All About China > Your trip to China

China Trip 5.0

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brett:
Hi Guys,

Thought I'd drop by to see how you guys were doing.

The old guard might remember me - I was quite active here back in 2009, until it all crashed and burned :(

One day I thought it might be a good idea to find a Chinese wife, so I signed up to Chnlove, met a girl I liked, then went to visit her in Wuhan.

Well seriously I had bitten off way more than I could ever chew!

So Miss Woo entered my life, turned it upside down them went off to marry a rich American dude with 6 cars. My world ended for a few months, but she was confined to history the day I dated a gorgeous curly haired Japanese girl.

Since then... well I have gone on to have a truly momentous couple of years.

Anyway, I had some great help from this board at the time. Maybe I drove a few guys mad, but we really were pioneers at the time. It's still very rare for Chinese women to marry foreigners. Still, at least my Chnlove girl actually existed, and I had a truly extraordinary time visiting her.

Back then, Willy's adventures living in China stuck a chord. And I began to realise that trying to look for a wife in a 2 week vacation was just not possible.

So here I am...

Earlier this year, I quit my job, sold most of my possessions and I am now living in China.

I've been in Guangzhou for 2 months now, and I'm loving every minute of it!

Why Guangzhou? My first visit to China was to Wuhan, and I really didn't like that city. There was nothing to do there really, and I kept getting sick all the time.

By contrast, Guangzhou is an amazing city, and most foreigners who come here love the place. It's a shame I didn't come here on my first visit to China. In fact I nearly did back in 2009, but Miss Woo couldn't find a train ticket, so I ended up visiting her in Hubei instead.

I visited Guangzhou twice in 2011. Now I am a resident here.

So what am I doing here?

As you guys might have found out, it's really hard to get a Chinese visa now. Since the government here changed, they've really cracked down.

Your best options for a long term stay are to come here as a student, or to come here with a job offer.

I chose to enrol here as a student at a University, and I'm learning Mandarin. I have 10x 80 minute classes a week from 3 different teachers. The cost is around 9000RMB a semester (2 per year).

By being a student I've been able to rent a pretty cheap 2 bedroom student apartment (1200RMB/month excl. bills). By comparison most apartments here are 3000-5000RMB/month, although they're mostly 2-3 bedroom places. Most apartments here are quite big, and designed for families.

My apartment is quite basic, and the Chinese WC doesn't even have a flush. I'm also fighting a constant battle with the wildlife. Who knew cockroaches could fly? Yikes!!! Also the mosquitoes that come down from the mountain are also the biggest I've ever seen. They find ever more creative ways of sneaking into my apartment, and I've caught at least one hiding in my shopping bag.

If you don't want to study, then demand for English teachers here is very high. I've turned down all job offers so far - learning Mandarin is hard enough work, and so is finding ladies to date. Plus working on a student visa is not recommended.

As far as ladies go, I've met quite a few now. Last week was a watershed moment, because my Mandarin was better than the girl's English.

Current frontrunner is Miss Xiang. She is a princess for sure, but now I'm here I can take my time and woo the most desirable ladies of all.

I am very impressed with the quality of lady I've met in China now. Every lady has been a graduate, and most have spoke fluent English. A couple have also been very wealthy, so they're not marrying for money. Most ladies I've met have have been Cantonese or from Hunan.

One interesting factoid is that in 2 months here I've seen less than a dozen foreigners with Chinese wives/girlfriends. Dating a foreigner here is still groundbreaking, and very novel.

As to my own future, well I feel like a refugee from the UK. Reading the news from home is often a depressing experience. Additionally, given how hard it is to get a marriage visa for a foreign spouse, I might end up just living here instead. And of course it cuts out any visa hunters. Not that I've met too many of them.

Anyway, if any of you guys are thinking of living here for a while... just do it!

Every day is action packed here. Today my friend and I went to a Chinese singles party! 150 single Chinese girls and I was the only foreigner. And it didn't cost us a single RMB.

But this is China, so there had to be some chaos thrown in of course! Coming back home, the bus got stuck in traffic. Fortunately the bus driver let us out, and we went in search of a metro station. So we were walking through 3 lanes of traffic like people routinely do in China, and at one point I got my umbrella caught on the roof of a moving bus... yikes. To make matters worse all this took place in a good old traditional Guangzhou thunderstorm! Anyway, in the rush to get out of the rain and avoid ruining my shoes I jumped out of the road and ended up standing in wet cement!!! Only in China...

Maybe tomorrow I'll return to see what I ruined!

Anyway, if any of you guys are thinking of coming here and need assistance then I'll be only to happy to help. I'm living in Baiyun district and I'm only 20 minutes from the airport. I also know a long list of good hotels, English translators and of course single ladies! I also know the city pretty well and can tell you where to buy anything from an Alligator to Heinz Baked Beans. The majority of Western expats don't dare come up to this part of the city, but if you do venture here, well the ladies are out of this world  :-*.

And if you have any questions about what it's like to live here, ask away...

Pineau:
Hey brett,
Guangzhou is a mixed bag. For me it was fun for a while but the Guangzhou men drove me crazy.  I lost my temper more and more often the longer I stayed there.  I still miss it. I love the shopping and most of all the girl watching. I made a lot of friends there and was sad to say good bye but I just could not live there.

Damned right they can fly. they can carry off a potato if your silly enough to leave it out. And they are aggressive  if you piss them off. The bigger ones will charge you if you spray them with poison. I kept a large can of RAID in the kitchen and another in the bathroom.

I recommend getting yourself a mosquito net.  It made a world of difference to me. otherwise they will eat on you all night long. and wake you up when they make a strafing run across your face and land in your ear.  Not much can be done about them though during the day they hide just about anywhere and come out in the evening before bed.  You can find mosquito zappers all over Guangzhou but most don't attract them. I think they use the wrong color of light.  The best and most fun thing for them is the hand held zapper. Sort of looks like a tennis racket   is electrified. If you mange to hit one he burst into flames.  (brings a whole new meaning to the term "payback" ) . You can buy them every where.

Another form of wildlife you probably have not met yet is the monster spiders and the nocturnal lizards. One night I heard a commotion in the bedroom and could see the silhouette of something running across the wall. When I turned on the light there was one of these monster spiders chasing a lizard on the wall. Well I killed the spider (scared to death) and the lizard ran away without so much as a thank you.  I know there are more spiders lurking in the house. At least one behind the wardrobe, because sometimes at night I can hear him munching and crunching on a roach.

If your in Baiyun you can probably get supplies from Walmart which is in Wanda Plaza shopping mall lower level.  (the locals call it O-a-Mar)

If you can read Chinese or have the patience to brows with a  translator you can get just about anything you want at http://www.amazon.cn/   (Amazon.com ).  They have a distribution warehouse in Guangzhou and most things are delivered within 1-2 days.   ( I bought an electric oven from them one evening and it was sitting on my doorstep the next morning before breakfast.) You are almost guaranteed that what you buy there is much better quality than what you can find on the sidewalks of GZ and there is a return policy you wont find elsewhere in China. 
Wanda plaza has mosquito nets but amazon.cn are cheaper.

Maybe you already know but if you want to know where all the good wholesale shopping is let me know. Clothes, jewelry, watches, telephones and electronics.

I hope you still feel the same way a year from now. I will come check on you and see if you are still alive in a few months.

shaun:
 :o :o ??? :o :o :-\ :-X

Willy The Londoner:
Hi Brett

I am glad you made my little secret public.   There have been people who have asked about you in the past but until you came out of the closet today,  so to speak, I had not breathed those three little words - Brett Is Back! ::)

Now your here then I am sure we all look forward to hearing in lucid detail how you find Chinese life when actually living here and having to fend for yourself. Well at least for the moment.

Well as I said the other day, get some time away from Uni and you can and make use of our spare room and see just how married life is for a foreigner in China.

Willy

brett:
Hi Guys,

About the bugs, yes I got a mosquito tent for my bed, and I put a net up on the door. One mosquito did go inside the tent though! And yes, the electrified tennis racquet is absolutely the best thing for dealing with bugs - it's very satisfying to see them meet a fiery end. Last night in the Pizza place a girl was even using one to beat a huge moth to death.

I'm learning to be patient here, really patient. I don't let it bother me when Chinese people try and push in front of me to be the first to enter/leave the metro/bus.

Actually it's the Arabs here who have been the biggest nuisance so far. One tried to make money off me within an hour of my meeting him, and another one wanted to borrow a load of money  :(.

Naturally I know about the wholesale markets. I can pretty much tell which part of downtown I'm in by what the stores are selling. The markets are potentially a way of making a lot of money, but to be honest a lot of stuff here is just junk, and if you sent a container of duff merchandise to Europe you could be bankrupted. For example my new pair of shoes I bought here only lasted 6 days, and they weren't that cheap either!

The European/US markets for Chinese goods are pretty saturated anyway. Most foreign traders here are Russian/African or from the Middle East.

Most of the students at my University buy stuff online - so much stuff arrives they have a permanent collection point outside one of the dorms. It's actually hard to buy stuff out of the ordinary in stores here. Most stores sell the same old stuff. Rich people buy their stuff in Grandbuy, poor people use a local supermarket. Grandbuy sell slow cookers for 600RMB, I paid 48RMB for mine in the local supermarket. Of course if you want to buy a puppy or a rabbit or a turtle then you can find them for sale in the many unofficial street markets here.

And yes, the girl watching is great. I'll never get tired of that. There's a shopping district 20 minutes from my apartment that's packed with fashion stores and they attract the most fashionable ladies imaginable.

I guess I could go mad here, but then I already knew that from my previous two vacations here. If I find a girl and we set up home together then maybe we'll live out of town, or go to Singapore or HK for a while. There are also some attractive cities along the coast which is another option.

I've been to Shenzhen already. The border with HK is crazy, but from what I've seen the rest of the city it is much cleaner than Guangzhou. Like for example their buses have carpets! There are also a lot more single ladies looking for foreign husbands, but they tend to work long hours and it's hard to schedule dates.

As for stores, I have so many stories already. Highlights have included the class trip to the body check clinic (for the visa), being caught downtown when a monstrous thunderstorm turned day into night and the rain ruined my shoes, plus of course the walks through the 3rd world on the way to the metro station here.

And of course it's great to experience life in a Chinese University. As far as I am aware I am only one of three Brits studying here. More guys should enroll - 80% of the students are girls!

P.S. I'll come and visit you again Willy and see how your Mandarin and your wife's English is progressing!!!!

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