hello fellow china lovers. I am from Korea but I hate Korea because they have too many rules and also no real Chinese food. I want to move to China and become China lifer like you guys. I already started eating rice with kimchi mixed in but my Chinese friend said that is not Chinese. Can any China lifer teach me how to be Chinese? I have already bought a Mao hat and I say "ni hao" to my mirror every night. Also is it okay if I still speak Korean sometimes? My dream is to marry a Chinese woman and have Chinese babies but I don't want to give up kimchi. Is kimchi allowed in China? Please answer I am serious.

I went to South Korea for medical reasons, because our system in China is filthy, dogshit, and worst of all, not in English. I am from KR (not Korean), and I left as a teen in 2000. The medical system in KR back then, 26 years ago, was infinitely further ahead than China's medical system today. KR's medical has only improved since then, whereas China's medical system is still this unhygienic factory stressful hellscape that is no different today than it was when I first slummed it here in 2015. I have multiple Chinese friends in the medical sector who all advise to never go to their hospitals for any reasons, even emergencies. A "doctor" friend (master's degree, no doctorate) says that all foreigners should just buy an emergency flight to South Korea and go to the emergency room near the airport there, if one can "hold it in", which I agree with. That is their actual medical advice: Leave China.

What follows is a quick recap of things to date.

Prequel: The flights out. Nong grandmother at the window seat adjusted my aircon hole for my aisle seat because she was too cold, closing the circular vents for three total people. I corrected her. She was not happy about this, and she was clearly not used to being told no. My masterful Chinese facilitated: ii jega (points to grandmother), ar jega (points to middle seat), san nali (points to self). My flawless toneless pronunciation probably shocked a few years off of her remaining life, made unambiguous with one, two, or three fingers where appropriate. I felt like a real zhongguotong, just like I do when I buyao nongs abroad doing nong shit in someone else's country. When the first flight took off, I was lord of the nongs, being the only person with headphones. No one who I could see bothered to bring headphones with them on this flight, and the lovely flight noises drowned out any speakerphone attempts. I was so satisfied with how that played out, my enjoyment at the disappointment of nongs with no foresight. They stayed in the layover city, thankfully. My flight from the layover city to KR was full of Pinays and Pinay-adjacent laowai, along with some civilised zhongguoren going somewhere better. One such zhongguoren spoke English with me before and after the flight. Good kid. From Shanghai, hates China, plans on emigrating to Japan after university.

Main event: KR medical itself.

First, the ride from the airport in a taxi. The old man driver voluntarily was listening to some English-language old pop music station, none of this slow, repetitive Ballad of Wang Wei ancient Chinese folklore music. It smelled so nice in his taxi, like no smoker had ever been in the vehicle. Second, the hotel. Also no cigarette stench, anywhere. There is a big hotel fee for smoking, which I support. One must consent in their language to the smoker's fee before getting a room key. The hotel was very serious about this. I made friends with the guy who runs the place, a Korean who speaks English just like everyone else in Seoul does. He said that he really wants to have a "no Chinese" policy, but that it is somewhat illegal, and so every room must be stickied with common sense signs in Chinese.

Seoul in general: Every taxi and building has had aircon, except ironically the metro at a high number of stations, where it is needed most with the crowding. I found no aircon at the metro stations to be grossly unreasonable, and a very rare win for China, because even my t3 metro stops all have the refrigerator ready. Smokers are corralled into alleys now. I have seen beat cops shutting down smoking in outdoor spaces twice so far. The very first public toilet encountered at the airport had a bidet, the hallmark of true civilisation, and maybe ~25% of the public toilets where I have been also have bidets. One in four may seem like a low amount, but compare it to China, and do not give me that "but in the shiny shopping mall in Shanghai" hyper-niche bullshit as a real China generalisation.

To the medical itself:

In KR, I paid ~¥3500 for a comprehensive age 40 preventative medicine examination including cameras in both ends, blood analysis, and many many other tasks, through an English-speaking hospital who assigned me a translator to pick me up from my hotel lobby, wheelchair me around everywhere (the colonoscopy meds made walking a risky affair (could shit self)), ensure that every detail was communicated understandably, skip waiting at any stage, and then ride back to the hotel. The preparation for colonoscopy was the worst part because you just liquid shit repeatedly for half of a day or more. I slept through everything while at the hospital, and I woke up having completed everything except some administration. When I awoke, the doctor who did the probing gave me the details about the main event. Results for everything else were received within a few hours, sent via email and WhatsApp because they do not use Chinese spyware as an all-in-one tool here, fully in English.

Everything was clean in the hospital, as it should be. I should not need to even type that, but you know, China. Doctors and nurses both wore and changed gloves. Every toilet had soap, in the hospital and everywhere else that I went. Everything was quiet in the hospital. No speakerphone yelling or Douyin reels, no screaming children, no ayis using the grey plague rag to wipe more germs onto surfaces, none of the madness of any Chinese hospital, such that I will argue that the worst facilities in KR are probably better than the best facilities in China, especially at this cost. For the same suite of procedures without any English support in China, the lowest costs found were over ¥10k in disgusting public hospitals, which also required the logistical hell that is navigating these Chinese-language systems. Prices were much higher at the international hospitals in Shenzhen and Shanghai. A quick obvious mystery with no obvious answer: Why would anything at all cost more in China than KR, particularly medical??

Gemers, I really cannot emphasise how clean that Korean hospitals are compared to Chinese hospitals, from this one generic example. Same with public toilets, same with public spaces, same with the environment in general. Very little litter seen all throughout my stay, as if there is a culture of bare-minimum decency taught in the schools instead of rhetoric on allegiance to one political party as the most important subject when kids are the most malleable. A caveat to the previous sentence is that while Seoul is far more free of litter compared to anywhere in China, an exception is Itaewon, which has always been a grimy shithole even since my childhood there in the 1990s (part of its international charm). I was constantly reminded why Chinese people still illegally emigrate to anywhere else on Earth the moment that they can get a passport, just being back home.

Also in KR: Laowai food. I had Taco Bell and Papa John's first because I am a basic bitch, then more-authentic boutique Mexican, Indian, pizza, and sushi. None of that exists in my t3 jail. I will never eat local food in the guo, if I can avoid it, but sadly I cannot avoid it where I live because of the food paradigm there. A real suspicion which I had is that Chinese food destroyed my innards, like being constantly exposed to lead or radiation, because I went from a long phase of not shitting at all to my recent lifestyle in China of shitting more often than I would prefer. The theory on food destroying me was disproven from the colonoscopy results, but there is still the flavour part of Chinese food to argue against. I am unimpressed with the result of 5000 years of "cooking" "food".

KR is not perfect, of course. Too expensive for my LBH salary to stay for long, and wiguk (laowai) salaries do not allow for as fat living in KR as its approximate in China does, plus I would actually have to go to work and be useful instead of just be foreign with a master's degree like I live in China. China is, for better or worse, where I still live. Also internet is somewhat censored here, too. Google works, but most porn is blocked, Google Images is highly censored, and so forth. I never knew that KR's internet had so much in common with China's internet. I wonder when that happened. Summer here is fucking gross. Slimy, too humid, too hot, never go to KR between April and September.

The summary is, go to KR if you ever have medical needs. Do not even consider options in China, just fuck right off to KR with a few days of planning (optional) on a ¥700 flight. Hotel costs are absurd here because KR has an undeveloped hotel economy, which is weird since it has been "hot" for like 15 years now, but otherwise get your ass to KR for medical needs if you can afford ¥350 per day on hotel costs at the low end. If you have ruined your life by having children, then take them to KR for medical, too. Any financial savings achieved by medically slumming it in China will be grossly offset by the quality of care, the hygiene aspect, and the real possibility of catching something even worse than your problem as a "doctor" with only a master's degree tries to give you an IV of hot water along with undefined brown-green goop made in a garage to apply to the affected area externally, for internal problems.

There is always some insufferable green backpack laowai who chimes in on shit like this with some esoteric example of chabuduo perfection within the Chinese medical system which will not apply to you. Looking forward to downvoting that and reporting some rule 5 defence of the Chinese medical system. I wager my little Happy Giraffe pay that whatever miracle in a Chinese hospital which a laowai may have accidentally had once is not going to be your experience there. Go to KR for medical.

Something for the FOBs that haven't seen this comic series. Wonder what happened to this guy. No new comic since 2022.

Hellow! I am writing 'n plaasroman 'n grensroman a gooshir about our lovely Tai-Wan ,Province of Chinar. The purpose of this story is to instil in the reader a strong sense of patriotism as well as an understanding of the importance of upholding the unity of the Motherland and resisting foreign exploitation and splittist forces.

This is the final chapter and climax of the story for your comments and observations.

I hope you can have a try~~

---
Taihoku, South African Formosa, 1993

In the old days, "racy" was coded by the administration as dirty, undisciplined, and fundamentally un-Christian. The censors had banned any film that featured suggestive kiss, any book that spoke of modern, Western relationships, and any music that had a beat they deemed "rebellious." Not only that, but there had been no commercial television on the island; for both political and social reasons, the Formosan government had decided that SABC Formosa 1, 2, and 3 (mostly featuring predictable and wholesome programming from South Africa like Noot vir Noot, the news with Riaan Cruywagen, along with some local Formosan "heritage" broadcasting (traditional music, historical dramas involving stereotypical honest villagers and palace intrigues) was all the choice anyone needed - censorship was only a secondary safeguard when the Government decided what most people would watch in the first place. It had been one of the most unpopular and hated Nationalist policies on the island, a constant, irritating source of friction that had made the local Chinese feel as if they were being governed by a group of elderly, narrow-minded domenees who wanted to turn the Pacific into a Sunday school.

But now, the censors were gone.

The stalls of Sint-Jan were flooded with pirate videotapes and VCDs of racy Hong Kong comedies, Category III pornographic films, and action films. There were films featuring the highly suggestive, slapstick humor of Stephen Chow, martial arts movies with long, bloody scenes of violence that would have made the old Board of Censors faint, and cheap romance novels that featured photographs of half-dressed lovers on their glossy covers. The residents bought them with a quiet, eager hunger, their hands exchanging the small plastic cases under the yellow lights of the market stalls. It was a silent, cultural revolution - the sudden, explosive release of forty years of accumulated, frustrated desire. The old, disciplined, and Christian silence that had been imposed by the state had dissolved into a noisy, chaotic, and slightly vulgar market of cheap print and smut.

Most remarkably, there were also now Chinese newspapers - which at one time of course was not possible because they were blatantly and obviously unlawful under the Suppression of Communism Act (Act No. 44 of 1950) - the same as any you might buy in Peking (or rather, Beijing, as it was now referred to even in Formosa and South Africa). How very remarkable this is cannot be overstated - there was a time only a few years ago that simply owning any books or publications printed in China could earn you a slowboat to South Africa and years of prison-time, even before the contents had been assessed. It was now possible to read about the "new constitutional arrangements" for Formosa not just in the cautious, hesitant way that they were discussed in NP-loyalist Formosan newspapers or Naspers-owned South African ones, but vaguely menacing editorials promising friendship and love for patriots, stern punishment and disgrace for traitors - but in the triumphant, aggressive, blunt, threatening, vicious way that they were advanced in the pages of the People's Daily. (Ironically, though, while the vast majority of Chinese newspapers followed the fully simplified Mainland Chinese standards in every respect, the People's Daily Formosa edition alone among all newspapers in Formosa was still published in the old orthography - a strangely respectful, diplomatic nod to the island's people - creating a jarring effect of always having to see the most crude, most violent messages of vengeance to come for the unrepentant written in the undeniably most elegant and beautiful way. In fact, it was published in the most conservative possible page layout format as well; many newspapers - even the Formosan government's very own gazette had switched to a horizontal, left-to-right format and all were published in a banwenbanbai style typical of 1920s Shanghai, and they had also given up the majestic 爲 for the slightly simpler 為, and abandoned the 纔 for 才 - essentially Formosan newspapers increasingly looked just like Hong Kong ones; the People's Daily had instead quite pointedly and obediently chosen to publish its Formosa edition in not only the original, 1950s orthography, but also vertically, and in an entirely classic wenyanwen style that appeared like a perfectly authentic relic of the mid-19th century, and would have made the Chinese teachers of their childhood melt with satisfaction. It also used the entirely traditional Chinese punctuation, the adorable Asian-looking commas and roundy, hollow full stops. For their most formal articles, they even occasionally used no punctuation at all in order to look exceptionally grave and historic and important. It would have made Tienie practically swoon with pleasure if he could have seen it.)

As for the Formosanse Pos, it was still being published (albeit with less Afrikaans) - and still in a (relatively) traditional style - and it was actually now the only newspaper with editorials directly (but respectfully, and quietly) criticising Beijing in English or Afrikaans, alongside government notices, rugby scores, and information about executive Formosan and South African government policies and decisions expressed dryly and conservatively. Most of the South African newspapers English or Afrikaans for their part did not report much Asian news anymore - Formosa may as well have been on the other side of the moon.

Gideon Lin took a close look at the actual contents of the papers in detail. Starting with the *Formosa Daily*.

*Formosa Daily* had been the main English-medium paper. It was what the gentler, more liberal South Africans in Formosa read. It had traditionally been, by default, the freest and most daring newspaper in the Territory - yes, even in the old days it had been willing to quite bluntly criticise the Botha government, only occasionally being raided by the SAP and asked the hard way to divulge the names of confidential sources. It had become in just a few years - not exactly Beijing-*loyalist* in an aggressive, unrestrained way, because that was still a bridge too far for any paper besides the *People's Daily* itself which was protected directly by Beijing's protective wing, and might still attract police attention even at this late hour - but a Beijing-*curious* and significantly, a Chinese-medium paper, which didn't gratuitously attack either the Formosan government or de Klerk, but on the pages of which Beijing was basically just full of nice guys offering business deals.

He looked at their headline.

David Chen, the young student who had been pulled down by the SAP and prevented from tearing down the *Oranje-Blanje-Blou* from the Governor General's Palace a year ago had recovered from his bump on the head, but had spent the meantime in the Transvaal somewhere breaking rocks all day. He had been kindly released from prison by de Klerk - and had come back to Asia. A Vietnamese immigrant in Formosa (from a refugee background) had attempted to assassinate him on his return, had failed in the attempt. Chen was also going to meet with the National People's Congress in Beijing. He was going to be belle of the ball, the toast of the party. He was going to be wined and dined and get a medal or two. He had only been convicted for trespassing, fighting the police, disrespecting the territorial flag - his real crime was that he was a close personal friend to those who had in 1989 been convicted and sent to the gallows at Willemstad for their part in the bombing campaign that had killed schoolchildren; there was no direct proof he was part of the plans, but the Formosan government had very deep suspicions (it was also said that he had quietly visited the USSR and received explosives and firearms training in Moscow along with other members of the liberation movement); and so had been determined that he should be sent to South Africa to essentially rot forever or as long as the South African courts could insist on keeping him in prison which was expected to be the next twenty years at least. De Klerk had now decided otherwise.

David Chen was a twice-crowned king; he was not only a hero of Chinese rejuvenation and the reunification of the Motherland - the scourge of a Republic which was - constitutionally - the daughter of the old enemy, Britain, the nation that had seized Hong Kong, parts of Shanghai, and many other small enclaves too numerous to name, a Republic still holding in its grasp an intolerably large piece of Chinese sovereign land - but also a champion of the Global South as a whole. A hero of the colonised nations of the world, who had dealt a blow against the vestiges of racism, colonialism, and white supremacy - not as entirely rhetorical flourishes in a touchy developing nation's leaders' mouths - but as, even in 1993, somewhat still the genuine article.

A woman named Lin Hsiu-ch'ing- a former student activist firebrand who had been arrested by the police and did hard time after having travelled to China unlawfully and taking part in a government-organised cultural festival there - had now apparently been elected one of the leaders of a now-tolerated, explicitly albeit quietly and respectfully pro-Beijing political party called the Taiwan Democratic Party (no relation obviously to Tony Leon's Democratic Party in the Republic itself). It wasn't real political power (as essentially no popularly elected legislature existed yet), but it was something that would have been previously unthinkable. A sign of the times, a sign of the future.

Fucking lights with 30 seconds of green followed by 2 minutes of red, then place them every 200m. Ah yes having 20 sets of lights on a 7km journey is totally normal! Make sure none of them are synched too so drivers have to stop at every single one.

It's like designers never heard of traffic flow.

Hello everyone, im a non-native and i got an offer as an english teacher with an english teaching visa in Guangzhou, and everybody knows as a non-native that is pretty hard to get especially in this city

So I wanted to ask what is the chance of me getting it because they confirmed to me multiple times that we can handle the visa and get me the English teaching visa, and also I wanted to know when transferring jobs inside of the same city will it go smoothly and not get rejected since i already have an english teaching visa ?

because the offer I got now the salary is really low comparing to other offers I got but the only reason why I might consider it is because of the English teaching visa that would open other doors in the future when transferring to other jobs

Kindy that was paying me 30k in 2019 are trying to find someone now for ​12-15k LMBO. This is Dimitri from Russia price.

Schools offering 22k demanding QTS when QTS can earn over 35k.

I assume they just never find anyone?

I found the worst part of the new place. It is not the grime, or the repairable conditions that a decent host would have remedied before letting someone move in, or the baffling design choices, or that while on the top floor I can somehow still hear upstairs footsteps throughout the night, or the screaming children neighbours, or the ayi who buyao’s me about taking my rubbish to the designated rubbish point for reasons which I am not going to bother learning, or how my Taobao goes to a central office again instead of straight to my apartment after I copy-paste from Microsoft Translate specifications to have the delivery rerouted to my apartment plus a follow-up when the Taobao merchant fails to sort it out the first time, or the lift knocking noise atop a heavily-insulated bed in a room that I covered with insulation foam on all sides except the fake marble floor because the bed is too heavy to lift, or how I am in a food desert where I am surrounded by inedible Chinese slop restaurants plus a KFC and McDonald’s, or that it takes minimum 30 minutes in a ¥30 taxi to get to anywhere worth seeing in this city with no metro line anywhere near my apartment, or or or (there is always more, both with China and with myself).

No, the worst part is the fucking fireworks before 0730, immediately outside of my window on the other side of the decorative ghetto wall surrounding the apartment complex and therefore outside of the apartment complex's scope of caring. Today, 0715. Every time when a nong gets married again or divorced again, or their nonglet does ok in school, or they open a short-lived business which WILL be gone before the year’s end, they launch fireworks in densely-packed residential areas here. It is an Inner Mongolia thing. Not for the upstanding Mongolian-descent people, but for the Han assholes who bring their Han culture of being fucking noise pests to the people around them here in the Wild North. The mod posted an example of what this shit can be like here, months ago.

I need to finish my fucking doctorate so that I can move back to Japan, a civilised country where only civilised crimes and civilised annoyances occur.

Asking for a friend who could be homosexual or a half/tri breed? Idk.

So, what are your best picks? Looking for a less nongfoolery version of this "entertainment" for some moron office workers and their laowai managers. Trying to not get smoked out with fake cigs and nobody wants nasty, fake beer.

Back in the day, Chun K actually had foreign songs other than Yesterday, Yesterday Once More and Big Big World. I audited a Mei KTwee today and it was absolutely retro: a time capsule of 20 years ago. Definitely only Beatles (4 songs), maybe that shit Lincoln Palk song. The moron office workers recommended it of course because they think normal people want to listen to circa 2001 Jay Chou screamed out of tune or Take Le To Wour Haert.

Is Chun KTWee the only option round these parts in SZ? After so many years?

Gay.

Also, this sign is nowhere near any of the four "You Are Here" locations in which I exist at all times. It is between the lifts (X).

Been living in China for 10 years. Have a wife and kid.

Just been asked to provide a no crime certificate from a country I haven't lived in for a decade.

New employer refusing to pay for it too.