One of these days I will hopefully be able to read Chinese. When that day comes I will devote every waking moment to finding the blog of a Chinese person studying in America and read every single post about what they think is wrong with my country. And it is with this solemn promise that I hereby grant myself amnesty in regard to complaining about China.
Earlier some classmates and I were talking about what we missed at home. The Italian girl said food. I said, what else, my cars. My Canadian friend mentioned something about not missing traffic. I never minded traffic that much. If anything, I minded upkeep on a German car older than I am. Moreover, the thing about it is that even without a car one still encounters plenty of traffic here (this one is actually a pan-asia phenomena), just of a different variety.
The two greatest for profit companies currently in operation are in my opinion Google and Publix. Google is an easy one to understand, but a lot of readers are probably scratching their heads on Publix. It's elementary my dear Watson: Publix is where shopping is a pleasure. A home grown Florida grocery store chain, employee owned and now infecting the entire southeast Publix shoppers are fiercely loyal. Ask a native Floridian what milk they grew up on and dollars to doughnuts it will have been Publix brand. The organization is so well run it seems to make shopping painless and in college towns even a little bit of fun. Publix is like Japan, things just work smoothly. Hence their slogan of more than a half century: “where shopping is a pleasure”.
Currently I'm getting sick. How bad it will be is yet to be determined, but I feel terrible. Stuffed up sinuses, burning chest, sore throat utterly fatigued, the whole nine yards. And then these first level immersion classes are utterly brutal and after braving a bus crammed full of people, ill maintained sidewalks crammed with people and a tasteful middle class elevator crammed with people the only thing on my mind is pirating the latest episode of Archer and passing out. Alas! My cupboard was bare. Actually it was bare two days ago meaning that a trip to the Carrefour on the corner was unavoidable. For something which is literally on the corner, the trip is vastly more imposing than one may think.
There are a few reasons I hate grocery shopping here. Most of them pertain to the lack of a “customer first” mentality. When I leave my cart unattended for under two minutes there's no reason for the staff to begin using it for empty boxes. I could understand moving it if it was in your way, but rummaging through it and picking out different items? But that's just icing on the cake. Really, the worst part of it is the traffic. Asia has so many people that traffic isn't just on the roads, it's in your day to day life. If one were ever try and wait patiently in line the store would close before you left. It's essential to be pushy and non-caring about those around you.
My driving can be called many things. Though my personal choice would be “spirited”, passengers may opt for other descriptors: reckless, deadwish, insane. As a delivery driver I'm used to no holds barred situations in cars. If there's food that needs to get somewhere in under fifteen minutes, you ARE getting out of my way. I laugh at Manhattan traffic. Haha! See? Literally, I'm laughing at it right now. It's fun, just a big game of bumper cars. But when take the car out of the picture it's less funny for me. When someone looks me in the eye and then walks directly in front of me in a line it's a personal affront. That's what you've got to cope with here.
This last trip was one of my moments, my occasional “every thing you people do here is wrong and I want to scream it over a loudspeaker” moments. Deep painful coughing, tired as a dog, my ego terribly bruised from an immersion language class, as people streamed in front of me in line my usual capable attitude shattered. It's remarkable how quickly one can go from “it's a cultural thing” to “they're idiots”. I hate that these moments still crop up for me. Among my new friends I'm the old China hand. Everyone else's combined experience is a matter of weeks whereas mine is between three and four months. Ultimately I suppose (to tweak a saying) “you can take a westerner out of the west, but you can't take the western expectations out of the westerner”
On to the actual point of the blog though. When forming opinions on this society, it is often rooted in observing the procedural methods for doing day to day tasks. Once in a while something is smart and you think “why don't we do that”. Most of the time though it's inefficient and frustrating. The enlightened expatriate says: “this is not my land, my knowledge of the cultural background is sparse and once placed in that light these procedures probably make a lot more sense” The thin skinned expatriate says “Clearly Deng missed a couple of things because this is [expletive] asinine. something as simple as arranging these checkout counters more efficiently and encouraging use of credit cards could cut make the experience quicker, more enjoyable for customers and need less employees”. In reality both are probably components. People here are used to fighting for a place in line so designing a checkout with hard and fast lines could lead to actual fights. It it's ambiguous let nature take it's course. That seems cultural. However, China still is a developing country and there's a lot of things they simply haven't figured out the better method just yet. Beyond learning a language one thing I hope to learn through my time here is to discern what is cultural and what is, well, wrong. Because if you can find something that's wrong and provide a service to fix it all of the sudden you've made your way in the world.
Earlier some classmates and I were talking about what we missed at home. The Italian girl said food. I said, what else, my cars. My Canadian friend mentioned something about not missing traffic. I never minded traffic that much. If anything, I minded upkeep on a German car older than I am. Moreover, the thing about it is that even without a car one still encounters plenty of traffic here (this one is actually a pan-asia phenomena), just of a different variety.
The two greatest for profit companies currently in operation are in my opinion Google and Publix. Google is an easy one to understand, but a lot of readers are probably scratching their heads on Publix. It's elementary my dear Watson: Publix is where shopping is a pleasure. A home grown Florida grocery store chain, employee owned and now infecting the entire southeast Publix shoppers are fiercely loyal. Ask a native Floridian what milk they grew up on and dollars to doughnuts it will have been Publix brand. The organization is so well run it seems to make shopping painless and in college towns even a little bit of fun. Publix is like Japan, things just work smoothly. Hence their slogan of more than a half century: “where shopping is a pleasure”.
Currently I'm getting sick. How bad it will be is yet to be determined, but I feel terrible. Stuffed up sinuses, burning chest, sore throat utterly fatigued, the whole nine yards. And then these first level immersion classes are utterly brutal and after braving a bus crammed full of people, ill maintained sidewalks crammed with people and a tasteful middle class elevator crammed with people the only thing on my mind is pirating the latest episode of Archer and passing out. Alas! My cupboard was bare. Actually it was bare two days ago meaning that a trip to the Carrefour on the corner was unavoidable. For something which is literally on the corner, the trip is vastly more imposing than one may think.
There are a few reasons I hate grocery shopping here. Most of them pertain to the lack of a “customer first” mentality. When I leave my cart unattended for under two minutes there's no reason for the staff to begin using it for empty boxes. I could understand moving it if it was in your way, but rummaging through it and picking out different items? But that's just icing on the cake. Really, the worst part of it is the traffic. Asia has so many people that traffic isn't just on the roads, it's in your day to day life. If one were ever try and wait patiently in line the store would close before you left. It's essential to be pushy and non-caring about those around you.
My driving can be called many things. Though my personal choice would be “spirited”, passengers may opt for other descriptors: reckless, deadwish, insane. As a delivery driver I'm used to no holds barred situations in cars. If there's food that needs to get somewhere in under fifteen minutes, you ARE getting out of my way. I laugh at Manhattan traffic. Haha! See? Literally, I'm laughing at it right now. It's fun, just a big game of bumper cars. But when take the car out of the picture it's less funny for me. When someone looks me in the eye and then walks directly in front of me in a line it's a personal affront. That's what you've got to cope with here.
This last trip was one of my moments, my occasional “every thing you people do here is wrong and I want to scream it over a loudspeaker” moments. Deep painful coughing, tired as a dog, my ego terribly bruised from an immersion language class, as people streamed in front of me in line my usual capable attitude shattered. It's remarkable how quickly one can go from “it's a cultural thing” to “they're idiots”. I hate that these moments still crop up for me. Among my new friends I'm the old China hand. Everyone else's combined experience is a matter of weeks whereas mine is between three and four months. Ultimately I suppose (to tweak a saying) “you can take a westerner out of the west, but you can't take the western expectations out of the westerner”
On to the actual point of the blog though. When forming opinions on this society, it is often rooted in observing the procedural methods for doing day to day tasks. Once in a while something is smart and you think “why don't we do that”. Most of the time though it's inefficient and frustrating. The enlightened expatriate says: “this is not my land, my knowledge of the cultural background is sparse and once placed in that light these procedures probably make a lot more sense” The thin skinned expatriate says “Clearly Deng missed a couple of things because this is [expletive] asinine. something as simple as arranging these checkout counters more efficiently and encouraging use of credit cards could cut make the experience quicker, more enjoyable for customers and need less employees”. In reality both are probably components. People here are used to fighting for a place in line so designing a checkout with hard and fast lines could lead to actual fights. It it's ambiguous let nature take it's course. That seems cultural. However, China still is a developing country and there's a lot of things they simply haven't figured out the better method just yet. Beyond learning a language one thing I hope to learn through my time here is to discern what is cultural and what is, well, wrong. Because if you can find something that's wrong and provide a service to fix it all of the sudden you've made your way in the world.
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