I went to live in China... ask me anything!

[xiongmao]

Where is Winston? The white legged ladies are in town:



I don't know if I want to take too many more photos here. My ex was a bit shocked that I was taking photos of everyday life. Despite the apparent chaos, everything is controlled here. Stuff that shows China in a bad light is a big no-no. Although I think they'll be happy with my photos of Chinese ladies who are way hotter than USA ladies.

One of my University courses is taught by a guy with excellent connections here. Hopefully I'll be able to question him about what really goes on. But it would be hard for anyone to speak candidly here. Almost everyone toes the party line.

I saw much the same in Japan. Yeah, there's democracy in Japan, but everything is also very ordered and controlled.

Really I need to keep my head down, go to my Chinese classes and try and get the HSK exams under my belt.

I don't know what you guys in the Phillies or Thailand experience, but foreigners are *extremely* rare here. This evening I didn't see a single one till I got back to my local neighborhood.

So if you're coming here to date women, then you might have a tough experience. Foreigners are so rare, and so few people speak English that it's hard to know where to start.

I think I'm through with internet dating though, so next up are bars and clubs. I don't know if I'll find a wife there, but for once I'd like to meet some Asian ladies who aren't just in it for the wedding ring and babies. And I'll be able to get some experience in chatting to girls who speak little English.

[xiongmao]

Visa day tomorrow, so I get to find out how long they'll let me stay here for. The only sure thing is yet more money will need to be spent.

Yeah, if you've got no money, don't come here!

Well assuming I'm allowed to stay, things are ticking along nicely.

I know that I'm through with studying, but I'm going to find it pretty easy to land teaching gigs here. I'm already a native speaker and have a postgraduate degree. I want to see if I can get some sort of teaching certificate. I don't really need it, but it would be useful to know the nuts and bolts of planning lessons etc.

The Mandarin classes aren't going that well to be honest. This is a terrible choice of city if you want to learn Mandarin because there are just so many languages being spoken out on the streets. Also nobody will understand you unless you get the tones absolutely spot on.

This is potentially a great city to do business in. But I'm in IT, and China is a lousy place to do Internet work. As for import/export, well I think you'd go mad hustling in the wholesale markets.

I'm also finding out that Asia sucks in some respects. Like mosquitoes literally suck! I'm growing to respect my very cunning adversary.

Also it's not that cheap out here. While food is cheaper, the cheaper restaurants have pictures of the food but no English, and the cheapest have no pictures of the food, just Chinese characters. Well it's all meaningless anyway, as restaurant food rarely looks like the pictures here anyway. It's a far cry from Japan and those plastic plates of food made to represent the menu. I once went in a Tokyo pizza place and the number of olives on my pizza was exactly the same as on the model of the pizza.

As to the Chinese ladies...

Well it's hard going if you want to date a 10, or even a 7+.

The thing is that the majority of Chinese women who date Western men are from the upper reaches of society, so they tend to be fairly picky anyway.

I guess my options are to date older, poorer, those with baggage or those who don't speak English.

Older is OK because Chinese women age so well. Some of the moms taking their kids back to University looked little older than their 18yo daughters.

Poorer, well the poorer Chinese often have bad habits like spitting, and they can have rough voices. Of course they rarely speak English, and the older women won't necessarily even speak Mandarin or be able to use a computer.

As for baggage, well I've chatted to a couple of divorced women. Single moms are also an option.

The non-English speakers, well they're a huge challenge.

My other option open to me is to ditch online dating and find other ways of meeting more ladies. Hmm, this is quite hard but I'll keep my ear to the ground and await some ideas. Sure, you can go to bars, but they're not always such good places to find good wife material.

Since I hit 40 I think I've become a lot less popular on dating sites (as far as younger ladies are concerned). Maybe I'm approaching the cut-off point where it's better to go to the Phillies (or maybe Thailand/Vietnam). Then again, nobody said that this would be easy.

[Hero]

Who put the bop in the bop-she-bop-she-bop?

(Well, you did say we could ask you anything )

[xiongmao]

On I dunno about that but I've seen just about everything else since I've been here.

One month into my crazy plan to move to China and...

I finally got my residency permit today, so I'm allowed to stay here until the fall. I can also enter and exit the country unlimited times during that time, so I might be able to fit in a side visit to one of our neighbouring countries. I'd love to visit the Phillies and also 'nam.

Dating wise, well that's got off to a slow start but there's no rush. As for studying, well that's a waste of time I think - the only way I'll go serious about learning Chinese is if I find a gf who speaks no English.

I need to connect with the other white guys in this city and figure out what I could do here next. If I need to I'll teach English, but I think I can do more here.

Am I happier abroad? I'd say that I was probably happier when I was single and didn't care about dating women. I'm pretty sure coming to China was a good decision. It was a question of sitting and watching my ex-colleagues get destroyed by the daily 9-5, or come here and do something really interesting with my life.

You know in downtown Guangzhou there are probably more skyscrapers being constructed right now than in the whole of Western Europe. Who knows if this is a Tokyo 1989 type of bubble all over again. All I know is there aren't many empty apartment buildings - they are building it, and yes, they are coming here.

Tips for people coming here? If you're serious about learning Mandarin, go to Beijing or someplace where they actually speak it!!! If you've got no money, get a teaching certificate before you come. Bring money if you want a decent lifestyle, and also bring good (e.g. Swiss) chocolate as it's really expensive here and you'll wow ladies with it!

[green1976]

That confirms a lot of things regarding China,especially dating there.
It's not an easy task like in Thailand and more in the Phils.
Even in Thailand you get the poor ones and the uglies..good luck if the foreigner expect to make out with a hi class Thai.

I heard that Chinese women are picky..they have the sex ratio for them,they are very career orientated.
The big cities like Shanghai doesn't bring any feasibility factor compared to a random western cities when dating.

I never fancied traveling at the other part of the planet to find something who won't radically change the dating reality.
This is why China never has been and probably would never been a dating spot for me.

If i had plenty of money i could give to me a more open view as money won't be a problem.
But that's not the case.

At least you are honest and not inventing stories on how you score easily everyday and have tremendous success.
A big problem of trip reports is those guys who can't show their failures,so they bring something who is far away from the reality and spread so many bullshit putting those who read them in the wrong.

[publicduende]

I have never liked (mainland) Chinese women, and not even the men for that matter. Virtually all mainland Chinese I met are cold, pragmatic and bossy. An effect of the single child policy? Or their default tiger moms? Or their obsessive emphasis on all things material, without a hint of a genuine feeling slipping through the cracks (including those between their legs)? Dunno.

XiongMao, I have been thinking of writing this short message to you for a while. By no means I intend to poo-poo on your expectations of learning Mandarin and finding a good wife in China. It's all very plausible. The problems I see with Guangzhou are mainly those you yourself sniffed and described in your previous posts:

1) it's one of the most heavily industrialised and polluted cities in the world, and this reflects on quality of air, water, and food (which is grown under that air, soil and water);

2) from what I could see (briefly) during my 2008 stint there, it's a poster child of the scary wealth gap you can find all over China - you will find the most destitute girls a second world country can give you, sharing turf with scions of millionaire families, upper middle class and wannabe middle class girls (the worst, IMO); OK to wax lyrical about their glamourous outfits, perfect white legs and peach bums, but what good does it do if it's "look but do not touch"?

3) assuming you do find a young woman who would capture your heart and make a good wife, can you ensure that she wouldn't turn into another career-obsessed tiger like AbcDavid's mom? Can you ensure she would be hot stuff in the sack and not see sex as a necessary evil to keep you happy? Can you ensure she won't easily get tired of the kind of lifestyle that, as an English teacher on relatively modest means, you will be able to afford her, and start bitching about you being unable to provide her the same kind of glamorous life as her friends'?

I think your plan is grand and life-sized, and I do wish you all the best. I may be wrong and in fact will be happy to be proven wrong...it's just that, for what I know and have seen and met across the spectrum of Asian cultures, China just won't cut in terms of women's warmth, truthfulness, and ability to bond based on real feelings, rather than social/financial opportunities. Cave canem.

[Rock]

I have never liked (mainland) Chinese women, and not even the men for that matter. Virtually all mainland Chinese I met are cold, pragmatic and bossy. An effect of the single child policy? Or their default tiger moms? Or their obsessive emphasis on all things material, without a hint of a genuine feeling slipping through the cracks (including those between their legs)? Dunno.

XiongMao, I have been thinking of writing this short message to you for a while. By no means I intend to poo-poo on your expectations of learning Mandarin and finding a good wife in China. It's all very plausible. The problems I see with Guangzhou are mainly those you yourself sniffed and described in your previous posts:

1) it's one of the most heavily industrialised and polluted cities in the world, and this reflects on quality of air, water, and food (which is grown under that air, soil and water);

2) from what I could see (briefly) during my 2008 stint there, it's a poster child of the scary wealth gap you can find all over China - you will find the most destitute girls a second world country can give you, sharing turf with scions of millionaire families, upper middle class and wannabe middle class girls (the worst, IMO); OK to wax lyrical about their glamourous outfits, perfect white legs and peach bums, but what good does it do if it's "look but do not touch"?

3) assuming you do find a young woman who would capture your heart and make a good wife, can you ensure that she wouldn't turn into another career-obsessed tiger like AbcDavid's mom? Can you ensure she would be hot stuff in the sack and not see sex as a necessary evil to keep you happy? Can you ensure she won't easily get tired of the kind of lifestyle that, as an English teacher on relatively modest means, you will be able to afford her, and start bitching about you being unable to provide her the same kind of glamorous life as her friends'?

I think your plan is grand and life-sized, and I do wish you all the best. I may be wrong and in fact will be happy to be proven wrong...it's just that, for what I know and have seen and met across the spectrum of Asian cultures, China just won't cut in terms of women's warmth, truthfulness, and ability to bond based on real feelings, rather than social/financial opportunities. Cave canem.

Let's not burst xiongmaos bubble just yet. China is huge and far from monolithic. Read some of Falcon's stuff for example. A few of the PRC gals Winston has been corresponding with seem down to earth and might make great companions. I talked to a couple of them on the Skype. I also met Ling Ling in Taichung and she is a very sweet, caring, down-to-earth, giving, and fun woman. It's a shame that she doesn't meet Winston's physical specs. Sure there are plenty of the bad kind in China. My friend married a Chinese woman who now controls a lot of his life. But there are cracks and crevices in China where u can meet sweet and easy to get a long with Chinese girls. I've met several myself on my trips there. Overall, and Winston will disagree with me here, I think Taiwan has a generally higher caliber of available Chinese women on average. But China has like 50 times as many girls as Taiwan lol.

Anyway, go on a case by case individual basis. I bet there are plenty of gems around, esp. since xiongmao finds beauty in the olders Chinese gals around and about.

[Cornfed]

As for studying, well that's a waste of time I think - the only way I'll go serious about learning Chinese is if I find a gf who speaks no English.

I need to connect with the other white guys in this city and figure out what I could do here next. If I need to I'll teach English, but I think I can do more here.

That is a bit lame. I would think you should try to give studying a bit more of a run. If you were going to marry a Chinese woman and stay in China you would want to learn the language. If you were going to repatriate a Chinese wife to the West then you would need to be on a higher income than English teaching would likely afford you and have something to go back to in England.

[xiongmao]

Oh I don't know about that. What's the point of learning Mandarin? My last gf was Cantonese. She's not gonna speak Mandarin at home.

I have plenty to go back to in England, I'm not worried about that.

[Cornfed]

Oh I don't know about that. What's the point of learning Mandarin? My last gf was Cantonese. She's not gonna speak Mandarin at home.

Because most chinks speak Mandarin as a linqua franka. Obviously if you are in Canton they will speak Cantonese, but all the more reason to learn the national language.

I have plenty to go back to in England, I'm not worried about that.

What I'm thinking about is how you are going to get a UK visa for your hypothetical wife. You would need to demonstrate that you have enough money to pay for her by Western standards to qualify. They take it on what you have recently earned. If you are earning what by Western standards would be poverty-level wages (which most Chinese English teaching wages would be) then her visa application would be declined.

[xiongmao]

Hmm, just talked to a great looking girl who doesn't speak much English. Now that's a pretty good reason to learn Mandarin. Again though, she's also Cantonese. Cantonese girls are great - maybe the pick of the whole bunch.

And who said anything about English teachers being on the poverty line here? This ain't the Philippines or even Thailand. I've done the math and if I worked as hard here as I did back home I'd be earning a substantial salary out here. There's a whole load of work here if anyone wants it. Not everywhere in the world is in an economic slump. Guangdong Province's GDP is larger than that of many countries! If you're a good teacher then you can find jobs that pay the same as they do back in the UK.

But again, I don't care about the UK. I'll meet that problem when I come to it. I don't even know if I would want to return to the UK. I could have a pretty good life here.

[Cornfed]

And who said anything about English teachers being on the poverty line here? This ain't the Philippines or even Thailand. I've done the math and if I worked as hard here as I did back home I'd be earning a substantial salary out here.

If you have found a way to earn large sums of money by teaching English then perhaps I will move there and do it too. I would advise against any strategy that involved long contact hours though. If you are a good teacher you will put out a lot of energy, often getting nothing in return, and you only have a finite amount of energy to give. Teaching isn't like stacking boxes or fiddling with forms in a cubicle.

[xiongmao]

Plenty of well paying jobs here, but in China it's all about who you know, plus establishing your reputation.

Money isn't everything though, and at the moment my priority isn't earning money. Hence I've turned down all the teaching jobs I've been told about.

[xiongmao]

Wow, an action packed day today.

I had two Chinese classes, then popped downtown on the bus to buy books.

Books are expensive here (unless you can read Chinese) so bring any you need before you come. Sheesh, if it wasn't for the Internet I'd probably forget how to read English.

I then got the bus back to my University and had to walk like hell through a thunderstorm to make my next class.

After that class a Chinese girl talked to me and wanted to see if I could help me with my Chinese. She's studying to become a Chinese teacher. It's a reminder that here teachers aren't looked down on - being a Chinese teacher is fairly prestigious and offers possibilities of working overseas.

Anyway, I was glad to help her as I can't emphasise how important it is to have some Chinese friends you can call upon in moments of need.

Also we talked to some Korean girls. I found them a bit remote, and not as friendly as the Chinese girls are here. Winston would love their white legs though - the Koreans are by far the palest Asian girls here. Hmmm, I really must visit Korea some day.

Later I went back to my apartment for a rest, but the caretaker got all excited and took me to the apartment of the other English guy who lives in the building. So I finally got to meet him. And...

...well there was another thread on HA about meeting interesting expats. Suffice to say this guy is one of the most eccentric guys I have ever met.

Also I'll add that he's not here for the women, in fact mongers are not common at all here.

Anyway, we agreed on many topics, such as Europe being f**ked for the next few years (at least) and swapped notes on dealing with mosquitoes.

He showed me a few interesting places in the neighborhood. He's been teaching the juice bar guys some English. He also showed me a super cheap restaurant with dishes for just 10RMB. Even cheaper places are available, but you'll have to put up with occasional toilet troubles!

Also I heard that he knows of a place where you can get a China 6/12 month visa, few questions asked. It'll cost you though. I've known about these places for a while. Well anyway if you're interested in coming here then studying or teaching English aren't the only ways of staying around.

Dating wise, I think I'm gonna visit Shenzhen next. I've been chatting to a couple of very attractive ladies there. One is a bit formidable, but maybe the tiger can be tamed. The other speaks little English and has a kid already, so there are some obstacles there. Both ladies have been previously married. Although it would be nice to find a single, previously unmarried lady, my other train of thought is that all the best ladies here get snapped up in their early 20's.

My Mandarin would improve dramatically if I met a girl who doesn't speak English.

It's the smaller things that are interesting here. Like getting on a bus and seeing two massive containers full of liquid in the luggage rack. Can you imagine how excited Homeland Security would get about that situation in the US?

And today I saw a man cycling with two gigantic fridges on the back of his bike.

There's also been some ferocious weather around today. When the cold air slips off the Tibetan mountain ranges and hits the warm air of the Pacific it can be pretty dramatic here.

[fightforlove]

Xiongmao, I have some questions:

1) How does one get into China/establish residence legally? Do they have a worker's visa or something similar? How fast or difficult is that to obtain?

2) What type of "skilled" jobs are hiring over there? I work in the mechanical engineering field, do Chinese companies hire/contract foreign engineers? Do you need to know some mandarin or cantonese to get a job?

3) I read that you're taking language classes, what have been your other outlets for meeting women? Is online dating as popular over there as it is in England and America?

4) What age group and social class of chinese women are you dating? Are certain age groups or socioeconomic classes more open to dating western men than others? I hear there's a surplus of dragon ladies in the biggest cities, alot of 30+ professional "left-overs". What are they like??

5) Which is the more beneficial language to learn, mandarin or cantonese? How similar are they? Do most southern/cantonese chinese also speak mandarin and do many northern chinese also know cantonese? I was sharing a rosetta stone of mandarin with a friend a few years ago, just learned a few basic phrases. Was thinking about getting my own copy and seriously pursuing it.