Things I Hate about China

Yes, there are some and peopls complain that I don't complain

I had a very interesting experience a few days ago in Ningxia.

We were at a place I really don’t like very much and met a person who made me think I needed to write an article and explain what it is I don’t like about China.

What happened was, we had taken a day off and planned to visit a couple of sites which are important in the region, we were in Zhongwei and just an hour or so drive out of the city there are some important places to visit, we decided to hire a car and driver and go to see them.

One was a Bei Chang Tan, which is a village, lifted out of poverty and one of my favourite topics to discuss - the village is now almost empty because there will be a dam built and the people will be relocated but the road to it is still being maintained because there is a small but thriving community there growing apples and red dates, or hongzao. When the dam will be built, we don’t know because the people on the Ningxia side of the mountains are all happy and have accepted the deal, the Gansu side has not but it is definitely going to happen. Ann had a long conversation with an old lady there who told her that there are only 16 families left in the village and all of them are older people who simply care for the hongzao and apple trees and make a living selling them to the tourists who come through - she obviously bought some from her.

However, it wasn’t that village which is the place I dislike, nor was it the copy of Route 66 which I find quirky and fun, the Chinese have an empty piece of road which they’ve turned into a tourist attraction that brings people from far and wide to take photos. In fact, I rather like that they’ve done this, it shows a sense of humour and, I think, a respect for US culture. it was the fact that, not far away, a billionaire businessman has built a Moroccan style town as a resort. Staying overnight starts about 600 RMB and goes up to the tens of thousands for a night, it has restaurants and souvenir shops as well as a coffee shop and a patisserie but there’s almost no one there - this is not the kind of attraction that Chinese tourists enjoy and it’s certainly not going to attract backpackers who like to explore China’s wilderness, it’s not likely to attract many foreign tourists and therefore is build as a whim to a person who has more money than sense, at least in the tourism industry - whoever he is, he has obviously done very well in his own business but this, to me is just an eyesore.

However, since we were there, we decided to try the coffee, I have to admit, it was good coffee but at prices that might have made Starbucks blush. I suspect we were the only customers they had all day, we were there for about 90 minutes, had a cake too, it was also good but then, while we were there a very strange thing happened.

A man, with a Chinese face walked in and said, with a very Australian accent, are you Jerry? What a surprise, to meet a YouTube subscriber in such a strange place, his name is David, he’s from Taiwan, educated in Australia and living in Beijing - he’d spent the night in the “resort” and, like us, was unhappy that it was so fake - he’d also paid for a night in a cabin by the river but because the place was totally empty, he was upgraded to a lovely room costing over 2,500 RMB on the App. That seems like a strange thing to complain about but I understand why he was complaining, it wasn’t what he’d wanted.

A similar thing had happened to us just a few hours later, we’d booked a night in the desert and our driver dropped us off, we were looking for peace, serenity and a beautiful starry night - we had a great time but mired in some disappointment - just as the sun went down so did our mood - instead of getting the peace, tranquillity and beautiful stars, the was a resort on the other side of the dunes which started up some kind of disco - one of the things I hate most in the world is electronic music, the thing I hate even more is people with a microphone shouting over the top of the music to encourage me to have a good time - I don’t. I hate it.

In fairness the noise only lasted until 9:30 but that was, to me an hour worse than sitting in a dentists chair. What really annoyed me even more was that the blazing lights all around the site were on all night and we didn’t see a single star, the light pollution had taken them out of view.

So, getting back to meeting David. He’d been sent some of my videos by the algorithm on YouTube and, while he agreed with most of the things I said, he had one criticism of my videos: I never complain about China, I’m far too optimistic and that’s why I decided that meeting him was actually a good thing - I am optimistic about China although I do have many complaints I tend to leave the negative things about China to the people who hate the place and not get too involved in them. If we’re honest, there are many people who’ve either never been to China or been here and left a long time ago who now make a very good living complaining about the country - I’ve decided to make it my home and therefore I generally keep my complaints to myself 9and of course my long suffering wife Ann, who hears them all) because there are things I could do if I really didn’t like China - one of them is leave!

The reasons for my optimism despite having things to complain about are simple, in most cases, the problems I’ve experienced in China are actually getting better for example, when I arrived in China the hospital system was chaotic, lacked all semblance of privacy, it also seemed to be a place where doctors ripped patients off by prescribing treatments that weren’t necessary - I don’t know if that’s true but it was definitely a perception held by almost every foreigner who had been involved in the medical system. It was also almost impossible to navigate - it’s not a simple case of me becoming more competent, but the systems now are so much better, everything is digitised and online, we can make appointments turn up and be seen, go from department to department, have scans and get reports which are also sent directly to the doctor asking for them and, as far as I can ascertain, almost everything is cheaper now than it used to be - hospitals were a serious gripe I had but they are much better than before. That doesn’t mean I want to go and try them again, I did that a couple of years ago, got great service, was surprised at the low cost and was even more surprised when the doctor who released me from the hospital asked m if I wanted the cheaper Chinese brand medicine or the much more expensive US meds to take home with me - I chose the Chinese because I’m pretty confident they would be fine and now, two years later, I’m still here!

Another reason I don’t publicly complain is that, in every single case, my life isn’t actually affected by inconveniences, it’s just annoyances which I’d love to see changed. For example, I go to the bank, once or twice a year now to convert my pensions into RMB and get enough cash to live the next few months without invading my savings. Each time I do it, it takes at least 2 hours - I can’t just go in and withdraw money, the process involves many forms, at least three signatures, the inputting of my PIN Number at least 3 times, several photos of me, at least two or three photos of my passport and visa pages and then the final approval of a floor manager before they convert the money and put it into my account. I usually allow a morning or an afternoon to do it. It’s not life threatening but it’s a pain in the neck.

Banking is not getting better, in fact, due to US regulations and international money laundering rules, it’s actually got harder.

There are a few other things which I don’t like that are improving. Most people don’t like spitting int he street, I’m with them on this, we don’t like to see people blowing their noses onto the footpath or coughing up whatever it is in their lungs but it still goes on. However, it’s less than it was, it’s mostly older people, they are often a lot more discrete than they used to be, although not always, some of them will actually do it into a bin - so it is still there but it’s improving. As a very wise person I knew a long time ago, pointed out to me, blowing a nose in the street might look bad to people from my culture but, wrapping it up in a cotton handkerchief and carrying it home in your pocket is quite disgusting to a lot of people from other cultures too.

On that topic, many people don’t like spitting on tables, and when it’s put like this, it seems bad but if you watch a Chinese person eating fish, they’ll put it in their mouth, roll it around on their tongue, separate the bones and meat, swallow the meat and spit the bones onto the table - seems disgusting but watch a Westerner eating the same fish, we pull the bones out with our fingers, we eat chicken that’s finger-licking good and, after licking our fingers clean, we say goodbye to our hosts with a firm handshake, which is more disgusting?

Smoking is another one - in Inner Mongolia, where I’ve just spent a few weeks, it’s ubiquitous, there are no smoking signs in every restaurant but usually placed strategically over a well placed ashtray, there are no smoking signs in all the hotels but an ashtray and often matches are provided for the convenience of smokers. In the South, it’s possible to ask a person to stop and they usually will, in the North, ask them to stop in a restaurant and they’ll often ask you to change tables, which doesn’t help because people at other table are smoking too. The sooner China gets on top of this regulation, the happier I’ll be but I do understand the restaurants will hate it. I know in major cities there are massive fines for smoking in public places, so again, this one is getting better.

There are a few other things I positively hate, one of them is these silly little toothpaste tubes that are in almost all small hotels. However, I do get that in many hotels around the world, toothpaste and toothbrushes are not part of the hotel room fee, so despite hating them because I can’t open them properly and, when I do finally get them open I find there’s about 70% air and 30% toothpaste in them I accept that it’s better than nothing - however, when we travel on these long journey, we pack proper toothpaste and our own toothbrushes.

But where hotels are concerned, I’ve noticed a very worrying trend that I don’t like at all - we stayed in a resort hotel in the desert which cost us over 600 RMB for the night - this was when we were looking for peace, tranquillity and a starry night but got none of them, what we didn’t get either were proper towels. They provided these horrible little disposable towels. I’m certain this saves on laundry costs and is cheaper for the hotel but disposing of these after each guest can’t be good for the environment, even if it is good for the environment, it’s not nice for the guest to use them.

My one big fear is that they will soon be replacing cotton sheets with disposable sheets was realised a few days later - we were in a hotel in Jingtai, Gansu and they had used these disposable pillow cases, underneath the disposable one is a real one and I wonder if they are washing the real one after each use, or simply covering them with the disposable one and pretending this is clean - it’s hard to know and this is the first and only experience, so far with them. I’m hoping this is an aberration we’ll never see again, not a future trend.

I’m quite intolerant to noise and China is a noisy place, one of the first things I learnt when I started learning Chinese to be functional was “xiao sheng yi dian” which means turn it down a little and most people will do so happily. when I’m walking around museums or galleries, I hate the guides who have loudspeakers, I hated this when I was working in schools too, some teacher who believe they can’t teach unless they project their voice through a megaphone attached to their waist - the problem is, every class on the same floor is subject to the same lesson. But, like everything else, it’s getting better, only the older museums still have the megaphones as most guides speak quietly into a wireless mic that’s linked to an earpiece - it means everyone can enjoy the museum in relative silence - I haven’t been in a school for several years so I don’t know if that’s better or worse than it was.

I think that’s pretty much it, I don’t know too many other things I hate, or even dislike about China, people who know me know I hate coriander or cilantro, with a passion, I’ve learnt how to say no to it in several languages including Mandarin and Cantonese but that’s not a specific thing with China, there are some foods where it’s used regularly and I can avoid them but it’s like noise to me, I’d rather go to the dentist than a disco and I’d rather have root canal treatment than eat a meal with coriander in it.

I hope this clears up the record and helps people like David who are concerned that I’m far too positive about China - I’m positive for all the right reasons, it’s a country going in the right direction, and I’m not negative because, as you’ve now seen, there isn’t really much to complain about and where I do have something to complain about, I can always do something to change it.