Thread: China!!!

Kang, as I appear to have confused you with my verbal shorthand, maybe I should spell it out. When garza said don’t talk to the locals, I think he was implying that you wouldn’t know who you are talking to – will he be a Chinese man-in-the-street who simply wants to tell you his recipe for fried rice or will he be a Communist agent with the potential to make you vanish – poof! – off the face of the earth?

But, I like fried rice. Point taken though.

Originally Posted by Hawke

Okay, skip the pictures, man. I'll don't want to be responsible for you possibly doing jail time. A work about your trip though would be welcome. *hint*

Oh, of course. And I think I can get away with taking pictures of The Wall

Truth to tell, Kang, the best thing to do with your camera while you are in China is to leave it at the hotel. Take the advice of a trip counselor about whether in your room or in a safe deposit box. Be certain there are no compromising photos in it no matter where you leave it. There will be plenty of good post cards for sale. Of course I always carried a camera in the East, but I was paid to be shot at so it was okay.

Even if the local person you have a conversation with is an ordinary citizen, the fact that you are seen talking with him can put him in danger. And he may in fact turn out to be a policeman ready to spring a trap.

None of this is intended to make you paranoid - just careful.

Welly insclutaber, Chinee poricemans.

whittle away, my friend, whittle away. It would totally worth it. I just arrived in Changzhou two days ago to teach English at an international language school for children and it's amazing here. If it makes your mom feel any more comfortable, their communism is only a shadow of its former self. It's much more like a socialist society with some pretty heavy capitalist overtones. On top of that, they actually treat foreigners better than they would native Chinese citizens.

Of course if you're going to go, learn to read Pinyin at the very least. And don't just assume that you know how to read it, be 100% confident that you KNOW without a doubt how to pronounce the words written in Pinyin. If you get lost and have a map with where you need to go, let's say it's called Xinquan, if you ask someone how where "zeen kwan" is, they're going to look at you like you're an idiot and walk away. If you don't speak Chinese, that's fine. But don't be so naive as to believe the stereotypes that everyone here speaks perfect English. NOBODY does. If you can't read Chinese characters, that's fine as well. But for the love of all that is good and right, learn Pinyin. That'll be your only saving grace if you come to the country with no prior knowledge of anything else.

Do it though =) you'll love it the country.

Pinyin? :S

I shall look into it

haha, sorry I should've clarified =) Pinyin is the Romanization of Chinese, although it still definitely takes some study and getting used to, because it's not necessarily pronounced how it's written (e.g. the letter "q" is pronounced closer to the sound "tch")

Kang - Here is an article I saw in the New York Times that you may find of interest.

My nephew is off travelling, he went across Russia and down through Mongolia into China. He is a blonde, six foot four, Viking of a lad and he told us that in China people kept approaching him wanting to have their photos taken with him, he looked so different. I think things might have changed a little in the last few years garza, communist does not mean what it used to in Mao's day.

Originally Posted by garza

By the end of this century the world's two economic super powers will be China and India. Take advantage of every opportunity you have to visit any country in the East.

lol should I feel lucky or what? I think I should finally put up pics of my trip.

And yay Kang, hope you go and hope you enjoy.

Olly - It's not Communism that's the worry. Political systems change. Underlying culture does not. The East and the West have much yet to learn about one another and therefore anyone with an interest to visit the East should be encouraged. But they should also understand that the people they meet do not have the same world view, the same concepts of time and reality, as people in the West. Their world view is not better or worse; it's different. The innocent but incautious visitor can offend with no intention of offending, can break the law with no intention of breaking the law, can find himself in harm's way when he never meant to go there.

People never have the same world view, that's why it is so good when they get out of their own culture, they start to realise which are the mostly superficial aspects and which are those that are common to all human beings. I have been places where I have almost no cultural connection and can still see the same characters I saw in the playground, the bully, the victim, the one who stands up for him, and so on. Of course one does not go blundering about in another's house, but the aspect of the world one meets is often also a reflection of one's own attitude, perhaps they had read your signature.

But the relationship of the bully and the victim in the East is different from that same relationship in the West.

It's true that individually people are much the same everywhere, but collectively they vary. The people in a village in the mountains are not the same, collectively, as the people in a village in the Mekong valley. Nearer to home, the Garifuna and the Kriol are both of African descent, but their histories as a people are different, their cultures are different, their languages are different. I've been among them long enough now to sense the difference in talking with the people of, say, Flowers' Bank in the Belize River Valley and the people of Hopkins Village on the coast south of Dangriga. How I behave, the speech I use, in one place is a bit different from how I behave and talk in the other.

Likewise among the three groups of Maya in Belize. I have many friends among the Kekchi, some among the Yucatecan, only a few among the Mopan, but enough in each to understand that the society of one is not exactly the same as the society of another. And the cultural concepts of the Maya, especially regarding property, time, spatial relationships, and mankind's place on the Earth are misunderstood by a majority of people who come from a Euro-centric background. The European thinks of 'East' as a specific direction. The Mayan thinks of 'East' as 'where the sun rises'. The literal-minded person who believes there is only one correct way to think of 'East' will never understand the world-view of the person who thinks differently.

The bully and the victim may appear to be the same, East or West, but the dynamics of their relationship will be guided by the society where they live. One advantage I've had over the years comes from being raised in a home where there were six different religions under one roof and two races of people in one neighbourhood. Coming from that background makes it possible to meet with a new set of customs, a new framework of reference, and accept it, adapt to it, and disappear into the crowd with eyes and ears open and mouth used sparingly. Someone mentioned 'comfort zone', and that's a concept I don't fully understand because I've never been uncomfortable in any cultural setting.

I spent a total of some seven or eight years in southeast Asia - I'd have to go back to my journals and add it up to know exactly because of the coming and going that went on for a number of years - and did my best in each place where I spent any time to fit in as well as it was possible for a big blue-eyed near-sighted white guy to fit in. Still, I was always the outsider, which was okay because I'm a reporter, an observer and bearer of tales. Being an outsider, and yet adapting to local custom does allow a degree of fading into the woodwork that permits close observation and, as much as is humanly possible, objective reporting.

So, Kang, do try to absorb as much as you can of the local culture by keeping your eyes and ears open and being careful to follow the rules that are laid out for visitors. You will see and hear much that is counter to the way you were taught. Accept cultural differences as the other right way of doing things and you'll be fine.

Yeah, I'm not bringing my laptop to China, lol. And I'm going to assume the hotel rooms are bugged. Call me paranoid.