Why would you want to RETIRE in China!?!

so can you retire or semi retire in China so I'm going to assume that you fall into one of the following categories you're either an older bloke who's single maybe recently divorced maybe got a couple kids and you engaged two or married to a Chinese wife recently or planning to at least find yourself a Chinese wife if you don't fall into that category of course you could also just be an older guy who's looking for a change some kind of adventure and even for the younger guys watching if you're thinking about coming and living in China for any extended period of time this is the video for you because I'm going to discuss a lot of the pros and cons of trying to settle down here so a retirement naturally falls underneath that category so why would you want to come and retire in China what would be your reasons well a good couple of reasons I can think of straight away number one is the cost of living as long as you're not staying in Shanghai or Beijing or even Shenzhen where I live cost of living is almost a joke it's incredibly low however the bigger cities sorry forgot to mention Guangzhou and of course all the other bigger up-and-coming cities as well kind of fall under this category the bigger cities can be quite expensive and at least comparable to what you're paying back home as far as rent is concerned and of course you're going to get a lot smaller kind of a place for the same amount of rent but what I'm trying to say is cost of living such as rent food travel you know those kind of things it's still very cheap in China so if you're a pensioner and you've got a steady pension coming in every month you'll be able to survive and live a much more glamorous lifestyle here in China than you would be able to say for instance in the UK or the States so the number one of course is cost of living number two is the adventure of it all you know that's something that can't be discounted China is so different to what you're used to back home I'm talking about things like the way people eat the way people sleep the way people enjoy themselves hobbies food of course is a huge thing language is a massive thing the way people travel the way people see the world the way people interact with each other there's almost nothing that you can draw a proper parallel with in the Western world so why I'm telling you this is this is going to give you a lot as a retiree a lot of things to do and at least I'd say for a year or two it'll keep you completely busy just discovering new things about the culture discovering the way things work here you know going out and seeing something weird on the street and then trying to figure out what's going on there you know so as far as you getting bored as a retiree certainly not for the first couple of years so as a man of course there is an abundance of available women here now there might seem a bit weird because I'm sure you hear about this gender imbalance all the time and it's true there is a big gender imbalance especially in the rural areas not so much in the big cities in fact Gingin I think right now the the women there are slightly more women than men in the city at the moment and when I got here twelve years ago there was seven women - one man that's not a joke you can look it up good times anyway what I mean by abundance of available women and I'll get I'll get to you if you're a woman watching this I'll get get to you soon as well it's that China has this left of a woman concept and especially if you're an older bloke and you're not looking for a crazy young young person because I think you know let's not not go there that's that's a different topic but if you're looking for someone in your age group with about a 10-year plus/minus age gap so say you're a 60 you're looking for someone who's 50 if a woman is 50 and single in China that means she's got almost no hope of finding a husband and this is just a sad reality this comes from many different aspects that have covered in my videos before basically if they're single in 50 it means that their number-one divorced and they probably have children already and a divorced woman with children is absolutely a no-go for any Chinese man a Chinese man in this family especially will not allow him to marry a woman who is divorced number one it's really difficult and number two with children that makes it like a hundred percent more difficult sorry ten thousand percent more difficult so you'll have a lot of these sort of divorced women in their 40s 50s so on who cannot find a husband here in China so they very often go and look for foreign husbands which is something I'm gonna talk about a little later as well here anyway so that's one of the reasons the other reason why they might be single is because the perhaps they're infertile and here in China that's a big no-no again if someone is infertile then pretty much there's no reason to marry them it's part of the whole sort of family unit the sort of culture here it's cruel but it's true and of course there's another option if the woman is very career minded and has spent a lot of time on her career and never spent time on getting married having a child that kind of thing that person is also very looked down on here in China and is also classed as a left of a woman so you get a lot of successful women in their late 30s 40s 50s who are also single so that's why as a man you will find an abundance of available women in China now as a woman you will find an abundance of available men in China simply because of the gender imbalance and all these strict social norms that prevent them from marrying leftover women so you know you've got many more men and women in China but the strange thing is even though they're more men they won't touch the leftover women and they usually do things like go and find Brides in Vietnam things like that to kind of balance things out but that being said you'll find a lot of young professional up-and-coming men here who are single and so as a woman it's very easy for you to find yourself good-looking young motivated young man here in China well so there's a pro for coming here those are some of the pros and we'll talk about more of the pros as we get through this but of course this is a serpent's at a video so we have to talk about the bad things because that's what I'm famous for so let's get on to the bad things and by bad things I mean just the truth a bad thing which is also a good thing is the fact that China's culture is completely different to yours like I said in the beginning it's fantastic you really get to explore and see so many new things so many different traditions why do they do this during this holiday why do they drink that Oklahoma why do they eat that kind of food why on earth are they doing this why are they doing that why do they have such hard beds you know it's cetera et cetera so there's all these differences and it keeps you entertained and it's it's an adventure and it's something that you can discover and it's really really a positive honestly but at the same time it is a completely different culture and they don't respect your culture over here you've got to realize that but in China Chinese cultures a way to go your culture yeah they might think of it as quaint and interesting but at the end of the day you're in China you have to do things the Chinese way and you'll find this a lot with your Chinese in-laws yes they may respect you but they're still going to hound you and tell you to drink hot water and not to drink alcohol and not to do this and not to do that and you must buy a house this or you must do that and you'll find a lot of these very annoying pressures towards you especially if you're an older guy and you've already established yourself in life you don't want to be told what to do you don't want to be told that you can't have your aircon on in the house because it's going to make your wife sick or something when your wife's in her 40s or 30s and you're you know up there in your 50s it's set for two so there are a lot of like negatives when it comes to the different culture of course different culture means there are a lot of things that won't be compatible with your culture such as just social etiquette you really really really have to have a lot of tolerance if you're going to live in China if you come from the West things like people cutting in queues just personal space I mean right now behind me and around me people are busy getting their lunch from all these little food stalls but you know people are crowding together they're rubbing shoulders with each other they're bumping into each other they're spilling food on each other it's it's for a lot of Western is fairly unacceptable and hard to swallow also the spitting that you see a lot the public urination you know there's all these these kind of things you know the the shouting in public the the general noise can drive especially an older person crazy because you have to understand that unless you're in some kind of far-flung small village home town area of China you will not escape noise there will always be construction noise around you people like to shout and talk loudly people talk loudly on their phones people talk loudly to each other and noise is a huge huge huge con the next thing of course is just the freedom to be able to go where you want to do your own thing is quite stifled here getting a car is not easy I mean if you're marrying a successful woman here she'll probably have her own car and that's no big deal right but getting your own car is difficult you can't drive here without a Chinese driver's license international licenses don't cut it so you have to get a Chinese driver's license which is actually quite difficult depending on your visa right so the ability to just hop in a car and go to the shops or something like that it's pretty much erased you have to learn public transport you have to learn to either walk a lot take buses take trains take taxis things like that so there's that whole personal freedom of just being able to go where you want it's kind of taken away and to compound that as a foreigner you can't buy train tickets or things like that online Chinese people can with their ID cards but as a foreigner you have to go stand in queues go up to a window and pay you know money with the passport and of course the language barrier there can be a hassle so just getting around connection to be quite difficult especially in the beginning when you have no language skills because believe me as much as China has been trying to make the cities more international trust me if you come here you'll find out very soon that very few people actually speak English sure younger people speak English more sure in the first tier cities you will find more people that can speak English but on average seriously I'd say all the people around me I don't know if they could speak English let's find out hey man can you speak English no you can't speak English okay can you speak English can you speak English you know English okay go how about you can you speak English no okay all right so basically what I'm trying to say here is being able to speak English in China is what as you see just from this little sample of the five gents sitting around me they're all young and 100% of them can't so you know that'll give you a little bit of a tell as to to what you're going to experience here and I am in a first-tier City so you know you're stuck here with a big language barrier and that can be a huge huge hassle but it doesn't end there I'd say these things can be overcome because number one you know if you're a half decent human being you'll realize that you're in a new country you have to learn the culture you have to learn the language at least to a conversational level which is where I'm at my my Chinese by the way I know a lot of my subscribers see me speaking Chinese they say well your Chinese are so good you're fluent it's it's totally not I don't put enough effort into my Chinese my Chinese is at a level where I'm comfortable that I can get around I can communicate with people I can get things done but in all honesty my Chinese needs a lot of work but the thing is I put in the effort because otherwise I would be incredibly frustrated or I would have to rely on my wife or friends or coworkers Chinese friends and co-workers to do everything for me and I just don't like being so dependent I'm a fairly independent person so that's why I learned the language but what I'm trying to get at here is that you can't accept all these differences in culture you can adapt you can learn the language right you can understand why people do things you can start to eat the same foods drink the same drinks you know partake in the same celebrations it's entirely up to you and you can try your best to integrate but what you will never be as you'll never be Chinese right that's something that a lot of us have learnt the hard way a lot of us who've put a lot of years and time into China will learn is that basically at the end of the day you will always be a foreigner and you'll always be seen as a fresh off the boat foreigner and it can be quite disheartening and it could be quite upsetting if you have spent a lot of time and effort trying a best to integrate into society here now that's not just on a personal sort of hour I feel you know upset about it level this is actually on every level and this is where it gets important this is what I want you guys to listen to as somebody who wants to come here and wants to retire you have to understand that you will never be able to have a stable social system here you cannot have a stable system and I'll explain number one visas okay if you're married or you're getting married you can get what I'm on and that is a spousal visa this allows you to visit your spouse in a lot of work on that visa you're not entitled to any kind of social programs anything like that you're basically it's it's like it extended tourist visa I'd get no benefits from that other than the fact that I'm allowed to stay here and visit my wife like I said I'm not out of work on that visa not allowed to invest on that visa I know how to do anything the only thing I can do is literally sit around visit my wife walk around the streets take videos and things like that which is what I do now there is this legendary green card which I put a challenge out to lots of people out there to say show me one if you have one and I did actually get some replies that people who showed me they had a green card but basically all it is is it's like a ten year visa now this green card that they give up which by the way you won't be getting it's the only the only way you can get it is if you've worked and lived in China for a long time provided a lot of investment in China like buying a massive house you have to prove that you've got five years of paying tax to a certain amount you have to have had a certain amount of celery or a certain amount of investment over that time and you have to have been married during that time and there's a huge checklist so if you're thinking of just coming to retire here you're not going to get that green card at least not in the beginning if you stay long term you might be able to but that green card can be taken away at any point it's written right there in black and white it says that if you are seen to disturb the social harmony of China your green card will be canceled and that's pretty obscure wording it basically means that if they don't like you you're gone so you don't have any rights here also you don't have legal rights in China as a foreigner you will be treated how can I say as a second-class citizen in most legal disputes and of course if there is any kind of dispute you will find and I have found through my own experience that Chinese people get the upper hand almost every single time of course foreigners on the other hand also get a lot of bonuses when it comes to dealing with police and stuff because a lot of the times the police rather than not wanting to deal with you will let you off with a slap on the wrist if you do something stupid like I don't know ride a bicycle drunk or something and they catch you or do justice doing stupid things like causing a ruckus or whatever a lot of the times you can get off but that's of course just up to your official discretion and not always the case now kind of along these lines is I know a lot of the the guys I speak to who come from America especially they're quite used to being able to have control over their environment I mean if you live in a in a neighborhood and I don't know your neighbors like a noisy dude or does stuff you don't like you can actually sort of speak to the management committee or something and get the guy to change or call the cops and get the guy to shut up or you know someone's doing something you could do something about it right if your local council has installed speed cameras in your city you can kind of vote and you know have them taken down or you know that there ways to enact change around you right if there's a really ugly building in your neighborhood that's kind of bringing down the value of everyone else's bill you can go to the local council you can kind of petition to get that building fixed up or removed you know what I'm getting at here is basically you do have some control in China you have zip zero nada control over anything remember it's not a democracy all right this is I don't even know what to call it really it's sort of a socialist communism with Chinese what do they call it Chinese characteristics kind of a thing no one really knows what's going on here it's incredibly capitalist but it's weird and it's all over the place but the bottom line is that you as an individual have no control and no say over what goes on in your area or in your living space so you have to understand that you're gonna have to let go of a lot of control at least perceived control that you have in the West at the end of the day it's entirely up to you remember there is no solid visa program here even the so-called green card even if you manage to get that it's not a guaranteed it can be taken away at any time and that's something you really really really have to take into account if you're planning to move here and try to settle here every couple of years you're going to be stressing because you're new your visas coming up and you don't know what new laws have been enacted you don't know what's gonna happen and if your visa is cancelled or taken away you have no rights so everything that you have invested in this country that widescreen TV that you bought the renovations you did to your wife's house the car that you bought all of that's gone to the wind and there's nothing you can do about it so just bear that in mind that's a big big big big big issue so one of my biggest issues living here for so long is that I've never been able to really put down roots and as for me personally the thought of retiring in China well I can't say I'm entirely thrilled about it it's very far away who knows what's going to happen in the future I will revisit that later when I'm at a retiring age now I think it's important for you guys to actually hear from somebody who's actually retired and living in China and I happen to be lucky enough to have gotten hold of another youtuber here by the name of Gua sixty who lives here in China he's retired but he doesn't live here all of the time he does you know move between China and Canada and the US but he does spend a lot of time here in China and you know it's always better to hear from the horse's mouth so he's helped me make a little video where he discusses things like finding hobbies and how not to be bored and you know exactly what it's like to be retired in China so next time we're gonna be discussing that and I just want to say a massive thank you to him for helping me out with this I'm gonna leave a link to his channel below if you want to just go check out his videos in the meantime but let's wrap this video up and we're going to be talking to güell r60 and next time anyway guys thank you so much for watching this video remember at the end of the day China is an amazing place I've been here for 12 years for a reason I love this I love this country I love the people and I love the experiences that China has given me so until next time as always you know the drill stay awesome [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] you you

Channel: serpentza

Views: 292,529

Rating: 4.8764243 out of 5

Keywords: retire, retiring in China, retire to China, living in China, settling down in China, getting married in China, Green Card, Getting a Green card in China, life in china, china (country), winston sterzel, chinese food, travel in china, moving to china, gweilo 60, china how it is, cultural differences, chinese girls, chinese girl, chinese car, food safety, societal issues, cultural difficulties, retire early, living in china as an american, living in china vs japan

Id: rZ6Uy5paWdI

Length: 21min 58sec (1318 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 05 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/WhereTheHotWaterAt]

Retiring in China? Sound terrible tbh. Good healthcare is terribly expensive, the environment is not easy for old people. Also you would have trouble finding the proper visa to do so unless you are married to a Chinese citizen

[u/MecatolHex]

The immigration laws seem like a crucial obstacle to retiring. Only on a Class A Work Visa can one work beyond 65 years. So if you are approaching 65 years old, aka retirement age, how do you convince the Chinese to allow you to stay?

Or am I missing something? Is the plan a recurring tourist visa and trips every three months? Or is there an easier but obvious way?

[u/SunnyWomble]

Warning: Trigger allert

[u/proletariatnumber23]

What are western standards amd why do they automatically mean moving forward?