A pictorial guide to China...

As we head towards a new week of teaching we have been laughing about how unusual and perhaps, er, dangerous this place can be if you are not careful. We are contemplating getting a rope ladder since we live on the fifth floor of our apartment building, for example. I looked around the web, especially a really cool site called sinosplice.com, and found some ideas for describing what it's like over here - sort of like a pictorial guide to life in China.

Everybody knows how much we love it here, you can read what we are teaching this week here, so of course these are meant to be funny and satirical. The graphics (except for the last one) were grabbed from the ready.gov terrorism preparation homepage.

First off, I'd like to mention that being in China for any amount of time messes with your body. Especially when you first get here, actually, for about two months now we have been on again, off again. Systems most notably affected include the digestive system and respiratory system. We're talking serious diarrhea here, and dirty air which means frequent and colorful mucous. Get that? Glad we brought Imodium, and Sudafed, and tissues. Lots of tissues.




There are some seriously rank odors out there on the street. You've seen the hanging fish, meats, raw ducks, and chickens. Add rotting organic matter, urine, feces, stinky tofu.... But don't worry, soon you'll be gleefully playing "name that odor" with your Chinese friends!






About that food thing again...you will have some difficulty. This isn't "Panda Express," folks. Inconveniences include little rocks in your rice, tons of tiny, tiny little bones in the fish, pieces of chopped up bone inside meat. Then there's also the food that's just plain not good (like chicken feet, live eels, maybe?), or hazardous to your intestinal tract. But be adventurous anyway! You'll learn soon enough what not to eat. (Diarrhea, and the occasional food poisoning, are harsh but effective teachers!)



Sometimes the pollution is pretty bad. It might even make your eyes water some days, especially if you come from some wussy place with really clean air, like Florida for example. Dust is everywhere. Chinese people don't sit on the floor or ground or non-designated sitting places because everything is dirty. You'll get dirty. We get dirty just going to our classrooms everyday.





So you might find yourself washing a lot (at first). That's OK, though. Soon you'll learn -- filth is fun. It gives you "China stories" to call home about!








If you're coming to China, I hope you're not too tall. That can be inconvenient sometimes since the only really tall Chinese person is playing basketball for the Houston Rockets. It's also difficult if not impossible to find any size bigger than a medium here. Forget about large sizes like 10's or anything in a L or XL, so don't count on buying any thing fun like socks, or shoes, or pants.





It also helps if you're pretty healthy to begin with, and you've had your shots. Lots of shots. Sure, they have "modern" medical facilities here, but the standards may not quite be up to what you have come to expect in the West. And then there are the toilets; metal troughs built into the floor. Can't fight 5,000 years of progress so just accept that they are difficult, if not impossible, to negotiate most of the time. Solution? Pray for a handrail, always have toilet paper and hand sanitizer with you at all times, don't get sick, and don't get hurt!



Don't get too attached to elevators. In schools and apartment buildings with 7 stories or less, there are no elevators. According to Chinese building codes, elevators are only required in buildings taller than 7 stories. Hey, it's cool. Elevators are for capitalist wusses! And think of the health benefits of all the walking you'll do. We walk up 5 flights (80 steps) everyday when we leave, come home for lunch, have a break, in the evening...who needs an elevator anyway?




You might be impressed by the amount of computers in use in China. Internet cafes are everywhere. You won't be impressed for too long, though, because building code standards are so low that buildings everywhere are already falling apart scant years after they're completed.






One weird thing about China is that even though Mandarin is the official language of the entire country, there are tons of dialects which are incomprehensible to the uninitiated. Especially in the south where we are located, every town has a separate dialect!






The good news is that stuff in China is really cheap! Sure, the quality might not be quite up to the standards you're used to, but you'll get over that. When stuff is this cheap, you can just keep re-buying it every time it falls apart! Neat!







There's lots more surprises waiting for you in China, so come on over! Before long you'll be familiar with the slew of inconveniences inherent to life here. Then you won't be annoyed -- rather, you'll accept them with a smile and chime in with us - "That's China!"