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Sign up with Google Sign up with FacebookQ: Problems foreigners typically complain about here that are not actually that big of a deal?
What can I say, I'm bored at work and a small-scale flame war would wake me up a bit.
I'll play.
"Farting loudly in a lift"
:
haha. I'd like to extend this to general bathroom bowel movement conduct, or "battle shits" as I lovingly call it.
Scandinavian:
I am not sure. If you take it beyond just the fart, with sound, and e.g. start talking about smells; then I think we are moving towards it becoming a pretty big deal.
:
Touché.
How about I change my answer to "a waste basket of soiled toilet paper may smell horrible, but it's better than the alternative of a constantly clogged drain."
Okay, back to work now.
Amonk:
I would rather spend 5 minutes plunging each time than have a waste bin full of soiled TP in my apartment. Good workout!
Firecrackers going off all night long - after all, it's only a bit of entertainment, isn't it?
Oh, and queue jumping - what's up with us foreigners having to wait longer than we should? We have money and time to burn!
Internet restrictions - they are only there to stop our pure, naive little minds from becoming corrupted. We should be wholly thankful to these people for saving us from our sins.
Amonk:
Last I checked a good VPN is like $60/year, I have no idea why people don't just get one...
Scandinavian:
I don't consider queue-jumping a minor thing. People who do so go to hell.
Kaiwen:
My answers were meant with a degree of sarcasm. I know VPN's are available and have one and I know queue jump actually induces violence on occasions but I answer from a tongue-in-cheek Chinese point of view.
Size of Condoms. We all know your dick is smaller than what you say
Amonk:
Exactly. Just use a Ziploc bag! My Chinese doctor has assured me it's 99.9% effective at stopping pregnancy.
t91camp:
I'm sure it's actually true sometimes. I've had to just pack large amounts of them into my suitcase, but then again I have to special order them in 'Murica too. Maybe I'm just picky, but I like a perfect fit, and that ain't gonna happen with Chinese condoms.
As far as I'm concerned, most of the stuff people complain about here are major 'first world problems'. I spent my last semester at university living in my car, stalking strangers with key cards into dormitories to sneak into the bathroom for #2s and showers. So when I hear the ECC people complaining about "Oh God I have to see another foreigner!" or "Oh no, someone is speaking to me in broken English!" or the best "Whatever will I do without a western toilet!"... I just laugh and laugh. You girls are classy.
Amonk:
Although I should say that I could really use a western toilet any time I'm reading about Hulk's mother in law, that lady scares the ____ out of me.
I was guilty. The inability to find decent spices, and then the fact that when they were actually stocked in a supermarket, the check out chicks refused to sell them, drove me crazy.
Not exactly a world-shaking problem, really....
GuilinRaf:
In Guilin, in my first tern I would buy Watsons club soda or soda water. I would buy the entire case. Every week. Then suddenly, they stopped selling it. I asked the owner why and she said because I was the only one buying it. I asked, if she made a profit and she said yes, but that she would not stock up on it anymore because I was the only one buying it.....
MissA:
Against all the odds, there was once a case of Irn-Bru (google it) stocked in Urumqi, but they'd only ever put out 4-5 cans at a time. The day we first found it was a very happy day for my partner - who promptly brought their entire stock.
Unfortunately for him, we had a fellow Irn-Bru lover over for dinner, who looked in our fridge and said "where did you get that!!!!" The supermarket only stocked it when they could be bothered putting out more stock, and so thus began a game between of who-can-get-to-the-supermarket-first- after-they-put-the-orange-crap-out. Between us, we must have bought an entire palate in maybe a week. They never bothered getting it in again.
Maybe a reference to a question I asked a while ago would fit in this thread
http://answers.echinacities.com/question/do-you-push-close-door-button-l...
There are probably dozens of them but I can't remember any at the moment because they're not actually a big deal.
Complaining about the food here you know back home there is some highschool kid spitting in your onion rings or stepping on your fries so I don't know why they'd complain about the food.
luggi:
well, you may choose spit over reuse of cooking oil. others wont...
I can't get good cheese. Yes cheese is great. No it is not the end all and be all.
When the "middle manager" in his 40+ sitting beside of me here, and everyday he do his ear-cleaning procedure at the desk, with the tools on his keys. checking, using fingers to clean it and than continue to write his excel ... next time i will spend 5kuai and buy him a box of 200 cotton swabs, lets see his face :D
The only thing here that ever really bothers me is the staring thing, but I always remind myself that it's preferable to the paranoia back home where staring is an act of aggression. I also remind myself that some kid's just been forced into child soldiery in Africa and if having someone watch me pick my nose is my only hardship, i'm doing ok.
Not a China thing but from home. I've thought about how foreigners coming to Canada react. I had a British GF years ago. Her dad and grandparents all came here. They complained about everything. They had dinner at the mayors house one night and were just climbing the walls. It seems that the entire family was cutting their food using only a fork. The sound of it drove them crazy. I didn't think a knife or fork made a different sound when cutting. Then I always had to listen about how bad things were here in the colonies. You know houses sell for 10% here of what a British one does and everything we sell is half of what the Brits pay. We have no culture, this coming from a land that gave us such exquisite cuisine like bake well tarts, no decent wines. The dad called me some Brit name for bastardizing my 1938 Chevy, it's a hot rod with new style suspension and power disc brakes. I don't think I could buy stock parts to keep the car running. Everything is just so bad here and we drive on the wrong side of the road. This was years ago, Brits gave us junk like BSA, Triumph bikes, Austin and Vauxal cars.
DaveP84:
You are stereotyping an entire nation by one bad experience of a family obviously socially inept. We don't like having them over here anymore than you want them visiting you. A lot of great things have come from the UK. For a start the English language which by the way, seems to be the key thing for helping so many westerners find work in China as well as other countries. Real ale, always a winner with me...... Yeah erm ok that's all I can think of to be honest lol. Glad I'll be leaving here soon enough.
But please don't drop us all into the same category just because some old fart slandered a country he knows f*** all about. He probably knows even less about the country he came from to be honest.
Xpat.John:
Well, it is a well known fact that Brits drive on the wrong side of the street because the Queen is cross-eyed. And Americans invented the English language. And of course, 37 Chevy's should never be legally exported from the US because wannabe-limeys don't deserve them. :P
TedDBayer:
I was just showing a reverse culture shock. If I want pie, I want pie, not a bake well tart with 1/8'' filling. And why do they still have royalty, people with no purpose in life and living in undeserved wealth? I read some where that the largest English speaking population is in NA. And as I see it,it is now a NA language, thou art a naive, least ye be fleest by a cockold.
Scandinavian:
The UK is basically a 3rd world country. I mean, uninsulated water pipes on the outside of buildings
Hmmmm, actually maybe a rant purely based on observations from Fawlty Towers might be in place.
MissA:
You're not being entirely fair, Teddy.
1. No decent wines, but awesome ales, ciders and whiskies, they deserve a lot of credit for all of the above.
2. And yes, their pies are occasionally a bit iffy, but this is the nation that gave the world the Banoffee Pie; major kudos there. Anyhow, I like Bakewell tarts. I'm struggling now to think of anything Canada's given the world except maple syrup? Bieber? Um.......
TedDBayer:
1938 HOTRODS, peanut butter, THE TELEPHONE, basketball, hockey, wonder bras, we have good wne, beer and whiskey, crap our flag is a beer label At least we have good food. If I made you a peach pie or my pina colada cheese cake would you still crave bake well tart? We have always been drinkers, tt's how we got our indendence from England, a bunch of drunks went downtown and yelled at the Brits and we out drank them, they got scared and left.
MissA:
LOL, Alexander Graham Bell, the man who won the patent wars over telephones, was a Scotsman. A Scotsman who moved to Canada, yes, but still a Scot.
As for the others - the only one that really matters is peanut butter, which, granted, is pretty awesome.
Motorcycles, cars & busses that drive down sidewalks. I mean, think of the advantages! People become much more dexterous and aware of their surroundings. I can't see why people would complain about that.
MissA:
When I met my boyfriend, I'd just finished up on a long stint in Asia and he thought that I was a bit strange.
The reason? I was absolutely incapable of walking in a straight line and approached footpaths (sidewalks, if you will) like obstacle courses: ducking, sidestepping, and weaving like crazy.
Eventually, I talked him into coming to Asia with me, and he understood why....
Can I get some fish without a hundred little bones sticking me in the gums? haha
The usual pollution, environment, and indigenous population. Really there is not much to complain about here as a foreigner. The question is what do you want to focus on, and what do you want to waste your energy on.