Topic: news Homebound: 10 Things Expats Miss About China When They Leave

This entire topic, and all the items on the list, are debatable and depend on personal preference/experience. I enjoyed reading it, as the author seems to be a glass-half-full kind of guy, which makes a nice change to all the fairly negative stuff that I keep reading. It's easy to come up with reasons to dislike all the items mentioned above, it simply depends on how you look at things. Food, for example, largely depends on your taste (I know a lot of people don't care for Chinese food at all, as they find it too greasy/unhealthy/weird, and they won't miss it at all), in addition to which it's hard to get food that's tasty, healthy, and affordable at the same time. As far as the cushy hours are concerned, this may or may not be the case for English teachers, but it definitely isn't so for degree students (who will need to attend class during the day and resort to crap evening jobs, as most nice jobs that offer any experience that's related to your major tend to take place during times at which you're supposed to attend class), and I imagine any foreigners employed as managers or otherwise working regular (non-teaching) jobs aren't any better off than they would've been back home. The buzz of life, to me, is both a good and a bad thing. I like the fact that you can walk into a bar any evening of the week and find people there, or walk down the street and always have people around, but the reverse can also be true. It's hard to get privacy anywhere, and having to deal with people during rush hour is a right pain in the ass, as is the constant noise during the night when you're trying to sleep. The convenience part is nice, as I too like to order in when the weather's bad or I'm suffering from a hangover, but it's easy to take things too far and turn into a slob. It's easy to get used to ordering in and just spending all your time sitting in front of the TV, rather than going out for dinner and walking around a bit. Taxi drivers and locals alike can be nice/funny/interesting, but they can also act incredibly ignorant/racist/annoying. For every taxi driver I enjoyed speaking to, there has been another who bored the shit out of me by drilling up the same questions I heard a million times before. For every time someone was sincerely interested in my country or opinions, there were a dozen people who couldn't give a shit less. As far as living expenses go, I think the author has either been very fortunate, or somehow miscalculated. Internet alone can cost you 100+ kuai a month, and when you add gas/water/electricity and whatever other expenses it's easy to end up paying 500-1000 kuai, especially if you're hiring a regular ayi. 400 dollars rent will only get you a very basic, old apartment. Anything 'decent', particularly in a nice area, will probably cost you twice that. Of course you can find places for 2500-3000 kuai a month, but those places are hardly as convenient or nice as implied. Even though a lot of services, such as barbers, are more affordable than where I'm from, some are not. Gyms, for example, are more expensive in Shanghai (300 kuai or so a month is the best deal I found, on a 3-6 month contract), even though they are generally busier/noisier/filthier and less well maintained than where I'm from. In addition to this, you're expected to shell out for any help and won't get any pointers from staff unless you're willing to pay for a private trainer. You might be able to get cheaper clothes here, but I find that in the long run you actually end up spending more, simply because a lot of the clothes fall apart after a matter of weeks or end up getting shredded by your (also inferior) laundry machine. Not to mention brand clothes, which will cost you twice as much here as they would anywhere else. I think the perks of being foreign are wearing out quick. I used to run into people dying to offer me drinks/dinner so we could hang out and chat, which I very much enjoyed at the time, but rarely encounter this any more. Asides from getting offered drinks, I can't say I've really experienced any particular boons to being a foreigner (other than the "Oh sorry, I didn't know this was illegal, I'm just a foreigner" wildcard). I often get disrespected or ignored by employees, or more often just get treated the same as everyone else. There have been plenty of times where I stood around trying to order a drink for ages before getting served, simply because the waiter didn't seem to care for me. Now, I'm not expecting any special treatment, and am not complaining about the fact that some random store clerk is just as rude to me as he was to the previous customer, but to say foreigners get particularly better treatment is off by a long shot, and will most likely only be the case if the person in question expects to be able to make money off of you. Finally, language has its ups and downs. As much as I enjoy not being able to understand everything that is said around me, it's also an obvious, big disadvantage to not be able to understand what's going on most of the time. Anyway, I'm not trying to be a complete pessimist here, as I did miss a lot of things about China whenever I went back home. I'm just saying there's a lot to be said about lists like these, and how you interpret them. Overall, I don't regret having come to China but, like I said, there are a lot of bad things to balance out the good ones.