I write this post in an effort to give some idea of what it’s like to live in China, Beijing in particular, seeing as though I’ve only ever lived in the nation’s capital and only travelled through other parts of the country. I should make it clear that someone living in a Tier 1 city such as Beijing, Tianjin and Shanghai will have a very different experience of “life in China” than those who live in Tier 2 or Tier 3 cities, such as Harbin, Urumqi, Wuhan, or even further south in Guangzhou.
Anyway, so what’s it like? In general?
Chaotic and fast, which, I do have remind you, that I’ve only ever lived in Beijing so my perception of “life in China” is skewed by the very fact that I live in one of the fastest and most chaotic cities in the world.
Anyway, in general, China is a massive country with some 56 different ethnicities making up what we know know as “China”, the dominant group being the Han people. Although most of the people share a similar language, they don’t all share the same language. And this is important because people can tell where someone is from as soon as they hear how they speak, even if it’s standard Mandarin, which is what they learn in school. For example, I am studying putonghua (known as Standard Mandarin) which is based on the Han language. The Han language, in turn, is different from the Wu (middle of China), or the Yue (Cantonese) or Min (Fuzhou) languages, which make up much of southern China. Then there’s Xinjiang’s Uyghur (pronounced “Wigger”) people who speak a Turkic-type of language, Cantonese in Hong Kong and much of the southern coast of China, and even Tibetan, and not to forget Taiwanese which is also its own dialect. And finally, there are numerous city dialects throughout the country ranging from Xi’an, Dalian, Suzhou, Beijing, Shanghai, and many others.
What’s Beijing like?
Crazy and noisy. People all over the place. Cars. Motorbikes. Rickshaws. And the newest addition are those Segway-like roller-platforms (what’s their technical name?) If you visit, always look both ways even if you’re crossing a one way street, you just never know who is coming from which direction. And the general rule of the road is that if it has wheels, it goes first and the bigger the vehicle, the more road authority it has. Horn honking is commonplace.
In terms of weather, summers are hot and, despite being a “dry” climate for most of the year, the summer also very humid you just sweat all the time. Many people speak English at least at a basic level but are willing to give your Chinese a go if you’re up to it, especially taxi drivers and wait staff at smaller restaurants (who are often migrants from the country).
Oh, and there’s the pollution, which I’ve written about before, and many people still wonder just how anyone could live in such a polluted place. Well, Chinese people wonder how anyone could live in a place like Canada that is “so cold”, even though there are places with similar temperatures within China itself. When it’s too polluted outside, we don masks to help us breathe better and, when inside, turn on our air filters and close the windows. To be clear, it’s not like the pollution/smog is a toxic gas that will kill you instantly, it’s not mustard gas, it’s coal dust mostly, followed by car exhaust (though some might try to say it’s simply dust) which makes it a combination of “naturally”-appearing particles (coal dust) and man-made crap (car exhaust). PM2.5 is the biggie here as those particles are only 2.5 microns or whatever across and slip right through your delicate lung tissue and into your blood stream. Yep, I have coal dust in my blood. Not only is it coating our lungs with black ash (like the coal miners of old) but it’s literally infiltrating our blood stream which leads to all sorts of nasty health effects.
Wow, sounds like a dangerous place to live. Why do you live there?
Ask anybody living in Beijing and they’ll give you one answer: money. There really is no other reason. Put simply, China has the money and wants the knowledge of foreigners to educate its people and is willing to pay them for that knowledge. Now, not everyone can come into China, we do require visas that take about six months to get (Type Z, which is the long-term work visa) and it only represented by a sticker in your passport. So, if you were to, say, wash your passport, well, then you might find yourself kind of locked out of China until you get another visa… six months later. And probably another job because your employer probably won’t wait.
Sounds risky. What else?
Beijing is also full of migrants. You see, Beijing isn’t just Beijing-people, it’s a collection of people from around the country who have descended upon the city in an effort to make money. We’re talking street sweepers, delivery people, toilet cleaners, parking attendants, subway security, hotel staff, the list goes on. About 90% of Beijing is made up of “foreigners”, not just from other countries, but from other parts of China.
Sounds eclectic. Must be quite the crowd.
It is, but here’s the catch, Beijing doesn’t really promote “giving voice” to the individual. Rather, it’s more of a collective “we’re here to make money so put your head down and work.” All that is to say, I don’t think there is much of a “pulse” to the city in terms of arts and culture, despite the city hosting many of the nation’s antiquities and historical buildings.
In general, Beijing is a lot of politics and work. And money. Lots of money. Beijing is certainly not like London in which business and money have mixed, or even Ottawa where the financial district in Toronto can be reached within a few hours, but more like Washington, in that it’s just politics. If you’re thinking of working here and want more of “a life like home”, then Shanghai or Hong Kong might be more of your type. If you’re looking for more of an “authentic” Chinese experience, Beijing is your comfort zone, followed by places like Xi’an, Dalian, Shenyang, WuHan. After those places you’ll be heading into “the bush” so to speak in that you won’t have many of the Western amenities found in the larger cities. You might like that, and it will give you a very different appreciation of the country.
And, although Beijing has a mixture of people from around the country, it still is an international city in which you’ll sometimes get people staring at you with eyes open and mouth agape, yet other times you’ll have conversations in perfectly good English about any number of topics once you get passed the typical “where are you from?” question.
How much of the language have you learned?
Currently I’m about HSK 2, which means I can speak, read and write basic sentences and have minimal listening abilities. In terms of characters, I couldn’t give you an exact number but I know that reading my graded Chinese reader with 500 common characters is easier than the one with 1000, if that makes sense. In terms of day-to-day life, I can communicate what I need but answering questions is a stretch. I am working to change this over the next year and would like to actually take a course in the language if only to get a certificate to show how much time I’ve spent on the language.
So what do you do in Beijing?
My current job has me bouncing around parts of northern China and around Beijing, mostly in the university district. Since I travel for work, I see a lot of train stations and airports, subways, hotels and university classrooms. 16-hour days aren’t uncommon in my work, measuring from the time I get up until the time I get back “home”, even if it’s just to a hotel for the evening.
What kind of work do you do?
I work in the language consultancy area of ESL, basically I help people analyze their language and what they need to work on. I don’t give feedback, instead simply gauge their efforts usually in an effort to help them gain a sense of how they would function overseas. It’s the teachers who need to figure out how to help the students improve their language skills.
Do you like it?
To put it simply, I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. But (and you’ll hear this from just about everyone who lives in Beijing) I’m not against looking elsewhere and would move should the opportunity arise.
Why?
Beijing is not for living, it’s mostly for working. There’s really no other way to look at it and you’ll hear the same thing from those who’ve lived in the country long enough to see China both before and after the 2008 Olympic Games. China, especially Beijing, has changed a lot in a very short period of time, there are more people, more pollution, and more work to be done. It’s a hectic life, but you can make good money if you’re willing to show up. I’ve written more about the changes that have recently taken place in this post.
So, could you make a life for yourself?
People apparently do it, but I’m not sure how. Rent is expensive, schools are expensive (so I’m told), the average monthly salary of a Beijing worker is about 6,000 to 8,000 RMB per month (about $1200-$1600 CAD). Despite those costs, I do see lots of young families. One problem I see? Many people don’t live in Beijing for very long.
What’s it cost to live there?
To give a few examples from my own expenses:
- A grande Americano at Starbucks goes for 27RMB.
- Foreign beer is about 45RMB per bottle, though the local beers go for 5RMB or 10RMB for a big bottle.
- Western food is about 50RMB-75RMB per plate regardless of what it is and is hardly ever what it’s like back home.
- Chinese food is cheap and mostly noodles or rice, around 10RMB-30RMB per dish, the cheaper prices usually being smaller portions.
- Groceries cost me about 300RMB per week and that’s in addition to what I spend eating out since I travel so often.
- Utilities are cheap by Western standards, though Chinese people will say that hot water is expensive, about 0.5RMB per cubic meter. I don’t care, I don’t do cold showers unless I really have to.
- All phones are unlocked and, although there are contracts with phone companies, they never made sense to me. I use a pre-paid SIM card and spend about 100RMB ($20CAD) per month on data, etc.
- Average rent for a studio or small apartment is around 6,500RMB, though you can cut that down to much less if you room with others, possibly around 2,500RMB per month.
How much money do you make?
Enough to stay and a lot for my chosen area of expertise. I couldn’t make this much anywhere else in the world given what I do.
Can you give me a number?
Enough to save.
Do you pay taxes?
Yes. Quite a bit, too. You can read about the Chinese taxation system for foreigners in this article: http://onestop.globaltimes.cn/how-is-income-tax-calculated-for-foreigners/. I can ballpark and say I pay about 25-35% of my wages in taxes.
What about the toilets?
In Beijing you can usually find at least one sit-down toilet alongside the other squat toilets. Train stations usually have a lot of squat toilets while airports will have more sit-down toilets. But you should remember to bring your own toilet paper as that is a rare commodity in many places. Oh, and hot water and soap are also hard to find outside of larger cities and Western-style developments, such as malls.
How’s the food?
I can say that Beijing is home to a wide selection of food from around the country and around the world, but you need to choose carefully because there are many places that try to imitate foreign food and fail miserably at it. From craft beer to European cuisine, to import products to local favourites from around the country, Beijing’s food scene is pretty good by many measures.
I can also say that despite my rather dismal work-life balance, there are opportunities and activities out there for those who are looking for them. There is a bit of a music scene, Krav Maga and Muay Thai, plenty of regular gyms as the Chinese youth catch onto the Western style of going to the gym, quite a few museums (though only a few are really worth visiting) and historical monuments (such as the Forbidden City and Tian An Men Square itself). One neat thing is that you can actually take the train from Beijing to Moscow direct. It’d take seven days and you need a visa for Russia, but you can do it.
Isn’t stuff cheaper over there?
Nope. It’s usually more expensive. Going back to the price of “living”, rent is sky-high here in Beijing and that means people need to increase their prices in order to compensate. Coupled with the Government’s efforts to curb the flow of people into the city, there are licenses needed and other costs that seem to crop up, all of which contributes to people trying to charge as much as they can in order to keep at least some of it for themselves. Electronics, particularly Apple products, are more expensive if you buy them in a shop, but you can find some deals using online outlets such as JD.com or TaoBao, two of the popular shopping APPs here in China. But then you have to be wary of fakes and scams.
So where do you buy your clothes?
Uniqlo the cheap clothing store or I buy them when I’m back in Canada. I have yet to find a pair of shoes that fit properly here in China.
You must like it if you’ve stayed so long.
It works for me for now, but I don’t know if I could ever really call Beijing “home”. The whole idea of being dependent on a sticker in my passport seems like a bad way to live.
Are you still a Canadian?
Yes. I can’t become a not-Canadian unless I go to the embassy and hand in my passport and fill out a paper rejecting my citizenship. And yes, I’m still technically a resident of Canada because of my ties to the country.
You said you travelled quite a bit?
Yes, as a part of my current work I do travel quite a bit but these business trips don’t really allow me to see much of the places we work. However, during my previous job as a university lecturer (or a glorified English language teacher at the university level), I did have some time to travel the country on my own. I’ve gone from East to West (Beijing to Kashgar), from North to South (Dalian and Harbin to Shenzhen and Hong Kong) and from Beijing to Moscow through Mongolia. There were frustrations along the way, but each trip gave me a new perspective with which to view China and its people, especially as it pertains to its history, both modern and ancient.
Have you read much about the country?
Yes, I’ve read a few books on the country, its people and its history. A lot focuses on the last 100 years (and is certainly one of the most life-changing) as the ancient history is plagued by, well, being ancient. For modern books I’ve read The Penguin History of Modern China, Gang of One, Factory Girls, Wolf Totem, Paul Theroux’s Riding the Iron Rooster, and even Marco Polo’s Travels. I’ve also read Sun Tzu’s Art of War and bits and pieces of Lao Tze’s works. As for Confucius, I’ve read a bit of his stuff in English before, same with Mencius, but I can’t say I’ve read them in depth.
What do you like best?
In my old job I liked the students quite a bit, at least from one of the programs I taught since the other program was filled with some rather lazy rich kids. But the good program kids were fun and good to communicate with while the others sort of showed how money could get you a degree. My new job has more of a professional setting rather than a personal setting so I don’t really get to know “regular Chinese people” as much any more. I do meet more professionals, that is, people who don’t work in the ESL industry, and that offers a bit of a different perspective than what I learned from the students.
Other than that, I do enjoy some of the food, particularly sweet and sour pork, re gan mian (noodles), ruo mo ban mian (noodles), baozi (buns, sometimes filled with meat or vegetables, etc.), jiaozi (like perogies), chuaer (skewered meat).
I also enjoy the local craft beer scene, which I will credit with making Beijing a liveable city for me.
The subway system in Beijing is probably the best in the world in my opinion while their high speed rail network is also something to behold.
I’d also mention that the whole digital payment option has made life really easy in that I’m able to pay for a lot of things by using Alipay or WeChat Wallet, from groceries, to utilities, to sending money to a friend who paid for dinner (or receiving it!).
Finally, I enjoy simply having a place to myself. That might sound strange but after last year’s rather chaotic bouncing around Canada preceded by living in the university-appointed living quarters, I’m happy to have a place I can come back to and not have to deal with other people if I don’t have to. 😀
Would you recommend it to other people?
Yes, absolutely. You’ll probably like it. But you do need to understand that it can get on your nerves every now and then and that it’s important to have a time or place to “reset” either by leaving the country or simply having a place to go that no one else can reach you unless you choose.