This is the first time I've been to this city. However, since I don't want to use too much time describing subtle stuffs, let me cut this through and start talking about some impressions.
First, when I see those conductors on the bus, who don't sell tickets but just ask you to drop a coin, and those elevator drivers, or maybe captains or pilots or whatever you want to call them, I just think that for the first time I have seen a live and workable city in... Okay. This is not going to work. Let me rephrase it a little bit. The sphere of this city has greatly improved my confidence as being a Party member.
Second, service industry here seems to be undeveloped, and the service itself is not as good as in Southern China. Toilets in restaurants are not as clean as expected. There are no waiters handing towels to you after you washed your hand. Nobody cares about how long have you been waiting for your food. The worst situation - You walk in a store or a restaurant right after the service time is over, but there are still people working in it, they would just tell you, "We are closed". Maybe you would try to convince them that this wouldn't bring them any inconvenience, like "I just need...", and you would finally get convinced that you're really out of luck today.
Third, the whole city is really a huge parking lot during the rush hour. If you really got to travel during that time, you have two choices. One is that join the jam and get jammed; The other is that wait till the jam is over. No matter which you have chosen, your arrival time difference will be slight.
Although this city really has something that you can't find elsewhere, if you just want to have a modern life in China, there are still several choices out there, like Hong Kong or Canton.
These impressions are really true. I remember that when I was in Beijing in 2004, I couldn't understand conductors when they were reporting names of bus stops. It's too fast and vague. So I had to pay highly attention to names on bus stop boards, which made me quite nervous.
Anyway, it's much better than in Edmonton, or say, Canada. At least you can figure out your location by information printed on the board at bus stop in Beijing. In Canada, there is no conductor on bus, no place name reporting, no place name at bus stops, and what makes it worse, bus drivers won't stop if you do not press the "stop" button to inform him/her your destination. Therefore, for a new comer, like me, taking bus will be the easiest way to get lost. Till now, I have to double check the transit map before I go to some new places. :P
Yes, the service industry really sucks in Beijing. But I think as the Olympics are coming, this situation will be developed soon, at least for the big restaurants.
Well, you are in Haidian so you think it's really a messy, but Chaoyang is really better than haidian, IMO.
Anyway, I love Canton more than Beijing. It's not that cold at least.
I knew that Chaoyang District is better.
In Canton, districts are districts, because you can travel from one to another rapidly. But Chaoyang sounds like another satellite city to me. If I need to go there, I need to spend 2 to 3 hours just for nothing.
I don't have good impression onto Beijing, though it is our capital, so-called "The Heart Of China".
Once I was on a business trip in Beijing. I asked a Beijing old man for direction. However, he even told me a wrong direction. I could read his complaints in his mind. The local people (mostly the old Beijing citizens) seems not kind to the people coming from other places. They believe it is due to more and more non-natives flowing into and then makes Beijing so crowded. They don't know it is just the non-natives who, jointly with Beijing people, supported and constructed Beijing!
Yep. It seems usually people don't like those who live in the capital. When I chat with some guys in Canada, they don't like Ottawa's local either.
Don't hate the player; Hate the Game.
I don't hate local citizens. I said Happy New Year to elevator drivers, guards, and taxi drivers these days. The environment here is bad, and the political sphere is too political. But not a single citizen can change this.
Beijing's service industry is left behind Guangzhou's as much as 15 years. That's my personal experience during my 7day's visit to Beijing...
That's why most of the Cantonese's never been to Beijing, haha.
But... anyway, let the Olympics be there and "wait and watch", haha
Aw, yes... I don't know about other Cantonese, but I didn't have a very good first impression on Beijing. I blamed it for Beijing local people being rude to me back then. But after these years, I realized that mabye I have an unreasonablely higher expectation on Beijing simply because it is our capital city, and this is unfair. Anther reason is the language. Cantonese and Mandarin are "two languages". Even though we speak Putonghua, I believe there is a cultural barrier for us to understand Beijing dialect completely which might create misunderstanding.
Cat, I liked reading about these impressions. I didn't understand your second paragraph. Why do you say: "The sphere of this city has greatly improved my confidence as being a Party member"? Are you being serious or joking? :) Sorry I didn't understand.
In the expat community, there is a stereotype that expats that like Beijing are more sophisticated than those who like Shanghai. The expats in Beijing, according to this stereotype, are more sophisticated, more embracing of Chinese culture, more fluent at Chinese, etc. etc. The expats in Shanghai, on the other hand, are just focused on making money and having fun. Don't know if this is actually true or not, but it makes me as a foreigner want to like Beijing more than Shanghai.
Only problem is: I like Shanghai (and Hong Kong) more than Beijing! Beijing traffic is absolutely terrible, and I really hate sitting in traffic on the 3rd ring road watching the taxi meter go up and up and up. The city is also extremely big. I find that I often have to travel back and forth from Haidian to Chaoyang, and until Line 10 arrives, it just takes a long time even by Beijing Metro (Line 13 to Line 2 to Line 1). I really don't mind the crowds. But I hate the traffic. Shanghai and Hong Kong, on the other hand, are relatively compact cities with great transportation.
On the other hand, I love the feeling of brainpower coming from Zhongguancun. I love meeting with ambitious start up people and talented engineers. I love seeing all these people come from all over the place in China working together on challenging projects.
@Aw, @Chrisding, @Cat, are you guys all originally from Guangzhou or Guangdong? Are you guys objective or biased? Do Northerners also think Guangzhou is a city with great service? I personally like Guangzhou because my Cantonese is better than my Putonghua, so its easier for me to get around. But I'm curious if non Cantonese people also like it.
BTW, Cat, I think very few people use the term Peking in English these days, except maybe to refer to PKU (Beijing University), or Peking Duck! Yes, the Chinese government is doing a good job getting everyone outside to start using the standard pinyin versions of words!
What's the greatest wish of a Party member? I mean ideally. "The realization of communism", right? So the confidence is about the possibility of the realization. Got it?
I'm a born Cantonese, with a big family in Canton (and Hong Kong). People from other cities might think Guangzhou is too dangerous to live in. But if you watch CCTV News everyday, the whole country seems to be unimaginable safe. So, the impression depends on how mass media react to the dark side of the city.
Actually, there were also some local of Guangzhou complaining to me that how bad the security was. However, sometimes, I doubt it. A simple question is, assuming Guangzhou is really such a mess, why so many people are still live in there? :)
Maybe as a Wuhanese, sometimes, I also complain about the weather in Wuhan. But it's not such terrible. At least, I lived in there about 13 years and much more people stay in there longger. :P
I know many people searching with the keyword "Beijing" out there. Try search "Beijing Impression" and "Peking Impression" on Google, and you will know why I did this. I just want less attention, especially attention from this country.
Personally, I think I'm generally objective on this matter. As I have mentioned: this is just my personal view and is based on my visit to Beijing. The conclusion, that Beijing's service industry is left Behind Guangzhou's for about 15 years, in fact didn't came from me but from Beijing's local guide. My seven day's visit experience just proved it to be true.
This is just one aspect of a city. Still, Beijing is a great city. After all, she is our capital and has won the Olympic bid without any controversial. Also Beijing has great advantage in her cultural background. But even this field, Beijing is widely criticized for failing to preserve some of the most treasured sites. How to handle the conflict between modernization and cultural preservation is presently the biggest challenge for Beijing.
I was not born in Guangzhou but has lived here for more than a decade. Guangzhou was also criticized for failure in environment protection and road construction. We criticize because we want them to be better. My parents went to Beijing not long ago, witnessing Beijing's rapid change. Holding Olympic Game has really brought Beijing great change. But as the host, we surely put much attention on Beijing's service industry. Olympic Game just needs a totally commercialized Beijing. At the same time, criticism is indispensible because it's an important feedback system. All these, HAVE NOTHING TO DO with Geographical Assult.
At last, if I have a chance, I would like to visit Beijing once more^_^
Seems that most Ifgogoers are from Southern China. Well, I'm not.
I've been living in Shandong ever since I was born. Five years ago I went to Wuhan for my college study, and met lots of southerners there. Not a Pekingese myself, but I've been in Beijing so many times, and I know about what southerners think of Beijing. So in this topic, I have no objective or biased opinion. I just talk about the truth.
Beijing is a typical Chinese city, a typical city of Northern China as well. You may find Beijing ineffective, too crowded, maybe not so clean as well. But Beijing is a city full of "the milk of human kindness". That's what I like this city the most.
That's what I dislike the southerners the most. I don't mean anybody in particular, just a general impression of mine. People in Southern China always mind their own business, seldom care about others. Money is the most important thing in their life. I know money is very important, but when you make friends or talk about love, money is just something makes me feel awful about Southerners.
In Beijing, everybody talks about Politics, because people here care about what's going on in the country. They care about people outside Beijing, outside Northern China, even outside the country. The city is very traditional and compatible. The people in Beijing are honest and kind. They talk to you straightly, what they say is what's in their mind.
In Beijing, in Northern China, a woman will feel favored. Northern men are more androcentric, but also more generous. After five-years' living in Wuhan, I lost my expectation to live in Southern China for the rest of my life. I like Northern China much better, especially people in the north. When I finished my study in Wuhan, I want to come back to the north asap.
In one sentence, I like Beijing so much. Beijing is a city full of merits and flaws, but you'll love her eventually: )
It's not only about the money, but much more than that. It's about the culture. Just like the culture differences between eastern world and western world.
I think trade in money is better than trade under unspoken rules.
If you think the service is not as good as you expected, you have two ways to solve it. One by money, and the other by guanxi. In Northern China, money is not as useful as in Southern China, so you might find that you have only one choice left.
If I do something for money, I want my money after the deal is done. If I do something for free, I won't expect any direct return. If somebody tells me that, "Do this for me, and it will improve our guanxi", I would just say that, "It sounds like some kind of chips in my hands, and I want them cash out now!"
To Gijo:
"They care about people outside Beijing, outside Northern China, even outside the country."
Do they? Maybe they do not really care about others' life, but use it as a topic for chatting.
Chinese people are so eager to express themselves, and are so eager to control their own lives, but they just can't.
People, who really care politics, contribute their own effort to the change. People, who talk a lot about politics without taking an action, know how helpless they are.
Okay! Whatever! Back to what Gijo said.
Totally agree!
"People in Southern China always mind their own business, seldom care about others."
Gijo, this is somewhat offensive, I think, and will of course bring words against your argument. I don't want to say why southerners are better than northerners, because this is such a bad move just like what you have done. In fact, you got to be see the brighter side of the people you have met. If you can't see it, try to discover it.
Come to Canton, and see how mass media stand with grassroots instead of representing the authority. Both in Guangdong TV Station and Guangzhou TV Station, after the evening news there are grassroots news or grassroots shows. You can see, when people are confronted with different kind of daily problems, how they got help from others or from the government, or how the government failed their expectation. If you really want to know a true example about how well Cantonese mass media did, do some research around this blog post:
http://blog.wangjunyu.net/980
In you're in any of the Cantonese QQ Groups, you can see messages calling for donation and voluntary to the people stuch in Guangzhou Station these days. Thousands of volunteers from high schools and colleges are trying to help those who have contributed to the city development and cannot get home on time. Tencent, which is a Shenzhen based company, donated 500k to these people. If you want to see photos, check out this blog post:
http://blog.wangjunyu.net/976
In one sentence: Gijo, you just picked a wrong argument to express your love to the Northern China.
There's no need to regard Gijo's words as "a bit offensive" since I agree with her. Gijo is telling a truth, in a way we southerners don't want to hear. Obviously, Gijo didn't mean that Southerners totally don't care about others, but that Southerners CARE LESS THAN Northerners, which is a fact we can't ignore. And I'm sure some of us may also express similar words in a similar way, like“北京的服务态度差得要死”or“南方人就知道赚钱”(at least, I once expressed this sentence)... The fact is: you may not realize when you speak out while you may mind those words when you hear.
So what's different between my view and Gijo's? It's the way we look into this matter. While Gijo regarded this as a loss of the precious morality and social atmosphere, I regard it as an inevitable process of commercialization. To illustrate it, suppose the difference between Courtyard(Siheyuan) and apartment, and the change brought to neighborhood's relationship from this difference. To some extent, Guangzhou is more like Hong Kong and western world, no matter in the way the government runs, or in the way people socialize. In Hong Kong, you will find local people quite polite, but they keep an appropriate distance from each other and never care others in a way the Northerners do.
Turning to Beijing. People care much about relationship(renqing)，and this inevitablely brings bureaucracy when talking about government. Of course this situation also exists in Guangzhou. But I'm sure there's much less. I totally agree this sentence by Cat Chen: "I think trade in money is better than trade under unspoken rules."
As a good author, you definitely should mind what kind of emotion your audiences would develop after reading your words.
A Northern China businessman, who doesn't care about his customers, cares about his relatives and friends a lot. What does this mean? It means guangxi. If you don't know what's the difference between connection and guangxi, please read through this wikipedia page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guangxi
If this stays as a personal habit, that's fine. But if this becomes social expectation for every grown-up, it will finally lead to bureaucracy. If you're a total stranger to an administrative official, he wouldn't care about whether you enjoy his service, because he only cares about when he's serving his relatives and friends. And you can't even use money to change this, because he doesn't care your money either.
Sorry for the wrong wikipedia link. Here's the right one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guanxi
One more point adds to Yu Zhiding's opinion.
In the way of westernization, we learn how to respect other people's privacy. A northerner offers his help when he think help might be needed, with less concern of the privacy problem. If you don't accept the offer because of a privacy concern, that northerner might think this is just a push-and-pull routine, and insists on helping you. And finally, this might lead to embarrassing situation.
When a southerner needs help, he would just ask for help, so this becomes a contract between southerners. But asking for help seems to be somehow more impolite to the traditional Chinese culture, so here comes the conflict. Didn't get it? Remember when you were still a child, you mom brought you to a friend's house, and you asked the host for sweets. Your mom might tell you it's impolite to do so and said apologize for your "immature request" to the host. So, in the traditional Confucianism ideal, nobody makes request, and everybody keeps guessing others' requests and then try to make an offer.
But in Southern China, we just don't live in this Confucianism way. You can make requests, as long as they're reasonable. This helps make things clear, because you say it. You say that we can help you with this, without causing any privacy concern, and that's great. And if you say that this is trade, that's great too. Now we have a obvious deal, with no more unspoken rules.
@Gijo,
I really appreciate your expressing your opinion freely. Yes, I have met some Beijingers who have been caring, warm, humorous, and straightforward. One of my best friends from China is from Beijing and represents some of the best values of Beijingers and Chinese people in general. I also feel Beijing is an exciting place for people who are involved in technology! In these companies, there are Chinese people from all provinces working together on challenging problems. Anyway, thanks again for expressing your honest opinions, and please continue to do that because it makes the ifgogo.com community stronger! I look forward to reading your blog posts and comments!
@CatChen,
Thank you also for refuting Gijo's argument with some good data points. I have another. We met with Andrew Yu, the founder of a non-profit called 1kg.org. He left his secure career as an engineer to give away books and school supplies to schools in small villages in China. Here is a link to the 1kg interview with Andrew Yu on our CN Reviews blog. He happens to be Cantonese as well, and doesn't seem to care about money as much as he cares about these rural children! I would like to find ways to support his effort more, and we will be putting a donation button on our blog soon.