Life in the fast lane

In China much is based on appearance. Although it is similar at home, it really is on a whole new level here and hard to adjust too. It was explained to me by a few Chinese people I have met along the way that status is exceptionally important but so is privacy. Rather than being intrusive and asking personal questions about what a person does they just show everyone. Through clothing, jewelry, hair styles, what you own and whatever else it is very obvious here what socioeconomic status people fit into.

One of my friends that I met here used to go to the zoo and rent a dog for an hour. They had a selection of dogs to choose from, brought in from many different countries. You would pick your dog and go into a gated area and walk it in a circle for an hour or two. This was a big thing for Chinese people because only the richest people could afford dogs here (the bigger the dog this richer the person because they would have to have a bigger house to keep the dog in). She said this was really special because dogs were so rare here so not only did she get to feel what it was like to have and walk a dog, she also got to feel rich for the hour, and take many pictures to show her friends. It was so interesting for me to hear about this.

A Chinese couchsurfing host of mine is a teacher and she was teaching a class on happiness the other day. She said any time she teaches this class the first automatic answer is money which usually is in the form of owning a house and a car. It is typical that the top five answers or so are based around financial position and then they move on to feelings, love, respect in the community, family, etc. This is one of the reasons Chinese like foreigners so much. Traveling is a huge sign of money for them so they believe every person visiting from another country has a lot of money themselves. What they don’t necessarily realize is that Chinese people have the hardest time out of anywhere to receive a traveling visa. Among an endless list of requirements is the sheer fact that you need to own a house or a business with at least 50 000 down on it before the Chinese government would even consider letting them leave the country. So for them traveling is the ultimate sign of money and position and for those who cant afford it they love to dream away about foreign lands and fill their ears or eyes with people from afar.

Beijing has grown and changed an exceptional amount in the past ten years. It is almost unrecognizable. Every skyscraper and tall apartment has been built within the last dozen years; only a decade ago Beijing was still a countryside looking city. My friend was talking about how fast things would change here. She said one day cells phones came out and they were huge bricks only for the rich and overnight the small ones hit the street and every single person owned them. Can you imagine things changing that fast, literally! One day they would tear down a community and literally the next day there would be a park with green grass and a playground on the property. For the Olympics they were told they had to build a whole new underground subway line that goes across the entire city in less than six months and they did it! That is unheard of, a whole freakin subway line! When my friends parents bought their first home they paid 5000 rmb for a two bedroom apartment (which is only about 800 dollars), today they could sell it for over 500 000 rmb now and they have only owned it for 15 years! The growth here is amazing and truly unbelievable, it has been my favorite fascinating topic of conversation with the local Beijingers.

Life here moves at lightning pace and it is quite interesting to learn about but as for keeping up I think I can count myself out on that one!