Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Tiger Beer]

I'm just curious.

I've been there three times now.. and feels very Korea-like more than anywhere else I've been.

But its not Korea.. and I guess in that sense its interesting.

But with all the other countries in Asia.. and us living in Korea.. I gotta ask.. 'whats so interesting about China?'

Okay, I gotta admit, I'm a tad bit interested myself.

[joe_doufu]

For one thing: the hugeness of it. I recommend taking a long train ride. If you just go to Beijing and Shanghai you only see Korea-like urban sprawl (though Beijing has far more culture and nicer people than Seoul), but when you take a 24-hour train ride (i recommend 'hard sleeper' class) you get to see the countryside and stop in lots of random little villages along the way. It's a huge country like the US with a zillion places to get lost in. I intend to give it several years of attention.

[Tiger Beer]

those long train rides is what killed me. I went up from Hanoi into Kunming. Then around Yunnan and ultimately up to Chengdu before going back down to Hanoi again.

I really liked Yunnan and Sichuan in particular.. but being on those hard-sleeper trains wasn't that great. Unfortunately had a lower bunk for one of them, and everyone treated it like a chair/couch and were sitting on my bed while I was trying to sleep and talking loud all night.

Grrrrr... the things I did like about China was the games they were playing in game halls in Leshan looked really interesting and really different. I also liked that I saw 'Tai Chi' almost everywhere I went that had a park.

I didn't like the hawking spitting that even college women did though.

[sadsac]

What's great, the food. Variety, variety, variety. There is always some little dingy back alley food vendor that serves the most delicious fare for 5 to 10 Yuan. The people are more polite and not as pushy as Koreans. I do agree on the spitting, it can be a little off putting. I like the place and plan to visit there many more times with my wife.

[peppermint]

5-10 yuan? You can eat very well indeed for that in the night markets here. I was staying next to the one in Kaifeng, and beer was 2 Y, stuffed bread thingies were 1, huge bags of kettle corn were 1.5, etc. Great smelling muslim food there too.