Introduction
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“If the jade is not cut and polished, it can’t be made into anything.”
– Chinese Proverb
Over the recent decade or so American and certain European journalists and politicians have taken rhetorical aim at China. Often their perceptions of events in China are either based on wrong information or else deliberately cast aspersions on anything the people of China undertake. The articles herein seek to dispel the hexes of ignorant writers. The people here are kind and welcoming. The culture here has depths of which one cannot find the bottom. There is virtually no crime, living is more modern and more convenient than elsewhere, and people take care of themselves and others. This is truly a place of social harmony.
This site is devoted to helping ‘western’ people better understand China. The articles herein aim to help stem the tide of hatred and vitriol welling up in America and Europe about China. I hope the insights people gain reading here can contribute to an appreciation of the beautiful culture I’ve found in China and prevent racism and national discrimination against China and the Chinese people. If you too are a fan of peace, please share this site with your friends.
All Content and Photos are original and the property of Shang Guan Jie Wen.
Content
Oh, my gosh, people are arguing a lot here.
But in reality, this is very normal for chinese culture to raise your voice to talk is just normative, maybe mother and daughter, or two, really good friends.
Just want to talk really loud, da, jaha we're here in yuyuntan park during the cherry blossoms blooming in early april.
People are everywhere we're here to talk to you about failing to expat or what we call a runner.
So for many people come over into china to live here.
Some people don't acclimate, they don't enjoy their stay.
So we call these people in the industry runners.
They come over and they're here for a week or two sometimes as long as a month, and then they find it too difficult to acclimate to china, and they decide to move back to their hometown today.
I want to tell you three stories about three real people that moved to china, but couldn't adapt.
The first story I'd like to tell you is about a person we're going to call jay.
He arrived in china in 2012 and started working for an english teaching company.
He started immediately not being comfortable instead of learning chinese and adapting to the culture here.
He expected china to somehow adapt to him and be able to speak english to him and be able to provide him with the food that he wanted like so many expats that come over here to china.
He expected hamburgers and english everywhere.
Well, I in my mind I'm thinking, this is china, you should have been coming here for the chinese food and for the chinese language.
So instead one day, he didn't show up to work.
And after a couple days, we went to his apartment to see where did he go, and he had gone back to his home country.
The next person I want to tell you about came over in about 2015 and to protect her identity we're going to call her elle.
So elle came over and was uncomfortable had difficulty wanted to eat western food.
Didn't understand chinese found the culture different and therefore difficult for her to adapt to.
And one thing that she kept saying is I miss my mom, I mean I understand that, but maybe after you finish college instead of moving to china, she should have moved to the next town over.
So after a couple of months, she disappeared, one day, she stopped coming to work, and she called from the airport to say, I I can't.
Take it here.
I can't handle it.
I find people to be rude.
People weren't rude to al what's important to note is that she hadn't adapted to the culture.
She hadn't tried to fit in to the culture here instead.
She expected people to continue to behave as though they behaved back home, not understanding that they were still behaving.
Well in a civilized way, she just couldn't identify the manner in which that civility was being communicated.
So pretty the third person I want to tell you about is m, m came over in about 2017.
This person took a break in 2018 or something after a few months of being there.
They had also already gone back to england by the time vacation had ended.
I think there are several things that we can learn from runners people who take a runner.
This is what we call it.
So we say, oh, he took a runner.
She took a runner that means they ran away.
We can learn a lot from these instances that yes, china is an absolutely amazing place, but the cultural differences between other places like england or america and china.
And it takes someone with an adaptable mind in order to be able to fit into both cultures, a lot of that also says, some of the foreigners that come over here.
Don't adapt.
We were talking about in the last video.
Expat bubbles, people who come over from america and only make friends with other americans or other people who speak english.
These people also haven't adapted very well.
So when foreigners have lived here for many years, and they have bothered to learn chinese and have bothered to appreciate and integrate with the culture here.
I think that is actually something that's very special.
So lots of things that make our cultures different that make adapting more challenging for people who don't have like a certain kind of cultural versatility I'm going to give you one or two really simple examples, right now lining up or queuing as they say in english in america, or in england, you could have a lot of space between you and the person in front of you and still be in line.
Whereas in china, if you have a lot of space, people assume that you're not actually in line.
Now for foreigners coming to china, this creates trouble because they stand a little bit further away from the person in front of them.
And then people walk in front of them.
They think that the local chinese person is being rude when in reality, the the chinese person assumes that they're not in line at all because they're so far be back away from the line.
So foreigners who don't have a lot of adaptability find these things incredibly challenging the differences across the board and every little tiny piece of minutia vis-a-vis how people stand how people use their voices, whether their voices are elevated or not makes a huge difference in culture.
A second example, I'm going to give you a lot of people from some parts of china will talk at a very high volume when they're talking and us foreigners will think oh my gosh, are they arguing? Oh my gosh.
People are arguing a lot here.
But in reality, this is very normal for chinese culture to raise your voice to talk.
And to almost have a yelling volume is just normative, maybe mother and daughter, or two, really good friends, just want to talk really loud in america.
If you talk at that volume, people will assume you are arguing because most people are fairly soft spoken.
And these are just two examples of thousands and thousands of kinds of things that make these two cultures, different.
Hi, hi.
Hello.
Are you still filming? Yeah, they cut some of that up all right, that's, pretty much all.
I wanted to say in this video, but I do want you to subscribe, because the purpose of all of these videos is going to be to examine all of these cultural differences between china and other places.
And what makes some people adaptable, what makes people not adaptable, and maybe what you can expect if you were to ever go to america or england, all right, we'll, see you next time? Bye, you.