The language, the culture, the people; living in another country is a difficult, baffling, and sometimes even maddening experience. All expats in China have suffered “China days”, the days where everything seems so complicated, so backwards, so foreign. When you’re living in another country away from family, friends, and so much is unfamiliar it’s easy to become irritated and shout loudly and slowly “I ordered my food over an hour ago” or “you told me yesterday to come back today and now you’re telling me to come back again tomorrow?”

There are so many things about China that drive foreigners crazy: the amount of oil in all the food, the people who say ‘yes’ when they really mean ‘no’, the bureaucracy that has us all running in circles and chasing our tails trying to get our residency permits. Yet, there are so many things we love about living in China: the delicious cheap food, the amazing friendliness of so many Chinese people, the feeling of safety when we walk the streets at night. I’ve asked a diverse group of expats to share what they like most and least about China. Our panel includes foreigners from all over the world doing different things in a number of Chinese cities. Shanghai to Beijing, students to ad execs, westerners and Asians, there were a lot of commonalities as well as quite a few penetrating insights into expat life in China.

In this article we'll explore the things we like least about China. Next time around we'll be a bit more positive and talk about the things we love.

One of the things that all expats can agree on is that we hate the pollution. We hate the perennial colds and the hacking coughs and the loud dramatic hocking of loogies out on the streets. We might chuckle a bit when we compare the amount of soot we blow into our tissues but we’re just laughing to keep from crying as we realize that in China it’s not just the smokers who are at risk for lung cancer. It’s worst in the winter when coal briquettes are used to heat old homes and fire stoves. Beijing cleared up beautifully during the Olympic traffic regulation period but now we’re back to explaining to visitors that ‘it really isn’t foggy out’.

 

 

Nobody loves the traffic, the stretch buses, cars, mopeds, tricycles, and scooters all grinding together like rocks in a bag. Or the death grip every driver in China has on his or her horn. The general inability of people to queue in any kind of fashion drives foreigners crazy and the unfortunate custom or charging into the subway car before anyone can get out of it is not understood by any laowai (foreigners).
 

Beyond the more tangible problems of spitting and children in split pants running rampant there are the differences in mentality that foreigners have such a hard time understanding. A friend from Hong Kong who lived in the US for many years and mainland China now for many more told me one of the things he liked least was “people overcoming rules and regulations… and taking pride in it.” And yet most foreigners are probably willing to bend a few rules when it allows them to bypass what another friend described as,“the confusion that is created by bureaucratic inefficiency,” adding, “ I've lost a lot of time and money because of this when dealing with the government, landlords, schools --- even department stores.”

In many instances the bureaucratic inefficiency is happily married with the “the complete lack of flexibility some people have here, that robotic stance that simply cannot be changed and can make it very hard to solve any problems you have. It happens in plenty of countries but the worst I have ever seen is here.” People are often quite unwilling to admit they’ve made any sort of mistake which makes fixing that mistake nearly impossible. As an American I still believe ‘there is always a way’ and to every time I hear ‘没办法’which means ‘there is no way’, there is a grating together of cultural fault lines and I usually end up exploding in an embarrassing and useless display of ignorance of anger.

 

 

I understand the concept of ‘face’ no more than when I got here and still can’t comprehend that it is an effort to save face that causes “people saying yes when they mean ‘no’ or ‘I don't know’,” as my friend puts it, “I have a hard time figuring out how to guess what people really want,” and like most foreigners, “I don't know how to learn this skill either. Someone needs to teach it because it causes so much confusion, misunderstanding and well, problems.”

For many foreigners the things most uncomfortable, unfamiliar, and difficult to accept are those we can’t see. We can turn away from a child urinating into the street or ignore the phlegmy shouting of the cab driver but the differences in mentality are impossible to avoid. Some expats learn to relax and go with the flow, some wall themselves up in compounds full of foreigners and have their companies or schools handle everything for them, and many are somewhere in between trying to find a way to resolve the differences and remove this cultural divide from the list of things they like least about China.

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Keywords: living in China