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Magna Kaser posted:Something else you have to realize is that many of these sites, even if they load, will not let you buy things from China due to licensing issues. Also GOG doesn't give Steam keys so what's the point
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Aug 8, 2013 03:00
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Also important to understand that western sites will randomly slow down and time out and stop working for 5-10 minutes because the Chinese government/internet industry complex wants to keep people from using western web services even if they're not blocked.
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Aug 8, 2013 03:51
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How often is gmail shutdowns an issue in China? I'm not going to spring for a vpn for a week-long trip, but if I need a throwaway address with a "friendly" provider, what is one that'll work for sure? I gotta be able to send along indesign docs to the home office.
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Aug 8, 2013 03:57
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Eat This Glob posted:How often is gmail shutdowns an issue in China? I'm not going to spring for a vpn for a week-long trip, but if I need a throwaway address with a "friendly" provider, what is one that'll work for sure? I gotta be able to send along indesign docs to the home office. Shutdowns? Infrequently. Severe degredation of service? Every other day or so. I think it has to do with the automated features of the firewall and the integration of non-blocked Google services with blocked ones (logging in to Gmail will sometimes redirect to Youtube's login system, for example). Basically, a website with lots of links to a blocked site may be sporadically blocked. For instance, the Council of East Asian Libraries main site has a lot of Blogspot links, which are blocked, and is itself blocked on occasion.
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Aug 8, 2013 04:07
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Eat This Glob posted:How often is gmail shutdowns an issue in China? I'm not going to spring for a vpn for a week-long trip, but if I need a throwaway address with a "friendly" provider, what is one that'll work for sure? I gotta be able to send along indesign docs to the home office. Gmail will work fine, but Google Docs is blocked.
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Aug 8, 2013 04:33
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So day 3 of flat hunting in Shenzhen was far better. Luckily the school's HR department have a lot of experience working with one agent who was pretty good and even had some pigeon English. Yesterday we got shown around nicer flats for decent money compared to the first two days. The agent even managed to knock off 100RMB of my rent and took us got for dinner (Least he could do considering in 3 days he has gotten himself like 7 commissions) Being a retailer agent in China seems sweet, half a months rent in commission is not bad for basically showing us where it is, opening the door and explaining the contract to the landlord. So for 5500 I am in a nice little garden place in Futian with 2 bedrooms and it has a supermarket on the ground floor which will keep me going. The place has a pool (50 RMB a swim and its only open afternoons, a gym which is basic as but very cheap compared to anywhere else and nice outdoor equipment like basketball hoops, body building equipment/monkey bars, table tennis etc) Landlords are strange here already had a couple who didn't want to rent to foreigners due to the paperwork and were expecting me to carry around the full deposit with me. 2 months rent as a deposit plus half a months rent for the agent plus your first months rent upfront is steep when you have just got here. Think in total I looked at about 30-40 places and would say I only liked about 4 of them.
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Aug 8, 2013 05:02
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tacoman165 posted:Also GOG doesn't give Steam keys so what's the point What? Anyway, I own like 67 games on GOG so it would be cool to know I can download them from within China, or if I should download the ones I'm likely to play in the next 12 months or so before I ship myself on over. The general vibe in this thread is that torrenting everything is the norm, so I'll likely cancel the Netflix account rather than hassle with it, predownload a bunch of games on Steam, and I'll have a PS3, 3DS and PSP with me anyway, so I don't think I will find myself short of media to consume nor electronic entertainment to while away the hours. As for the stuff I'm actually excited about going to Shanghai for... I'm really keen on checking out the surfing on Hainan. Anyone been down there before? It's a +/- 3 hour flight and you can get a return ticket for like $150. Then there are flights to Indonesia return for like £350 (I haven't done the conversions of these to RMB yet) via Kuala Lumpur, and of course Hong Kong and Taiwan are a short and inexpensive flight from Shanghai as well. Until I get burned out I'm hoping to do a couple of weekend trips a month before it gets too cold to enjoy, and then a few more next year too. I'm going to try learn Mandarin to the point where I can at least ask and understand basic stuff - let's see how long that takes. My new employer has an in-house teacher who does lessons paid for by the company a couple times a week, and then can also do additional lessons in our own time if we want. I'll see how expensive it works out, and how good of a teacher she is - might stick with it for the convenience, unless a Shanghai/former Shanghai goon has a recommendation of a good teacher in or near Jing'An? BadAstronaut fucked around with this message at 13:43 on Aug 8, 2013 |
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Aug 8, 2013 09:57
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Shanghai goons! We have Western Chinese food! New place just opened up called Fortune Cookie that offers Kung Pao Chicken. It even comes in the paper box cartons with a fortune cookie. It was packed with a bunch of Brits, but I'm sure the Americans will find it soon.
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Aug 8, 2013 13:15
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I'll be a Shanghai goon in 6-8 weeks... what street is this on?
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Aug 8, 2013 13:40
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JimBobDole posted:New place just opened up called Fortune Cookie that offers Kung Pao Chicken. Unless there's two things going by that name, that's authentic Chinese Chinese.
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Aug 8, 2013 13:50
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Its probably not chock full of random bones.
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Aug 8, 2013 14:26
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General Tsao's beef, chop suey, fried rice in that white "Have a nice day" carton, I saw it as Chinese food you'd find on the corner of any suburban American town. It's not Chinese-Chinese at all. It's on Changshu Lu near Julu Lu. Same building Piro is in.
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Aug 8, 2013 14:35
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That's not too far south of where I'll be working, if Google Maps is to be believed. Do you live close to your place of work? I'm hoping to cut down on the commute if I can, but not really sure if Jing'An is a good place to live?
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Aug 8, 2013 14:47
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ally_1986 posted:So day 3 of flat hunting in Shenzhen was far better. 5500 a month? I don't know what your job is, but that seems a little high... is it just you in that place? And 50 RMB a swim? That must be a glorious pool because holy poo poo. Then again maybe I'm just out of touch with the cost of living in Shenzhen.
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Aug 8, 2013 15:08
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Yeah it depends what his job is. Shenzhen is pricier than most places in China, though. The cheapest apartment you'd probably see a white guy living in would probably run around 2500 a month, but for a corporate dude on the full expat package it's pretty common to be 10-20 thousand per month or more. My old Chinese teacher had a student here renting an apartment for 70,000 rmb per month lol
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Aug 8, 2013 15:19
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I find 70,000rmb a month to be greater than lol. More like fantasy, possibly even sci fi. A lot of the decent-ish places I have looked at in Jing'An come anywhere from 5000 upwards, with a lot of the nicer places being high 6000-8000, and then you start going over that and again you're paying lolmoney. I don't really know what is a decent amount of rent to pay in this area, and I don't really know if I am earning particularly well as I have no idea of average incomes in Shanghai for people doing my kind of work. It's definitely a hell of a lot more than I used to make in 
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Aug 8, 2013 15:23
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BadAstronaut posted:I find 70,000rmb a month to be greater than lol. More like fantasy, possibly even sci fi. Jingan is one of the more expensive areas of Shanghai.
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Aug 8, 2013 15:57
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BadAstronaut posted:predownload a bunch of games on Steam Steam works fine in China. There's even a Beijing server that I got good download speeds on in the middle of China with the 2nd to 3rd slowest Internet in China. You'll need a VPN to buy things but downloading is not an issue. Even poo poo that's banned in China, like Hearts of Iron, can be downloaded no problem. Also, your 3DS eShop won't work and good luck finding games. Most the games are Japanese or the Chinese region. I'd leave the 3DS at home unless you only want to play what you bring with you. EDIT: Occasionally you'll find a US game, more so in BJ and SH. The selection will be limited though and the prices will be higher than US retail. I'm also assuming you have an EU 3DS. RocknRollaAyatollah fucked around with this message at 16:12 on Aug 8, 2013 |
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Aug 8, 2013 16:05
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Magna Kaser posted:Jingan is one of the more expensive areas of Shanghai. Also one of the weirder parts... where convoys of GL8s shuttle white people to and fro, and everyone is somehow incapable of doing anything for themselves.
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Aug 8, 2013 16:07
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RocknRollaAyatollah posted:Also, your 3DS eShop won't work and good luck finding games. Most the games are Japanese or the Chinese region. I'd leave the 3DS at home unless you only want to play what you bring with you. Aww, that's kinda lovely. Thing is I've got about 10 games in all, both 3DS and unplayed DS games I want to get through, so that will be more than enough to bring with me. Plus I'll probably be back to the UK at least once next year to pick up something else if I'm dying for more Nintendo action (or to just sell the system and be done with it if they decide not to localise the Dragon Quest VII remake).
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Aug 8, 2013 16:10
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There used to be more US region stuff but China just got it's own 3DS. They're supposed to be getting a PS3 release soon, if they haven't already. PS3 works great by the way. PSN has no issues and there is no region locking except for PSOne titles and the rare PS3 title like Persona 4 Arena. You can even get games cheaper than US retail at launch in English but that's mainly in BJ where competition reigns supreme and the market isn't inflated by cash flush expats throwing down ridiculous money.
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Aug 8, 2013 16:16
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You're basically going to have to just get a flash cart and pirate games. I never saw a DS game in China because they would just offer to hook you up with a flash cart. Even when you try to buy a PS3 game at the store, they will tell you, "I can mod your PS3 for you instead and put all these games on it." Piracy in China is done without a second thought making "real games" or "real movies" pretty sparse and overpriced. Vocab for this: 正版 - Zheng4ban3. Legit copy. 盗版 - Dao4ban3. Pirated copy. If you say you want to buy any form of software, they will usually assume you mean a pirated one. Sometimes they may ask, 你要盗版还是正版的？ Pirated movies are usually complete poo poo quality, like 320p screencaps.
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Aug 8, 2013 16:17
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Sounds a hell of a lot like Indonesia, actually, where you can buy DS carts with hundreds of games - I guess these are ready made flash carts or something. And the movies are a gamble - you can get a lovely cam version or a high qualityDVD rip or a 'Courtesy of...' screener, and it's just a roll of the dice really...
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Aug 8, 2013 16:23
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systran posted:You're basically going to have to just get a flash cart and pirate games. I never saw a DS game in China because they would just offer to hook you up with a flash cart. Even when you try to buy a PS3 game at the store, they will tell you, "I can mod your PS3 for you instead and put all these games on it." Piracy in China is done without a second thought making "real games" or "real movies" pretty sparse and overpriced. Ni3 yao4 dao4ban3 hai2shi zheng4ban3 de? Do you want a pirated or a legit copy? Put some pinyin with your hanzi. Not everyone can read or write Chinese in this thread, especially the new people. Flashcarts don't work on the 3DS as well and will possibly brick it. They did for a short time but patching and a change to the Nintendo EULA has pretty much told people who even do homebrew to get hosed.
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Aug 8, 2013 16:24
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It's cool, I won't be shy of games with what I'm bringing over with me - a new PSP collection, my existing DS/3DS library and of course my Steam and GOG catalogues. I will get by without a flashcart... ...for now.
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Aug 8, 2013 16:31
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systran posted:Pirated movies are usually complete poo poo quality, like 320p screencaps. They are all literally just DVD burns of whatever's up on the torrents now. If the only thing out is a lovely cam, then that's what'll get burned. It made sense back in like the "256k dsl is super fast" days, when people still used the national 56k dialup system. But now, unless you feel like watching some obscure Chinese movies (which are all probably up on tudou/funshion/youku/pptv) then DVDs are just stupid and pointless. Hell, it's been like forever since the days when they were literally everywhere on the streets. Still some stragglers, but it's pointless. Ditto for games and pretty much all software, it's all just coming from torrents. If it's a bad copy, you just grab a different one, rather than trying to track down the seller and try to trade after the DVD magically works in their crappiest dvd player ever, but fails entirely in yours. Not to mention the clutter that builds up over time and the fact that just buying another hard drive to add to the stack is gonna end up cheaper than blank DVDRs. edit: just get an HTPC when you get here, they are stupidly cheap and you'll be a happy camper
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Aug 8, 2013 16:37
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I wonder how China will ever develop a domestic software industry. MK probably knows about this kind of thing.
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Aug 8, 2013 16:50
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Isn't he moving here to work as a game developer? This whole conversation is entertaining.
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Aug 8, 2013 17:05
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China actually has a decent number of domestic success stories for mobile, not to mention companies like Tencent which are absolutely gargantuan. I think software is the one place China has really already had a lot of success outside of making things for cheap. If China and the Chengdu government have their way Chengdu will become the next silicon valley. As I understand it, Chengdu is essentially a SEZ but for software and tech stuff specifically. It doesn't seem like a week goes by without some big firm opening an office here. Microsoft, Cisco, IBM and Ubisoft to name a few have non-trivial offices here now. The combination of a decent and well educated IT workforce combined with the ability to pay foreign workers a lot less than you would in the Bay area seems to be attracting more and more big players.
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Aug 8, 2013 17:30
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ReindeerF posted:Isn't he moving here to work as a game developer? This whole conversation is entertaining. Working for a games company, but not as a developer. What are you finding so entertaining?
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Aug 8, 2013 18:19
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That much of the discussion for the last few posts is about pirated games. I don't find this controversial living in the region, just entertaining. On a related note, I wonder if the Chinese gaming companies steal foreign gaming IP as studiously as Chinese heavy industry steals that kind of IP. I don't mean copying discs, I mean absconding with the IP internal to development. EDIT: "so" entertaining would be overstating. In the SE Asia thread we have a guy who is lugging giant infected balls around to various quacks who keep mud diagnosing him, so there are levels to this stuff. ReindeerF fucked around with this message at 18:36 on Aug 8, 2013 |
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Aug 8, 2013 18:23
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ReindeerF posted:That much of the discussion for the last few posts is about pirated games. I don't find this controversial living in the region, just entertaining. I think the infected balls story it's fucken classic. Got to find this thread. I'm actually going to be working for an international company that has an office in China with a bunch of developers based there. I'm going to be on the marketing side of operations. It's also a free to play title so that's maybe something that suits China better. I dunno. Plenty to learn on a lot of fronts.
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Aug 8, 2013 22:08
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I've been in Shanghai since Monday, the 5th, visiting friends and my stay has been very tame. They promised me to show me around and take me places but we haven't done much since they are busy with work. We are going on a one day trip to Nantong tonight but I will be in China until the 19th and I was hoping to do more touring around. Does anyone have any recommendations on any tour groups I could sign up with that does business out of Shanghai I could partake in for a few days next week? I'm hoping to tour Beijing, Guangzhou, etc. Thank you.
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Aug 9, 2013 00:02
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You could take the high speed rail to Beijing and just do a few days yourself based out of a decent hostel. All the hostels will be able to help you get to the Great Wall, and you can walk to the Forbidden City, Tiananmen, and easily shuttle around to Temple of Heaven, Summer Palace all by yourself. I had been in China for less than a month and I made a trip to Beijing to do all this stuff, so it's not like you need some overwhelming grasp on the language. Just be wary of Every Single Chinese Person You Meet and you'll be fine.
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Aug 9, 2013 00:22
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I'm Chinese! Nobody in Maine thinks I speak English Hit up your local goons they are a fun bunch. Afro ninja and gang in Shanghai, a a people's liberation army battalion in Beijing caberham fucked around with this message at 00:34 on Aug 9, 2013 |
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Aug 9, 2013 00:28
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Yea especially in the touristy areas of Beijing cause you will be an easy mark walking around by yourself speaking no Chinese. If a Chinese person (girl, it's always a girl if you're a dude) comes up to you randomly and starts talking they are probably trying to get money from you in some way.
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Aug 9, 2013 00:29
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BadAstronaut posted:Working for a games company, but not as a developer. What are you finding so entertaining? Way to put words in my mouth! One of the "good" things about being at such a small studio is I do take part in all game design and concept stuff. I also do a lot of Chinese-speaking since most of the management staff isn't bilingual. ReindeerF posted:That much of the discussion for the last few posts is about pirated games. I don't find this controversial living in the region, just entertaining. IP is getting to be a weirder and weirder thing. You can see crap like CF (Began as a CS Source clone, now I think it's evolved into something totally different) as what seems to be the last of an era. There used to be so much of this stuff, even as recently as a few years ago you could see people playing weird not-quite War3/SC2 games and pretty blatant Diablo stuff. Since the rise of free to play, this market has sort of died off. Also, League of Legends is essentially a Chinese IP at this point as Tencent owns Riot. What I kind of miss is weird old single player RPGs hacked out of the Baldur's Gate II engine that used to be around, mainly coming out of Taiwan. I played through a few and they weren't really that bad. And don't forget the Chinese classic fighting game, Dong Dong Never Die.
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Aug 9, 2013 00:35
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JimBobDole posted:General Tsao's beef, chop suey, fried rice in that white "Have a nice day" carton, I saw it as Chinese food you'd find on the corner of any suburban American town. It's not Chinese-Chinese at all. I'm aware that kung pao chicken exists in both markets, and that fortune cookies are American. But if you want to be like "hey guys check out this totally foreign Chinese food," leading with a totally domestic menu item kind of makes the presentation fall flat.
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Aug 9, 2013 02:33
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Busy Bee posted:I've been in Shanghai since Monday, the 5th, visiting friends and my stay has been very tame. They promised me to show me around and take me places but we haven't done much since they are busy with work. We are going on a one day trip to Nantong tonight but I will be in China until the 19th and I was hoping to do more touring around. Does anyone have any recommendations on any tour groups I could sign up with that does business out of Shanghai I could partake in for a few days next week? I'm hoping to tour Beijing, Guangzhou, etc. Thank you. What GBM said, Get a fast train or cheap flight to Beijing. Stay in s hostel, nearly all of them will have tours to most of the places you wanna go or you can make a new friend and go by foot to a lot of the places. Meet up with some cool BJ goons and have them show you around a bit. Seriously do it, a 3 day trip would satisfy your urge and your friends wouldn't have to worry too much. Nothing to really see in Guangzhou, but I'd highly recommend Xi'an.
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Aug 9, 2013 02:34
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I've cooked some american chinese food for my girlfriend before without telling her what it was. She basically just considered it chinese food that she hadn't seen before and liked it, although when I told her it was american chinese food it suddenly made more sense. e: I like Guangzhou, what do you mean there's nothing to see? Are you talking only about world famous landmarks and tourist attractions?
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Aug 9, 2013 02:36
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