10 things I hate about China

(Found way after this blog was written in Yangshuo and promptly purchased)

If you’re scared of tight spaces, being enclosed on all sides by people making physical contact with each other; you’d best learn to deal with it before visiting China. Learn too how to develop a Duck’s back, so that 川流不息 (the stream flows without stopping), across it.

It’s been a month in total spent in China, with my stubbornness to see it through rivalling the local’s own, and I’ve been blessed with more insight in to the country than I would really have liked.

10) Copying
Copy Cat, Copy Cat, Sitting on the Door Mat! Ingenuity, inventiveness, originality; for the main, there’s none of that here. Try to understand the mentality; perhaps copying is the greatest form of flattery (though personally I think the greatest form of laziness), either way there’s little interest in moving things forward. Take shops for example; one opens in a street selling neon signs – let’s say – and due to success, others will soon follow and before you can blink, a row of “Neon Sign” shops will litter the entire street, packed full of identical premises selling identical stock. That’s perfectly acceptable behaviour and with not a sign of competition from any of them, impossible to tell one apart from the other on price, quality or merchandise. It’s the same in all walks of life, from mobile phones to the underground and all demonstrating shoddy, cut-corner and surface-level quality. Look closer and you’ll quickly realise that the rucksack, coat or umbrella you’re eyeing up will last about the time it takes for you to walk away and forget what the person looked like that sold it to you.


9) Hacking
The Asian games is due to take place in Guangzhou later this year and I’m wondering how this sport will feature. We’ll need close-ups for one, slow motion replays and definitely a suite of Hawkeye cameras to record precise placement. In fact the guy opposite me on the train must be deep in to training, having just hacked up what sounded like his small intestine. I think he’s in serious need of medical attention from the noises he’s making; but no one seems to be bothered as he hobbles his way to the toilet. It’s banned in major cities and there are signs everywhere asking people to refrain, though it’s had little effect on this tradition (a definitive piece of Chinese heritage and culture), with even beautiful women not perturbed by their fugly counterparts training for the games regularly. Back home that’d be dumping material.

8) Government
There’s too many people; hmm I’ve an idea. Let’s write down some rules for the population to follow and then wrap a story around it; giving it context. That’s where religion started and little has changed now except for the name – communism. It’s execution in China is far from perfect, with the affluent so far divided from the remaining 99.99% recurring that even a KFC half corn-on-cob is seen as a treat. It’s exactly the same as religion though; where only some practices and principles are followed – those that don’t affect coffer swelling rate – and just as wrong; it should be all or nothing. Trying to control technology though is surely the most ridiculous waste of money and infrastructure ever; subscribe to a cheap VPN to the UK or US for the same price as a Starf*cks Venti Mocha each month and punch a hole straight through it all. It’s bad enough trying to manage a few thousand users accessing the net (and that’s with cutting edge filtering technology); over a billion and it’s impossible, but their futile obduracy persists nonetheless.


7) Mobile Phones
Or more specifically the ring tones, which are all set to the maximum volume, blaring distorted and tone-deaf flat singers to all within a fifteen kilometre radius. It’s bad enough, though most leave it to play for a full thirty seconds as it must be their “favourite song” before answering; I’ll frisby It from the window shortly I swear it! The silent mode is lost here and even text messages generate the same kind of hateful eardrum punishing pain; but it’s all accepted. In fact you’ll need to ensure you can deal with noise when in China; everyone has the uncanny ability to switch off to it, sleeping through just about anything. Get a decent pair of headphones and ensure your iPod (or cheap KIRF bought here), is fully charged. In fact bring two; should one pair break you’ll want to beat your head against a wall until the connection from brain to eardrum is severed.

6) Food
Chicken and rice please. Sorry, make that noodles. In fact can I just have a whole chicken? At least that way I can ensure I’ll receive meat; as opposed to the chopped pallet-impaling chicken bone lumps that even your malnourished canine would turn his nose up at. I’m sorely missing bread, brown bread from a loaf and filled with things that I can bite in to. This much rice and noodles and I think my teeth are beginning to disintegrate and turn in to mush from the lack of use. Everything is soft and easy to swallow here; there’s no chewing required. It’s all slurp, suck and swallow; the three Ss if you will. With one truly remarkable exception in Zhangjiajie City where to my surprise the dishes had wholly edible pieces of Chicken breast and strips of Beef, everything else has been a nightmare of SSS. Alternatives include offal, or “[something] on a stick”, which could be any number of animals; or perhaps fish heads may take your liking. A sandwich, my kingdom for a bloody sarnie.



5) Bureaucracy
I’m drowning in the red-tape, there’s so much it’s suffocating. Perhaps due to the sheer number of people and communist approach to unemployment, roles have been duplicated and copied in order to give people something to do. Take the trains; you’ll need to present ticket before entering the station for checking. Once inside, get it out of your pocket and show it to the staff guarding entrance to the waiting room. Upon train arrival, show it for a third time to the guards at the entrance to the platform stairs and once more at the entrance to your carriage. Find your seat or bed and expect it to be checked by a carriage attendant who will exchange it for a plastic credit card-sized replica; clever. Show your passport, presumably to explain blood-type, favourite colour and desert island disc choices and then expect a second round of guards to double check your passport and credit-card ticket. Once the train is almost at destination, swap credit-card for paper original. Finally you will need to show and submit it to the guards at exit point of destination. Wait, I’ve lost count – that’s nine right?


4) Barging
The next person to push past me is going to receive a knuckle sandwich. I don’t understand the mentality; there’s precisely no need to make physical contact and enough room to skirt around my body. Perhaps it’s laziness, perhaps it’s a lack of manners, perhaps it’s because I’m foreign; either way it’s unbelievable that so many people put up with such disdainful attitudes towards other humans. Running in London and it was something I was already accustomed to, people are blind and have the ability to look around 2nm infront of their own nose; here people are more spacially aware; just about. I’ve barged through countless people when running (shouting at them doesn’t seem to help, even in Mandarin), and except for one challenger who turned around and looked at me, everyone else has accepted it without contest. Boarding the metro necessitates this practice, for the numerous signs asking people to wait for passengers to alight first and painted directions at each carriage entrance have made no difference. I’ll simply force my way through treating it like a Rugby scrum (I reckon I’d make a good player), should someone look to get in my way I’ll tense up – I’ve even gone to the extent of pushing someone back for a good few metres and not been braved.



3) Smoking
It seems to be a right, not a privilege here and every man falls down to peer group pressure when young. So much so that it’s actually rare to find a male that doesn’t puff away and when I’ve said I don’t smoke, I’m greeted with expressions of utter perplexity, usually taking at least three repetitions before the message is actually accepted. It must be a sign of manhood in Asia (it was the same to a certain degree in Japan), though personally I think deep down people are desperate to be different. Signs make little difference to your average addict, as he lights up yet again and makes no allowance for anyone wishing to maintain their own odour; be it at breakfast, lunch, in a closed space, on a train, on a bus, directly underneath a “No Smoking” sign etcetera, etcetera. The strange thing is that it is heavily limited to males, hardly any women are interested in increasing their risk of lung cancer; stranger still is the low number of cancer cases. Maybe it’s all that tea.

2) Toilets
They’re cheap to manufacture and easy to install, being effectively a hole and suiting both genders alike, though with squat toilets come a wealth of foulness, filth and squalor that makes each bowel movement cause the same kind of dread as a death-row inmate must feel when his sponge is wetted. Ensure you have toilet paper – I can’t stress that one strongly enough – as getting caught short doesn’t bear description. Place it in a convenient pocket and place hand sanitiser in the other. You’ll be lucky to find somewhere with a functioning flush, let alone tap and set your expectations for water, paper and soap firmly to two hopes. Some squat toilets are cleverly designed 45 degree slides ending at a sight that may cause instant excretion from another orifice; others will be home to insects that don’t take kindly to invading human excretions; so try to make it quick. Learn the British Army technique for use of toilet paper and folding (again I shall skip over this loveliness), and when dropping shorts and pants, only lower them to calf-height before rolling twice and gripping with your opposing writing hand; you risk contamination otherwise. Oh and one last point; though some of these “establishments” may ask for a fee here’s a tip: Simply run in, do your business and run out. You won’t be stopped, just shouted at; I refuse to pay a few Yuan to risk catching a disease.
[Not risked taking camera out to capture the foulness]

1) Staring
Most guidebooks and articles incorrectly describe this as “curiosity”, and perhaps sometimes it may be just that; underneath the surface of clear jealousy. The Chinese are a jealous bunch; of status, wealth, power or anything making someone different from the rest. Most once they’ve got you locked cannot peel their eyes away, so stare back and refuse to budge. Once the initial glance has faded, it’ll soon return, and again, and again. Sat waiting for the train a girl diagonally opposite notices me and immediately calls to her friend “lao wei!” (foreigner), whilst laughing. Her three friends all turn to stare at me and as I reply “I can understand you” in Mandarin, they flush red but continue to stare nonetheless. Take this scenario and place it in a Western country and imagine it’s acceptability. In fact the only place I’ve found acceptance is Xiamen, with the northern cities scorning me simply for what I am. Walking down the street and the Londoner in me wants to Hulk Smash™ each and every gawping, staring racist that crosses my path. With a female travel buddy in tow people even dare to ask “Where is he from?”, to her or “Why are you with a foreigner?”; she knows me well enough to skip over the details as I’ll quite happily confront them. It is, however, the most annoying thing about the Chinese and having only ever experienced racism once in my life before; somewhere that anyone committed of a race-crime in the UK should be sentenced to spend some quality time, for it will forever change your attitude towards racism; and promptly.





After the break; 10 things I love about China.