After a Week in China, I am becoming Acclimatized

After a Week in China, I am becoming Acclimatized

Thank God I can eat the food without any major trauma.

I must be the only westerner amongst my clique that has not been in China for years.  One person told me that he had been here more than 5 years.  Others, well over two years teaching in a variety of schools, mostly teaching language classes.  For some they came, they saw and decided that it was the place to be.  They can earn good money whilst paying no rent for the rather spacious apartment. 5 years, 3 years, 2 years all seem to be a consistent story for expatriate contractors.  They came and staying in this alien country with a sense of adventure.  I could not quite understand the attraction.

I am a little bewildered at how some people can shift to strand land that speaks a stranger tongue that has no latin routes.  I asked one man who had been here 5 year where he was hiding out in China because he had murdered someone back in England. Was he just hiding out here like another passenger on the ship of lost souls?  Thankfully he laughed. They all had their reasons for being in this place.  One lady explained that it was all about the money.  She was earning more that could ever hope to earn in Australia and was teaching in a field that she had always wanted to teach.  Her dreams were being fullfilled by taking a risk with her life and throwing herself into this new world.  It was like a an extended holiday and an adventure for her as she explained how many other people were doing the same thing just to make financial gain that could not do by other means.  Beyond the shift in lifestyle she was delighted to catch up with a fellow Australian who understood they way we think and our sense of humour.

China is very different than what I expected to find. Different from what I had been told by media reports.Different from its turbulent and horrific history.  All the trappings of the west have infested this nation and grown like a virus.  China is more capitalist than the most capitalist nations on earth.

There no doubt in my mind that communism is dead.  It died when the first iPhone was sold to China’s youth.  The concept of a socialist paradice does not live in the imagination of the youth.  Instead they dream of playing video games and buying a Mercedes Benze.  What more proof do you need?