Hopefully you brought your own TP and hand sanitizer, because you sure as hell won’t find any of that here. Upon entering a guy’s public bathroom in China, you’ll be greeted by a few dudes squatting over holes in the ground with no doors in sight, usually smoking and yelling into a cell phone while they do their business. With all that oily and spicy food, it happens quite often – especially to those fresh off the boat.
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There are few things worse in life than being out and about in China and suddenly needing to go running for the nearest bathroom. Practicing my squat in a Chinese bathroom. For more on Internet censorship in China, check this post from a few months ago. There are far more pressing matters in this country that deserve at least a fraction of the attention that policing the Internet gets. There are millions of people employed as “Internet police” around the country, spending their days censoring WeChat posts and blocking sensitive content. The worst aspect of the Internet here to me is without a doubt the insane amount of energy and resources that the Chinese government pumps into this whole operation. Speaking of slow, get used to the turtle’s pace of your connection here. Foreign websites that aren’t blocked load incredibly slow. There’s so much more to my hatred of the Chinese Internet than just a few blocked websites, though.
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If you’re hoping to keep up with people on Facebook, write a blog, use GMail, or post videos on YouTube, make sure you buy a good VPN before you arrive in China. That’s great for Chinese people and all, but none of my family or friends in the States use any of those sites. At least there are Chinese versions of many of the sites that are blocked – WeChat is Twitter, Ren Ren is Facebook, Youku is YouTube, Baidu is Google, and so on. Commonly referred to as “The Great Firewall of China” and perhaps more impressive than the original, this drives both foreigners and Chinese crazy. It’s no secret that China has a tight grip on the Internet. This is most likely due to the fact that I know, no matter how hard I try, I’ll still just be another “lao wai.” 3. I don’t study Chinese as much as I should, I don’t go out looking to meet Chinese friends as much as I should, and I don’t try to integrate myself in the culture as much as I should. It doesn’t matter how long you stay in China – you will always be “lao wai.” You can speak Chinese fluently, practice tai chi, prepare a mean plate of dumplings, and write Tang Dynasty era poetry in water calligraphy, but if you don’t look like them, you’ll still just be “lao wai.” Perhaps this is the reason that even though I’ve been in China for five years on and off, I refuse to make a long-term commitment here. The word doesn’t bother me as much as it does other foreigners here, but after five years of constantly having it shouted at me, I’m fed up. I’ve been called “lao wai” so many times in China that I like to joke around and tell people it’s my Chinese name sometimes. Plus, when someone randomly walking by you on the street, points at you and yells “Foreigner!”, you’re not going to have the best reaction regardless of what word they use. “ Lao Wai” (老外 – lǎo wài) means “foreigner” in Chinese, but it’s not exactly the nicest way to say it. This goes hand in hand with the point above. Something tells me they didn’t like it very much, but I can guarantee they’ll do the same thing the next time they see a foreigner in China. We found a huge tour group of Chinese folks in New York City, doing their usual routine of wearing matching hats and following a flag, when I yelled to my Girlfriend… “Look! Look! Chinese people! There are Chinese people!” We pointed and giggled and then awkwardly ran away, as they do to us on a daily basis. I always wondered how Chinese people traveling abroad would feel if I did the same thing to them in my country, so one time I did.
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Hell, half of the fun for many Chinese people visiting big cities is to see the silly foreigners and try to sneakily take cell phone pictures of them.
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No bumpkin from the middle of nowhere China on their holiday in the big city is ever going to stop and ask me how long I’ve been in China or try to make any small talk for that matter. After five years, though, I’m sick of being a zoo animal. When I first came to China I thought this was quite funny, and I’d humor people by flashing the peace sign (it’s actually “V for Victory” here, because they win?) and waving back with my own very brutal version of their common greeting (“Knee-how!”). Many foreigners arrive in China and are surprised to find people constantly taking their photo (whether they agreed or not), yelling “Ha-lo!” in their face, pointing, and staring.