Living in China

This is the third posting from SRI's current Intern, Eric Luker, from BYU's Kennedy Center for International Studies.Living in ChinaHaving been here in china for several months, I now feel that I am getting used to some of the cultural differences that make living in China hard, at least for many people. That said, I was in China for a few months last year studying and have also spent several years dealing with the Chinese people, which has made it easier for me. However, since my trip to China last year I have gotten married and this is a whole new experience for my wife.  When we were preparing to come to Shenzhen for this internship we were surprised by how much attention was given to her, as I was the one that would be working. After the first week I realized how much of a culture shock it was to move here and why she was given such attention. So I’m going to try and talk about the largest obstacles that we have faced trying to live here and a few things to do to feel a little more comfortable.Language: The most abrupt change that occurs as you get off the plane and which makes everything else that much harder is the language. We are better off than some because I speak Mandarin, but that doesn’t help my wife much when I’m at work and she needs to go shopping or do some other errand. During the first few weeks it was not unusual for my wife to come home with some new story about the language difficulties she encountered during the day. One such experience happened when she was trying to meet a friend at Walmart. When she walked out of the apartment complex, there were hundreds of police and military men all over the streets, blockading most exits. She kept trying to ask people what was going on and why the buses were blocked but everyone just laughed at her. Helpless, she returned home and rescheduled the trip for a different day. My wife is generally a pretty capable woman and can handle her own, but in China she has found that not being able to speak the language creates a vulnerability that can be quite frustrating and even frightening at times. So spending some time everyday to pick up a little mandarin will make China a much more enjoyable place.Driving: The first time I got into a taxi here I thought I was going to die. It was night and all I can remember was weaving in and out of traffic at high speed with neon lights quickly flying by the window. I did make it to my hotel without any incidents and since then I have had the same experience many times. Driving in China is not like driving in the US or Canada, the only other countries I’ve been to. First, in my opinion, the taxi drivers are actually some of the best drivers on the road. I have never seen a taxi stop in the middle of a fast moving road to switch lanes or to cross three lanes of highway to get to a freeway exit they almost missed. I’ve been told that most of the population with driver’s licenses has been driving for under a year. In essence, that’s like a city full of stereotypical high-school drivers. The only difference is that instead of being too aggressive they just don’t move. Thus, I have yet to see a bad accident but once while driving home from a factory I saw three fender benders in five minutes. So if you want to get a license and drive in China, good luck. If want to take a taxi, don’t freak out when see that you are three inches from the car next to you. Because of these reasons and price, I don’t want to spend twenty dollars each time I go across town, we have found that public transportation, such as a bus or the subway, is the best way to get from point A to point B.Subway: My wife and I are not the biggest explorers, but we have found that the subway will take us to most of the places we want to go. Yes, there are lots of people that use the subway, but I have never been unable to get on the subway due to it being overcrowded. Also, there are few places that you will go in China that don’t feel “crowded”, whether it’s the grocery store, side walk or the road. It shouldn’t take long until you know which stops to get off at. The bus is almost as convenient but you do need to know how to tell the attendant on the bus where you are going. Usually the same attendant will also let me know when to get off, which is a perk of being a foreigner. It will take longer to figure out the bus system than the subway but when used together they can get you almost anywhere.Food: Everyone always wants to know about the food. In my opinion, authentic Chinese food is better than any rip off like Panda Express or even P.F. Chang’s, but this is one thing my wife doesn’t always agree with me on. I like the variety of flavors regardless of what it is, but she is more of a boneless person and everything has bones. Textures can also be very different from what the west is used to like tofu and artificial fish balls, which are common for hotpot. So to each his own but going out on a limb to try something may pleasantly surprise you.Cooking: There are lots of things that have prevented us from getting the hang of cooking at home. The first is the lack of ingredients for western food and the price of dairy products. Also, it can be nauseating to walk around the meat section of the local grocery store and see stacks of goose heads, piles of ground meat that you scoop into bags and lots of body parts you won’t see anywhere else. Our solution to this is simply picking a different store, since there are three within walking distance of our complex. One of them is much milder in content and even has boneless chicken breasts, a rarity in China. Most stores will have an import aisle where you can find a few types of pasta and sauce but that is about where the average store stops, and some don’t even have that.  We have started looking up simple Chinese recipes online to fill out our weekly menu and I have also found that there are many general sauces for beef, pork and even some vegetables that make cooking a lot easier.There are lots of other cultural things that will take time to get used to, if it is even possible. There is a book that I just read about Chinese business culture by Scott D. Seligman that has some great information about why the Chinese do things the way they do and some advice on how to work within the culture. I would recommend it to any new comers and wish the best of luck to all foreigners who wish to make China a place of residence.