissA:
"turn around, look at you and start running." Mate, you're a big dude, just saying...
Hulk:
True, or maybe they were spies! Sent to steal my secrets. What secrets, you ask? I don't know. I don't have any.
Well, lets face it, you have to be a nutter to want to live here. All the "normal" people are back home.
If I see a foreigner in a place where foreigners are not normally seen, I give a nod and "Hi there". I don't stop for a chat and exchange life stories.
It's 50/50 if I get a nod back. Makes no difference to me.
As an aside, when my wife was in the UK with me, she was always amazed how if you passed someone while walking in the countryside they would always say " Hello, what a grand day for it eh?"
You don't do that in towns or cities in the UK, so why do it here?
It's not that i dont like other expats, it's that I don't like people in general.
dunno. I haven't met many ex-pats really.. but I am sure some are like u said. I must admit oftentimes I think (thought) it was weird to see some white guys/girls in different places in Asia,,,,, just cuz we rarely see them far off the beaten path, even though I guess it is getting more & more common now. Still, it always kinda surprised me, but even though I am reticent (Word of the Day) to have contact with them, that's mostly because I am not around white guys (foreigners) much and they are typically younger than me by at least a generation.
I do find that I don’t get as chummy as I could with other expats because most don’t stick around long enough to really get to know. It just seems like a waste of time to become friends with someone you’ll never see again after their short stint in China.
mike695ca:
Thats not cool. Of course people come and go but you can mis out on alot of friendships long term and fun times short term. I certainly dont have many friends but the ones i do make , we keep in contact no matter where we are. Just takes a little work but its worth it for your sanity.
Kahns_fury:
I do have close expat friends but they are the ones who are here for the long haul like myself. It also doesn’t help matters that I am usually at least 10 years older than most greenhorns who come here. We don’t have that much in common.
Yeah, actually I like to help out new expats because it was toughwhen I first came here with very little Chinese ability. Hard to get to know them because you know they will be leaving soon and they treat China like a frat party which is cool but when you have been here a while... it's boring and you realize that a lot of these expats act like they are in hobo college.
I will talk to them if they make an open attempt as well but I am not one of those types that NEEDS lots of friends and other people to accept me. I don't want to be forced to be someone's buddy because we both traveled half way across the world.
I really don't like most people, I find lots of people weak and fake. I like ambitious, determined, humorous, intelligent and classy people. Hard to find in China.
expatlife26:
Right, I try to help people out where I can. It's pretty easy to tell the wannabe frat people from good people worth getting to know.
I see it as paying forward the good mentorship that I was lucky enough to have when I first got here. Show younger guys fresh off the boat that you CAN build a real professional life here, and to ignore anyone telling you otherwise. I had that...mentorship is really important. I still have mine, and am trying to pay it forward a little bit now that I have some good experience of my own.
I think 1 party year in China is probably OK...it's just that after that you need to have a firm plan to either leave or get your act together. The problem comes from when someone starts to think that screwing around and drinking all the time is "normal" and that being a professional is just for the "lucky people".
I mean shit right out of college, screwing around for a while might be what the doctor ordered and I don't fault a 22 year old for working 12 hrs a week at a uni job and backpacking around China...that's an awesome experience.
If you wanna keep doing it, that's ok too...but I just want people to not be under any delusions that anything better is coming. If you think that low-responsibility party lifestyle that's really fun at 22, isn't going to depress you at 40. More power to you.
Robk:
In my opinion, those passionate people are (like entrepreneurs, athletes etc.) the best people in the world. They don't want to screw people over, they see potential in people and want motivate others. They love what they do, they are good at it and getting paid is an awesome reward for it.
Passionate people spread their inspiration and touch other people's lives positively. They don't just give hands-outs, they spark an energy in other people to better their own lives, to stop waiting around and make things happen. They make people believe in themselves. I always remind myself of this when I feel down or like things aren't going my way ... We don't know how big the Universe is, but we know it exists and we know it is massive beyond our comprehension. It is just sitting there, and you can have anything in it. A billion dollars, a private jet, even a planet... the Universe doesn't care what you want because it is all made up small particles and molecules. The Universe only cares how badly you want it and if you can create the energy, actions and reactions necessary.
So simply put, you shouldn't mix with people anyway that do not create the same energy because they will throw you off track. You will notice how passionate, motivational people seek each other out because of the energy they put out there.
I love helping people out, but most of them time they don't want help. Most people don't like listening to others because they think they have everything sorted out yet wonder why their lives are not going they way they want. Then they blame others or the world...
This is a timely post. My gf is always pushing me to go to meet other expats so I will have friends. I try and explain to her that just because someone is a foreigner and speaks English does not mean we have anything in common. I don't drink so there is no enjoyment at hanging out in bars. I stay at home and BBQ in the back yard on the weekend. Walk my dog. Travel to places of no interest (I hate crowds).
Yesterday she calls me and tells me she met another American and invited him and his family to our house this weekend for a BBQ.
CharlieB:
I didn't really say anything. I figure I will humor her, I am going to be BBQing anyway, at least he is married and will be bring his wife and 6 year old kid. Apparently they are all pretty new to China. I will let you know how it goes.
Honestly I haven't come across anyone who would like to befriend me or avoid me only because I can speak the same language.
Moreover, when I China, I try to make Chinese friends.
So, i guess same is the case with other people.
If I ever come across an expat, i just nod to acknowledge his /her presence.
Sometimes they nod back and sometimes they don't.
But in any case, I try to stay away from those who have only bad things to say about China.
mike695ca:
Well thats a good way to isolate yourself! You show me a foreigner who doesnt have anything bad to say about China, and ill show you a foreigner who just got here.
Honestly I haven't come across anyone who would like to befriend me or avoid me only because I can speak the same language.
Moreover, when I China, I try to make Chinese friends.
So, i guess same is the case with other people.
If I ever come across an expat, i just nod to acknowledge his /her presence.
Sometimes they nod back and sometimes they don't.
But in any case, I try to stay away from those who have only bad things to say about China.
