Why I Changed my Opinion on China

Now China is a country that polarizes people's opinions mine included I'll be the first to correct someone that is unfairly criticized in the country and the first to point out when overly optimistic Visions of China's future are just plain wrong I've seen China and it's golden years and I've seen a country where the top-heavy policies are starting to tear at the seams The first thing that China is seemingly doing correct is growth and development I have to admit when I would leave China to visit my hometown once every couple of years around 2008 to 2012 It was just embarrassing to see that not only did nothing change in my hometown But the few businesses and attractions that were just managing to keep afloat were shutting down The once passable city center was now more or less boarded up the mall destitute and abandoned People were leaving in droves to go south for better jobs And it really looked like local politics and economic policies were failing in the town Not only small towns like my own were disappointing though I would fly into JFK Airport in New York City and just Feel like I was stuck somewhere in the 70s in terms of the tech and attitude in the workforce Stepping out of the cab into New York City. It wasn't dirty per se but everything just felt old Yeah old is a good word for it You know, the charm was always there I Love New York and it's always had a special place in my heart But I just couldn't shake the feeling of it not going places Trying to get home was a nightmare There was only a couple buses for a day for over 50 bucks just to make a 100-mile journey I'd have to take a $52 taxi ride from the airport to the bus station as well meanwhile flying back to China I would look out the window of my plane and I'd see the magnificent buildings springing up from the ground like bamboo shoots after a good rain storm and Hop off the plane and be able to take a direct bus that only costs $7 To my small city of three million people in a matter of minutes Because straight from the airport the bus has left every 15 minutes But if I want to splurge a bit, I could just take the high-speed rail Yeah, even my tiny little no-name city had a high-speed rail line. Keep in mind This is one of the least important cities in the province So it's not like I was going to DC from New York City It was more like going to my hometown from New York City after getting off the bus It cost me $2 in taxi fares to go straight to my house And guess what even back in 2013 I was paying for everything with my phone On the bus from New York City to my hometown, I'd watch the swaths of forest go by in my journey I couldn't help but shake the fact that when I got home, I'd be stuck there The near shop was a 15-minute drive and there was certainly no one that was gonna deliver anything that I needed to my door flashback to my backwater apartment in no-name Chinese city And I was having Oreos and beer delivered to me at any time at night Not that I recommend anyone order Oreos and beer at when I am but I could and that's what mattered Pop downstairs anytime at night and I could sit roadside and eat and drink to my heart's content Make friends with curious locals and spend little to nothing house $5 for some beers and barbecue sound Now conveniences aside life in China compared to the u.s. Felt relaxed anything goes The rules were more of a suggestion than anything I ran my business cash or WeChat pay When clients would come to my informal office for English lessons word of mouth was enough for a 20-something year old like myself At the time to make a really nice profit And a ton of spare time to party meet people and pursue my hobbies like writing and building motorcycles to boot Compare this to my prospects of working my way up slowly as a network admin or a code monkey in the states where I was still paying off student debt and Life looked horrible at home. I watched myself move up financially socially And I really felt like the world was my oyster. I got married I had my first child and although the responsibilities as a parent started to take over I still could go to my roof at night with my buddies crack a beer and watch the city around me explode with me and developments and how The train felt like it would never stop. I Even expanded and started making videos full time not to mention had the freedom to go out on month-long expeditions and film full-on TV documentaries with little to no Regulation where I could go or what I could do I could speak Chinese fluently And I was finally able to pursue my dreams riding motorcycles and filming amazing content with my best friends Things however changed it's pretty drastically The train and bus tickets that I mentioned now needed a Chinese ID to buy them something I would never have You can't become a citizen of China You can't even get a green card. This meant being enslaved to my wife's help really buying anything transport-related It was now illegal to put an American flag up next to the Chinese one at the entrance to my English training center Even though it symbolized cooperation Police visits became a regular fixture of my life and friends and family in the government. We're now telling me that I was Constantly being monitored and followed and I should be careful about posting anything online or who I was associated with And keep in mind all of my content was fairly positive Social media and non Chinese websites were now blocked in my little window to the outside world was now shut My motorcycle business with my best friend shut down when the government decided that it wanted to reclaim the land for more ramshackle ghost towns for hungry real estate investors no one was asked if this was okay a big uptick of kidnappings in the neighborhood Park started to become more prevalent and With a child at home the idea that I could lose my daughter to human traffickers really kept me up at night Unrest at the nearby hospital down the road led to the murder of countless nurses and drunken street violence The BBQs was hard to avoid now Police would arbitrarily threaten me with arrest even coming to my door because I had flown a drone over the building where I lived They said there was a military base that was visible in the footage Meanwhile, the exact same footage was posted on Chinese video sites by Chinese people with no pushback Arbitrary enforcement of law when random government leaders who come to town Mendez Street side vendors were closed and shooed away with all their goods confiscated All of the choice I have for restaurants on my local Road who close and reopen with worse and worst quality food I got sick a lot more than in the past and with the ever growing prevalence of gutter oil being used in the cooking and the Fake alcohol even being sold in large supermarket chains. It wasn't a good time to be eating or drinking anything The building's I once fond over started showing signs of abandonment and those bamboo shoots springing up around me at an alarming rate Turned out to be hollow shells and empty apartments some of them nearly collapsing only after three years Due to the advice of my Chinese family and friends I bought my own apartment for my family But the elevator collapsed twice in this shiny new building to hit literally just been built and massive cracks formed across the floors and walls China also decided to randomly ban motorcycles So every day involved a calculated route to avoid police barricades where they would snatch your keys and take your bike in discriminately This caused an insane explosion and car traffic which made it frustrating to drive anywhere. You really had a time when you went out Our next documentary conquering northern China focused on showing the positive adventures that China had to offer And it led us to being searched and detained by the SWAT team as well as the People's Liberation Army Apparently they don't like footage of camels We were harassed and bullied out of towns not allowed to stay at most hotels Followed and we quickly realized that the vibe towards foreigners had changed For the first time I would be heckled almost weekly by locals who had been reading too much news about how China's problems are now The fault of foreigners you're stealing our Chinese women go home foreigner. I don't like Americans Family members who once loved having me over started to blame me for political decisions abroad that they deemed as bad Western influence That was harming China My fluency and Chinese had gone from a major asset to a sad realization that people's opinions about the outside world were souring foreigners were now corralled into a b or c class system based on arbitrary standards and Dictated what they could or couldn't do for work? the social credit system was being rolled out which monitors your activity what you do or say about the government and pretty much all of your actions and Banners praising the current leader as well as tons of Communists insignia started to be unveiled in every corner of the country Cameras can now be found on every stoplight and street corner all this new regulation The clamp downs the renewed xenophobia even the growth seemed to be shifting from a tolerable inconvenience to a full-fledged messy bureaucratic nightmare You see China's always thrived on being a gray area in almost all walks of life Capitalism had taken his tolls in many ways. But life was improving and even felt freer than the West in many many ways albeit, no political expression or freedom of speech Now churches are being dismantled Millions of ethnic minorities are being put into concentration camps and being told that they're Chinese but need to be re-educated families torn apart Foreign entertainment opinions blocked and squashed overstepping boundaries when it comes to free societies like you see in Hong Kong military showmanship threats Imprisonment and daxing huge smoke and mirror government projects like the Belton Road initiative have created a populace That doesn't dare speak out gives up what little freedom they had in the first place to do and say what they want in many ways China has effectively become a dystopian police state and the wonderfully curious and upwards looking people I once knew Have become deeply affected by the one-party rule Clinging to order as their house of cards starts swaying with economic slowdown and other changes in the world around them the open tap for dialogue with other people from other countries has effectively been shut off and They've created an army of soft power internet trolls and government initiative to try and prove to the world that it's not only us versus Them but that our system is best. You see there's a bit of self guilt involved. You might think over these past 10 years I've changed maybe now I'm the one that's become sour I'm the one that's become bitter but when you look at your language experience the people you know and love the things around you the place that you bought a house in the place that you started a family and Everything around you is shifting towards the negative everything around you is being clamped down and tightened up and People's freedom of expression and ideas that once almost flourished in the early years of me moving to China are now squashed You realize that? These past 10 years you've started to understand actually how things are working and not only that how things are potentially going And it doesn't feel good Now when I go back home to my tiny little town on the forest It'll make sense. And It feels fantastic Hope you guys enjoyed the video if you did please consider supporting me on patreon comm slash Lowrey 6 where you can see other bits of the shows you can put on topics and You can actually talk to me directly and don't forget that every single Wednesday at 1 p.m Est you can watch another Lau 86 click right here for another one. So forget every single Monday at 1 p.m Est you can watch a TV China and just in time for a beer every single Friday. You can watch the serpens a day Every single Friday at 1 p.m Yes the and don't forget very important to subscribe to our live show a TV podcast every other Thursday Thank you so much Louis and I'll catch you on the next one

Channel: laowhy86

Views: 1,813,856

Rating: 4.4419055 out of 5

Keywords: laowhy86, c-milk, serpentza, china, advchina, adv china, living in china, cmilk, living in china as an american, current events, moving to china, winston sterzel, hong kong, expat in china, expats in china, teaching in china, prc, ccp, communist party of china, chinese government, hong kong protest, 中国, us china, china protest, us china trade war, headlines, hk protest, hk protest 2019, teaching english in china, hong kong protests 2019, china trade war, chinese economy

Id: ed4ryYokLzU

Length: 12min 3sec (723 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 18 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/snurpo999]

Captured exactly my feelings about having lived in and left China..

So glad to know I am not the only one.

[u/Drew2248]

First he compares living in a large Chinese city with living in a small, rural town in Upstate New York. That seems a bit silly to do. They're completely different and are not comparable at all. But he's right about the larger issue, the ridiculous nationalism that has grown in China in recent years to create a restrictive police state. It's outrageous.

[u/Xis_a_dong]

Should I watch this?

His vids have been missier than hit the last while.

[u/geekboy69]

He makes some good points but definitely exaggerates for others. Also most of his and serpentza problems stem from the fact they put out videos on the internet about China. Should problems comes from that? Ideally no. But if you're just the average foreigner in China you wont have most of the issues he talks about.

I definitely feel the same about going back to small town America and feeling at peace after spending time in what can be a very hectic China

[u/shroob88]

I think at a certain point life in China looses its appeal. The first few years may be fun, you can re-invent yourself, and there's ample opportunities to try new things that simply aren't available in the west (or prohibitively expensive).

But eventually the novelty wears off. Your thoughts change. Instead of 'wow, waimai to my door for 20RMB' becomes 'What the hell did they put in this?'. 'Wechat pay is so convenient' becomes 'Everything I do is monitored'. 'Pollution's not that bad' becomes 'Another polluted day'.

And that doesn't include frustrations such as banking, hospitals, train tickets, where being a foreigner really sucks because everything is designed for Chinese IDs. And that doesn't include te acceptance of living in an authoritarian society.

Eventually most people realize they have the option to leave China. Even if it means going back to a lower salary, more difficult work, and more hours, the rights and freedoms the west offer outweighs the pros of being in China.

[u/xiaoLK]

I was feeling the same way about my small town in the Pacific Northwest, now I feel much better, boring but stable.

[u/restlys]

everything is sort of how I think many of us felt when we left...so kudos to this guy for making a video about it.

My own small gripe is when people call the CCP communist. China is capitalistic as hell, the name is just a shell now

[u/TopspinTEC]

Agreed on everything except the foreigner ranking system. I don't think most of those metrics are arbitrary and prefer that system for immigration.

[u/Intern3tHer0]

During my last years in China, unfortunately chinese strangers would randomly in the middle of a conversation tell me "你们老外不能再欺负我们中国人"

I don't know what the endgame is, but China under Winnie the Pooh is heading in a bad direction what-with the bad economy and 1984-esque policies