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I want to move to China. However, there are a few concerns and/or fears I feel I need to vent/seek advice for.
Growing up on the West Coast of America, I have seen lots of different racial groups come and set up shop in my hometown and surrounding suburbia. Its awesome, and I love it, multiculturalism is pretty neat. However, there's a double standard surrounding language that I've noticed.
Fighting the urge to make up statistics, I've seen my fair share of instances where a 45 year old woman will use her 12 year old son to translate for her. There's plenty of cases where simply the moms vocab was not strong enough to hold a full conversation and the kid needed to support, and then there's the cases where it's obvious they have made no real attempt to learn our local language. As a local boy, I've had it hammered into me that "This is America the melting pot. You can't shame immigrants for not knowing English (but unspoken rule you are not socially allowed to call someone out for not learning)".
As an isolated case I couldn't give a shit, if you don't want to learn a new language so be it, but the vibe I get is that Americans should learn the local language if ever they plan to move to a new country.
America is rife with stories of immigrants coming to its shores with no cash, no degree (or valid degree), not speaking the language, and entirely re-inventing and establishing themselves. Its incredible and inspiring, and I've always had a secret resentment for being born in America, because WE were the place people came to. But thats China now, and I want to experience life from that angle.
How much will Chinese people hate me if I move over there and try and take their shitty service jobs? I know Chinese people are super nationalist, and I'm a little afraid of that idea because as a German male in America, whenever you talk about nationalism people get super tense and shits just weird, so I avoid it.
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Unless you have some specialized professional skill, you'll be a white monkey who will be able to work white monkey jobs like teaching English. Otherwise they'd have literally no reason to hire someone who has an infant's grasp on their language over a native Chinese person. Maybe they won't hate you and in some places, you'd still be a novelty, but also keep in mind that they might ask themselves, "What is this American guy doing in China? Can't he make it back home?" I don't know why you want to move to China, but if you're a loser, they'll know it and probably have contempt for that, but then again, most people would.
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>>18594075
I lived in Qingdao then Shanghai.
Why would you have an urge to make up statistics?
Chinese people are actually much less nationalist than americans, japanese, or even say brits.
I'm fully caucasian and have never been ostracized for being white in China. If anything, it got more a little more positive attention because of that "oh, you come from America! Jack Nicholson? Sunset Boulevard? Hoho!" factor.
I've heard of stories of rivalries between Japanese and Chinese, in the sense that sometimes japanese people would refuse to talk to korean or chinese workers, things like that. As far as white people go, we got it great in China.
What I noticed is most common people don't know a lick of english. Waiters in big cities know the basics, but knowing elementary chinese is a real necessity. You just gotta know terms like "how much", "bathroom", and in common life you catch on quick enough. Professionally it can get real complicated, so on a practical level you may have a real hard time like I did.
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>>18594106
No, that's not really the case, expatriates in China are either there because they were sent by their corporation or taking advantage of various opportunities the Chinese market has to offer. Expatriates seeking new horizons in megalopolis' like Shanghai or Hong Kong are quite common and even with China's stunted growth it's still very much an economic boom in several milieus.
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