Most Taiwanese are *ethnically* Chinese. You sound like another mainlander who has never been to Taiwan. Taiwan has a seperate government, military, currency.. This adds up to a *de facto* independent Taiwan. The Mainlander military will have a hard time invading Taiwan with their Audi A6s, I bet.
I just want to add that I have, unfortunately, seen the insides of three hospitals in China. The BeiDa University hospital at Xizhimen in Beijing, the military hospital for musculoskeletal injuries in Wuhan, and Beijing United Family hospital. The only hospital of those three I would ever want to end up again is the third, because it is for foreigners, and they charge foreign rates for service. Have you been in a Chinese hospital? Well, you too can experience the delight of paying to use the elevator despite having a serious knee injury (happened to me). Need to get an antibiotic injection? The public hospitals have older/less potent medicines. Instead of getting a one time injection, I had to go to the hospital for 45 minutes on three days and have an IV drip hooked up. Not to mention the insides of the public hospitals are not sanitary at all and quite dirty.
I'd say that life expectancy here is due to a mostly healthy diet (low sugar, saturated fat, plenty of vegetables) and lots of exercise. I'm curious how the CIA got the life expectancy statistic, because you cannot really trust the government here regarding any such statistics.
That all said, I still love living here, but offer me another silly rebuttal that is too academic, and I will be happy to blow it out of the water.
Really, these "amenities" are almost standard here in China. In many places that use unskilled labor, the workers live in a dormitory and have access to health care, ie shitty public hospitals or clinics.
They've got access to genuine 1960s era medical technology there, which I suppose is better than medical tech from the Qin dynasty that is available in the boondocks. That is, if people don't just watch you die.
Workers typical have access to low cost/free housing too, which consists of crappy temporary concrete buildings. I'm sure Chinese business owners have a paternal warm fuzzy when taking care of their workers, but don't let the the "spin" of how great the workers have it get to you. The conditions totally suck here.
The Chinese pride themselves on their ability to endure hardship, but the other side of the coin is that they are ignorant of what a better life is like AND they are fairly passive as a people. Change is going to be a long, frustrating progress here. Honestly, I don't think China would be progressing so fast if they weren't being given oodles of money on a silver platter.
China is a country full of middle men. It's part of their culture. Instead of streamlining processes to make them more efficient, they intentionallty make processes inefficient, due to abundant labor. This is certainly one aspect of Chinese culture that grates on my nerves as well, and it took some adjustment for me.
Is a mashed-up trailer for Star Trek Enterprise, a la "Ten Things I Hate About Commandments" or "Must Love Jaws".. That might make that crappy show entertaining.
A while ago I found a guy's website (Russian I think) with his signal processing software that takes in a singing voice from a microphone and creates a music video on the fly. What he does first is feed in some audiovisual sources, analyze them, and then store them into a database. When somebody sings into a microphone, his program can composite the samples together to recreate the singers voice, and the original video is displayed on a screen at the same time. I have been trying for ages to find this guy's page again, but no luck. Anybody else seen it?
Having lived in China and discussed the matter with my history prof aunt, China is indeed going through the growing pains the USA went through around the end of the 19th century. The rapid industrialization, environmental issues, and labor issues resemble what happened in the USA. The cities in China are swelling, due to their shift from an agrarian economy to an industrialized one. China is a special case, because they are basically jumping ahead a century in terms of technology in the span of 20 years.
I don't know how purchasing power parity is calculated. As an American living abroad, I had enormous purchasing power (yes, i know that is qualitative).
I do concur with your conclusion- only the richest Chinese can afford to buy American products, because there is always some shitty knock-off that is good enough. Plus, the lifestyle there is spartan for most people.
The most disturbing trend I see is all the technology transfer going to China: companies want to make their stuff cheaper, partner with an existing chinese company, then send their know-how and IP to China. All this making shit for a cheap price in Asia is going to bite all these people in the ass.
Sure I did. I attended a well respected language university in Beijing for six months (Beijing yu yan da xue, formerly known as Beijing yu yan xue yuan). I was not being serious about learning only rude things. Frankly, I know very few curse words in mandarin, and I'm not interested in learning how to speak like the nongmin. It is difficult to speak a language beautifully if you have only lived in the country for one year.
As another poster said, "da3 fei1ji1" means masturbate, but literally means "hit the plane."
This is the sort of thing I learned while living in China.:P Some advice- don't attend a Chinese university to learn how to speak/read/write Chinese except for the basics. That is, unless you learn the way chinese learn- by rote memorization and reading straight from the book with no deviation. Get tutors, study a little every day, then go out and have fun and interact with people. The Chinese method for learning really sucks, IMO.
This raises the question- why? Chinese labor is cheaper than robots, but the robots probably give better service. Who did the chinese steal this technology from?:P
Your sources are right about "ni hao"- just make sure you get the tones right. Or you could say "wo3 mei2 tian1 kan4 ni3 nu3 hai2zi de shi2 hou4 da3 fei1ji1." Yep, try that.:D Quick tone lesson: 1= high flat tone 2= rising tone 3= low growl piss off tone 4= falling off the wall tone
But fortunately, the seller sold two laptops at the same time- one to me, and the other to a cop. The cop and I kept in contact as things got shady. After the cop applied some pressure, eventually the seller came to his senses, reimbursed me and gave me a free printer.
Well, at least not yet. I've been in Beijing for the better part of the last year. I've yet to be arrested for anything (though I've nearly beaten the shit out of some guys who cut in line in front of me- happens often here.)
Dvds typically cost 10rmb (about $1.25), and oftentimes they are less, around 5 or 6. After living in China, I'd saw this is the only way for big media companies to make any money. It is either make very little money or lose it all to piracy.
This also goes to show how fricken high the margins are when you sell a dvd for $20.
I support the initial point you made in this thread. However, I think people see what they want to believe. I've seen similar anti-American sentiments here in China and elsewhere. I would think that living in a foreign country would open somebody's mind to this and accept this as the way things are, but maybe that is just me.
If your dad is making the point that there are special interests in the USA that would like to portray the Chinese in a negative way for their benefit.. Well, duh. Some people profit from strife. He might as well say the media is run by Jews.
Speaking as an American living in Beijing, I concur with what you say.
In this day and age, you cannot trust any government or news outlet to give you the complete truth. If you have the capacity for independent, critical thought, you are the minority. Jingoism tends to get in the way of being objective.
Many Chinese think that information in the USA is censored like in China.. Unfortunately (this will sound sinister), I think it is easier to exploit the ignorance of people than it is to educate them.
I live in Beijing, and let's just say I could have a different Chinese girlfriend for each day of the week.
I'm not going to devote my life to correcting peoples' lack of perspective, because there are so many opportunities for people who are willing to look past the nonsense. The average Chinese has equally comical views about the West.
It could be double speak for "We are not really a totalitarian regime, and our censorship is not so invasive."
Living in China, I can see any of these possibilities as real, at least some some context. People here think that the US government censors the news to the same extent as here...Which is not exactly true, in my opinion. The censorship in the USA is, depending on your perspective, far worse, because it caters to the lowest common denominator(the sheeple) to sell advertising.
Seriously, I have this same sort of problem, but the problem is not what you say, it is in the delivery. People are not receptive to intellectual snootiness, even if you did not intend it that way. Instead of a terse "excel is crap, mathematica is much more leet" type of reply, say something along the lines of "I can use Excel, and it is a very useful tool. However, oftentimes I need some extra functionality I can get with only with Mathematica, like the ability to solve differential equations." Learn to talk with people, not down to people. It's a bitter pill to swallow, but get over it and yourself.
The first thing that comes to my mind is that you can set up a business that does consulting. You can build up a portfolio of intellectual property- develop algorithms to solve real world problems and then create implementations of your algorithms. License what you produce.
For example, I am no math genius, but I am trying to make my own software that will extract tone information from a recording. The intended application is very marketable, and I have a customer waiting already.
Identify your strengths, identify what interests you, identify some need in the marketplace, and take all of these into consideration.
Off the top of my head, there is a market for developing algorithms for signal processing(audio, video,whothehellknows), financial analysis, statistics.. Or you can develop optimizations on existing algorithms.
Reading your comments, I'm curious how long you have been in the USA. I am in a similar situation as you- American engineer living in China (I will not become a Chinese citizen though:P ).
You bring up some interesting points, however I would like to offer some counterpoints.
If I was to tell some random person in the USA that I am an EE, that would probably earn me some respect. People know that engineering is not easy.
Secondly, if you are suggesting that Chinese are more open to rapid technological change.. well, I disagree to say the least. It seems rapid right now because they are making 100 years of advance in the space of decades.. And it is due in large part to opening to outside, market forces.
Thirdly, while arts majors may be looked down upon here, at least they are doing something they are good at.
Which brings me to my last point- there are many people studying engineering here who should not be studying engineering. Many engineering students I have met here don't want to do it and really do not have an aptitude for it. To say that politicians here are technically savvy because they got an engineering degree 40 years ago is absurd.
When I hire somebody for my company here, I will only hire from the very best technical universities, because, in my experience, a lot of the engineers here are crap.
Slashdot Mirror
Try Foxit Reader, as it is so much faster than the Adobe reader.
Most Taiwanese are *ethnically* Chinese. You sound like another mainlander who has never been to Taiwan. Taiwan has a seperate government, military, currency.. This adds up to a *de facto* independent Taiwan. The Mainlander military will have a hard time invading Taiwan with their Audi A6s, I bet.
I just want to add that I have, unfortunately, seen the insides of three hospitals in China. The BeiDa University hospital at Xizhimen in Beijing, the military hospital for musculoskeletal injuries in Wuhan, and Beijing United Family hospital. The only hospital of those three I would ever want to end up again is the third, because it is for foreigners, and they charge foreign rates for service. Have you been in a Chinese hospital? Well, you too can experience the delight of paying to use the elevator despite having a serious knee injury (happened to me). Need to get an antibiotic injection? The public hospitals have older/less potent medicines. Instead of getting a one time injection, I had to go to the hospital for 45 minutes on three days and have an IV drip hooked up. Not to mention the insides of the public hospitals are not sanitary at all and quite dirty.
I'd say that life expectancy here is due to a mostly healthy diet (low sugar, saturated fat, plenty of vegetables) and lots of exercise. I'm curious how the CIA got the life expectancy statistic, because you cannot really trust the government here regarding any such statistics.
That all said, I still love living here, but offer me another silly rebuttal that is too academic, and I will be happy to blow it out of the water.
Yeah, I live here. QED.
Really, these "amenities" are almost standard here in China. In many places that use unskilled labor, the workers live in a dormitory and have access to health care, ie shitty public hospitals or clinics.
They've got access to genuine 1960s era medical technology there, which I suppose is better than medical tech from the Qin dynasty that is available in the boondocks. That is, if people don't just watch you die.
Workers typical have access to low cost/free housing too, which consists of crappy temporary concrete buildings. I'm sure Chinese business owners have a paternal warm fuzzy when taking care of their workers, but don't let the the "spin" of how great the workers have it get to you. The conditions totally suck here.
The Chinese pride themselves on their ability to endure hardship, but the other side of the coin is that they are ignorant of what a better life is like AND they are fairly passive as a people. Change is going to be a long, frustrating progress here. Honestly, I don't think China would be progressing so fast if they weren't being given oodles of money on a silver platter.
China is a country full of middle men. It's part of their culture. Instead of streamlining processes to make them more efficient, they intentionallty make processes inefficient, due to abundant labor. This is certainly one aspect of Chinese culture that grates on my nerves as well, and it took some adjustment for me.
Is a mashed-up trailer for Star Trek Enterprise, a la "Ten Things I Hate About Commandments" or "Must Love Jaws".. That might make that crappy show entertaining.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4UIJTt-vdU
A while ago I found a guy's website (Russian I think) with his signal processing software that takes in a singing voice from a microphone and creates a music video on the fly. What he does first is feed in some audiovisual sources, analyze them, and then store them into a database. When somebody sings into a microphone, his program can composite the samples together to recreate the singers voice, and the original video is displayed on a screen at the same time. I have been trying for ages to find this guy's page again, but no luck. Anybody else seen it?
Having lived in China and discussed the matter with my history prof aunt, China is indeed going through the growing pains the USA went through around the end of the 19th century. The rapid industrialization, environmental issues, and labor issues resemble what happened in the USA. The cities in China are swelling, due to their shift from an agrarian economy to an industrialized one. China is a special case, because they are basically jumping ahead a century in terms of technology in the span of 20 years.
I don't know how purchasing power parity is calculated. As an American living abroad, I had enormous purchasing power (yes, i know that is qualitative).
I do concur with your conclusion- only the richest Chinese can afford to buy American products, because there is always some shitty knock-off that is good enough. Plus, the lifestyle there is spartan for most people.
The most disturbing trend I see is all the technology transfer going to China: companies want to make their stuff cheaper, partner with an existing chinese company, then send their know-how and IP to China. All this making shit for a cheap price in Asia is going to bite all these people in the ass.
In fact, the real problem is that China has many more stupid people than the USA.
Sure I did. I attended a well respected language university in Beijing for six months (Beijing yu yan da xue, formerly known as Beijing yu yan xue yuan). I was not being serious about learning only rude things. Frankly, I know very few curse words in mandarin, and I'm not interested in learning how to speak like the nongmin. It is difficult to speak a language beautifully if you have only lived in the country for one year.
As another poster said, "da3 fei1ji1" means masturbate, but literally means "hit the plane."
:P
This is the sort of thing I learned while living in China.
Some advice- don't attend a Chinese university to learn how to speak/read/write Chinese except for the basics. That is, unless you learn the way chinese learn- by rote memorization and reading straight from the book with no deviation. Get tutors, study a little every day, then go out and have fun and interact with people. The Chinese method for learning really sucks, IMO.
This raises the question- why? Chinese labor is cheaper than robots, but the robots probably give better service. Who did the chinese steal this technology from? :P
:D
Your sources are right about "ni hao"- just make sure you get the tones right.
Or you could say "wo3 mei2 tian1 kan4 ni3 nu3 hai2zi de shi2 hou4 da3 fei1ji1." Yep, try that.
Quick tone lesson: 1= high flat tone 2= rising tone 3= low growl piss off tone 4= falling off the wall tone
But fortunately, the seller sold two laptops at the same time- one to me, and the other to a cop. The cop and I kept in contact as things got shady. After the cop applied some pressure, eventually the seller came to his senses, reimbursed me and gave me a free printer.
Well, at least not yet. I've been in Beijing for the better part of the last year. I've yet to be arrested for anything (though I've nearly beaten the shit out of some guys who cut in line in front of me- happens often here.)
Dvds typically cost 10rmb (about $1.25), and oftentimes they are less, around 5 or 6. After living in China, I'd saw this is the only way for big media companies to make any money. It is either make very little money or lose it all to piracy.
This also goes to show how fricken high the margins are when you sell a dvd for $20.
I support the initial point you made in this thread.
However, I think people see what they want to believe. I've seen similar anti-American sentiments here in China and elsewhere. I would think that living in a foreign country would open somebody's mind to this and accept this as the way things are, but maybe that is just me.
If your dad is making the point that there are special interests in the USA that would like to portray the Chinese in a negative way for their benefit.. Well, duh. Some people profit from strife. He might as well say the media is run by Jews.
Speaking as an American living in Beijing, I concur with what you say.
In this day and age, you cannot trust any government or news outlet to give you the complete truth. If you have the capacity for independent, critical thought, you are the minority. Jingoism tends to get in the way of being objective.
Many Chinese think that information in the USA is censored like in China.. Unfortunately (this will sound sinister), I think it is easier to exploit the ignorance of people than it is to educate them.
Among them being the shortage of women.
I live in Beijing, and let's just say I could have a different Chinese girlfriend for each day of the week.
I'm not going to devote my life to correcting peoples' lack of perspective, because there are so many opportunities for people who are willing to look past the nonsense. The average Chinese has equally comical views about the West.
It could be double speak for "We are not really a totalitarian regime, and our censorship is not so invasive."
Living in China, I can see any of these possibilities as real, at least some some context. People here think that the US government censors the news to the same extent as here...Which is not exactly true, in my opinion. The censorship in the USA is, depending on your perspective, far worse, because it caters to the lowest common denominator(the sheeple) to sell advertising.
Seriously, I have this same sort of problem, but the problem is not what you say, it is in the delivery. People are not receptive to intellectual snootiness, even if you did not intend it that way. Instead of a terse "excel is crap, mathematica is much more leet" type of reply, say something along the lines of "I can use Excel, and it is a very useful tool. However, oftentimes I need some extra functionality I can get with only with Mathematica, like the ability to solve differential equations." Learn to talk with people, not down to people. It's a bitter pill to swallow, but get over it and yourself.
I'm trying to do the same.
The first thing that comes to my mind is that you can set up a business that does consulting. You can build up a portfolio of intellectual property- develop algorithms to solve real world problems and then create implementations of your algorithms. License what you produce.
:)
For example, I am no math genius, but I am trying to make my own software that will extract tone information from a recording. The intended application is very marketable, and I have a customer waiting already.
Identify your strengths, identify what interests you, identify some need in the marketplace, and take all of these into consideration.
Off the top of my head, there is a market for developing algorithms for signal processing(audio, video,whothehellknows), financial analysis, statistics.. Or you can develop optimizations on existing algorithms.
Cheers, bonne chance.
Reading your comments, I'm curious how long you have been in the USA. :P ).
:D
I am in a similar situation as you- American engineer living in China (I will not become a Chinese citizen though
You bring up some interesting points, however I would like to offer some counterpoints.
If I was to tell some random person in the USA that I am an EE, that would probably earn me some respect. People know that engineering is not easy.
Secondly, if you are suggesting that Chinese are more open to rapid technological change.. well, I disagree to say the least. It seems rapid right now because they are making 100 years of advance in the space of decades.. And it is due in large part to opening to outside, market forces.
Thirdly, while arts majors may be looked down upon here, at least they are doing something they are good at.
Which brings me to my last point- there are many people studying engineering here who should not be studying engineering. Many engineering students I have met here don't want to do it and really do not have an aptitude for it. To say that politicians here are technically savvy because they got an engineering degree 40 years ago is absurd.
When I hire somebody for my company here, I will only hire from the very best technical universities, because, in my experience, a lot of the engineers here are crap.
But, hey, you can say that about any place.
A shell-enabled Clippy!
Seriously though, this is the funniest thing I have seen today.