I totally agree with this:

“However the longer you live abroad you realize that it’s all fucked, its just different shades of fucked. Some like the communist flavor of fucked, some like the GW flavor, some like the swirl.”

There are just types of fucked you can deal with more easily than other types, or types that are easier to ignore anyways.

Ryan: As to those who think everything is good in China, personally I think they are just as crazy as those who have to complain about every stupid little thing that goes wrong during a China day.

My experience with the “everything is good” guys however is pretty limited, usually I find myself in that position, which is quite crazy, coz I usually am pretty critical about things and I do not suffer from blindness nor colouring things pink that everyone says are black.

The thing is that i try to see how relative these opinions are and how lucky we “westerners” are. In China, we usually make a decent wage in comparison to the Chinese, we are more free: no family hassling us and scant controls by the government and if we don’t like the place we just pack our things go to another city or leave again for our homecountries, where, if we are a wee bit smart, cash-in on our “China-Experience” and still make more than a decent living.

Taking all of this into the equasion, I cannot but kind of feel happy throughout my days in China and laugh all my way to the bank. Not out of spite for the Chinese, but out of sheer thankfulness for being born in the “free” west, blessed with half a brain, some determination and some back-up savings that in my homecountry would amount to nothing, but over here get me through the rough patches of the China half-pat life.

I have met a lot of people here that say they do not know what they would be doing if they werent here. They express the same dislike of things back home and wanted more.

I think people like this are inherently very difficult to please and we will be more critical than the average sheep at home.

However the longer you live abroad you realize that it’s all fucked, its just different shades of fucked. Some like the communist flavor of fucked, some like the GW flavor, some like the swirl.

For me pick a day, it’s a different flavor each time.

@Josh: I agree. The problem being we’re all at different levels of our “China Experience”.. so what is an issue to me is not always the same issue to someone just arrived, or someone here 6 months, or whatever..

Just read the “Extrapohaters” post, and you’ve coined a great term. It took me a long time to get around that “generalization” from “select” experiences… the only hole in extrapohation, is that generalizations when it comes to China/Chinese is not entirely the same animal as genearlizations elsewhere.

It doesn’t justify stupid whinging… but it does lend weight to what they’re whinging about being applicable to others and likely to repeat itself.

And it is one of the major reasons I don’t have much of an “expat” social life. I find drinking 100 kuai pitchers with socially dysfunctional, crybaby extrapohaters who blame every daily inconvenience on the g’damncommiepinkos to be mind-numbingly boring.

Most expats I’ve met in China don’t fit that description, but there always seems to be that one in the crowd I end up talking to.

That needed to be said by someone. Hope ya don’t mind but I just wrote a spin-off of sorts.

Complaining is definitely one of my favorite pastimes. And I’ll be fucked if someone is gonna complain about it.