5000 year of culture????

[LeeLee]

http://forums.eslcafe.com/job/viewtopic.ph...2502ec58#726539

 

Orrin from CFL posted this article as you will see.

 

 

A few days ago, I witnessed an event which I think exemplifies one of the many paradoxes of daily life in China that we expats encounter on almost a daily basis.

 

About 5:30 in the afternoon I was waiting for a bus to take me to Wanzaisha at the bus stop in front of Hita Plaza shopping center. Of course, there was a larger than normal (whatever ¡°normal¡± is) number of people waiting there as well. As far as I could see, I was the only ¡°laowai¡± in the crowd.

 

Within a very few minutes a nose-to-tail procession of three #2 busses pulled into the stop. Each bus was separated from the other by about 10 to 12 meters. This was enough separation for me, and anyone else who cared to look, to easily see that all three were #2 buses.

 

Before the first bus in line, which was quite full, came to a complete stop, a group of about 20 to 30 people, many carrying full shopping bags and/or infants in their arms, surged towards the front door of the lead bus. Before the driver could get the front door open, the group were pushing, shoving and trying, by whatever means, to be the first one to board a bus on which, obviously, there were no unoccupied seats.

 

Here¡¯s the paradoxical part of the story. The other two #2 buses were virtually empty! I leisurely walked to the second bus in line, boarded, and settled easily into my preferred seat (the one immediately aft of the rear door). There were no more than five people on either the one I boarded, or the last #2 bus in the procession. The #2 bus that I boarded, and the one immediately behind, after waiting with the front doors open for a reasonable amount of time, during which not a single passenger attempted to board either one, pulled out of the stop while the first #2 bus was still loading.

 

My only regret is that I did not have a camera with me at the time to record this uniquely Chinese phenomenon.

 

My apartment is located on the 19th floor of a 27 story building in Wanzaisha. I really like this apartment. It has a balcony with a great view, and provides about every convenience that I or my wife could ask for in a Zhuhai apartment. The only problem (if you could call it a problem) is that there are only 2 lifts to service the whole building, and about 15% of the time one of these lifts is out of service for one reason or another.

 

When these out-of-service conditions occur, (and other ¡°normal¡± times as well) attempting to get either in or out of the building can be somewhat of a frustrating ordeal. The outward bound (down) half of the journey usually goes something like this.

 

After waiting for 5 to 7 minutes for the one functional lift that is headed in the correct direction to reach my floor, the door opens to reveal 7 or 8 people already inside. The doors close, and the downward journey begins. Of course, because this is the only functioning lift, it stops at every floor on the way down. At each floor more and more people get in until the lift is now packed beyond capacity.

 

When it finally reaches the ground floor and the doors open, there are about another 20 people wanting to take the lift up to their apartments. The instant the doors open, those waiting to go up (there are, many times, one or two who have their bicycle with them) begin pushing and shoving their way into the lift before the people already inside can get out. This practice makes for an interesting scene.

 

Why do they do that? Don¡¯t they realize that there are no seats to be had in the lift, and whether they are the first one or the last one into the lift, it¡¯s still going to take the same amount of time for them to get to the desired floor?

 

The inbound (up) half of the journey is no less eventful. As I mentioned earlier, there are sometimes one or two people waiting in the ground floor lift lobby with their bicycles, and another with two overflowing buckets of some unknown, very odiferous, fishy-smelling, semi-liquid substance; but, more often than not, there is at least one, 6 year old ¡°nosepicker¡± dressed in his playground-soiled, yellow white and red primary school uniform, with one of his index fingers buried firmly in his nose up to the second knuckle.

 

As soon as he boards the lift, he squirms his way to the control panel where he then removes his freshly booger-coated digit from his nostril, and gleefully applies it to every floor button that he can reach on the panel. He can usually reach up to about floor 22 or 23. All the while, his minder (usually his grandmother) looks on approvingly.

 

Little Mr. Nasal Excavator and his granny exit the lift on the second floor, secure in the knowledge, or perhaps oblivious to the fact, that the lift is now going to stop at every floor on its upward journey. They don¡¯t seem to have too much concern for the unfortunate, sweating delivery man in the lift who is trying to juggle the two large and cumbersome bottles of cooking gas that he is attempting to deliver to an apartment on the 24th floor, or for any of the others in the lift for that matter.

 

Now, before some of you climb my frame about my ¡°China bashing¡± let me say what I have said several times before. I have made the conscious decision to make Zhuhai my home. I can think of no other place in China (with the possible exception of a sun-soaked beach on the southern tip of Hainan, where an endless parade of smiling, bikini-clad local girls would bring me an endless stream of gin and tonic) that I would rather be.

[rogerluli]

Great stories LeeLee... The observation that it is all about ME or at the most MY FAMILY is one that we are well acquainted with...Everyone else is relegated to hell in a handbasket with amusing results for all concerned...

Edited January 27, 2009 by rogerluli (see edit history)

[rogerluli]

A Chinese bloggers mild rant on the frustrations of living the expat life in China...

 

 

http://shenzhenundercover.blogspot.com/200...n-in-china.html

[Jeikun]

Forgive me, but this popped into my head and posting it is the only way to get it out:

 

http://i39.tinypic.com/1zg698h.jpg

[tsap seui]

A Chinese bloggers mild rant on the frustrations of living the expat life in China...

 

 

http://shenzhenundercover.blogspot.com/200...n-in-china.html

 

I loved readin' posts like LeeLee's and the blogs that roGgIe posts. At first I thought I was gonna have to work in China and really get exposed to everyday life with dealing one on one with China and it's people.

 

Now I see that no, I won't be teaching english or doing any other job in China. Heck, the way the lil' guards me, I bet I'll live the whole 18-24 months we live in China and NEVER even get on the first bus.

 

I'm a real bum too, I probably won't learn any Chinese as the boss has decreed that only english will be spoken in the home...especially including lil' Bubba, Jr.. Boss rabbit wants me to prepare them both for america....okay.

 

In the lil' puddle in the road that is her 1.3 million people city I am sometimes mesmerized by all the people, I've been stared at like I was a space alien, photographed tens of times by fleet feeted Chinese with phone cameras, and go out to eat in a restaurant....fugitaboutit unless we get a private room.

 

I can see that my experience in China isn't gonna be the normal fare for an ex-pat, so I won't disgrace the term, "ex-pat" by using it on myself. It appears I'm gonna be writing and playing music during the day, teaching english to the lil' family, riding in taxis everwhere I go, and eating the best food in the world. Plus, the rabbit and I being wacked out laugh-aholics we're gonna have a ball singing kari-jokie and eating out with her friends.

 

I really like the bit of China I have seen but unless the lil' rabbit is super turned off by america, or worse, doesn't get a visa on her next interview...I'm just gonna be "passin' through, a travelin' nutty lil' nobody on a different path...if no america, then Australia is much better to live in anyhow. A man's GOT to know his options, eh?

 

tsap seui

[IllinoisDave]

A Chinese bloggers mild rant on the frustrations of living the expat life in China...

 

 

http://shenzhenundercover.blogspot.com/200...n-in-china.html

All of that sounds very familiar. He has a great point about it being amusing or even endearing when you're only there for a short time. All those things made for a great adventure when I was there for my small week or ten day trips. But I imagine it would get to be a little old after awhile.

[Batmaniac]

Thank God nobody was hurt. When I first started reading that story I thought it was going to be about a crowd of people stepping between the buses before they stopped.

 

I have some China nitpicks too . . . I experienced the same as this guy on the elevators. Very frustrating. However I have another elevator story. In two buildings that I used elevators frequently in had elevators on both sides of the hallway. The problem is nobody ever synced the buttons together, so you had people pushing both buttons (and I was guilty too) to see which elevator would come first. This caused a problem because you'd be stopping on floors that had no people on them all the way down! As much as a hurry everyone is in, it seems that would be fixed.

 

And I have a bus and taxi story. Taxi driver was dropping me off. A bus in front of him had been stopped for like 2 seconds and the driver starts to speed up around the right of the bus. Sure enough just as I predicted, a girl started to step out out of the rear bus door. Fortunately she pulled herself back in at the last second, but surely that was a predictable event for the taxi driver!

[LeeLee]

So as you can see we can love China and hate China too. The same thing applies to the USA too. I can see that there are some of our Chinese ladies feel this way as well. It has nothing with bashing China or America just our observations about the things that we don't like. I think that is basically what I am trying to say.

[Sebastian]

I only experienced the elevator bits in GZ when we went to visit with friends. My digs there was in a private enclave, only 12 stories, 2 flats to a floor.

 

But the buses - oh my. always a mess, I learned Orrin's trick, it always works.

 

My worst nightmares occurred when encountering tour groups of old uncles and aunties at the old BaiYun airport. No concept of queue'ing at all, always pushing. I counted these episodes, cause it seemed really nasty. Only 2 out of 14, where I was able to get 'these people' to actually queue up. The rest was a swarm, and after the 4th time, I started stepping on feet and kicking shins, just like everyone else.

 

Recently, when coming back from Chengdu, I had to 'capture the counter space' for reticketing - all was chaos because of the snow. I stood there with my back to the crowd, spread my arms wide on the counter top, and 'had my turn' with the China Southern Ticket Goddess.

 

I'd suggest to anyone to forget about queue-ing up for anything, and if yer a laowei, yer gonna be bigger than all of the folk pushing around you - push back - it won't make any difference to them - they're used to it - but you'll certainly feel better.

 

I had seen some of the riots at the beginning edge of spring festival, on TV last year, about the trains shut down in Guangzhou because of the snow, to the north. This year, even with the added number of trains, is still this f*cked up pushing and shoving to swarm, with no concept of queue-ing at all. I miss her, but I'm glad to not be playing in that swarm this year.

 

I don't see this as a 'bashing China' response - it's just how it is. I'd happily help out with the outline of the 'Be Polite and Queue' campaign, though .

Edited January 27, 2009 by Darnell (see edit history)

[rogerluli]

A lot of great stories and no one saying its good, bad or indifferent...Just the way it is...

[GZBILL]

A lot of great stories and no one saying its good, bad or indifferent...Just the way it is...

An observation is simply that...and observation. I, too, was surprised at the cluster-f#$k elevator rush in a department store on my first trip. Same with buses. I observed it being different that I'm accustomed to; but that's the way it is.

 

A lot has to do with having a population of over 1.4 billion impatient people.

[Finer in China]

Wow, is everyone here from towns of less than 12 million where every instance is a push and shove? My times in China are just like home. They push but I am all ready. As has been said, they are mostly smaller and gawking a bit so it makes it much easier. Big city respect.

[Jeikun]

Wow, is everyone here from towns of less than 12 million where every instance is a push and shove? My times in China are just like home. They push but I am all ready. As has been said, they are mostly smaller and gawking a bit so it makes it much easier. Big city respect.

 

 

If you are from the USA you are from a town of less than 12 million. Even NY,NY is barely over 8 million, and the next biggest, LA is less than 4. My wife used to laugh at my concept of a "big city" and say we are all country people here. Just as I was shocked that the "little town" she claimed to be from had a population of 1.5 million which would make it bigger than the 6th largest city in America.

 

And honestly, when I was in Beijing, a sizeable portion of the men were as tall/taller than me, and I'm 5'11". Han are not small people.

Edited January 28, 2009 by Jeikun (see edit history)

[amberjack1234]

Wow, is everyone here from towns of less than 12 million where every instance is a push and shove? My times in China are just like home. They push but I am all ready. As has been said, they are mostly smaller and gawking a bit so it makes it much easier. Big city respect.

 

 

If you are from the USA you are from a town of less than 12 million. Even NY,NY is less than 9 million. And honestly, when I was in Beijing, a sizeable portion of the men were as tall/taller than me, and I'm 5'11". Han are not small people.

 

Jeikum you have got that right my brother-in-law is 6'7" tall.

 

Larry

[david_dawei]

A lot of great stories and no one saying its good, bad or indifferent...Just the way it is...

An observation is simply that...and observation. I, too, was surprised at the cluster-f#$k elevator rush in a department store on my first trip. Same with buses. I observed it being different that I'm accustomed to; but that's the way it is.

 

A lot has to do with having a population of over 1.4 billion impatient people.

the closest I see in the US (besides in cities like NY), is at airports.. suddenly all western etiquette is thrown out the door when people are feeling the pressure of getting gate to gate and snaking through the crowd.

 

Wait till the US is 1.4 million... I can't imagine how many laws will be put in place to possibly control order via a robotic society...