The China Megathread III: It is not a happy everyday

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Tourism & Travel > The China Megathread III: It is not a happy everyday

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VideoTapir: Oct 18, 2005; He'll tire eventually.

Will custom roms for Samsung Galaxy S4 run on it?

# ¿ Jun 25, 2013 09:56

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 04:19

VideoTapir: Oct 18, 2005; He'll tire eventually.

Red velvet cake. Bring red velvet cake and blow everyone's minds.

# ¿ Jun 28, 2013 09:21

VideoTapir: Oct 18, 2005; He'll tire eventually.

GuestBob posted:

For a bonus note, it seems like SAFEA is activley updating the banned laowai list (which had the same names on it forever last I checked):

http://www.safea.gov.cn/content.shtml?id=12746208

That's the whole list? It doesn't sound like they did much of anything. I was expecting a sex offender registry.

# ¿ Jul 1, 2013 10:00

VideoTapir: Oct 18, 2005; He'll tire eventually.

You are our one millionth customer! Here is your box of eggs!

# ¿ Jul 1, 2013 16:49

VideoTapir: Oct 18, 2005; He'll tire eventually.

SB35 posted:

I've been keeping an eye on it, just waiting until I can figure out the details for sure, for sure. So far it's all just kinda-maybe-reports about visa changes in some places and not others.

Where'd that come from?

edit: Any change to the visa fees for Americans?

# ¿ Jul 5, 2013 09:49

VideoTapir: Oct 18, 2005; He'll tire eventually.

I wish there were more taiwanese food in Beijing.

# ¿ Jul 10, 2013 11:50

VideoTapir: Oct 18, 2005; He'll tire eventually.

WTF is that?

# ¿ Jul 12, 2013 12:35

VideoTapir: Oct 18, 2005; He'll tire eventually.

Wow, it's been a long time since any photo made me want to throw up.

# ¿ Jul 17, 2013 08:06

VideoTapir: Oct 18, 2005; He'll tire eventually.

Oh man, if Mongolia wants a boom in tourism they need to dye a bunch of horses like My Little Ponies, and build an Equestria resort.

# ¿ Jul 18, 2013 03:14

VideoTapir: Oct 18, 2005; He'll tire eventually.

Big Alf posted:

I'm a cultural Philistine but I'm pretty sure all that stuff (museums, old buildings) is open as normal during holidays.

Shops and restaurants are business as usual.

Some neighborhoods I've lived in had a significant fraction of stuff closed. Lots of street vendors pack up and go home. But it was never more than about half the shops on the market street.

# ¿ Jul 23, 2013 05:49

VideoTapir: Oct 18, 2005; He'll tire eventually.

The fringes of the CBD in Chaoyang on a smoggy night are totally Blade Runner.

# ¿ Jul 23, 2013 05:56

VideoTapir: Oct 18, 2005; He'll tire eventually.

FearCotton posted:

Have any of ya'll had success with part-time work, either getting it or hiring someone for it? (I don't mean tutoring in the evenings for cash, I mean actually having a contract for added employment.)

My university is trying desperately to find someone to cover 12 hours of classes a week at 2000 a week, and we can't find anyone. It comes with a visa, an apartment, utilities, round-trip air, insurance, travel allowance, blah blah etc. If you already have those things, then they cash them out to you and you can walk away with the fair amount of money. But no one wants it, because the hours are low (no office hours, legit you only need to be at the one school 12 hours a week, normally two-three hours in a block) and as such the pay is kinda crap. It looks like it's perfect for somebody over here studying or looking to have an uber lazy Asia adventure, but it's in Quzhou.

I'm not posting this here to advertise (getting someone isn't my job), but because the girl in charge of the flesh search is all in a tizzy and keeps asking me for help. I really don't know what they can add to a contract to make someone want to do this.

Where is it and what are the hours? I'm up for a part time gig if it's doable for me.

# ¿ Jul 25, 2013 15:09

VideoTapir: Oct 18, 2005; He'll tire eventually.

What are the coolest cities or tourist attractions within a 5 hour train ride of Beijing, like worth going to for a couple of days? I've been to Qingdao and Shenyang, and the wife says Dalian sucks.

# ¿ Jul 25, 2013 16:34

VideoTapir: Oct 18, 2005; He'll tire eventually.

Big Alf posted:

However it takes about 13 hours to get there by train, much simpler to jump on the plane for an hour. What is your wife's reasoning for why it sucks?

She thinks the people are assholes, so does her sister who just finished going to school there.

# ¿ Jul 26, 2013 03:58

VideoTapir: Oct 18, 2005; He'll tire eventually.

DontAskKant posted:

One job was teaching 45 classes at 50 minutes each. Yeah even in the public schools, quality is a joke.

For the last 10 or 15 of those you're drooling and gibbering like an idiot, right?

# ¿ Jul 26, 2013 09:34

VideoTapir: Oct 18, 2005; He'll tire eventually.

There's a public pool like a 5 minute walk from my place that is open until 9

# ¿ Jul 27, 2013 10:25

VideoTapir: Oct 18, 2005; He'll tire eventually.

Magna Kaser posted:

Looked at an apartment that was 1.9k today in a complex right by the subway that has two pools, a tennis court and a fake beach today.

Never leavin' tier 2.

I want to go to tier 2, if I could find a decent paying job there. Been to Wuhu a couple of times and I liked it. (or is that tier 3?)

# ¿ Jul 28, 2013 08:40

VideoTapir: Oct 18, 2005; He'll tire eventually.

BadAstronaut posted:

What is tier 2/3? What is a tier in this context? You're not talking about anything in Shanghai, are you?

I'd like to look at a max of 6500RMB per month if that is realistic. It might be too much or it might be average, I really don't know. Hoping that can cover all my apartment related costs, all in, with internet, pool etc.

What are you guys paying and what should I expect to, for a decent, comfortable place with pool etc?

"Tier 1/2/3" cities, are a kind of poorly-defined thing that's still used all over the place in China.

Tier 1 is Beijing and Shanghai, and according to some lists, Shenzhen and IIRC Guangzhou

Tier 2 is places like Suzhou, Tianjin, Qingdao, Nanjing, Shenyang and Harbin and such. The division between tiers 2 and 3 is murky, some people limit tier 2 to developed provincial capitals, others don't. That distinction would make Wuhu tier 3 and Hefei tier 2, despite the fact that Wuhu is kinda nice while Hefei sucks.

# ¿ Jul 28, 2013 13:07

VideoTapir: Oct 18, 2005; He'll tire eventually.

Magna Kaser posted:

Also the cost of living has no real bearing on the Tier system, which is actually decided by the Chinese government based on economic development.

Is there an official Chinese-government tier list?

BadAstronaut posted:

Does this relate to cost of living, quality of accommodation, (un)employment rate/job opportunities, earnings etc?

Tier-1 is where most of the non-teaching job (if not business) opportunities for foreigners are, as you go down things generally get more specialized, harder to come by, or lower-paying.

Housing prices are kind of all over the map...Suzhou is, from what I've seen, like 2/3 as expensive as Beijing, but also-tier-2 (AFAIK) Hefei is like 1/4 or so. Food prices don't vary much from city to city or tier to tier. Brick-and-mortar retail clothes DO, from what I'm told by my wife (who actually cares).

VideoTapir fucked around with this message at 16:11 on Jul 28, 2013

# ¿ Jul 28, 2013 16:05

VideoTapir: Oct 18, 2005; He'll tire eventually.

I expect to be able to smell Mao's embalming chemicals from my bedroom.

# ¿ Jul 28, 2013 16:22

VideoTapir: Oct 18, 2005; He'll tire eventually.

Pro-PRC Laowai posted:

And Baijiu is pretty awesome anyways to be honest

Guide to reading Pro-PRC Laowai posts:

Factual statements are gold.

Value judgements are poo poo.

# ¿ Aug 1, 2013 10:54

VideoTapir: Oct 18, 2005; He'll tire eventually.

Eat This Glob posted:

With no Mandarin, is it easy to get a pack of smokes? Put 10 yuan on the counter and pantomime smoking a cigarette? This is babby's first trip overseas. It's kind of embarrassing, really.

Yes. If you're in any kind of city there'll be about a million little shops where you can do this.

# ¿ Aug 2, 2013 04:24

VideoTapir: Oct 18, 2005; He'll tire eventually.

MeramJert posted:

Actually I think the "k" in Peking is there because Mandarin had a sound shift from k -> j after Wade Giles was made

Got an authoritative source on that? It seems reasonable given that characters that start in K in Japanese (or H or K in Korean), including gyo/kyou/king/jing start with j in Mandarin. But when you're talking about the west they could be influenced by western "all look same" sentiment and taking the pronunciation from some southern dialect or something.

edit: It's "Pekin" in Japanese, even they could just say "hokkyou" or something.

VideoTapir fucked around with this message at 08:49 on Aug 2, 2013

# ¿ Aug 2, 2013 07:26

VideoTapir: Oct 18, 2005; He'll tire eventually.

Bloodnose posted:

That's what I thought. 京 is usually romanized 'king' in Cantonese.

Counter-evidence is that Chongqing was called Chungking, where 慶 is 'hing' in Cantonese. Maybe j/q were like g/k sounds.

A lot of Chinese dialects have that phlegmy H sound, which some might think sounds more like K.

# ¿ Aug 2, 2013 08:43

VideoTapir: Oct 18, 2005; He'll tire eventually.

Pro-PRC Laowai posted:

No, that's for *each*, a meal would consist of anywhere from 20-70 of em. Definitely like 50-70 of em if the are the tiny delicious ones that still are legit at 0.5.

Uh, that's for 4 people, right?

# ¿ Aug 2, 2013 15:53

VideoTapir: Oct 18, 2005; He'll tire eventually.

Eat This Glob posted:

Awesome. That'll be a great help. Now to get my boss to cover the cost of booze and smokes for gifts! Is there a limit I can bring in to the country? I'm not planning on filling a duffel bag full, but would two 750ml bottles of Johnnie Walker and a couple cartons of smokes get me in trouble?

Most countries, and I think China is one, you can have three 750 ml bottles of whatever and Customs won't care. I've never had customs in China even look at my stuff, and I doubt they'd care if you're a little over.

You can buy Johnny Walker pretty much anywhere that stocks foreign hard liquor in China; though it's more expensive here. Same with Jack Daniels, and most other popular mass-market brands of booze. (I can't recall seeing Maker's Mark in China, though) If there's some decent local or regional booze you can bring, bring that.

# ¿ Aug 3, 2013 05:46

VideoTapir: Oct 18, 2005; He'll tire eventually.

SB35 posted:

Apparently this is all you need to breathe cleaner air.

Article

That's basically what any off-the-shelf model is, except with better sealing around the edges.

# ¿ Aug 5, 2013 17:06

VideoTapir: Oct 18, 2005; He'll tire eventually.

You're going to have to seal the edges somehow. Duct tape, I guess.

# ¿ Aug 6, 2013 05:55

VideoTapir: Oct 18, 2005; He'll tire eventually.

Arglebargle III posted:

It depends on what you're doing with it. If you're putting a filter on some kind of intake fan then you need to, but if you're trying to build a scrubber that will sit in the living room then sealing is unnecessary. All you have to do is force air through the filter.

And if you dont' seal the edges, you're just forcing air AROUND the filter.

# ¿ Aug 6, 2013 07:23

VideoTapir: Oct 18, 2005; He'll tire eventually.

So basically unless you find the perfect combination of box fan and nearly-same-sized super-cheap filter, it isn't worth it.

# ¿ Aug 6, 2013 09:43

VideoTapir: Oct 18, 2005; He'll tire eventually.

ally_1986 posted:

There is literally a big sign across from me that says Shenzhen central park. If your Scottish anything above 30 is hot! Flat hunting went better today, agents are really strange.

Unless this agent came recommended to you by someone you trust and have good reason to trust, they're probably looking to screw you. Agents are scum.

# ¿ Aug 6, 2013 17:05

VideoTapir: Oct 18, 2005; He'll tire eventually.

Most of the firewall's blocking is DNS-based. Basically anything that doesn't use DNS, or doesn't rely heavily on it for all traffic (torrents, games, IM) will be a lot faster and more reliable than traffic that does use it. That's one reason why VPNs, which should slow down otherwise unimpeded traffic, will often give you faster downloads on some sites that are actually accessible from within China.

Sometimes DNS service will go out entirely, but leave non-DNS services unaffected.

quote:

I've never seen capped. Something to keep in mind, though, is the speed. In most cities now "fiber" and 100M+ connections are easy to find, but those speeds are only within China. ie if you're connecting with anything located outside of China, it will go through the great firewall AKA bottleneck and speeds will be poo poo. I have a 20M connection and I can download poo poo from within China at that speed, but anything from outside of the country seems to be soft-capped at 250kbps or so.

Also you tend to pay for internet by the year instead of monthly.

There's no hard cap, and the advertised speeds, particulary on slower connections don't really mean much...I mean that in a good way...I was routinely getting 8 to 10m on a cheap 2m connection.

Anyhow, about domestic traffic: the firewall isn't the only internet control system in effect, it's just the best known (and the only one I really know much about), and it's way smaller than their domestic operations. Domestic sites can be slowed from time to time, as well.

If it weren't for the Great Firewall and related bullshit in China, the ISP situation here (1st tier China...what I've seen of 2nd tier is pretty good too) would be just night and day better than the US, IMO. As it stands it's kind of a lateral move.

I'm now on fiber paying monthly (Unicom in Beijing).

edit: My favorite Great Firewall fact: Due to the way that they use fake DNS results to block traffic, the firewall pollutes foreign DNS servers and degrades service worldwide.

VideoTapir fucked around with this message at 10:37 on Aug 7, 2013

# ¿ Aug 7, 2013 10:34

VideoTapir: Oct 18, 2005; He'll tire eventually.

Arglebargle III posted:

Is this ever not the case?

I'm posting right now without a VPN?

BadAstronaut posted:

I don't see myself downloading too much except
1) new games I might get on Steam
2) streaming Netflix... will this work? I have unblock.us set up (I am in the UK but love that sweet, sweet USA content)
3) streaming live surfing ASP World Tour events which sometimes use YouTube or their own streaming services.

I have heard 1) Steam can be very slow from within China, and I know nothing about using 2) or 3), other than 3) could give me issues when they are using YouTube...?

Steam has been blocked entirely from time to time (well, for me, perhaps...the firewall sometimes blocks things automatically and it can be loving bizarre), but not recently. Speed is all over the place for downloads, pings on TF2 and L4D2 are usually decent if you're connecting to China, Taiwan, HK, parts of Japan (not sure WTF is up with that, I can't get playable speeds with my favorite Japanese servers anymore), and the Russian Far East (best TF2 servers and players within reasonable ping times of Beijing). Korea as well, but Koreans are SO loving TERRIBLE at TF2 I don't even bother with Korean servers anymore.

I've never been able to purchase steam games from within the steam client in China (probably could with a VPN, I guess), but the website works.

VideoTapir fucked around with this message at 10:53 on Aug 7, 2013

# ¿ Aug 7, 2013 10:44

VideoTapir: Oct 18, 2005; He'll tire eventually.

Arglebargle III posted:

I just mean when DNS goes out other services are always unaffected; unless the service outage is wider in scope. It's kind of a tautology.

Well yeah, but it's the frequency with which this happens. I only ever saw a DNS outage in the US once.

edit: It immediately preceded the ISP beginning to redirect mistyped URLs to ad pages.

VideoTapir fucked around with this message at 12:39 on Aug 7, 2013

# ¿ Aug 7, 2013 12:28

VideoTapir: Oct 18, 2005; He'll tire eventually.

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.

# ¿ Aug 8, 2013 04:07

VideoTapir: Oct 18, 2005; He'll tire eventually.

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.

# ¿ Aug 8, 2013 13:50

VideoTapir: Oct 18, 2005; He'll tire eventually.

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.

# ¿ Aug 9, 2013 02:33

VideoTapir: Oct 18, 2005; He'll tire eventually.

goldboilermark posted:

Just be wary of Every Single Chinese Person You Meet and you'll be fine.

Not "Every Single Chinese Person You Meet," just "Every Single Chinese Person Who Approaches You Unsolicited and Speaking English."

Edit: Is there anything on the street scams in the OP? Yes: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3413886&pagenumber=45#post396677673

RocknRollaAyatollah posted:

Steam works fine in China. ... You'll need a VPN to buy things but downloading is not an issue.

Use the store.steampowered.com site in a web browser rather than through the client and no VPN is needed.

VideoTapir fucked around with this message at 02:40 on Aug 9, 2013

# ¿ Aug 9, 2013 02:37

VideoTapir: Oct 18, 2005; He'll tire eventually.

Arglebargle III posted:

I was aware of this but what I don't totally understand it. How are Chinese firms going to enter the domestic desktop software market when it's inundated with high quality pirated software?

Cloud computing, assuming they can suck enough govt cock to ensure quality of service

Custom business software and...what do you call it when you get a contractor to spec poo poo out and set it all up for you.

Services over products, I'm guessing. It seems to work for Linux companies.

# ¿ Aug 9, 2013 10:38

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 04:19

VideoTapir: Oct 18, 2005; He'll tire eventually.

Pro-PRC Laowai posted:

Some of it's decently useful for certain things... think of a lot of it like RealPlayer. Back in the day it was a love-hate relationship. loving everything needed it, and it would infest your computer the second you looked at it. And of course, most people genuinely do not care all that much. Perfectly willing to install adware if it means free movies somewhere.

It wasn't so much that it was adware as that it was just generally poo poo and liked to grab any and all file associations it could at every opportunity.

Meanwhile, 360 is about on par with Norton Antivirus for loving poo poo up.

# ¿ Aug 9, 2013 17:51

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Tourism & Travel > The China Megathread III: It is not a happy everyday

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