I guess I had to do a "Top Ten List" eventually... After spending a considerable amount of time here over the past six years, I feel I know the place well enough to comment on some of the things in China I find most discomforting as a westerner. These are in no particular order.
Water - Don't even think about drinking from a tap or eating anything raw that may have touched water at some point in the past. If you feel like living on the edge, you can try brushing your teeth with tap water. Dangerous bacteria aside, there is no telling what the water here contains. I'm not even sure I trust the bottled water...
Air - Some days, the air quality in places like Shanghai and Wuxi where I travel often can only be described as mind-blowingly nasty. I can't recall how many cloudless days I have seen here where the sky was some color other than blue.
Spitting - All manner of people do this. Walking along a crowded sidewalk, and hearing from behind a deep, nasty, from down around the ankles throat-clearing sound, followed by the inevitable "thoooop" of a wad of spit being ejected, all I can think of is "I hope his or her aim is good and I hope they are not aiming for me!"
Drivers - I have written a lot about Chinese drivers over the years. They range from criminally discourteous to downright dangerous. Strangely though, after six years of traveling in China I am starting to just accept the chaos that is Chinese road travel. Or maybe after visiting India, the Chinese don't seem so bad by comparison...
Queues - This is a bit of a misnomer in China - queues in the sense of people forming an orderly line really don't exist here. Chinese line up the same way they drive, or maybe it's the other way around
Smoking - China is full of smokers, and provincial governments subsidize tobacco to keep the tax revenue from tobacco purchases flowing. A pack of cigarettes generally runs 10 RMB, about $1.50. Restaurants, bars, hotel lobbies - smoking is permitted almost everywhere. I don't need to start smoking again, I just need to spend more time in China to get my daily nicotine ration.
Bone Fragments - Meat dishes in China are nearly always cooked "bone-in" and then hacked into bite-sized pieces with a cleaver before serving. Inevitably, small shrapnel of bone winds up in your food, especially with poultry. Chew at your own risk!
Cell Phone Service - Just because you have a signal doesn't mean you have service. Just because you have service doesn't mean your data connection will work. I regularly go from 5 bars on the signal meter to zero and back again in the space of a few minutes without moving. Calls to the outside world from Shanghai normally require 5 or 6 tries, and sometimes I just give up. In Shenzhen, the email on my iPhone will be useless for 2 or 3 days at a time, and then without changing a thing I will get 3 days worth of backed-up messages.
Internet - Apart from the annoyance of frequent interruptions, China polices its Internet usage carefully and to that end, many sites like YouTube and Blogger are blocked entirely. Do a Google search on a taboo subject and you will find you have lost all Internet connectivity for a day or two. Without the use of a proxy server through work, I would be largely unproductive here
Toilets - Squat toilets are appauling and flush toilets don't work properly (except at the Nan Hai hotel as previously noted).
Water - Don't even think about drinking from a tap or eating anything raw that may have touched water at some point in the past. If you feel like living on the edge, you can try brushing your teeth with tap water. Dangerous bacteria aside, there is no telling what the water here contains. I'm not even sure I trust the bottled water...
Air - Some days, the air quality in places like Shanghai and Wuxi where I travel often can only be described as mind-blowingly nasty. I can't recall how many cloudless days I have seen here where the sky was some color other than blue.
Spitting - All manner of people do this. Walking along a crowded sidewalk, and hearing from behind a deep, nasty, from down around the ankles throat-clearing sound, followed by the inevitable "thoooop" of a wad of spit being ejected, all I can think of is "I hope his or her aim is good and I hope they are not aiming for me!"
Drivers - I have written a lot about Chinese drivers over the years. They range from criminally discourteous to downright dangerous. Strangely though, after six years of traveling in China I am starting to just accept the chaos that is Chinese road travel. Or maybe after visiting India, the Chinese don't seem so bad by comparison...
Queues - This is a bit of a misnomer in China - queues in the sense of people forming an orderly line really don't exist here. Chinese line up the same way they drive, or maybe it's the other way around
Smoking - China is full of smokers, and provincial governments subsidize tobacco to keep the tax revenue from tobacco purchases flowing. A pack of cigarettes generally runs 10 RMB, about $1.50. Restaurants, bars, hotel lobbies - smoking is permitted almost everywhere. I don't need to start smoking again, I just need to spend more time in China to get my daily nicotine ration.
Bone Fragments - Meat dishes in China are nearly always cooked "bone-in" and then hacked into bite-sized pieces with a cleaver before serving. Inevitably, small shrapnel of bone winds up in your food, especially with poultry. Chew at your own risk!
Cell Phone Service - Just because you have a signal doesn't mean you have service. Just because you have service doesn't mean your data connection will work. I regularly go from 5 bars on the signal meter to zero and back again in the space of a few minutes without moving. Calls to the outside world from Shanghai normally require 5 or 6 tries, and sometimes I just give up. In Shenzhen, the email on my iPhone will be useless for 2 or 3 days at a time, and then without changing a thing I will get 3 days worth of backed-up messages.
Internet - Apart from the annoyance of frequent interruptions, China polices its Internet usage carefully and to that end, many sites like YouTube and Blogger are blocked entirely. Do a Google search on a taboo subject and you will find you have lost all Internet connectivity for a day or two. Without the use of a proxy server through work, I would be largely unproductive here
Toilets - Squat toilets are appauling and flush toilets don't work properly (except at the Nan Hai hotel as previously noted).
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