Hello Steem Blockchain!
Last month, I posted about my experiences, as a Canadian, living in China for over 3 years. Thanks to 
He asked me 6 questions and I want to answer each and every one of them to the best of my ability. I am sure there are a lot of people curious as to why I even came to China and how I managed to live here for 3+ years. I think most people see that as an accomplishment itself.
So let's get right into it!
Question 1: What do you do to earn money there?
I am a math, science and business teacher at a public high school. I teach an international program for students that want to attend universities abroad. I help prepare them by teaching them content in English as well as assisting them in successfully completing the ACT and IELTS tests. This job allows so much freedom for me to earn a good salary for China, travel and still have plenty of free time to do whatever I want.
The great thing about my job is that I don't have any office hours and most of my expenses are free. When I am not teaching in class, I am free to stay in my cozy apartment and chill out. Most jobs require office hours or staying in the school building at all times which is a huge disadvantage. My job has allowed me to escape the 9-5 life at 23 years old.
Every class of mine has been so much fun. The students are generally well behaved and interested in life in the West. You don't have to deal with stabbings, shootings, drugs, etc. at my school because it is the highest ranked high school in the city (plus guns & drugs are strictly forbidden in this country). The only problems I have to deal with is them not listening if the class I'm teaching is boring lol.
Living here has allowed me to visit factories for Amazon FBA and to pursue other hobbies in my spare time.
Question 2: How did you meet friends and what is your social circle like?
A lot of my Chinese friends I met on an app called HelloTalk. It's a language learning app that I used frequently to practice my Chinese. Being a native English speaker in China, I would get a lot of messages from people that wanted to learn English. After some time, I basically had a network of friends that lived in various cities around the country and whenever I travelled to those cities, I would meet up with them.
My friend, Benjamin, in the bottom center photo is someone I met while I was travelling in the city of Tianjin. I went there solo and as I was sitting at one of the tourist spots, he approached me with some of his Chinese friends and asked if I wanted to hang out with them. He's a good dude.
You may have noticed that most of my friends are females lol. The reason is because it is kind of difficult to make male friends here. Being in China, you are always considered the foreigner. As a result, I feel like it is difficult to bond with other men because whenever they invite you out, you'll just be that foreign guy. They will either all talk to each other in Chinese which can be difficult for me to follow or talk to me in English if they want to practice their English. To me, I don't really feel much connection so I prefer to hang out with females. I feel a lot more entertainment going out with a girl for dinner, a date, drinks and maybe something more (if you catch my drift).
Question 3: How long did it take you to get comfortable grocery shopping?
Not too long. When I first came to China, I was vegan and mostly ate rice and steamed vegetables. There is a big supermarket called Ugrant that is easy to shop at. I would just put everything in my cart, get them scanned and then pay the cost. For produce, you put it in a plastic bag, get it weighed at a station and then the employee puts a price tag on the bag with a barcode. I basically only needed to learn how to say "bag" when I needed shopping bags to carry my groceries. However, I later on wanted some foreign goods.
There is a famous UK supermarket called Tesco located in the downtown. There is also a Carrefour. Initially, Carrefour is where I went to get all my imported goods, but Tesco and Ugrant have stepped their imported goods game up as well. There even is a whole store that only sells imported goods that recently opened up beside Carrefour!
These are some shots of the imported goods section at Tesco.
A lot of the stuff is from other Asian countries like Korea, Japan and Malaysia, but they do have some Italian, French, Russian and American products as well. I think it is best to learn how to cook local dishes because this stuff can get really expensive.
When you go to the local markets, it gets a little more complicated because you have to communicate with the vendors what you want and if your Chinese isn't good enough, it can lead to some awkward situations ahaha.
It isn't so bad though. It took me a couple weeks before I was confident in going into these places instead of the Ugrant. Prices are cheaper and the produce is usually more fresh. What you should be careful of is the meat; some places don't refrigerate the meats when they are put out on display.
Question 4: Is it confusing paying bills, taking the bus, just normal little things like that that back home your accustomed to doing one way but are different in another country?
It was difficult for me to order jugs of water when I came here. I didn't know any Chinese and needed to call someone to deliver water to my front door. One of my colleagues did that for me (but tried to make excuses to get herself out of it; she really didn't like doing this for me).
Eventually, one of my fellow teachers from Indonesia that spoke fluent Chinese told me that if I call their hotline, there is an option that allows me to order the same amount of water as last time by simply pressing a button. I had this teacher call them the first time to give them my details so that they have me on record and then it was smooth sailing since then.
Buses are super inexpensive. The price ranges from 1 - 2 RMB which is like $0.16 to $0.32 USD. The bus stop across the street from my apartment takes me to the downtown core so I am very thankful for that. No problems there.
Taxis use a meter and you just need to tell the taxi driver where to go either by speaking or having the address written down. They have an app called Didi which is their version of Uber. It has an English version but sometimes the drivers will call you just to confirm your location so that can be nerve wracking if you don't speak Chinese very well.
Some things you really take for granted back in your home country. I live in a small city so most people don't speak English. It got frustrating trying to explain something so simple to people when I needed help. One thing that really stuck with me when I first came here is that when Chinese people speak to you, they DO NOT speak slowly, even though they know you are a foreigner. They talked to me with the same speed as they would talk to a fluent speaker of Mandarin. Communication used to be really difficult. Chinese is not an easy language to grasp at first. It is a tonal language and so many words sound the same. It's hard to know when one word begins and ends. It has almost no resemblance to English except for loanwords. So I'd say language and communication is one of the biggest challenges I had when I first came here. I remember wanted to buy a sponge from the school's supermarket and didn't know how to say it. I spent some time doing sherades and looking stupid and they still didn't know what I wanted. It took me 6 months before I could hear the individual words people were saying. Before that, everything just sounded like a big conglomeration of sounds.
Did you know that Chinese people can count to 10 on one hand?
This tripped me out at first. I remember wanting to buy something at my school's supermarket and the cashier just made this sign.
Source
I was like, "wtf does that mean?"
It means 6.
Question 5: What made you choose China? How did you find the city and were you nervous about moving?
I initially wanted to move to South Korea to be an English teacher. I graduated university with an engineering degree but didn't want to work a 9-5. I worked as a Project Engineer Intern for a big automotive company and did not enjoy that lifestyle. As a result, I figured I should travel and see other parts of the world. However, I started seeing that the ESL market in Korea was declining and China was becoming really big into ESL. The country is much bigger and has more history than Korea. At the same time, I felt like there is more to see in China. I also was happy to find a position where I could teach math, science and business instead of English. I felt like my degree was at least being put to use.
The funny thing is that when I first entertained the idea of moving to China, I was like "no way!" I never wanted to live there. To me, China seemed like a polluted country with poor quality products. I only knew of Shanghai and Beijing. One day I decided to watch some videos about China and saw a really cool video showcasing the city of Guangzhou. I eventually realized how ignorant I was and that this country looked really cool. The more I looked into it, the more cities I learned about apart from Shanghai and Beijing and they all looked really nice. I started to actually like the country. I found this city from the recruiting agency I used. The told me about a math/science position in Qinhuangdao and I was like, *"Qinhuangdao?? Never heard of it." I found some videos on YouTube about the city and instantly fell in love with it. I saw footage of the beaches and scenery. It looked an an upscale city; a place that people go to for a relaxing vacation. Once I got the job, I knew that this was the job for me. I accepted and started preparing immediately. I wasn't too nervous about moving here. I was excited to leave Canada and live somewhere else. I was excited to live in my new apartment but maybe I felt a bit nervous about getting around and finding my way back home. I was fine for the most part.
These days, I am happy that I chose China. It really is a cool country with a lot to offer. Most people are ignorant about it though and here all the crazy news stories and food scandals. If you came here, you would realize that a lot of what you thought you knew about China was wrong.
Question 6: Do you plan to stay there forever and make a life there or is this an experience for a few years?
It's hard to say now, but it seems like this is a place I can stay for a few years and then move on. Immigration is tough in China. They already have around 1.4 billion people, so why would they make it easy for foreigners to gain permanent residency? In order to work in China, you need a residence permit that is only valid for 1 year. Every year you have to go through all the paper work and health checks to renew for another year. There is a marriage visa which allows you to live in China if you marry a Chinese woman, but you can't work here.
My goal is to build other income streams and become nomadic. I'd love to be able to spend time in other countries without needing to be employed somewhere. I've been checking out Thailand and Taiwan. The funny thing is that I initially thought I'd only be here for 1-2 years but every year I find myself renewing my contract lol. You can definitely live a good life here. People are generally friendly and the cost of living is relatively low.
Thanks to
Thanks for reading!
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