hello china group

[Melrose Plant 1]

If I am reading correctly, the title of this topic is, "Hello China Group." That would give a person quite a bit of latitude to talk about China, I should think. But, to be fair (and balanced), I will now post something which is squarely on point.

Hello China group! I have never actually been to China, but I've been within a few miles of it, does that count?

My wife and I have an internet friend living in Guangzhou, whom we actually tried to go visit this year, but I couldn't get a visa from the embassy in Hanoi because the Olympics were fouling everything up. Anyway, that's the main reason why I lurk and sometimes reply in the China section.

And, for better or for worse, it hasn't been dead on this forum lately! Have a nice day, China group!

[justashooter 430]

china is not one country. it is many countries under one flag.

Like the USA is not one country but many countries under one flag?

OFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF TOPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPIC like justa has taken this many times.

like i said, the americans posting here are under a lot of pressure.

[pushbrk 12,137]

china is not one country. it is many countries under one flag.

Like the USA is not one country but many countries under one flag?

OFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF TOPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPIC like justa has taken this many times.

like i said, the americans posting here are under a lot of pressure.

With a topic as broad as this there's plenty of lattitude for all but insults. Please save those for people you meet face to face, so they can respond appropriately.

Edited October 17, 2008 by pushbrk

[justashooter 430]

china is not one country. it is many countries under one flag.

Like the USA is not one country but many countries under one flag?

OFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF TOPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPIC like justa has taken this many times.

like i said, the americans posting here are under a lot of pressure.

With a topic as broad as this there's plenty of lattitude for all but insults. Please save those for people you meet face to face, so they can respond appropriately.

then there are those who have lost their place in life, and desperately attempt to restore their worth.

[pushbrk 12,137]

china is not one country. it is many countries under one flag.

Like the USA is not one country but many countries under one flag?

OFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF TOPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPIC like justa has taken this many times.

like i said, the americans posting here are under a lot of pressure.

With a topic as broad as this there's plenty of lattitude for all but insults. Please save those for people you meet face to face, so they can respond appropriately.

then there are those who have lost their place in life, and desperately attempt to restore their worth.

I suspect that whatever that is intended to mean, you're VJ's foremost expert on every aspect thereof. When somebody posts a question about it, by all means, be the first to respond.

[endoftheroad 1]

like i said, the americans posting here are under a lot of pressure.

Is that your point? To put down Americans? I feel the Chinese are also under pressure.

then there are those who have lost their place in life, and desperately attempt to restore their worth.

I now realize you are a troll and will be treated as such. You do not want to help, you want to injure. Good luck.

[justashooter 430]

like i said, the americans posting here are under a lot of pressure.

Is that your point? To put down Americans? I feel the Chinese are also under pressure.

then there are those who have lost their place in life, and desperately attempt to restore their worth.

I now realize you are a troll and will be treated as such. You do not want to help, you want to injure. Good luck.

my remark about the Americans posting here being under pressure is intended to explain their sometimes evidenced short tempers and defensive nature. i was lucky enough to spend most of my 16 month K1 wait in china with my intended. you are waiting since january without much solace in the interim. this must be very difficult for you.

chinese immigrants are under lots of pressure before and after immigrating to the US. they get pressure from their families and friends, who constantly question their choice to marry a meiguo guizu (american devil), and tell them it is all a hoax, and will never happen. i can understand enough chinese to know people told my wife this in my presence before we were married on many occasions. with all of the negative propaganda in the chinese press how could it be any different? this is why it is so important that you go to china after you are married in US, to allow your wife to "save face" by celebrating the marriage right under the noses of those who told her that it couldn't/shouldn't/wouldn't happen.

the average chinese has a very negative opinion of Americans until they get to know one. this opinion is engineered by their government, whose control of the country, tenuous as it is, would collapse if no external enemy could be blamed for the difficulties people in this country face. for example, after the chinese stock market went public 3 years ago at 1200, it bubbled to 6000 in less than two years, and then rapidly fell to 1600. the chinese TV news blamed the US economy for the bubble, rather than acknowledging the overstatement of value by chinese sellers who profiteered in the process. this occured long before the recent collapse in the US market and the reduction in consumer spending it will cause. things are bad in china now. wait till Americans stop buying their product in volume...

i wish you luck in acclimating your wife to America. she will have to learn how to speak/hear/read/write english on a level more advanced, drive, find her way around, find friends, adjust to your neighborood, find a job, balance a checkbook, understand American tax structure/law/social structure, accept the loss of day to day interaction with her family, deal with people who have prejudice against her as an immigrant...

i understand the process in some aspects, having "immigrated" to china, myself. even so, IMHO it is more difficult coming from china to America, than vice versa, as we accomplish simple tasks on a daily basis without thought that most chinese will never face. most chinese never really "make it" to America, from what i've seen of chinese my wife has met in penna in the last year. hopefully, yours will.

it's a daunting task my wife and i are tackling together. stay close to your wife when she faces these challenges, and support her through it all. see her not only for what she is now, but also for what she can be.

[pushbrk 12,137]

like i said, the americans posting here are under a lot of pressure.

Is that your point? To put down Americans? I feel the Chinese are also under pressure.

then there are those who have lost their place in life, and desperately attempt to restore their worth.

I now realize you are a troll and will be treated as such. You do not want to help, you want to injure. Good luck.

my remark about the Americans posting here being under pressure is intended to explain their sometimes evidenced short tempers and defensive nature. i was lucky enough to spend most of my 16 month K1 wait in china with my intended. you are waiting since january without much solace in the interim. this must be very difficult for you.

chinese immigrants are under lots of pressure before and after immigrating to the US. they get pressure from their families and friends, who constantly question their choice to marry a meiguo guizu (american devil), and tell them it is all a hoax, and will never happen. i can understand enough chinese to know people told my wife this in my presence before we were married on many occasions. with all of the negative propaganda in the chinese press how could it be any different? this is why it is so important that you go to china after you are married in US, to allow your wife to "save face" by celebrating the marriage right under the noses of those who told her that it couldn't/shouldn't/wouldn't happen.

the average chinese has a very negative opinion of Americans until they get to know one. this opinion is engineered by their government, whose control of the country, tenuous as it is, would collapse if no external enemy could be blamed for the difficulties people in this country face. for example, after the chinese stock market went public 3 years ago at 1200, it bubbled to 6000 in less than two years, and then rapidly fell to 1600. the chinese TV news blamed the US economy for the bubble, rather than acknowledging the overstatement of value by chinese sellers who profiteered in the process. this occured long before the recent collapse in the US market and the reduction in consumer spending it will cause. things are bad in china now. wait till Americans stop buying their product in volume...

i wish you luck in acclimating your wife to America. she will have to learn how to speak/hear/read/write english on a level more advanced, drive, find her way around, find friends, adjust to your neighborood, find a job, balance a checkbook, understand American tax structure/law/social structure, accept the loss of day to day interaction with her family, deal with people who have prejudice against her as an immigrant...

i understand the process in some aspects, having "immigrated" to china, myself. even so, IMHO it is more difficult coming from china to America, than vice versa, as we accomplish simple tasks on a daily basis without thought that most chinese will never face. most chinese never really "make it" to America, from what i've seen of chinese my wife has met in penna in the last year. hopefully, yours will.

it's a daunting task my wife and i are tackling together. stay close to your wife when she faces these challenges, and support her through it all. see her not only for what she is now, but also for what she can be.

Although the things you generalize as true CAN and DO happen, my three years of experience communicating with and reading the stories of hundreds of folks going through the fiance or spouse visa processes from China tells me they are true in less than the majority of cases and that generally only some aspects of the difficulty present themselves sporadically, in the vast majority of cases. It would be a fairly rare exception for the scenario you present to occur. If these issues came up in your own process, that's one thing, but please don't project them onto the rest of us. Each couple is different. In our situation, I was accepted from the first weeks of our online communication and treated as family from the day I first arrived in China. At this moment, my wife is sleeping in her brother and sister in-laws bed. They turn their house over to us when we visit.

My impression of how the average Chinese views Americans is quite opposite yours but I've spent most of my time in Guangxi, where things may well be different than some other parts of China.

It was difficult for us to be apart during the process, even though I visited once about forty percent through it. I don't see that as any different because of China. Spouses and fiances living apart is difficult.

[justashooter 430]

chinese people don't often tell foreigners what they are experiencing or thinking when it would place the foreigner in a difficult position. to do so would only cause both the chinese person and the foreigner to "loose face". chinese have a way of being polite to foreigners, whether they like them, or not. i've seen it many times.

my grandfather said to me on his death bed that the only thing a man knows about his wife is what she is willing to tell him, and i've never forgotten those words. they are true no matter what country your wife is from, and should encourage a man to select a wife who often speaks her mind.

i would agree that my experience may be different from that which partners of coastal chinese face, but not in nature, only in degree.

[pushbrk 12,137]

chinese people don't often tell foreigners what they are experiencing or thinking when it would place the foreigner in a difficult position. to do so would only cause both the chinese person and the foreigner to "loose face". chinese have a way of being polite to foreigners, whether they like them, or not. i've seen it many times.

my grandfather said to me on his death bed that the only thing a man knows about his wife is what she is willing to tell him, and i've never forgotten those words. they are true no matter what country your wife is from, and should encourage a man to select a wife who often speaks her mind.

i would agree that my experience may be different from that which partners of coastal chinese face, but not in nature, only in degree.

Chinese views and foreigner's opinions about those views vary widely. So, generalizations don't really help much, do they?

In China, as in the USA, many people are wise enough to form their own opinions rather than rely on the government's party line as propagated through government controlled media.

Or, are the Chinese people with whom you associate exceptionally unwise?

[Melrose Plant 1]

I've always wondered why the Chinese have a much more negative view of Americans than the Vietnamese. After all, we went to war in Vietnam and killed a lot of people and destroyed a lot of stuff, poisoned the environment, etc. And if anything, the government in Vietnam is much more old school Communist than in China. Maybe the Vietnamese are just happy to finally be independent after 1000+ years of domination by foreigners, and they just don't care about the past?

[pushbrk 12,137]

I've always wondered why the Chinese have a much more negative view of Americans than the Vietnamese. After all, we went to war in Vietnam and killed a lot of people and destroyed a lot of stuff, poisoned the environment, etc. And if anything, the government in Vietnam is much more old school Communist than in China. Maybe the Vietnamese are just happy to finally be independent after 1000+ years of domination by foreigners, and they just don't care about the past?

These generalizations really do crack me up.

That aside, has it occurred to you that we actually fought in behalf of and on the same side as roughly half the Vietnamese population?

Contrary to some popular belief, many Chinese were in combat on the North's side in that war. I'll be having lunch with a retired PRC Army General in a few hours who was leading a large contingent doing just that. He's my father in-law.

Edited October 20, 2008 by pushbrk

[justashooter 430]

Chinese views and foreigner's opinions about those views vary widely. So, generalizations don't really help much, do they?

In China, as in the USA, many people are wise enough to form their own opinions rather than rely on the government's party line as propagated through government controlled media.

Or, are the Chinese people with whom you associate exceptionally unwise?

generalisations are valid when it comes to prejudice against Americans in china, but in varying degree. for 50 years America has been depicted by the chinese government as an enemy, though with different motive in different times. a repeatedly rendered chinese twist on recent history reads very different from reality.

in 1950 we were reviled publicly to garner support from the people for the growing alliance with russia. in 1960 the great famine was all America's fault because the terrible danger of American invasion forced the poorly managed conversion to industrialisation which resulted in famine. in 1970 we were anti-communists planning to bomb china, forcing the construction of many underground bomb shelters. by 1980 we had destroyed the chinese economy by forcing the split from russia and giving taiwan missiles. in 1990 we were ruining the world's economy, just when china was coming out of the dark agest. in 2000 Americans were only in china doing business so that they could steal chinese technology. these days Americans are only in china to bang young chinese girls (maybe, but middle aged married chinese men who can afford to are doing it much more frequently and openly).

each of these claims has some basis in fact (except the one about stealing technology), but the conclusion drawn by chinese propoganda has been wrong. most of these claims are based on marginal evidence, and are really more of a projection of chinese schema upon Americans to excuse the repeated failure of chinese government to care for it's own people. because this failure to act responsibly in the interest of the people continues to this day, a scapegoat remains a necessary part of the scenario. propoganda against America is that balancing "Z" factor in the equation which keeps china marginally stable.

occasionally visiting guangxi, you would be exposed to chinese people who frequently see and interact with foreigners. chinese who have this experience are forced to develop an awareness of reality, but still harbour the teachings of generations. how lucky you are to have an opportunity to help them form a new opinion.

living in the west central part of the country, i meet people every day who have never even seen a foreigner in person before. i was in the tang city section of luoyang yesterday and had a nice conversation in mixed english/louyanghua with a 12 year old girl. she wanted to touch my beard, because she had never seen a man with a beard before. she said that i was the first foreigner she had ever met.

300 million of an estimated 1.4 billion chinese live in cities, and the vast majority of these have never spoken to a foreigner. the remaining 1.1 billion, even less so.

[pushbrk 12,137]

Chinese views and foreigner's opinions about those views vary widely. So, generalizations don't really help much, do they?

In China, as in the USA, many people are wise enough to form their own opinions rather than rely on the government's party line as propagated through government controlled media.

Or, are the Chinese people with whom you associate exceptionally unwise?

generalisations are valid when it comes to prejudice against Americans in china, but in varying degree. for 50 years America has been depicted by the chinese government as an enemy, though with different motive in different times. a repeatedly rendered chinese twist on recent history reads very different from reality.

in 1950 we were reviled publicly to garner support from the people for the growing alliance with russia. in 1960 the great famine was all America's fault because the terrible danger of American invasion forced the poorly managed conversion to industrialisation which resulted in famine. in 1970 we were anti-communists planning to bomb china, forcing the construction of many underground bomb shelters. by 1980 we had destroyed the chinese economy by forcing the split from russia and giving taiwan missiles. in 1990 we were ruining the world's economy, just when china was coming out of the dark agest. in 2000 Americans were only in china doing business so that they could steal chinese technology. these days Americans are only in china to bang young chinese girls (maybe, but middle aged married chinese men who can afford to are doing it much more frequently and openly).

each of these claims has some basis in fact (except the one about stealing technology), but the conclusion drawn by chinese propoganda has been wrong. most of these claims are based on marginal evidence, and are really more of a projection of chinese schema upon Americans to excuse the repeated failure of chinese government to care for it's own people. because this failure to act responsibly in the interest of the people continues to this day, a scapegoat remains a necessary part of the scenario. propoganda against America is that balancing "Z" factor in the equation which keeps china marginally stable.

occasionally visiting guangxi, you would be exposed to chinese people who frequently see and interact with foreigners. chinese who have this experience are forced to develop an awareness of reality, but still harbour the teachings of generations. how lucky you are to have an opportunity to help them form a new opinion.

living in the west central part of the country, i meet people every day who have never even seen a foreigner in person before. i was in the tang city section of luoyang yesterday and had a nice conversation in mixed english/louyanghua with a 12 year old girl. she wanted to touch my beard, because she had never seen a man with a beard before. she said that i was the first foreigner she had ever met.

300 million of an estimated 1.4 billion chinese live in cities, and the vast majority of these have never spoken to a foreigner. the remaining 1.1 billion, even less so.

All interesting enough and I have no quarrel with accuracy but I see nothing in there that explains why you think your generalizations are helpful to anybody today in this forum. We all have our own experiences, as does each Chinese person. Each member here has an individual as prospect for or actual life partner. Most of the Chinese halves of those relationships live in cities, primarily in outer rather than inner regions and not the least of which, Nanning specifically.

Edited October 21, 2008 by pushbrk

[justashooter 430]

All interesting enough and I have no quarrel with accuracy but I see nothing in there that explains why you think your generalizations are helpful to anybody today in this forum. We all have our own experiences, as does each Chinese person. Each member here has an individual as prospect for or actual life partner. Most of the Chinese halves of those relationships live in cities, primarily in outer rather than inner regions and not the least of which, Nanning specifically.

my generalisations are value in varying degrees. a tiger is a kind of cat. a tabby is a kind of cat. they both kill to eat, if given the opportunity.

the relevance of my comments lay in increasing awareness of the difference between the typical American cognitive schema, and that of the typical chinese. we have opportunity to marry persons in all countries, thanks to the internet. from the nature of posts i've seen on this forum, it appears to me that most posters do not understand at a deeper level that foreigners do not think like we do. as a result, they are in for a suprise in marrying one. understanding the differences before signing on the dotted line is critical to success in the venture.

equality is a major feature of modern American marriage ideals, and the most difficult of all states to acheive. it is not considered normal in many countries people are selecting mates from. a chinese woman might be perfect for you, as women here tend to be very subservient, especially if they were born before 1980, having grown up in a culture in which such was expected. my chinese wife is also a good fit, because she expects me to have a traditional male role. that being said, i am creating opportunity for her to increase her status carefully, without destroying our balance.

young chinese women today are less subservient. they have learned that a "western" style relationship is possible, though problematic. not only do they watch subtitled Sex In The City, but they even have their own chinese version that is very popular in the mainland. from this kind of television programming they have learned that they have a right and expectation to reject men, with or without cause. unfortunately, most chinese girls in the city in which i live are married by 26, so the rejection comes out within the marriage, rather than without it.

so the sad news is, china will soon have as many unmarriageable women as America does, today.