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Aero737 posted:I don't know. I went three years working on a Z/residence permit and until now I have never paid anything in taxes or social insurance. Never had any issue with renewals. It's all provincial. My university handles my tax in bulk because the local taxation authority went "duuhhhh foreigner?" when they asked how my tax record should be processed. In places where the social security system has been implemented though, you could very well have a problem. Literally, nobody actually knows what the gently caress is going on outside BJ, SH and GZ at this point and it is loving hilarious.
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May 13, 2014 03:58
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GuestBob posted:It's all provincial. My university handles my tax in bulk because the local taxation authority went "duuhhhh foreigner?" when they asked how my tax record should be processed. The first response from the local "legal expert" was, "Don't worry about it. The government doesn't want foreigners contributing to social security." Unfortunately, now I know more about Chinese social security taxation than I ever wanted to know, including details around employee/employer contribution splits, the 5 different types of insurance, minimum/maximum multiplier caps, and per-province average wages. You can calculate your required contribution here. It's a national law, but implemented on a provincial basis. The Tier 1's rolled it out in 2011/2012, and it looks like it's going to the smaller cities, because here's a 2013 news report about 300 foreigners in Xi'an paying for the first time. It's an unpleasant surprise, an additional cost, and I don't ever expect to use any of the insurance being bought.
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May 13, 2014 08:14
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I am not trolling you when I say that you simultaneously know more and less about Chinese taxation than you need to. This is true of almost all administrative and legal processes in China. When I first came to China I thought everything was done on a nod and a wink, then I believed there were rules and regulations and then I found out about how these rules and regulations were made and applied, and I realized that there never will be any answer. Most of the rules and regulations, by the way, are tacitly promulgated and implemented via QQ groups of interested parties. Don't believe me? Check out the provincial SAFEA websites for regulations on criminal record checks. Go on, try it. There's nothing there. And the great thing is, the E/E PSB will tell you what they want straight off, it isn't hard to find that out. But they are the last link in the great "lets get residency" chain which means that no matter what the law says, an administrative regulation can trump it. It's like Hofstede and Hall are playtesting some obscure Civ5 mod designed to simulate a High Context AAAAHHHHH! Indeed.
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May 13, 2014 14:55
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Living in China like taking a shower: Too cold and you're going to hate it, too hot and you're going to get burned. Now you can turn the knob around and adjust the temperature, and eventually that'll work, but there's ten other people doing the same thing, without you knowing it. And a QQ group is discussing this process and laughing at your tiny penis.
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May 13, 2014 15:06
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I can't change the temperature of my shower whilst in the bathroom, I have to get out of the shower and go into the kitchen in front of a window and move a lever on the boiler which increases the temperature by 1000 degrees for every 1/2mm you move it and will gradually work it's way back to cold.
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May 13, 2014 15:36
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Jimmy Little Balls posted:I can't change the temperature of my shower whilst in the bathroom, I have to get out of the shower and go into the kitchen in front of a window and move a lever on the boiler which increases the temperature by 1000 degrees for every 1/2mm you move it and will gradually work it's way back to cold. My previous apartment was sort of like this except the hot water heater only had 2 settings: 0% or 100%. So I'd let it heat up and then turn off the water heater and I'd have about 1-2 minutes of hot water that was cooling down before it got really cold.
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May 13, 2014 15:41
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Jimmy Little Balls posted:I can't change the temperature of my shower whilst in the bathroom, I have to get out of the shower and go into the kitchen in front of a window and move a lever on the boiler which increases the temperature by 1000 degrees for every 1/2mm you move it and will gradually work it's way back to cold. Our place in Beijing was exactly like this, right down to the position of the boiler and its lever in the kitchen. My sister was studying in Japan and she came over to visit us for a week. She was beyond horrified with pretty much everything in that apartment and pretty much everything in China in general. On the Beijing subway: "Oh my God! That guy is picking his nose. Do you see him picking his nose!? He just flicked it on the ground! Nobody would ever do that in Japan!" In a Beijing taxi: "Holy poo poo, this is filthy. Like, really filthy. Look at all the rips in this seat! And the driver isn't even wearing gloves! Nobody would ever ride a taxi like this in Japan!" On the Great Wall: "Look at all the trash! The Japanese would never put up with this!" I couldn't get her to shut up no matter how many times I told her that a lot of Chinese people in Beijing understand English better than you might expect. I was fully prepared to have to call our mother to report that her youngest daughter had been murdered by angry Chinese patriots which would, of course, never happen in Japan!!!
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May 13, 2014 16:58
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People waved a contract at me saying teach our high school kids. ¥13,000 a month, 25hr week, flights paid, no accom, they have no curriculum and want me to make it, and have no other foreign teachers. I'm imagining a clusterfuck, with the bonus of no pay being on time and we don't know what overtime is.  Probably going to give that a miss and avoid 
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May 13, 2014 17:54
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BCR posted:People waved a contract at me saying teach our high school kids. ¥13,000 a month, 25hr week, flights paid, no accom, they have no curriculum and want me to make it, and have no other foreign teachers. The right call. Too many hours for that pay, especially without free housing, and creating your own curriculum (which they will try to take and use after you leave without any payment for your efforts) would eat up a monstrous amount of extra time. I only teach about 8 hours a week, but building modified AP content for ESL students has proven time-consuming (unsurprisingly). blinkyzero fucked around with this message at 18:30 on May 13, 2014 |
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May 13, 2014 18:27
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Thanks for the second opinion. I'm going to throw back an offer asking more cash, less hours and see what they say. More out of curiosity than anything. One other thing is I've seen a lot of university's giving ¥6000ish a month for 15hrs a week of talking to undergrads and post grads to improve their English. Accom is included. I'm guessing that's the middle ground or lower end of the price scale.
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May 13, 2014 19:04
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The problem with that job isn't the pay, it's the uncertainty. 25 actual teaching hours per week is kind of a lot, especially in a situation where that's 25 hours with 10 or more different groups of students (at my peak, I had ~40 different classes). You could end up spending an hour of prep for every hour taught if you don't want your classes to be poo poo, especially at first, and especially if you don't get to reuse much of your material. The curriculum thing, depending on what not having one means (not having a lesson schedule or any ready-made lesson plans? Or not having a textbook at all?) could mean a little more work, or a poo poo TON more work. The biggest question mark there, though, is the no other foreign teachers thing. On the one hand, maybe 1 out of 3 foreign teachers in China are either complete shitbags or just insufferable, so you don't have to worry about commiserating with a source of your misery. On the other hand...why are you the only foreign teacher? Because they can't hold on to foreign teachers? Or because they've never had one before and they don't know how the gently caress to use you. The plus for that second one is that you'll probably be able to do whatever the gently caress you want; but the catch is you'll never know if you're supposed to be doing something until it's too late. There is no plus for the first one. Also, make sure those 25 hours a week are regularly scheduled, try and keep your weekend as one solid block ESPECIALLY if you work mornings. (Mine isn't, but it's actually kind of pleasant since I don't have to be to work until 5 pm on the days after my days off...almost like having 2 weekends.) And FOR gently caress'S SAKE don't take split shifts. I interviewed at a university that was offering like 140 an hour for like 6 hours a week of classes. The only reason I'd even consider that is that the school is practically next door to my place. But it turned out these were to be writing classes, and if the class isn't utter poo poo, that means grading papers, which means that 150 an hour would quickly turn into 50-75 an hour. UGH, FIND ANOTHER SUCKER
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May 13, 2014 19:21
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VideoTapir posted:The problem with that job isn't the pay, it's the uncertainty. 25 actual teaching hours per week is kind of a lot, especially in a situation where that's 25 hours with 10 or more different groups of students (at my peak, I had ~40 different classes). You could end up spending an hour of prep for every hour taught if you don't want your classes to be poo poo, especially at first, and especially if you don't get to reuse much of your material. Yeah, it's a lot of hours, and without scheduling specifications there's a very real and very high risk of getting your free time absolutely shattered. Generally, employers here aren't remotely interested in making your life easier (or even pleasant) when it comes to building schedules. That's something you have to fight for, usually preemptively. edit: in fairness most jobs I had in the U.S. were no different about treating employees like robots that disappear into a closet and power down when not on the job. quote:The curriculum thing, depending on what not having one means (not having a lesson schedule or any ready-made lesson plans? Or not having a textbook at all?) could mean a little more work, or a poo poo TON more work. Very true. No lesson plans or textbooks (or a useless textbook) will screw you, especially if you're new to the game. It screwed me in 2012 when my writing class at the Beijing university had the worst loving composition text I'd ever seen. quote:I interviewed at a university that was offering like 140 an hour for like 6 hours a week of classes. The only reason I'd even consider that is that the school is practically next door to my place. But it turned out these were to be writing classes, and if the class isn't utter poo poo, that means grading papers, which means that 150 an hour would quickly turn into 50-75 an hour. UGH, FIND ANOTHER SUCKER Writing classes are the worst. I hate teaching writing (and I was a writing and composition major in college). Those classes are unbelievably time-consuming and usually despised by teachers and students alike. 140 an hour is really low to begin with, too. Talk about a raw deal. blinkyzero fucked around with this message at 20:00 on May 13, 2014 |
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May 13, 2014 19:55
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GuestBob posted:It's like Hofstede and Hall are playtesting some obscure Civ5 mod designed to simulate a High Context AAAAHHHHH! Hmmm... I would play that. Let's see. Start and end times of turns will need to be indeterminate. All the data you have about the performance of your own civ will be distorted and on the surface completely unreliable. Distance to authority will be fixed and extreme. This means you either have no feedback from your populous or an explosive revolution. Not much in between. In order for something to happen in one city an ornate process involving your capital city will always be involved, but it is not greatly important since the action and that process will not be intimately connected and you will have almost no feedback about what is actually going on anyway. It will be necessary to do many, many things all at once. No system of queuing actions and such. All at once. Every civ will be more or less constantly offended by every other civ for any moves made. The shelf life of such offenses will last for the duration of the game, but they do not necessitate any action. All transactions involve a very high relational cost expressed as time. Any and all agreements you imagine as fixed are actually moving. Borders as well. It will be possible and even necessary to make investments in intangible seeming relationships in order to make any moves at all. Successfully doing this will allow many non-linear moves.
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May 14, 2014 01:27
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blinkyzero posted:
Where have you worked? Even at big chain stores I've never had bosses like this, whereas every single boss I ever had in China was utterly incompetent in every respect.
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May 14, 2014 01:37
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Cuatal posted:Where have you worked? Even at big chain stores I've never had bosses like this, whereas every single boss I ever had in China was utterly incompetent in every respect. Yeah as much as I like our Chinese boss from the university, he is often hilariously incompetent. Most of my lovely boss experiences come from working in accounting for Sam Walton's evil empire before I went to college. I frequently had bosses in that company who not only lacked so much as a smidgeon of compassion for their employees, but were also just plain lovely at their jobs. One office manager I had couldn't successfully complete a routine cash pull at a store after over a year of trying to learn the SMART computer system. (A girl in her early 20s we hired who had literally zero computer experience became a master of this thing in three weeks and within two months could do register pulls easily totaling over $100,000 with the monitor turned off. She was never off so much as a penny. We used to have competitions like that because, while a good job, it was mind-numbingly boring if you didn't suck at it.) I did have a few really great bosses (and a lot of good stories; I should probably do an Ask/Tell thread about some of that crap someday) but yeah, mostly a shitshow. blinkyzero fucked around with this message at 02:20 on May 14, 2014 |
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May 14, 2014 02:16
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blinkyzero posted:On the Beijing subway: "Oh my God! That guy is picking his nose. Do you see him picking his nose!? He just flicked it on the ground! Nobody would ever do that in Japan!" I sometimes see this (actually just the other day), even in a place like Shanghai. It's grating when some unwashed white dude is talking poo poo to his friend in English about the people around him. Like, making fun of how someone sharing the elevator with him is dressed or something. Instead of a civilized nudge-friend-and nod-towards-poor-fashion-choice move, it's "Hey look at the outfit on the woman to your right. loving unbelievable. Leopard-print bandana and everything, I guess she doesn't have a mirror at home. Or maybe she actually thinks that looks good. loving China, man." I'd also heard that a guy previously in my team (before I joined) used to loudly bitch in the office about China and Chinese people, either not realizing or not caring that since the official company language is English, everyone in the office could understand him if they were paying attention. I wonder how comparable the "Asian people in Asia can't speak English" belief is to the "Non-Asians in Asia can't use chopsticks" belief.
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May 14, 2014 02:36
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VideoTapir posted:The problem with that job isn't the pay, it's the uncertainty. 25 actual teaching hours per week is kind of a lot, especially in a situation where that's 25 hours with 10 or more different groups of students (at my peak, I had ~40 different classes). About a year ago I had something like 42 teaching hours scheduled a week across 3 different schools. Just about killed myself by the end of that semester. Money was nice though. Also, I like it when high schools don't give you a curriculum to follow. I was at one in Beijing and they just said try and follow the structure of the Chinese teacher's class (which was poo poo). I ended up doing a history of the universe that semester with each lesson about a different stage in history (big bang, stars galaxies and space stuff, early life and dinosaurs, early hominids, different stages in world history). They really liked it except for the hopeless ones, but then again, not much you can do with those during your 40 minutes a week.
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May 14, 2014 02:38
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Aero737 posted:I ended up doing a history of the universe that semester with each lesson about a different stage in history (big bang, stars galaxies and space stuff, early life and dinosaurs, early hominids, different stages in world history). They really liked it except for the hopeless ones, but then again, not much you can do with those during your 40 minutes a week. I want to do that. All my students are the hopeless ones. 
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May 14, 2014 02:43
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A guy that used to work with us was HORRID about making comments in English about people all around us, and two different times it ended with his abnormally large foot in his even bigger mouth. Once we were on the subway in Beijing after going in for a conference for work and we were taking the subway back and it was packed and there was a cute girl sitting right in front of us, and the guy made a rather sexual comment about her proximity to his body and an activity that she could possibly partake in while she was sitting there and then two stops later she got up and said "Excuse me gentlemen, this next stop is my stop" and the guy was just like :I Another time at our old office we were taking the elevator up to our floor. Now before I tell this story, it is important that people understand this elevator. There were two, one went to the even numbers and one went to the odd number floors. Don't know why. Also, it didn't stop until floor 7, and then went 7-15. No idea why. Also, if more than like seven people got on this elevator, it completely reset and beeped loudly. This never seem to phase any other person other than a foreigner on it, until everyone else realized that we were still on the first floor and the elevator wasn't going anywhere. Finally someone would get off, and it would close, but since the elevator had reset, no buttons were pressed. So I'd be squished up against the back of it and yell "hit 8 floor please" and no one would do anything, other than a Chinese person or two turning around and saying "Oh wow the foreigner speaks Chinese", and we would sit there, cramped in this uncomfortable elevator, telling them "stop talking about us speaking Chinese and FFS hit the button so we can go". ANYWAY. A situation like this had just happened, in one way or another, it happened almost every day, and the guy I work with was really laying into the people on the elevator about it, just incessantly bashing them, and then we got off and some middle age lady got off with us and was actually coming to our office and asked us "So, how long have you guys been in China?" and the guy was just like this again :I
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May 14, 2014 02:47
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Is 13000 for 25 hours really bad? When I taught in like 2010 I made 10k for about that many hours teaching (no office hours/etc) and I had more free time than I knew what to do with. So much so I got really bored. I had three days a week off, and basically worked most of my hours between Friday and Sunday. I had classes Monday and Friday night and would come in on Monday in the morning to do any grading and would come in on Friday to do all my lesson planning for the week. These were basic ESL or test prep classes with the exception of one class geared towards kids going to uni in the states/UK, and we had the book and curriculum all there, we just had to plan out individual lessons. I also saved a decent amount on that wage.. but that was before my grad school loans so I'm not sure I could do that now. My biggest issue with ESL over here or just in general is the lack of advancement opportunities. It seems you get a good raise after 1 year, and then it stagnates until you hit the 1 semi-management position a foreigner can hold and then you're stuck again. I have friends at international schools who are on a totally different and very nice-sounding track, but ESL just seems terrible in this regard. I'm curious about people like Ghostbob that seem to have better-than-average gigs. What sort of advancement is there for you and teachers at your school?
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May 14, 2014 04:52
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Magna Kaser posted:I'm curious about people like Ghostbob that seem to have better-than-average gigs. What sort of advancement is there for you and teachers at your school? For me now? I can publish. For others in the future? One of them could take over what I do, but I chiseled my current magnificent throne from the cold and stony rock face of public sector indifference using willpower alone. So it may crumble after I leave in three years time. I make people feel like real teachers though (because they are and that's what we want them to be) and so professional advancement is less of an issue because we bring 'em in young, build 'em up and then watch 'em wander off into the big wide world by themselves after a couple of years. At least, that's my plan.
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May 14, 2014 05:14
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GuestBob posted:For me now? I can publish. That's a nice way of saying "dead-end jobs".
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May 14, 2014 05:24
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MeramJert posted:That's a nice way of saying "dead-end jobs". "Suits an early career teacher..." It is what it is and it's better than most: nothing wrong with coming in, getting experience, doing a Masters and then accessing a better job elsewhere. Sure, there isn't the track that you could expect in a high school teaching career but it's only really a dead end if you sit with your finger up your butt. Of course, next semester I'll be team teaching our advanced linguistics course with the assistant Dean of the FLD (an approach we are showcasing as part of the university's teaching reforms), taking on the Literature course for third years and running staff training seminars for all of the junior level Chinese staff in our FLD and the CET4 teaching section. So if someone has the chops to take over from me when I leave then they can certainly develop professionally. No way in hell I'd be doing this stuff if I was back in the UK: teaching fraudulent Pakistani students how to pass IELTS? Rinse and repeat on a pre-sessional basis. GuestBob fucked around with this message at 05:35 on May 14, 2014 |
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May 14, 2014 05:29
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Hey guys I'm one of those rear end holes who talks poo poo about people in English. And Cantonese and mandarin. I just make some off hand remark and mumble my sentences. Most of the time people are too busy with their own lives to actually catch you though. Besides you have to be snarky and discreet. Well many many years ago in France I was ordering things in French, a British family sitting across me said I must have been a boat person. Yeah I just called him out for being a racist monoglot incompetent rear end in a top hat. Sometimes I catch tourists trash talking in public and I just bluntly call them out and tell them to stfu. They then feel bad and embarrassed. On the other hand I give no fucks what the public thinks of me. Because I'm actually pretty gooony caberham fucked around with this message at 05:56 on May 14, 2014 |
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May 14, 2014 05:52
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Yeah I would say 13K/month for 25 hours isn't bad, but you just never know what they expect. You could make less and work longer hours in a US entry level teaching job in private schools. If it's in a big US city you could make a lot, lot less in terms of purchasing power. That's $25,000/year, and in the U.S. private market an entry-level teaching job in middle or elementary schools will be around $30,000/year. In a coastal city that's going to buy you a much poorer lifestyle than it would in China, and you will likely be expected to work 40+ hours per week. Teachers don't make a whole lot of money in the private system unless you have a higher degree, and teachers in the public system need a license and then you have to deal with all the poo poo public schools do unless you end up in a wealthy district... but all the financial incentives for new teaching grads push you towards low income districts. BCR you don't have PMs but I would say the Y15000/month job is a better idea than the Y6000/month. Unless you speak Chinese you're going to be bored out of your mind and you won't have a ton of cash with the university English monkey job. 15000/month is real money (shut up Bloodnose) and unless you have a masters or a teaching license you won't necessarily find better pay in the education sector in the States. Don't know about Australia. Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 06:09 on May 14, 2014 |
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May 14, 2014 06:01
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caberham posted:Hey guys I'm one of those rear end holes who talks poo poo about people in English. And Cantonese and mandarin. I just make some off hand remark and mumble my sentences. Followed by a cameraphone pic
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May 14, 2014 08:01
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Magna Kaser posted:Is 13000 for 25 hours really bad? When I taught in like 2010 I made 10k for about that many hours teaching (no office hours/etc) and I had more free time than I knew what to do with. So much so I got really bored. I had three days a week off, and basically worked most of my hours between Friday and Sunday. I had classes Monday and Friday night and would come in on Monday in the morning to do any grading and would come in on Friday to do all my lesson planning for the week. These were basic ESL or test prep classes with the exception of one class geared towards kids going to uni in the states/UK, and we had the book and curriculum all there, we just had to plan out individual lessons. We have a really nice arrangement here, but we're also under no illusions about advancement. The Chinese university that employs us (well, 50% employs us...it's a headache) absolutely does not need us for anything other than what we're doing right now -- working as curriculum writers and experimental teachers for its fledgling international track high school program. If we wanted to come back, we could make more money, sure -- we got a really substantial raise over last year -- but ultimately there's nowhere to go that would be a truly career-making move. The shoes immediately above us are filled quite solidly and permanently by Chinese folks with ridiculously good connections and/or PhDs from other national key schools. That's fine, though, and we knew what the deal was when we came in. Like GhostBob said, a dead end is only a dead end if your only intended progression is upwards through your current employer. We came here for the professional experience, especially fearcotton. Saving a ton of money has been nice too, of course, but the real goal was a little less tangible. It's all just part of the plan. On that topic, having a plan is obviously a pretty good idea for anyone at any stage in life, and I've seen far too many people come over here completely without one. There is something to be said for bumming around a foreign country when you're young, and also something to be said for the license of simple hedonistic joy that youth provides, but man, a vaselined weathervane in a seasquall has more consistent loving direction than some of the bizarre individuals I've met in China.
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May 14, 2014 10:20
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If you're young I would recommend coming to China to bum around but always have a plan...learn the language, gain some kind of experience...you should always, always have a plan and furthermore you should always have a way to execute that plan. Anything less is borderline idiotic. (This goes for everything other than holidays. Holidays I recommend showing up someplace unprepared and winging it. That's acceptable.) We have two people at work that tell me "I'm bored" sometimes. They aren't keepers. They have no plan. And that's fine, but that's not what we're looking for and they aren't going to get us where we want to go as a company.
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May 14, 2014 11:23
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Ghost bob best bob
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May 14, 2014 22:48
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Stupid question time: How do Chinese typically express large numbers? For example I had some confusion looking price at this car: http://www.iautos.cn/usedcar/3609215.html 280.00万元 RMB, which kept translating in to 280 million. Even my business partner said 280 million RMB, which if true would be insane. I later figured out the price was 2.8 million RMB. Hence 万元 is ten-thousand yuan. Is this normal for large amounts to be referred to in units of ten-thousand? Is there a cheat-sheet to avoid this confusion?
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May 15, 2014 00:46
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I may be off but I'm almost positive it is 2.8mil RMB. The 万 means (edit: ten) thousand, so you are looking at 280 hundred thousand...or 2.8 million. Maybe someone can correct me if I'm wrong, I'm doing alright over here but I'm not dealing too often in millions just yet :P Is that right? It is literally my second sip of coffee so my brain might not be running at full speed just yet. edit: corrected The Great Autismo! fucked around with this message at 02:27 on May 15, 2014 |
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May 15, 2014 01:31
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Mark got it right except that 萬 means ten thousand. That's why it adds up to a million. 千 is thousand but nobody posts prices in thousands. Expensive things like cars and homes are usually denominated in 萬元s.
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May 15, 2014 01:44
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stubinator posted:Stupid question time: Yes. 万 is ten-thousand and is the biggest order of magnitude of numbers commonly used in China and a few other Asian countries (I think Japan also uses it), like thousand is in the west. I can't think of a cheat sheet, you just have to kind of get used to it and do some mental conversions. Just multiply the number before the 万 by 10,000. Basically where everything in the west is based off thousand and three zeroes (between millions and billions and trillions, etc...) in Asia it's commonly 4. We say ten-thousand, in China they say ten-wan then hundred-wan, then thousand wan. Then you get ten-thousand ten-thousands and they call that (亿) which is one hundred million. Just like one thousand thousands is one million in English. 1万 (wan) = 10,000 10 万 = 100,000 100 万 = 1,000,000 1000 万 = 10,000,000 10,000 万 = 1 亿 (yi) = 100,000,000 And then the process goes on with 10 亿, 100亿, etc... until you get to 兆 which is exactly 1 trillion, though you don't see 兆 used a whole lot in common speech. You do see 亿 all the time though, so if you're hanging around with Chinese numbers know that means one-hundred million. 10 亿 is one billion. So China has about 12亿 people, some rich guy has 60亿 dollars, etc... Yeah, it requires some mental gymnastics but just multiply by 10,000 and you'll be fine. Ailumao fucked around with this message at 01:55 on May 15, 2014 |
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May 15, 2014 01:51
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Bloodnose posted:Mark got it right except that 萬 means ten thousand. That's why it adds up to a million. 千 is thousand but nobody posts prices in thousands. Expensive things like cars and homes are usually denominated in 萬元s. Ah, thanks for the correction, it wasn't looking right when I typed it. That is in traditional characters though, so that may confused some people. 万 is ten thousand and then the 千 is one thousand. I don't know the traditional character for it, other than the fact that you just posted it and I subsequently quoted it.
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May 15, 2014 02:24
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Speaking of cars, I sure wouldn't mind having one if it wasn't loving impossible to win the Beijing car lottery. Also parking in Beijing is ridiculous.
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May 15, 2014 02:26
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Magna Kaser posted:Yes. 万 is ten-thousand and is the biggest order of magnitude of numbers commonly used in China and a few other Asian countries (I think Japan also uses it), like thousand is in the west. I can't think of a cheat sheet, you just have to kind of get used to it and do some mental conversions. Just multiply the number before the 万 by 10,000. Yeah, it's also difficult for non -English speakers to do mental conversions about big numbers from C -E. Even now I still need to think for several seconds when I wanna say them in English. But if I see a number written in paper ,it's much easier. So maybe you can practice by starting to write down numbers in English and read them in Chinese one by one. You can refer to this and write more big numbers based on it for practicing 1万 (wan) = 10,000 10 万 = 100,000 100 万 = 1,000,000 1000 万 = 10,000,000 10,000 万 = 1 亿 (yi) = 100,000,000 In fact your business partner makes a mistake, million is 百萬(1,000,000)in Chinese, but he understands it as 萬 thus he doesn't realize 280million is a huge number.
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May 15, 2014 02:26
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Aero737 posted:Speaking of cars, I sure wouldn't mind having one if it wasn't loving impossible to win the Beijing car lottery. I haven't spent a lot of time in Beijing but I have absolutely zero desire to ever have one in Tianjin. I mean in rush hour here I actually go faster than the traffic. I'll continually pass cars, then they'll pass me, then I'll pass them. It's terrible. Except they are paying millions of RMB for their car and upkeep and have to park and gas and I'm just getting exercise walking down the street. Sure I have to avoid the poo poo on the sidewalks or the bikers that tear down the sidewalk but I'm kinda used to it.
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May 15, 2014 02:29
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goldboilermark posted:I haven't spent a lot of time in Beijing but I have absolutely zero desire to ever have one in Tianjin. I mean in rush hour here I actually go faster than the traffic. I'll continually pass cars, then they'll pass me, then I'll pass them. It's terrible. Except they are paying millions of RMB for their car and upkeep and have to park and gas and I'm just getting exercise walking down the street. Sure I have to avoid the poo poo on the sidewalks or the bikers that tear down the sidewalk but I'm kinda used to it. This is legit. While I was living in Xi'an, other than trips to the far-flung expat supermarket or sometime when I actually needed to carry a bunch of poo poo, having a motorcycle was the best form of transportation. At the very least I can move through traffic very easily and traffic jams didn't hold me back like it would in a bus or taxi. Not to mention Xi'an still only has 2 subway lines.
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May 15, 2014 02:33
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Yeah I wouldn't want to take it to work (the subway is just too fast and convenient). But after 3 years in Beijing, the city starts to run out of things to do. Would be nice to have a car for weekend excursions to surrounding areas. Also, someone has got to race PPL across town in rush hour!
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May 15, 2014 02:36
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If I were living...well, any other country other than China, weekend excursions would be nice, but if I left Tianjin I would just be going to Jixian, which is a few dirty mountains with trash everywhere. So...yeah. Tianjin is pretty much the only place I've ever spent a long amount of time where I have no desire to get outside of the city if I have a few days off. There's simply no where to go, sadly, that is worthwhile in my opinion. 
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May 15, 2014 03:07
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