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[china_gurl]

I was reading some other similar threads and thought I'd add my own input. Feel free to add yours, let's get a list going of what defines a foreigner's experience in China!

... you forget what clean smells like.
... you know what time they burn the garbage every night.
... you barely flinch when you see a small child emptying his bowels in the street.
... you know the news you're getting isn't the REAL news.
... a cup of coffee costs more than ten times a bottle of beer.
... you find yourself crying over a menu in a western restaurant because they serve potato salad.
... you haven't eaten anything baked in months.
... you eat every kind of meat off the bone, and spit the bones on the table.
... you speak really slowly and enunciate when you're speaking English, and sometimes find it easier just to speak Chinese.
... you have to ask if the VCD is in English when you rent it.
... you know what a VCD is.
... you ride a bike. All the time. Even in the rain, and people look at you strangely if you're not wearing a poncho.
... you can expertly maneuver your bike through any traffic situation.
... you see a kid throwing a baby chicken around. Later on, some students come to your house with the chick that they rescued from the kid and expect you to know what to do with a chicken when you live in a 4th floor apartment.
... you have to go to ten stores to find tampons, and even then they're the ob kind that have no applicator but you're so grateful for them even though you wouldn't use them in your home country.
... you have to hit three internet cafes before you find one that will either let you download MSN Messenger (which you can now do in your sleep) or get into Yahoo chat so you can keep in touch with your family without spending millions of RMB on phone cards.
... you know the currency exchange between RMB and your home country but not your home country and its neighbor.
... you spend less than 10RMB on a fully satisfying lunch, but might end up eating at a table with 4 strangers.
... you carry a supply of TP with you everywhere you go.
... you know how to use a squatter.
... you know what a squatter is.
... grown men and women often say hello to you, and when you reply they run away giggling.
... you can't decide if you love or hate the country you're living in.
... you realize that the smog-o-meters they use in western countries would explode if they were brought to the colder parts of the country in the middle of winter.

[Paul G]

Well, china_gurl, you got some of the major classics, but I'll throw in a few anyway.

---you see nothing wrong with standing on a white stripe in the middle of a highway while cars whiz past you at 90kph

---you don't slow down when you see someone standing in the middle of the highway

---you never stop for a right turn, particularly when the light is red, although you don't really understand why no one ever crashes into you

---it seems completely normal that some guy on a tricycle wants to buy your garbage

---you don't blink an eye when a complete stranger wants to take a photo of you with his family

---you actually put some thought into which live snake you want cooked for your meal

---you eat soup with chopsticks

---you use Kleenex for table napkins

---you drink warm sodas and find them refreshing

---you are accustomed to seeing people's heads popping up and down in the VCD you are watching

---you no longer use articles when you speak

---you bargain with the grocer over the cost of a head of lettuce

---you no longer question why the expiration date on the milk you just bought is two months from now

[gerard]

...you buy a movie that hasn't been released theatrically yet at home...

...you take cigarette breaks during dinner...

...you complain about the price of chocolate bars...

...you enjoy a glass of dusty brown wine...

...you comment the pollution "isn't really that bad..."

...and so on...

[goldstar]

a few more...

....when you can get ANYTHING to eat on a stick

....when a trim at the barber invloves two washes, a scalp massage, a whole lot of time, and a crowd of onlookers

....When beer is most often served cold in the winter

....When you go to a park and you can't walk on the grass

....When you go to the park and get heavily sprayed with pesticide that keeps that same untouched grass green and strong

....Where the red stamp is all powerful

....when in the case of a driver hitting a bike or pedestrian, the driver showers abuse and violence for the damages to his passat.

....when you are constantly asked if you think simple foods and beverages are delicious. "This is the best boiled water ever!" "fantastic seeds!"

....where every city is (in)famous for some kind of food

[xiaoyu]

some others i would add!

*you find yourself spitting in public places (i.e. the street, restaurant) and not thinking twice
*you speak chinese with other foreigners (even if they speak the same language) simply because it is easier
*you can access programs on computers even though there are no english prompts
*you take it in stride when you are offered beer/baijiu at lunch before going back to work
*you start wearing a face mask on windy days and wonder at the "silly foreigners" who don't do the same
*you can play charades so well that it is often not necessary to talk (due to lack of chinese when you arrive)
*people ask if they can keep some of your hair after you get it cut at the salon
*you start to believe that it isn't really a cigarette unless it leaves a yellow stain on your fingers after a night out
*an entire class looks at you with a blank face when you ask them to try and discover something on their own, rather than you just telling them the answer
*you are commonly spooken to in russian and cursed when you don't understand it (mostly in northern china when you are blond and blue eyed)
*the smell of stinky dofu doesn't faze you anymore
*your host offers you silkworms telling you that they are very good, and when you ask if they like them they reply no.
*most of the club stops dancing to watch in fear/horror when you actually start to shake your thing
*you make a scheduled trip to KFC weekly to buy them out of mashed potatoes!
*you complain about that price difference of DVDs/VCDs/CDs bought in the stores and on the streets
*you start to wonder if the chocolate ice cream you find in the store is even chocolate... sure it is brown, but it doesn't taste anything like the stuff back home!
*you are not surprised when your garbage lady answers her cell phone and keeps digging thru your trash!
*you find face lotion that actually bleachs your skin whiter....

[Roger]

A few of mine:
- You deliberately block traffic on a highway zebra crossing, because you want to reach the other side safely; drivers actually stop, and some even offer a proletarian-style kowtow (touching their forehead);

- you shove the guy before you back to where he stood half a minute before in the queue, barking a loud "hou mian, hou mian, ni nongmin!"

- you come to an appointment late, fully prepared with a run-of-the-mill explanation such as: "Sorry, but I was the only person standing at the bus stop, and no bus would stop, seeing as they did that I was a foreigner...";

- you dialled the wrong number, and instead of saying "buhao y-she, wo da cuole..." you simply slam the receiver back into its cradle;

- you forget to turn off your mobile phone, and of course, your girlfriend rings right in the middle of your first lesson in the evening class; of course, you answer, and the whole class gets a titillating lesson in what Westerners in love with each other talk about;

- you address the parents of your child charges as 'xiao pengyou', because you actually think they are more childish than their own children; they laugh good-humouredly;

[whitjohn]

You have learned to enjoy being stared at
You stare back especially at knockout women
Almost anything can be "fixed"
You can open and hull sunflower seeds with your tongue
You have a jar full of "fen" at home
You give a beggar a handfull of fen and he gives them back
You can climb 6 flights of stairs without a rest stop
You can buy a NEW bicycle for US $17
People offer you a stool to sit on when you stop in front of a shop
Chairs are never tall enough for you to sit with your legs straight down

[earth_dog]

OOOOOh I wanna play!!

-- someone hands you a pair of scissors with one of the handles snapped off and you try to use them

--long underwear is a wardrobe staple five months of the year

--you don't blink your green eyes or shake your very brunette head when someone compliments you on your blue-eyed blondness

--you have trouble sleeping when you go home for a visit because it's just too darn quiet

--Nescafe instant with edible oil product topping IS cappuccino

--you stop thinking about the big blood stain on the wall

--a 4% mortality rate seems a safe bet

Gosh, I feel so much better

[china_gurl]

Thanks for your posts, guys! I keep thinking of new ones:

... you get excited when you find a jiuba that has baiwei
... when you go shopping for clothes or shoes you often find that they don't have what you want in a size that will fit your big foreign frame. Instead they offer you something bigger and uglier and think it's a fair compromise.
... you're yelling at a kid that's throwing a chick around and you turn to his father for support and all he can say is that your Chinese is really good.
... you can stop watching tv for 2 weeks and when you start watching again they're still showing reruns of the same show.
... you have ten different responses to the question, "Do you like China?"
... you're looking forward to blending in with the crowd.
... you know ten different ways to point out a foreigner in Chinese.
... you point out foreigners to your Chinese friends even though you're foreign yourself.
... you no longer find it humourous that the bus never really stops to pick people up, it just sort of slows down.
... you find yourself asking anyone and everyone if they can make the price cheaper.
... you know which chocolate is real and which chocolate is glorified butter.
... you know words in Chinese for which you don't know the translation in English.
... your students bow and call you teacher when you enter a room.

[chinasyndrome]

I laughed so much the tears rolled down my legs!
- your mashed potato has squid guts and fish heads in it...and you think it tastes fine.
- you answer 'China' when people ask where you're from
- you answer 'China' when people ask where you live
- having fingers poked into your ears when you're getting a shampoo no longer makes you wonder at the cleanliness of the 100 who came before you
- you see 'Made in Australia' on products you've never even dreamed of when you lived there
- you answer 'ni hao', giggle, and run away when someone says hello to you
- your Chinese friend Faye has such poor pronunciation you tell her she's speaking feihua
- everyone assumes that if you know one word of putonghua, you know them all
- you pick your nose, burp, fart, and scratch so much even your Chinese friends get embarrassed
- you get a discount if you speak English, but you pay more for putonghua
-you no longer wonder if that guy who's up his nose to the second knuckle is drilling for oil or scratching his brain
- you start thinking that stupid questions are reasonable
- you call home and your family tell you to speak faster and stop correcting their grammar and pronunciation
- you spit on your own floor to save time treading it in on your shoes
- you think that having the runs for 2 weeks is normal
-SARS doesn't worry you; 4% chance of death is considerably lower than eating the food, breathing the air, riding a bicycle or listening to bad KTV

[senor boogie woogie]

I agree with what everyone has said about living in China. Yes, I have seen children pee and poop in the street, both in Taiwan and the Mainland. Ihave seen them burn garbage and God only knows what. I have gagged in the morning where I used to live due to the burning of the crop land.

I know what its like to go to a KFC and buy two or three units of mashed potatoes just to taste something familiar from home. Believe it or not, our brothers and sisters in Thailand, taiwan and Korea do the same thing. Baked food is almost impossible here too, as in Korea. Baked food is almost an impossibility too, because the Asians do not have ovens (same as in Korea).

I think spitting bones and other crap and the table is disgusting, but my Chinese wife does this. I ususally use the soup bowl, because most of the soup served in Chinese restaurants is water with a dead animal inside. I usually dont touch the soup.

If you are not regular bathroom wise, take TP in your pack when you are out doing business. I am usually regualar, but sometimes my bowels catch me unaware. I then look for a sit down john. I know that most all hotles have these and some McDonalds (not all) do too.

Traffic in the PRC and Taiwan is a nightmare, people are in the road crossing anywhere and cars will pass "willy nilly" if they can get around someone slow. What scared the living dung out of me two years ago rarely makes me flinch now.

Chinese like to drink hot drinks no matter the weather. When I taught in Taiwan in the early summer at a kindergarten, I asked for water when it was hot. i was served hot water. I have seen Chinese in 35-40C temps drink hot tea in the middle of the day. Chinese do not like cold drinks.

I like to spit. always have. i have goten drunk with school bosses at lunch with knowledge that I still had classes left. No big deal. I am more interesting with a head on. Imagine Americans working for a concern who did not care if they got faced at the lunch hour, we would have a lot of drunk workers. YEE HAW!

Almost any problem can be fixed with the right amount of money. people have asked me "Do you like China?" Yes mostly. "Do you like Chinese food?" yea, but you should cut the heads off and quit serving so much GD soup and dofu. But this is how they eat.

I like VCDS and DVDs. Chinese TV sucks. There is nothing on if I was fluent in the language. Yes, when I buy a VCD, I ask the shop to play it for me to make sure that it is in English.

China must be the same everywhere.

SENOR

[Kurochan]

-- you don't have any idea what something is, but you'll eat it anyway!

[whitjohn]

Yeah, and if you just ate and liked it...don't ask what it is!

[Seth]

- You have strict mental rules as to when you reply to a hello (ie person must be within a 20 foot semi circle radius and not with a group of men)
- Completely ignore most people who say hello to you
- Have a conversation while sidestepping feces, vomit, and mysterious green puddles on the sidewalk without blinking.
- Dodge urine streams spurting from an infant.
- Stare at dogs that are over 1 foot tall.
- Seeing a woman with dyed hair and trying to figure out of she's Chinese or foreign by walking fast to catch up.
- eat cake with chopsticks
- you're afraid of toilets
- you constantly wonder if everything has been boiled long enough.
- you'll sit through a half hour of Beijing Opera on TV because there's nothing better to do.
- contemplate suicide when taking a long distance hard sleeper train.

[chinasyndrome]

- you know what it is and you eat it anyway
- you catch a taxi and it becomes a dutch oven
- nobody blames it on the dog
- you stop wondering why the river fish have 3 eyes
- you miss your old apartment, where the roof only collapsed once each year
- you've stopped wondering why it takes a 20 gallon flush to clear a 2 ounce pee
- the open sewer next to your school smells better than the canteen food
- the open sewer next to your school tastes better than the canteen food
- you answer 'So is mine.' when people say their English is so poor
- you answer 'Into what?' when people say China is developing
- you laugh when people say China has been civilized for 5000 years
- you suspect that was 5010 years ago
- you go looking for signs of civility