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GeminiTiger · Posted: Mon Jul 23, 2012 7:34 am Post subject: Suzhou

My girlfriend's parents own a countryside home (4 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms) near Suzhou (1 hour). We often go into Suzhou on the weekend although we also like Nanjing and Shanghai, Suzhou is the closest.

I've loved Suzhou since 2004. Although Guilin, Xian, and Chengdu also were at the top of my experience Suzhou had a downright comfortable, clean and relaxed feeling. I guess a place filled with Gardens and silk manufacturing rubbed off on my hedonistic nature.

Anyways, this last weekend I went to a place I had never been before called INCITY, a shopping market that had a Burger King, Starbucks, Subway, Big Fish (japanese) and lots of other nice places to eat and of course yes lots of places to shop.

But only one thing stuck out.

The number of laowai. I have never seen so many laowai outside of a place like the Bund where tourist groups are likely to be. These were clearly people living in Suzhou. I went to the dentist, went to place called Casa Zoe for some Mexican and to "New Times square". Laowai were basically everywhere even driving in my taxi you would see plenty of random laowai walking on the road.

Infact it seems as I could have gone nowhere in Suzhou without being shadowed by nefarious laowai. A weird experience for a country bumpkin like me who works in smaller cities and holidays in "a village".

This got me to thinking about the fact that Suzhou was apparently the first city in China to institute the laowai social security tax. So what exactly are the Chinese up to? Most laowai, especially in Suzhou have no intention of retiring in China. Are they trying to ever so slightly bump up the pressure, reduce our numbers or fill their pockets?

I am of the opinion that the social security tax without a change in the green card policy is complete and utter bunk as most foreigners could never hope to collect on such a program.

Suzhou, a sea of white, black and Indians, whom I have no idea what the hell they are doing, but they are doing it in Suzhou.

kungfuman · Posted: Mon Jul 23, 2012 8:21 am Post subject:

I live across from INCITY. In the SIP area it is the best mall.

Plenty of restaurants and a movie theater.

Subway, KFC, Burger King, Starbucks, a crappy Italian restaurant, a crappy Walmart, and about 40 other restaurants.

laowai are attracted to it.

The other area, near Casa Zoe, is where many of them live. Hundreds of them - maybe more.

And Suzhou is a fine place to live.

NoBillyNO · Joined: 11 Jun 2012 Posts: 1762

Babala · Joined: 28 Jan 2005 Posts: 1303 Location: Henan

I'm also in Suzhou. Most of the expats that you see here are company guys. There are tons of foreign companies in Suzhou. As I mentioned in another thread the numbers are beginning to thin as some companies are reacting to the new tax and sending the foreign managers home but there will still be a lot of westerners.

There are places in the SIP where you see just as many laowi as you do Chinese people.

kungfuman · Posted: Tue Jul 24, 2012 6:15 am Post subject:

I had lunch at Incity today. It was early. maybe only saw 10 or so other laowai.

GeminiTiger · Posted: Tue Jul 24, 2012 9:09 am Post subject:

wangdaning · Joined: 22 Jan 2008 Posts: 3154