How do I start this….
Some of you will remember me..it has been a while since I posted anything...
First, I am not an “America” basher. All I am doing is offering a comparison to what life in the U.S. was like vs. what life is like now in wild and wacky China.
I moved here last July and I have made about twenty trips to China in the past few years.
Where do I start??
Let’s start with work. Everybody needs a job. Everybody needs to earn a living and provide for themselves and their families…
In America, I worked 50 hours a week (more or less) to earn a living that is by most accepted standards..lower middle class. I own a home( lower middle class standards (LT 2,000 sq. ft. 30 years old), had a fairly new car, a custom motorcycle, but not a lot of savings and/or investments. Most of my paycheck went to the daily essentials, electricity, gas, water, food , gasoline, insurance, etc.
Now China…My full work week is 13 hours (16 if you include commute time). I live in upper middle class society. I own a home. I don’t own a car merely because of the hassle of owning one in a big city. The motorcycle, however…is on order! My salary is divided into three parts after I receive it. One-third goes into savings, one third goes into those daily living expenses, and the remaining third is just for fun. This is for a family of three. My wife does not work outside the home. My (our) son is 14 and in the 8th grade.
I live in Chengdu. You can look it up. Lots of info on it. It is the home of the Pandas. A first-tier city of 11 million. First tier meaning it is also the provincial capital.
Public transportation is great here. There are buses that will get you anywhere and everywhere and if you prefer, you can also get a taxi. Lots of them and very cheap. A subway system is being built, but it will take a long time before it is done.
Living standards are similar but different than the U.S. Most people in the U.S. live in single family homes. Here, most (read..all but the very rich) live in high/medium rise apartment style buildings. It is not unusual to see a “residential development” that is 15 buildings of 25 or more floors.
There are “American” things you cannot get here without paying a huge price. These are things that the Chinese people never saw any use for. Things that “Americans” take for granted as an everyday staple and live just isn’t the same without them. Think potato chips and dip, for example.
I will say that one of the biggest issues for me is not being able to get a drink of water out of the tap. That would be a very stupid thing to do. We boil tap water and then pour it through a Brita water filter pitcher before we drink it. Pollution is China biggest drawback. Here in Chengdu the air is pretty good. We don’t have a lot of heavy industry to pollute the air and we usually have a good breeze. Sunshine is a rarity here. Chengdu is one of the few cities on earth that get less sunshine than London. Pollution from autos is pretty high, but it dissipates pretty quickly due to the breezes. There are places in China that the rivers actually glow in the dark due to the concentrations of phosphorus in the water. There are places in China where it is not safe to walk around outside due to air pollution some days of the year.
One thing that most people are confused about is that China is actually smaller in size than the U.S. And, to add to that, about half the country is uninhabitable. The Gobi desert, the mountains…so four times the population is stuffed into less than half the area of the U.S.
Ok…now for the stuff that seems to be on most people’s mind when I talk about China….Rights. You all know ( or think you know) what rights you have in the U.S., so I won’t compare..I’ll just state what China says are rights and then further explain if I can.
Freedom of speech. The only limitation on this is speaking out against the government or the leaders, past or present. The plain fact is that the vast majority of people in China do not care about the government one little bit. The basic thought is that the government has a job to do, I have a job to do. I don’t care how you do your job as long as you do it and you don’t need to care how I do my job.
Right to bear Arms. Nope. You can, if you have the money, join a hunting club and use the hunting rifles own by the club in a supervised hunt. Other than that, you don’t need a gun because you are not going to run up against anyone else that has one either.
Freedom of religion. Yes. Absolutely. Go practice your religion in any way you see fit as often as you please. Do not let your thinking stray to thinking that your religious beliefs have anything to do with altering the way the government runs. This is a “I don’t swim in your toilet, so please don’t pee in my pool” philosophy. You go pray to anyone God you want. Your God does not have any say in our government. Our government has no say in your religious beliefs.
Right to a fair trial. HAHA…Define fair? Being arrested is being guilty most of the time and the government doesn’t like to spend a lot of time with all that innocent before guilty thing. If the police say you did it, then you did it…not ideal, but it sure cuts down on crime! There are four types of punishment...fines, jail, prison/reeducation camp, death.
Fines are levied by the police. No trial, judge, or any other proceedings.
Jail is for minor crimes such as drunk driving, non-injury traffic accidents, bar brawls, etc.
Reeducation Camp...is for people that do/say stupid things that they know they are not suppose to say/do. A prostitute would go to a camp rather than jail. A person speaking out against the government would also see the inside of a camp. Camps are non-judicial punishment...meaning, if the police captain sends you there, you have no recourse, no one will know where you are until you are released after a few years at very, very hard labor.
Prison...for serious crimes. Crimes that would involve the injury or death of another person. continuing to speak out against the government after being in a camp.
Death. Kill someone by any means and this is probably what you are going to get. The dairy executives that allowed the melamine in the milk (remember the big scandal and sickness/death a few years ago?) were put to death. Government department heads that allowed medicines on the market knowing that they didn't do anything and people dies also were treated to a permanent case of death.
Crime…damn near non-existent. Fraud, cheating, bribery, bait and switch are not crimes..they are shrewd business principles. Bribery is open to everyone. It is not limited to just the rich. If you can afford it, it is yours.
Continued in Part 2
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read more blogs!
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misschoos
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Oct 26 @ 4:05AM
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I remember you and what an interesting blog. ~*~ 
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Blaiserboy
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Oct 26 @ 4:21AM
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China is a most interesting part of the world, as are the people... hopefully you will have time to make many future posts about your time there...
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Sternfan69
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Oct 26 @ 5:12AM
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Right to bear Arms. Nope. You can, if you have the money, join a hunting club and use the hunting rifles own by the club in a supervised hunt. Other than that, you don’t need a gun because you are not going to run up against anyone else that has one either.
fascinating how that works right...i guess you don't need a gun to protect yourself from an enemy that also has no gun,,,
if no one had a gun then you really wouldn't need to protect yourself with a gun,,,,correct?
such a simple concept,,try telling that to the gun-toting,,violence loving,redneck Neanderthals that populate this country.
obviously for all our bravado and claims to be "the greatest country",,,we can't seem to understand that if you take away ALL the weapons and make the playing surface even,,,
then perhaps so many unnessacary deaths could be avoided.
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cbond35
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Oct 26 @ 9:02AM
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My full work week is 13 hours
Well, you are the exception, not the rule...............Most people in China work over 60 hours a week in factories and live in rooms usually around 8' x 8'. Although certain things sound nice there, the hourly rate of pay is laughable.
The average hourly wage in China is between ¥25.80 to ¥20.70 per month or ¥4.66 to ¥0.69 . That is $0.60 to $0.25 an hour in U.S. dollars.
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phantom53
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Oct 26 @ 10:48AM
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Yes cbond. Being an American with a college degree puts me in an entirely different class than the typical Chinese worker. Your math is a bit off though. The average Chinese worker; it doesn't matter what they do, makes about 2,000 RMB a month. The difference is WHAT you do for a living. A factory worker will work 6 days a week. 12 - 14 hours a day for that money and an office worker will work 9 hours a day/ 5 days a week. Some people make as low as 700 RMB a month, some make more than the standard 2,000 RMB. This is only the working stiff, not supervisor or manager.
Being a degreed native English speaking foreigner puts me in the "Foreign Expert" class of workers and that pays about two to five times what my Chinese counterpart (teacher) makes. Another bonus is that "full-time" for me is 16 hours a week. Full time for my Chinese counterpart is 50 hours a week.
You laugh at the "hourly" pay rate, but it is a living wage here. If your home and all your living expenses were only 200 USD a month, you would have a very hard time finding a job that would pay you more than 300 a month. I support my family of three and put one third of it in the bank for a measly $1,000 USD a month. We could live on a lot less, but why should we? We live well. As I said, we live in the upper middle class level. An interesting note about that. If, with the current exchange rate of USD to RMB, you had $1,000 a month, you would be in the top 1% of income earners in a country of 1.4 billion people.
So, think how well you could live with a SS check every month of $1,200?
Have you ever been to China, cbond?
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yashaenka
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Oct 26 @ 11:25AM
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You are speaking of the new China a relatively new event in their annuals of the history of China. China as a nation was put on hold for 50 years under Mao but even he could not erase the belief systems of the Chinese.
I lived in Asia for three decades and China itself is not one entity any more than our individual states are not one state.
Your life in China is your life in China as an outsider looking in and trying to compare it to an entirely different philosophy of living as we have in this country.
The question for me is why you forsake your own country to live in China.
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cbond35
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Oct 26 @ 1:38PM
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Your math is a bit off though.
Not my math.........Got the info from Wiki
So, think how well you could live with a SS check every month of $1,200
Unfortunately, there will be no SS money left when I get old enough to draw it. 
Have you ever been to China, cbond?
Yes......Master Kuk Fan Lee and I went to Hong Kong in 1990. Mainly for the Cheung Chau Island Bun Festival.
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phantom53
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Oct 26 @ 10:38PM
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Yes yashaenka, hence the name of the blog MY life in China! China is a bit smaller than the US and yes, it is just as diverse. A persons life in Chengdu is nothing like a person life in Changchun. No more than person life in Boston is like a person life in Casper, Wyoming. I'm not even going to go into Mao. There is enough said about him that anyone can read.
Why did I leave the US? Simple. The US left me. After a lifetime of being a law-abiding citizen, I asked one thing of our government..to allow my wife to come to the US..It said No! I said Good-bye! I don't hate the US or its government. My family is in China, so that is where I belong.
Cbond. You have never been to China. Hong Kong at the time you were there was not part of China. And no, its not even close enough. HK is very westernized having British influence for many decades.
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cbond35
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Oct 27 @ 8:46AM
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Cbond. You have never been to China. Hong Kong at the time you were there was not part of China. And no, its not even close enough. HK is very westernized having British influence for many decades.
Regardless.........I was there and had fun at the festival.
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