Posted on 03/10/2008 2:08:45 AM PDT by KungFuBrad
Definition of Chinese person (Anyone who is a citizen of China and has parents and grandparents that are citizens of China.) By no means am I saying Asians in generally.
Even though I have lived and worked in China for 4 years, I have a Chinese wife and a half Chinese baby. I still have "I hate Chinese people" days. These happen 2 or 3 times a month actually so they are not rare occurrences. Some of this can be blamed on my impatient temper but most of it is caused by the Chinese people themselves. Their attitude on life and how you treat others. I do not know what the Chinese where like before the revolution but I do know what they are like now. I have lived in 3 Chinese cites, two in the interior of China and have visited 7 different provinces. I have been to the biggest cites and the smallest villages. I have seen the richest people and the poorest. I have seen students, businessmen, farmers, politicians, mayors and governors. There seems to be one thread that connects them all. This thread is the complete disregard for anyone else except their friends and family.
(Excerpt) Read more at whitedevilredangel.mee.nu ...
You can’t expect them to be short Americans. They are who they are, and they organize themselves according to their own customs. Your notion of an egalitarian society where all are equals is simply foreign to them.
You are not alone my friend. I went through that a lot...there are a majority of jerks and creeps out there...people that you think of and you think “they deserve the shit that they are living in”.
But then think of the few nice people you have met, who have been genuinely good to you...not the ones that made conversation to improve their English, or because you looked “Lao Wai” and exotic, or because they wanted to know what salary you re making in Chima (and then think of all the companies that short change Chinese employees :P)...I am sure you had a few of those people. Wish China well and the Chinese too...if only for those people :)
Not hating them, I agree that as a lot they are pretty selfish people. And somewhere in their selfish — “ME FIRST IN LINE OR ELSE” attitude, they can't even figure out that a straight line (at a ticket window or in vehicle traffic) means much smoother and faster getting along.
When I first arrived in China I taught English in Shijiazhuang, Hebei Province. The college didn't provide any teaching materials as they had promised. I ordered two cases of Paul Harvey's “The Rest Of the Story,” and used the short accounts as English teaching texts. It works great.
I told the forty college students that they would have to stand in line in front of my desk, sign a sheet affirming that they had each received a copy, and then take one copy of the paperback. They tried to line up. No less than a dozen times, just to distribute 40 books, I had to stop and put them back in line. They would MOB the desk.
At train ticket windows, there are a dozen hands shoved through the little hole at the bottom, all trying to get the first attention of the ticket seller. Those are the first dozen hands of of the 50 or more people in line, who are all mobbed up on each other's backs.
I have seen where up to 25% percent of the purchasers had to get back in line because errors were made on their train tickets. But the people can't discern that the errors are made mostly because the seller has the hands of a dozen different people in her face all at once demanding her full attention.
And the traffic in Shanghai is so pathetic, not because of the number of automobiles on the road, but because of the “ME FIRST” attitude. They MOB up on the roadways just as they mob up at the ticket windows and in the post offices.
My mother used to tell us that oriental people are the most polite people in the world. Well, Mom, . . . .
“You can’t expect them to be short Americans. They are who they are, and they organize themselves according to their own customs. Your notion of an egalitarian society where all are equals is simply foreign to them.”
I actually believe that it is worse in the Philippines than in China. And I would much rather do business in a Chinese-owned shop in the Philippines than in a Filipino-owned shop.
If you do any boating, you'll see that it's here, too.
These people need a dose of "The Golden Rule".
It is strange to them because it has been beat out of them by a Chinese communist gov. What your saying sounds very much like we must accept everything a culture does because its not our culture. I do not now nor never will subscribe to this philosophy. While we do have our own problems, I do believe we are the highest culture so far on the planet. This does not mean we will be in 100 years. But as of now we are the best. I do not expect Chinese people to behave like “Little Americans” I do however expect them to behave like citizens of a civilized world. I have many more accounts of these things and some that will just make your blood boil. So stay tuned. What till I get to the dead person in the road story.
HAHA yes I spent some time in the Philippines. I would much rather deal with the Chinese myself. Please people don’t misunderstand. This is just a day. 90 percent of the time things are fine. But, every once in a while I have a host the jolly roger day.
It sounds like an occasional thing.
Quite understandable.
We also have some (very) occasional "Hate the Japanese" days, here in Tokyo.
Although not that frequent, and hardly ever over a matter of manners or cleanliness, that's for sure! (Usually just over OVER efficiency, by-the-book-ism!).
Still, when you end up overseas having too many and increasing "Hate the =====" days, I would say then, well, it is time to come HOME.
I am not that familiar with China, but I have lived in Muslim societies. I went through a long period of beating my head against the wall when I was expecting them to follow the rules I carried around in my head. The problem is, they were all following a rule-book I had never read. The problem was mine, not theirs.
Trying to convince them that my rules, with contracts, fair play, reliability, etc, was the better set of rules was ultimately futile. They were convinced, from lifelong experience, that their rules of self/brother/family/clan/and way down the line everything else, were better, and I was simply wasting my time to try to convince them otherwise.
It is not a matter of accepting everything they do, it is more a matter of being realistic about what they will do and incorporating that knowledge into setting up relationships with them. I would not apply Western ideas about quality control, for instance, to a Chinese manufacturer, because the Western model assumes a broad range of cultural tendencies the Chinese manufacturer does not labor under. Trying to apply my model to their production is just going to be frustrating and will ultimately fail. That failure would be my fault.
I understand you. Just don’t let it get the best of you. Hebei and Heilongjiang Provinces are still preferable to Shanghai as far as I am concerned.
There are some subcultures in America that I'd like to behave like citizens of a civilized world - "PULL YOUR PANTS UP!"
I spent a number of business trips in China, mostly in Guangdong in a city called Fuyong. What you describe, I call “the funnel”. We ran into it everywhere. Any place where there was restricted flow of whatever(people, cars, bikes etc.), you had to just jam your way to the front. Being that we were all big guilo’s it wasn’t difficult...just annoying.
Hey! I just returned from a two mile walk in southwest Shanghai, and by an intersection where they were painting striped crosswalks. It was after midnight. A luxury car was just about to bolt across when two workers set up orange rubber pylons. The lux car screeched to a halt, and two men jumped out ready to fight, throwing their jackets off. One opened the trunk and pulled out a 16”+ bolo knife. He went to swinging it, too, and orange-jacketed road painters went running away in all directions. I didn't have a video camera with me — what a shame!
The two criminals got back in the car and “dragged” across and away. THEN police happened to arrive in an old raggedy Volkswagen squad. I doubt anyone even got a plate number.
While workers talked with police, the intersection filled up with cars, oozing through the pylons and ruining the freshly painted cross walk work. It made a funny sound with the paint sticking to all the tires. Ooze and sticky!
Big deal, I also have my ‘hate Britain’ days. Bikes are also stolen in London, every friday night the town center in most British towns is turned into a mass of drunken yobs and yobettes.
I also have my hate France days. The french are unbelievably rude and service in Paris is sloppy. I have my hate New York days .......
Point is, if you don’t like China, get out!
They all look alike?
I have an awful lot of "Hate the Terrorists" days. Pretty much every day.
I guess it's time to come home. ;-)
Are you talking to me about not liking China? You never read anything from my keyboard about not liking China. I love these people dearly, or I wouldn’t be here at all. There’s no financial hold on me here. And stating truth by observation does not indicate any hatred toward the Chinese. We are stating what we see.
The Chinese situation is on an entirely different plane than anything in Western Europe or the USA. It’s not the matter of stolen bicycles.
I’ve been working with a lot of Chinese this past week or two; transplants to San Francisco. They are endearing and
have a good sense of humor— they really get a big kick out of hearing me say the couple of Cantonese words they’ve taught me !
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