Beijing is a challenge because it's culturally so different and generally nobody but the college-educated speak english. The air is very polluted - reeks of sulphur and welding. I was shocked at how much worse the pollution was than I expected it to be. I don't recall seeing any grass there. It is absurdly inexpensive to eat out, take taxis, subway, etc although if you hang out at ex-pat places or even Chinese hipster places it's not that cheap. You also have to look pretty hard for the fashionable / hipster areas because most of the people look like they are still stuck behind an iron curtain. Definitely a really, really interesting city because of its ancient history (still tangible), its tumultuous twentieth century, and its recent rampant growth at a scale that no democracy could ever accomplish. You gotta go see it, at least.
been here for five years. worked for a local chinese firm and an international firm, taught at a design college, and now on my own as a design consultant on small projects.
the level and quality of design has never been high enough for my personal taste, and the vast majority of clients are large developers who have no idea what they are talking about. they just have money. one client actually walked in to our office, laid down a brochure from another project and said, "see this? i want you to copy this exactly."
of course, there are some exceptions. GMP is known in town as being extremely focussed on quality, not sure what holl is like but they've got high-profile projects, and OMA is in town too of course.
the other 99.9% of work being done here is a mish mash of cut and paste design unfortunately, or else very strange compositions. there is rarely an understanding of a design concept, just superficial applications of "styles" pasted on to the facades of buildings.
architecture here has in recent hstory been a part of the engineering discipline and viewed as a functional undertaking rather than an artistic or creative pursuit, so that explains a lot.
anyone coming to work here must realize what it is they want from coming here (leading edge design work, cultural experience, travel ops, money - all of these can be found) and find the right setting or they'll find themselves wanting to blow their brains out each day.
is the air polluted?
yes. very. upon arriving five years ago, i got a case of the perma-sniffles which took a few months to go away. even now when i leave and come back, i feel the dirty air when i get back. got pneumonia three of the five winters, and need regular trips out of the city to keep a balance. have lots of kleenex handy as you'll need to get rid of the black gunk that will collect in your nose. disgusting, sure. but am telling you like it is. i'm sure i've taken a few years off my life span from being here so long.
is the grass green?
of course it is. it's the green olympics, so it has to be. i don't know where the water is coming from (rumour has it that its being diverted from farming communities in neighbouring provinces) but the gov't is hard core when it comes to superficial things being taken care of to give the illusion that everything is perfect.
metaphorically, i'd say sure. there are reasons to come over to this of the fence for a while. biggest one is just to experience a whole different culture and way of thinking. for better or worse, this country will hold a lot of power in the world in the coming generation and i believe it's good for people to have some understanding of what's in store. i come from asian background and that did nothing to prepare me for dealing with a society that values things in ways that are so different from what i'm used to.
without being judgmental, id say that the biggest obstacle i had to overcome in living and working here was to accept that logic and rational thinking is of little value in most situations here. instead, seniority, respect for hierarchy, and the concept of "face" (never making people look bad in your dealings with them, always being humble) are what are most highly valued. this necessitates the use of a lot of back channels to get real work done. once you accept that there is an almost ceremonial way of living and working separate from reality, you will be fine.
can you save dough?
yes. if you are a foreigner, especially caucasian, you will make enough to be quite comfortable. if you can adapt to the chinese way of working, and want responsibility, then you can make a lot and move up quick. the managers of many of the big name offices here are very young relative to other countries. where else but china are you going to be the director of an international firm's office in your late 20's or early 30's?
the cost of living can be very cheap if you want it that way, or you can be very comfortable and still have some cash to take back. entirely up to how you want to live.
good memories?
yes. although i think i've overstayed my experience, overall i am very happy i came here. will probably transition out of here in the next 6-9 months after the olympics. probably why i'm still here as i got tickets. the best part of the experience has been learning about a new culture and experiencing an entirely different way of life (although it is possible to isolate yourself from it as an ex-pat if you want to, by living in a suburban gated community)
other notes
beijing has the historical and cultural aspects to it, but it is also at the very forefront of modern urban life and no different than any other major international city. as for the political side, you have to make that call for yourself. this is probably the most capitalistic society i've ever been exposed to and as long as people are busy doing that, the government seems to think that no one will care about wanting political power and it's mostly true. chinese people i know will freely say that as long as they can make a decent living, they really don't care what the government does. they know there's corruption and old-school politics, but they also realize that for a country this big, there isn't really a good alternative right now. my take is that this is a young country (this iteration of it) and it has to go through the same growing pains as any other.
there's a smell we call "beijing taxi driver smell". most prevalent during late spring and early fall when drivers aren't willing to turn on the air con. B.O. fermented over a period of days in a closed vehicle supplemented by sleeping in the same clothes. sometimes strikes non-taxi drivers too. also, toothbrush technology has arrived in this country, but the acceptance rate seems a bit on the low side to me.
people exposed to foreign culture, people and practices tend to have better hygiene, otherwise it can be an issue even with well educated, wealthy people...had a developer client once actually hike up his pant leg and start picking scabs off his shin during a design presentation.
spitting is still pretty common. never really understood the need for it. maybe clearing out the pollution being sucked in. the public education surrounding SARS cut it down quite a bit, but people still really don't think twice. don't get me started about the nose picking.
or nail clipping and blowing their nose *whale style* ..... Personal hygiene costs money and when you only have a dollar a day for three meals, personal hygiene is the last thing on your mind.
And what does Tibet have to do with this..? Nobody has a clear picture what is exactly going on out there and then you get these comments again. I read the same about the "Dubai-experts". They haven't freaking even been there! Please inform yourself before judging...
I was in China for 11 days in the summer of 2005. I went to Bejing, Nanjing, Wuxi, Suczhou, and Shanghai. In all that time I never once saw the sun. A melancholy sky is how I would describe it.
The skies are grey, there really isn't much grass and the air is acrid.
That said, Beijingers are fucking awesome despite their hygine issues, and their city is amazing thanks entirely to the hutong mega-blocks. Unfortunately, once their gone (which won't be long) the only reason to vist will to see the various palaces and temples, and to get drunk in ho-hai/the embassy district.
I'll say this in the defense of folks there, that having your own bathroom is a very foreign idea to most of them. Most folks handle their business in public baths, which aren't as convenient nor as nice as the Japanese take on them. I never saw anyone just straight up piss in the street/alley although in retrospect that should be surprising but the phlegm flies and frankly i blame the air quality. The people there are immediately lovable though and have a tendency to suck you into the community even if you can't speak a word of Chinese (miming, hand sketches and broken english/chinese can substitute for spoken word). Maybe its the whole "face" thing in action, but I don't think I've ever been treated better especially as a foreigner. I'd live there in a heartbeat if the weather wasn't so bad and the air was breathable.
Spring has arrived in Beijing. The pollution has blown away for a couple days and you can see the mountains to the west, the setting sun in the evening, bleeding down 'tween silhouettes of soviet apartment blocks.
It is kind of a cultural vacuum, but finding what culture there is, or contributing to it in some small way is pretty satisfying.
yeah, beijing is cool. there is plenty of work to be done. disregarding the fact that the food, air, service and overall atmospheres is generally pretty unpleasant, its an interesting place to live.
you get the sense that there is a lot of momentum in beijing, even though there is also a lot of hype.
vado is right, china is at the fascist end of the spectrum. but with the rest of the world speaking with their wallets, this country just keeps sending out cheap manufactured goods and the riches just keep rolling in. and most common chinese people see this as good management by the government in terms of the world stage.
with the olympics coming, there's more weird stuff happening than ever. couple weeks ago, i witnessed a round up of innocent victims in a popular bar district.
about a hundred police and fire department officials on a weeknight visited businesses on the street door to door and shut down ones that had code infractions and issued warnings to others. however, for one unlucky french restaurant, a truck pulled to up to haul away the worst offenders - about 50 evergreen shrubs lining the patio of the restaurant. at least they didn't use tasers.
apparently, they encroached on the street and were on city property. meanwhile, businesses further down the street had their employees sprinted in all directions carrying patio chairs, patio tables, plants and whatever else wasn't nailed down so they wouldn't be seized. entertaining backdrop while having a couple of drinks across the street.
vado, i find it pretty awesome that you, as an american can comment on the human rights issues of other countries. At least they f*ck people over in their own country/territories. Your guys are doing it, exclusively to other peoples. Iraq anyone?
Not suggesting that any of it is right, but the criticism directed to other countries seems a bit high in these forums compared to the atrocities by the US government.
Your rant seems to suggest that you've never been to China. In any case, look in your backyard before the classic one-liners. Thank you
comparing the usa to china is a conversation suited for high school students. as an american i can comment of anything can't i? including how fucked up our present foreign policies are.
yes, sure, in these forums the hate for other regimes, be it china, dubai etc seems to be much heightened then US foreign policy. You're right, its exactly like high school conversations.
Coming back to the original question from fuzzy_atelier (which has NOT anything to do which Tibet): work in Beijing / Shanghai is a great experience for me!!! And I assume for anyone who can cope with living in China (although the first three months can be a bit tough).
Beijing, anyone?
what is it like to work in Beijing?
is the air polluted?
is the grass green?
can you save dough from your ex-pat pay?
did you have good memories?
china just put a guy in prison for five years for writing a protest of the government's seizure of land for the olympics. good memories indeed.
Beijing is a challenge because it's culturally so different and generally nobody but the college-educated speak english. The air is very polluted - reeks of sulphur and welding. I was shocked at how much worse the pollution was than I expected it to be. I don't recall seeing any grass there. It is absurdly inexpensive to eat out, take taxis, subway, etc although if you hang out at ex-pat places or even Chinese hipster places it's not that cheap. You also have to look pretty hard for the fashionable / hipster areas because most of the people look like they are still stuck behind an iron curtain. Definitely a really, really interesting city because of its ancient history (still tangible), its tumultuous twentieth century, and its recent rampant growth at a scale that no democracy could ever accomplish. You gotta go see it, at least.
what's it like?
been here for five years. worked for a local chinese firm and an international firm, taught at a design college, and now on my own as a design consultant on small projects.
the level and quality of design has never been high enough for my personal taste, and the vast majority of clients are large developers who have no idea what they are talking about. they just have money. one client actually walked in to our office, laid down a brochure from another project and said, "see this? i want you to copy this exactly."
of course, there are some exceptions. GMP is known in town as being extremely focussed on quality, not sure what holl is like but they've got high-profile projects, and OMA is in town too of course.
the other 99.9% of work being done here is a mish mash of cut and paste design unfortunately, or else very strange compositions. there is rarely an understanding of a design concept, just superficial applications of "styles" pasted on to the facades of buildings.
architecture here has in recent hstory been a part of the engineering discipline and viewed as a functional undertaking rather than an artistic or creative pursuit, so that explains a lot.
anyone coming to work here must realize what it is they want from coming here (leading edge design work, cultural experience, travel ops, money - all of these can be found) and find the right setting or they'll find themselves wanting to blow their brains out each day.
is the air polluted?
yes. very. upon arriving five years ago, i got a case of the perma-sniffles which took a few months to go away. even now when i leave and come back, i feel the dirty air when i get back. got pneumonia three of the five winters, and need regular trips out of the city to keep a balance. have lots of kleenex handy as you'll need to get rid of the black gunk that will collect in your nose. disgusting, sure. but am telling you like it is. i'm sure i've taken a few years off my life span from being here so long.
is the grass green?
of course it is. it's the green olympics, so it has to be. i don't know where the water is coming from (rumour has it that its being diverted from farming communities in neighbouring provinces) but the gov't is hard core when it comes to superficial things being taken care of to give the illusion that everything is perfect.
metaphorically, i'd say sure. there are reasons to come over to this of the fence for a while. biggest one is just to experience a whole different culture and way of thinking. for better or worse, this country will hold a lot of power in the world in the coming generation and i believe it's good for people to have some understanding of what's in store. i come from asian background and that did nothing to prepare me for dealing with a society that values things in ways that are so different from what i'm used to.
without being judgmental, id say that the biggest obstacle i had to overcome in living and working here was to accept that logic and rational thinking is of little value in most situations here. instead, seniority, respect for hierarchy, and the concept of "face" (never making people look bad in your dealings with them, always being humble) are what are most highly valued. this necessitates the use of a lot of back channels to get real work done. once you accept that there is an almost ceremonial way of living and working separate from reality, you will be fine.
can you save dough?
yes. if you are a foreigner, especially caucasian, you will make enough to be quite comfortable. if you can adapt to the chinese way of working, and want responsibility, then you can make a lot and move up quick. the managers of many of the big name offices here are very young relative to other countries. where else but china are you going to be the director of an international firm's office in your late 20's or early 30's?
the cost of living can be very cheap if you want it that way, or you can be very comfortable and still have some cash to take back. entirely up to how you want to live.
good memories?
yes. although i think i've overstayed my experience, overall i am very happy i came here. will probably transition out of here in the next 6-9 months after the olympics. probably why i'm still here as i got tickets. the best part of the experience has been learning about a new culture and experiencing an entirely different way of life (although it is possible to isolate yourself from it as an ex-pat if you want to, by living in a suburban gated community)
other notes
beijing has the historical and cultural aspects to it, but it is also at the very forefront of modern urban life and no different than any other major international city. as for the political side, you have to make that call for yourself. this is probably the most capitalistic society i've ever been exposed to and as long as people are busy doing that, the government seems to think that no one will care about wanting political power and it's mostly true. chinese people i know will freely say that as long as they can make a decent living, they really don't care what the government does. they know there's corruption and old-school politics, but they also realize that for a country this big, there isn't really a good alternative right now. my take is that this is a young country (this iteration of it) and it has to go through the same growing pains as any other.
As I am living in Shanghai for quite a while: spaceman, you got it right...
long live Tibet....
wear your free tibet shirt around town and see how fast you get picked up by the secret police.
what's the personal hygiene situation? do folks know what deodorant is? or is the pollution so bad, you can't smell anything anyways?
and what's with all the spitting i'm reading about in the american papers?
there's a smell we call "beijing taxi driver smell". most prevalent during late spring and early fall when drivers aren't willing to turn on the air con. B.O. fermented over a period of days in a closed vehicle supplemented by sleeping in the same clothes. sometimes strikes non-taxi drivers too. also, toothbrush technology has arrived in this country, but the acceptance rate seems a bit on the low side to me.
people exposed to foreign culture, people and practices tend to have better hygiene, otherwise it can be an issue even with well educated, wealthy people...had a developer client once actually hike up his pant leg and start picking scabs off his shin during a design presentation.
spitting is still pretty common. never really understood the need for it. maybe clearing out the pollution being sucked in. the public education surrounding SARS cut it down quite a bit, but people still really don't think twice. don't get me started about the nose picking.
or nail clipping and blowing their nose *whale style* ..... Personal hygiene costs money and when you only have a dollar a day for three meals, personal hygiene is the last thing on your mind.
And what does Tibet have to do with this..? Nobody has a clear picture what is exactly going on out there and then you get these comments again. I read the same about the "Dubai-experts". They haven't freaking even been there! Please inform yourself before judging...
I was in China for 11 days in the summer of 2005. I went to Bejing, Nanjing, Wuxi, Suczhou, and Shanghai. In all that time I never once saw the sun. A melancholy sky is how I would describe it.
The skies are grey, there really isn't much grass and the air is acrid.
That said, Beijingers are fucking awesome despite their hygine issues, and their city is amazing thanks entirely to the hutong mega-blocks. Unfortunately, once their gone (which won't be long) the only reason to vist will to see the various palaces and temples, and to get drunk in ho-hai/the embassy district.
I'll say this in the defense of folks there, that having your own bathroom is a very foreign idea to most of them. Most folks handle their business in public baths, which aren't as convenient nor as nice as the Japanese take on them. I never saw anyone just straight up piss in the street/alley although in retrospect that should be surprising but the phlegm flies and frankly i blame the air quality. The people there are immediately lovable though and have a tendency to suck you into the community even if you can't speak a word of Chinese (miming, hand sketches and broken english/chinese can substitute for spoken word). Maybe its the whole "face" thing in action, but I don't think I've ever been treated better especially as a foreigner. I'd live there in a heartbeat if the weather wasn't so bad and the air was breathable.
Spring has arrived in Beijing. The pollution has blown away for a couple days and you can see the mountains to the west, the setting sun in the evening, bleeding down 'tween silhouettes of soviet apartment blocks.
It is kind of a cultural vacuum, but finding what culture there is, or contributing to it in some small way is pretty satisfying.
yeah, beijing is cool. there is plenty of work to be done. disregarding the fact that the food, air, service and overall atmospheres is generally pretty unpleasant, its an interesting place to live.
you get the sense that there is a lot of momentum in beijing, even though there is also a lot of hype.
you wanna know more about Beijing?
check out the videos: http://www.youtube.com/user/sexybeijingTV
seriously check out the video... all of them. mad cool and funny
what tibet has to do with it is that china is a fucking police state that also likes commerce. ie fascism.
vado retro. bro... no f-ing china. you are probably wearing something that is made in china. china can fuck you anytime and moment. watch yourself.
what are you the gang of fucking four?
vado is right, china is at the fascist end of the spectrum. but with the rest of the world speaking with their wallets, this country just keeps sending out cheap manufactured goods and the riches just keep rolling in. and most common chinese people see this as good management by the government in terms of the world stage.
with the olympics coming, there's more weird stuff happening than ever. couple weeks ago, i witnessed a round up of innocent victims in a popular bar district.
about a hundred police and fire department officials on a weeknight visited businesses on the street door to door and shut down ones that had code infractions and issued warnings to others. however, for one unlucky french restaurant, a truck pulled to up to haul away the worst offenders - about 50 evergreen shrubs lining the patio of the restaurant. at least they didn't use tasers.
apparently, they encroached on the street and were on city property. meanwhile, businesses further down the street had their employees sprinted in all directions carrying patio chairs, patio tables, plants and whatever else wasn't nailed down so they wouldn't be seized. entertaining backdrop while having a couple of drinks across the street.
should check this out too:
http://www.thebeijinger.com/blog/tbjblog?cat=155
vado retro ... you went to school at where?
whats that got to do with the price of human rights violations in china?
vado, i find it pretty awesome that you, as an american can comment on the human rights issues of other countries. At least they f*ck people over in their own country/territories. Your guys are doing it, exclusively to other peoples. Iraq anyone?
Not suggesting that any of it is right, but the criticism directed to other countries seems a bit high in these forums compared to the atrocities by the US government.
Your rant seems to suggest that you've never been to China. In any case, look in your backyard before the classic one-liners. Thank you
police state that likes commerce? Sounds like the U.S. these days.
comparing the usa to china is a conversation suited for high school students. as an american i can comment of anything can't i? including how fucked up our present foreign policies are.
yes, sure, in these forums the hate for other regimes, be it china, dubai etc seems to be much heightened then US foreign policy. You're right, its exactly like high school conversations.
vado retro. why don't you go back to high school. say "fucked up" again? say it... say it again... can't wait to hear that.
Coming back to the original question from fuzzy_atelier (which has NOT anything to do which Tibet): work in Beijing / Shanghai is a great experience for me!!! And I assume for anyone who can cope with living in China (although the first three months can be a bit tough).
typo: which = with
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