Лаовай, не расслабляйся!…

realchina.ru
12 октября, 2009

Сегодня серьезный пост. Поговорим о том, как меняются люди, переехав в Китай. И в какую сторону.

Как обычно, я не претендую ни на какую объективность. Все что я пишу – заведомо очень субъективно. Хотя…

На мысли эти меня натолкнул субботний вечер. В субботу вечером мы с Бени сидели в его белоснежной квартире, пили кофе и смотрели фильм. «Дрезден». Фильм про то, как в 1945 до основания разбомбили Дрезден – один из красивейших городов Германии. Разбомбили вместе с горожанами, с детьми, стариками, беременными женщинами, с больницами и школами. Фильм на меня произвел, мягко говоря, тяжелое впечатление. Настолько тяжелое, что мы даже молча досмотрели титры.

Я уже собирался было уходить и задал Бени один, казалось бы, невинный вопрос:

- Бени, объясни мне, как все это могло случиться в такой развитой и цивилизованной Европе?

К моему удивлению Бени стал объяснять на полном серьезе о тяжелом экономическом положении Германии тех лет, о том, что война была необходима для изменения ситуации, и все такое прочее…

Я позволил себе с ним не согласиться, и у нас завязался спор, в котором Бени заведомо был не в выигрышном положении. Он ведь австриец. А Австрия, как известно, – рассадник фашизма.

Потом мы перескочили на «еврейский вопрос». Я попросил его объяснить, чем руководствовались его предки, сжигая миллионы живых людей в концентрационных лагерях. Бени улыбался все меньше. И подыскивал правильные слова все дольше.

А меня несло… Я задавал все новые вопросы. И порой, просто уже некорректные.

Кончилось все тем, что я спросил у Бени, что дает право арийцам думать, что они супер-нация? Почему такое пренебрежительное отношение к тем же китайцам, например? Почему лично он позволяет себе в Китае то, что никогда бы не позволил нигде в Европе?

На чем основан весь этот пустой снобизм? Не на отголосках ли прошлого? И какое расстояние от его снобизма до нацизма?

Бени понял, к чему я. Он уже давно перестал улыбаться. Впрочем, я тоже.

Он заверил меня, что обязательно подумает над моими словами. Проанализирует свое отношение к китайцами и поведение в китайском обществе. Что, возможно, он действительно сам не замечает иногда, как переходит границы. И какие-то моменты в его поведении не достойны джентльмена. И поблагодарил меня за то, что я порой заставляю его задумываться над самим собой.

Мы с Бени обнялись на прощание. Я спустился с 25 этажа на 1. Сел в такси и поехал вдоль ночного побережья домой.

Я ехал и думал… А действительно, почему многие и многие лаоваи, не побоюсь сказать, что большинство, после года-полутора, прожитых в Китае, начинают так себя вести? Почему они относятся к китайцам так пренебрежительно? Откуда этот снобизм? Откуда эта борзота?

В вспомнил больше десятка ситуаций, когда мои знакомые (и европейцы, и русские, и я сам в том числе) борзели на пустом месте. Вообще без причин. Я точно знаю, что они никогда бы не повели себя подобным образом у себя на Родине.

В Европе это противоречит стандарту поведения. А в России за такое можно элементарно получить в бубен. Но все меняется, когда ты в Китае.

В Китае все тебе рады. Все улыбаются. Все гостеприимны. Тут чувство полной безопасности. И всегда к лаоваям относятся, как к старшим. С уважением. (Я не говорю про бизнес – там все равны. Я говорю про повседневность, улицы и общественные места).

Если первый год лаовай балдеет от всего этого, то потом он привыкает к хорошему. Верит, что это - реальность. И начинает борзеть. Это ему не так. Это не то. Китаянки – косые. Китайцы – дебилы. Таксист не умеет водить. Строитель – строить. Учителя – не могут ничего нормально объяснить. В больницах не лечат. В полиции хамят. И т.д.

А кончается все вот чем: «Я – лаовай! Почему я должен стоять в одной очереди со всеми этими китайцами?!».

И все. Привет. Это уже точка невозврата.

Ребята, я верю, что каждый человек внутри хороший, добрый, благородный, разумный и способный ценить. Я убежден в этом! Но для того, чтобы сохранить себя таким, надо постоянно поддерживать свою моральную форму. Следить за собой. Быть устойчивым.

Лаоваи, не расслабляйтесь! Следите за тем, что вы думаете. Пожалуйста, не опускайте свою планку ниже. Я знаю - это проще, чем поднимать ее вверх. Но, блин, это так неправильно. Если вы устали от Китая, приготовьте ужин дома, это ведь так просто. Но не надо идти в кафе и там, на повышенных тонах, воспитывать официантов, которые принесли вам второе раньше, чем салат. Это отстойно. Любая бытовая ссора выглядит смешно. Одинаково смешно выглядят все ее участники, вне зависимости от того, кто прав.

И если вам уж совсем тоскливо - соберитесь. Будьте выше себя. Не борзейте. А то превратитесь в маленьких гитлеров.

Ну, а если не можете… Если уже все… Давайте! Собирайте чемоданчик и на месяцок на Родинку. В Хабаровск! В Читу! В Уренгой! В Нижний Тагил! В Новосибирск! В московские пробки! Не забудьте сходить в русскую больницу за какой-нибудь справкой. Или, для разнообразия, в милицию! Удачи!

Возвращайтесь и поговорим!
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How China Saved My Life

I originally intended this story to be a very detailed and personal account of my life before and after arriving in China. My final draft was over 25 typewritten pages, single-spaced, and I submitted it to Middle Kingdom Life with full permission for them to print it as is.

My biography was divided into two parts and part one was published briefly until the site’s owner convinced me that it might be better for me to just to write about why it is I feel China saved my life. He was concerned that despite his best efforts at disguising my real identity, somehow the story would “come back to haunt me.” I still don’t know that I agree with that concern but I guess it is better to err on the side of the angels with something like this. So I rewrote my story to simply highlight why I credit China with having helped me to become the much better and happier person that I am now.

I’ve been in China for almost 10 years. I came here under very bad circumstances. I was one of those people the guide refers to as having “mismanaged his life back home.” The truth is that I was a drunk and a total fuck up and I moved to China to teach English for peanuts because I had nowhere else to go and nothing else better to do. The really screwed up part is that I had managed to trash my life back home with a doctor’s degree in business.

Without getting into every little detail of what I’ve been through in China over the last 10 years, I will tell you that I totally hated my existence and almost everything about China for the first three to four years of living here.

The language barrier was the worst part but not the only thing that tormented me. I hated all the lying and cheating. It infuriated me that I could never trust anything that was ever promised to me either verbally or even in writing. I also hated the way Chinese businessmen and other successful people would look at me when I told them I was an English teacher. They correctly surmised that any 51-year old man who came to China to teach business English with a doctoral degree must have some serious issues back home.

Maybe even worse than the language barrier was how I felt every time I drove my motorbike around town. I hated the way the Chinese selfishly and dangerously ignored traffic laws. It would be fair to say that my blood pressure reached stroke range every single time I was foolish enough to ride that bike into town. I would curse and scream and yell at them at the top of my lungs for being so stupid and they would look at me with a blank stare as if they had no idea what I was referring to, after having just knocked me down. I guess it was a good idea that I made a point not to learn one curse word in Chinese or I probably would have been killed by a mob during one of those episodes.

So my initial four years here were pretty tough. I was just about miserable all the time. And then something very strange began to happen.

Without deliberately meaning to, I found that I was beginning to adjust. I can’t tell you how or why exactly, other than maybe I just grew too tired of fighting back in all the ways I had before. Perhaps somewhere deep inside of me I knew that if I continued to react to stress and frustration in the same ways I always had, I would get the same results. I can remember the precise day and even moment that I was out riding around on my motorbike and the most remarkable thing happened after I had just escaped from yet another near-miss: I laughed! It wasn’t a laugh of mockery or contempt. It was the type of laugh one would emit in response to a joke or situation that is both funny and sad at the same time. Then it hit me that not only had I come to expect the unforeseeable, I had found acceptance of it for the first time in my life.

Another strange thing happened to me, just around the same time I began relaxing and laughing off things that would happen on the road (and at work) that used to enrage me—In my deeply profound social isolation, I began to finally enjoy my own company. After some really bad experiences with Chinese girls my first couple of years here, I had decided that it was better to just be alone than to go through a third divorce. I had stopped dating completely and would spend my free time socializing with other foreign teachers and mostly Chinese friends. I started reading again (thank God for Amazon.com) and found that I was spending a lot more time on the Internet than I ever did back home. It may sound corny but I guess you can say that, at the ripe old age of 55, I finally learned to love myself. Maybe I was finally able to love myself because China created an inescapable atmosphere of both challenge and new opportunity in which I was eventually able to forgive myself for past mistakes. I had been punished enough I guess. It was time to move on.

About five years ago I was walking around a department store when, all of a sudden, this beautiful young woman, with very good English, asked if she could help me. She was a very unusual woman I would say, especially in China. She was very pretty but either didn’t seem to know it or care. She also turned out to be the kindest and most emotionally generous woman I had ever known. She was the healthiest and most stable woman I had ever had the pleasure of dating and so I married her one year later. Some people may not believe in this sort of thing but, in my heart, I know that Angela is a gift from God.

Three years ago, about one year after our marriage, I was sitting in the computer room and was listening to Angela play with our dog, a miniature Yorkshire Terrier. All of a sudden, I found myself saying out loud “Life is good.” And then tears came running down my cheeks when I realised that I had never felt that way before. In fact, I had been suicidal most of my adult life. Despite some brief professional success I had known and then destroyed back home, this was by far my greatest accomplishment: I had a wife and a pet who, because of who I had become, were truly content with and loved me deeply. I had finally created something that I had never known or enjoyed before: a happy home—and I managed to do it in China of all places. Actually, as it turns out, China is the only place in the world that it could have happened in the way that it did.

Then a real miracle occurred. Three years ago Angela came home from the hospital and told me that she was pregnant. I couldn’t believe it because I had never been able to father a child before. The doctors told me that my sperm count was too low and that the sperm were also way too slow. If I didn’t know Angela they way that I do, I never would have believed that this was my child. But, Bill Jr. couldn’t look anything more like me even if he was my twin instead of my now two-year old son.

I don’t teach anymore. Instead, just around the time my son was born, Angela and I opened up a small Western restaurant in the center of town and it is always busy. We both get tired running it sometimes but we are also extremely happy with the financial freedom that it provides us with. Just before I decided to write this article, I finished paying off all the money I owed to people who had long written the money off as a bad debt lost on an even worse risk.

We bought a house about a year ago just overlooking a lake on one side and a mountain on the other. After having spent 50 years in my own private hell involving halfway houses for recovering drunks and even more time in and out of mental hospitals for depression and suicide attempts, I love my life and cherish every minute of it now. I quit smoking right after Bill Jr. was born and although I still drink on occasion, for some strange reason, it isn’t a problem for me anymore: I can take it or leave it.

It is true what the guide on this website says that if you move to China under the same or similar set of circumstances that I did, your life will initially be 100 times more difficult in so many ways. Everything is so different in China. Values, behaviour, personal hygiene, public health and safety, and just about anything else you can think of is like the difference between night and day. Moving here when you are feeling broken and beaten down is like trying to climb Mt. Everest with a bad knee and a chronic case of double pneumonia. On one hand you want to quit because there is no way you can possibly imagine being able to succeed with so much going against you. But you don’t quit because you know that you can’t, not unless you are willing to just roll over and die. So you’re in constant agony and you couldn’t possibly be more miserable or heartbroken. And then something miraculous begins to happen: You just put one foot in front of the other with all the strength that is left inside of you, and as you look back over all the ground you have covered, you realise that the knee has stopped hurting and you’re breathing much more easily than you ever have before.

So I am here to tell you that it can be done: People can and do rebuild their lives in China. I won’t tell you that it is easy or that everyone does it—but it is possible. I have also seen other foreigners in my situation crash and burn. I think they just gave up before the miracle took place or maybe they just ran out of strength because China can beat you down even more than you were before. But China also offers renewed hope and unexpected opportunities, a fourth, fifth and even sixth chance, for foreign guys like us who had burnt all our bridges back home.

It is true what they say: “That which does not kill us makes us stronger.”

I thank God for my new life in China everyday. It’s funny, but most of the things about China that used to drive me crazy, I now embrace with an appreciation and a gratitude I never thought possible. It’s not that life in China has changed all that much in the time that I’ve been here, but the way I look at things today has—entirely. Even though I can afford to return home now on my own terms, I will never leave this truly remarkable and amazing country with all its wonderfully warm and charming people.

Bill
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Cost of living in China

International Cravings
Posted on 20 May 2011

What does it cost for a family of four to live in China? If you wanted to move to China how much money would you need. Now after three months I am happy to give everyone a break-down of what our life here is costing and how affordable is it.

When we were picking places to move to there were many things that ran past our minds in our decision process, but one of the most important choices was how much was it going to cost us? Could we live on my teaching salary? We didn’t know if Zeek would be able to keep his job or not so we planned on worse case senario. If you prepare then you know what to do to keep your dream on track.

China is growing at a crazy speed. I have never experience such a growth process in the U.S.A., but I imagine that my grandparents did. I wonder if they were as bewildered about it as I am here in China. We live in one of China’s largest cities with over 13 million people. If something needs to be done, there is never a shortage of hands or workforce. In China things are built at lighting speed. Did you know that China consumes more than 50% of the worlds concrete. More than 50% of the world’s concrete…that is just crazy to even imagine. If I tried to imagine that much concrete my brain would just hurt. So I won’t.

(Picture of a side street on our way to Lupita’s school)

A city you saw last year…well could look completely different the next year, or even the next month. The 2010 Asian Games were held in Guangzhou and we are told that the city drastically changed 6 months prior to the event. If the government wants something done, well they just do it.

Anytime a city experiences growth it also experiences inflation. The costs we expected while planning ended up being quite different once we got here. Things we thought would be cheap were expensive, things we thought would be expensive were cheap. So that being said, what is our cost of living now that we have been here three months?

(The financial district of Guangzhou)

What do we live on and how much is China costing us?

Pay: My teaching salary is 10,000 RMB for 40 hours of English Teaching: 25 classroom hours & 15 office hours (keep in mind that most Chinese teachers make around 2,500 RMB a month for 40 hours of working)

Living: 4,000 RMB a month for our apartment: 75 sq meters (It would have been 3600 a month if we would have agreed to sign a year lease. We decided against the year lease because I still didn’t have a job when we originally found the apartment. I know we over pay a bit for ours and that there are better deals out there. We should probably be paying around 3200 a month considering our location and the size of the apartment. When we found the apartment it was the best and the least expensive. It was important for us to find a place that we all felt comfortable with. I ended up finding a job in the same building as we live so my commute is about 5 minutes.

(Beijing Road, Guangzhou)

Utilities: 250 RMB a month (Our utilities consist of electricity, gas, water, cell phone, internet, t.v.) For the internet and t.v. you have to pay everything up front. You pay for your year of service up front. That cost us 850.00 RMB for a year of T.V. & Internet. I know we didn’t have t.v. in the states why did we get t.v. in China? Only because it was too complicated to tell our landlord that we didn’t need t.v. and the cost was minimal, so we have Chinese tv! We purchased our wireless modem from the internet company at (I am sure) an inflated price of 200 RMB but it was convenient and they set it all up. We roughly pay about 250 RMB a month for electricity, gas, water, and cell phone. You pay for everything up front and then when it runs out you go pay again. There are NO payment plans in China.

Nanny/Daycare: 2,200 RMB a month We have to have a daycare/nanny for Abe & Lupita while we are at work. Even though Zeek works from home it is not like he can work and watch a 14 month old. There really aren’t day cares in China, so we had to look into a nanny. We also liked the idea of someone at our house, so that Zeek could see Abe more during the day and we knew everything that was going on. We were happily surprised to find out that not only does a Chinese nanny watch your kids but they cook all of your meals, go grocery shopping, clean your house, and yes wash your clothes. We were so surprised by this and have become extremely spoiled with our new nanny. I am someone who doesn’t enjoy cooking so, I love having meals served three times a day by someone else. hehehe Most nanny’s only get one day off a week. We give ours two and that brings her price down a little bit. She comes at 8 am and leaves at 8 pm. If she works extra days if we need her assistance then we pay her for her extra day. It seems to be a win win situation.

(Lupita in the financial district)

School: 650 RMB a month We decided to send Lupita to a local kindergarten where they teach in Mandarin. We pay 430 for her school, 10 a day for food, and then 20 a month for air conditioning, which equals 650 RMB a month. We had to pay to have her registered, uniform, and a cot for naps. Considering we had been use to not paying for school in the U.S. I have to say at first it was a little hard to come to terms with. There is public ”free” school but that is not available until kids are 5 yrs old. We chose one on the cheaper side. Since I don’t work on Monday and Tuesday, she rarely goes to school on those days unless there is a special function. It has been very hard for her to adjust to her new school environment. She has made one friend and that has helped tons.

(Paz in the financial district)

Food: 1700 RMB a month We spend 1200 RMB on everyday food and another 500 RMB on juice, coffee, and milk. We have to go to a special store that carries all sort of imported items to get good coffee, real juice, and cow’s milk. Our nanny buys all of our food fresh everyday at the local market. Many people don’t advise buying your meat from the local market because you have no idea where it came from. We are not big meat eaters and have not found it necessary to purchase our meat from the imported grocery store. Our nanny buys what little meat we do eat from the market and we have been fine. Our meals mainly contain veggies prepared all different ways. We eat rice with every meal or some sort of noodle. We have gotten use to eating our food with chopsticks and find it helps us eat a little slower. You can’t shovel food into your mouth with chopsticks. The “western” meals we eat on a regular basis are ‘peanut butter & jelly sandwiches’ and ‘oatmeal’. These little snacks are all we need to satisfy our western taste buds…oh ya and coffee! We can’t survive without coffee. Somethings never change.

So after all of our expenses and taxes (400 RMB), we have about 800 RMB left at the end of the month.

I know that this isn’t a lot of money to go travel the world with, but we are able to live extremely comfortable and still have money left over. Remember we have almost half of a normal Chinese teacher’s salary left at the end of the month. We could save quite a bit of money on our apartment. There are many nice places to live in Guangzhou that cost between 2500 and 3500 a month. We have thought of moving after our 6 month lease is up to a less expensive place. I am not sure if we will or not. The idea of packing makes me a little sick to my stomach at the moment. I love being able to come home for lunch and only having to leave for work 5 minutes before I have to be there.

We use our 800 RMB to go out with friends,travel around Guangzhou and on ice cream every once in a while. Although there are many wonderful things to buy in Guangzhou we have very little interest in buying things. We buy the occasional small toy for the kids or crayons but we have no interest in cluttering our life back up. Oh Zeek did have to buy a pair of Pumas (60.00 USD) because of all the walking we do here. His brand new Converse lets say died….the amount of walking we do here is not meant for an innocent pair of Chuck Taylors.

American Bills: We still have some American bills that we have to pay. So if you have these as well you need to keep them in mind. We have student loans, life-insurance, part of our mortgage payment, and hospital bills that we have to make payments on every month. So we use Zeek’s income to cover these payments.

What this all mean? Although prices changed from what we thought before we came, we are happy to say that our standard of living is much higher for some key points. We eat a million times healthier than we did before, yes I do mean a million!!! We spend more time with each-other and the kids because no one is worried about laundry or cleaning the house…or cooking. We walk with each other everywhere which is so much better than jumping in the car and running a million errands.

If you are interested in moving to China this is what it will cost you. Hopefully some of you will come and visit us.
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