Thats what I feel like anyway
Lots of English speaking opportunities too, but I wanna know what people think and how in their native language, I want access
1. You need an onerous-to-obtain visa to visit. There is no visa exemption.
2. Banking is a total pain for a foreigner. Many places only accept Alipay or Wechat, which require a Chinese bank account. Cash doesn't work well either, because the largest denomination is tiny.
3. Many US-China flights were canceled in the pandemic and never restarted afterwards. As a result, flights to China are expensive.
4. The Western apps are commonly blocked in China, and the local apps don't have an English translation. Your smartphone is a lot less useful in China.
5. Many US employers ban their employees from bringing company equipment (laptops) into China for fear of corporate espionage.
6. Lots of reports of hostile behavior toward westerners...
The list could go on. There's a reason e.g. Japanese tourism is booming!
Even Hong Kong, these days.
It's a shame, too. China has some really great cultural sites, substantial natural beauty, cosmopolitan cities, and excellent and varied cuisine. It would be a great tourist destination under a different government.
This is average schmuk stuff in China.
These are the people with the means to challenge the power structure, and they are watched more closely.
If someone in this wealth range holds up a blank piece of paper, they may end up in jail.
With any foreign country you should understand their cultural norms and laws. Your own ignorance is a valid consideration for travel, not being arrested as a political prisoner. You won't get in any trouble as a tourist or business person 99% of the time.
So there is 1% chance; and why would I take even 1% chance of getting into troubled country?
Good luck getting any Canadian that is not a dual citizen with China to visit, especially because CCP tyranny combined with Trudeau's incompetence cost these two people almost 3 years of their lives in Chinese detention.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detention_of_Michael_Spavor_an...
1. My visa took less than a week. In SF, where the consulate is busier than usual.
2. This is actually better than the last time I was there in 2019. Alipay now supports international credit cards.
3. Very true. Direct flights are rare.
4. It's annoying that even Gmail etc are blocked. VPNs that worked pre-Covid don't work anymore. The only thing that reliably worked was my roaming T-Mobile connection (but slow...)
5. This was always the case at my previous employer. We were issued temporary Chromebooks that were wiped after we returned. This time, I was extra careful and took a burner phone and left my personal phone off till I got to HK.
1.) There is a very high dislike of China across the world.
Large majorities in most of the 19 countries surveyed have negative views of China https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2022/06/29/negative-views...
2.) No business need to travel there. Foreign investment is down 90% this year. Literally no US/europe presence in the trade fairs in China the summer.
3.) Flights are super expensive, because of low demand, upwards of $5k-10k. travel out of China is down hugely due to the economy, you can search on youTube for videos from Shanghai airport where the airport is devoid of travelers, and filled with empty shops.
4.) It is very hard for travelers to navigate through China. No English translations in street signs. One needs Alipay to pay for anything in China, which is complicated to setup. Ethnocentrism from rising nationalism means there could be racism/violence against travelers.
On the one hand, it's staggering to me how rapid the pace of change against China has been. On the other hand, it was also staggering how rapidly they were modernizing and building in 2018.
On a more personal note I've had a family member recently return from living in China. Harassment by local law enforcement had a big part to play.
...Literal embodiment of Satan? What? You do realize they don't follow Christianity right? Nonsense. Overblown exaggeration.
Also starting from zero since covid restrictions.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-latest-problem-people-do...
And if you’re actually interested in riding the ranks as a career it’s a must that you can be able to work in the language comfortable for your superiors (in some places that’ll be English, of course…)
It’s possible to not have it, but every successful outsider I’ve seen in foreign countries learn the local language even if it’s “unnecessary”
Language will be a human struggle as long as humans run the world, I think you're absolutely correct on the meaningful and valuable practice of learning the language of the place you want to succeed in.
I'm only fluent in English, and I like it very much for its flexibility and expressivity, but I'm familiar with a handful of romantic languages and think every language has it's high and low points.
It is true that China like most countries at some point is experiencing a crisis at the moment.
As an aside, I think Xi needs to go. Deng Xiaoping’s strategy was better imho. The semi-planned economy approach has worked surprisingly well for now but it’s clear it’s running out of steam. China has already suffered greatly due to such a strategy before.
But still, there was one business owner arguing that there's never been a better time to do business with China because it's cheaper right now, so who knows what will actually happen.
But the machine translations are not (and will probably never be) perfect I’ll show you why:
Habló con su jefa y le dijo que le tiene ganas.
Google translate: He spoke to his boss and told her that he feels like it.
Well in Spanish this could mean:
(He/she/you) talked to (his/her/your) (boss/wife) and told (him/he)r that (he/she/it/you) (somewhere between wants and craves) (him/her/you/it).
This sentence mind you, isn’t especially contrived. It’s just how people talk in Spanish. And while all of these potential translations are good, only one is actually accurate. The only thing that it certainly doesn’t mean is:
He spoke to his boss and told her that he feels like it.
Which is what Google said it meant.
The problem is that what may be and can be ambiguous in one language, often needs to be explicit in another language. And when it must be explicit, the translator or whatever’s translating makes a choice and you don’t know what’s being said on your behalf. And while you can certainly improve a machines ability to guess what’s meant, you’d have to change the languages themselves to actually solve this problem.
What I find most amusing is when English speakers complain about why Spanish uses genders and say its pointless. Because Spanish uses genders for precisely the same reason English does. To add specificity and make things less ambiguous.
I realise this is a very long way to both agree with what you said and disagree.
However, after the first couple of times trying to teach in China and South Korea, I turned down further gigs, because I felt the students were not understanding me.
I don't think this is a fair take for a couple of reasons.
Mandarin is unlike other languages in that it's written form is famously ideographic. Phonetic translation is all that is done in any pair {L, M}. I assure you there is no such thing as a literal translation in any language.
Secondly, english as a global lingua franca is not a given and we in the anglosphere ought to be gracious in it's modern historical role, lest it decline (this is an exact mirror of dollar reserve privilege). Your statement reads as "be more accommodating for me". But through the prism of good manners it smacks of liberal entitlement.
>There is 0 reason to learn
hoo boy, i don't get paid enough for this... carry on
> Mandarin is unlike other languages in that it's written form is famously ideographic. Phonetic translation is all that is done in any pair {L, M}. I assure you there is no such thing as a literal translation in any language.
There's no Mandarin/English translation for a "STOP" sign? I expect there is such a thing as a literal translation for most short instructions, the type of which you might see on a sign, for instance. Maybe you don't realize that words
Btw, based on Wikipedia, China uses symbols for traffic signs like Russia and Europe. US and Canada are the exceptions who use text and only a small few symbols.
Could you give me an example? I just Googled "beijing airport sign" and everything seems translated as expected, e.g., Gates, Beijing Capital Airport, International Departure, Drinking Water, etc.
I assume you don't mean you want Beijing written as "North Capital"?
The English word “station” was replaced with “Zhan,” which is the pinyin or romanised version of the Chinese character.
In some places, station names such as Olympic Park and Terminal 2 of the Beijing airport were changed to “Aolinpike Gongyuan” and “2 Hao Hangzhanlou”.
https://www.economist.com/china/2022/04/13/why-china-is-turn...
Why China is turning away from English
Given that English is not a major local language outside of Hong Kong, I'd expect there's a very high chance that an English-only speaker might need to interact with a Chinese-only speaker. It could be something like trying to relay their goal to a taxi driver or delivery person, or something as critical as trying to gain the attention of emergency services (I'd assume if you called the equivalent of 999/911 and shouted a location in the phone, even if you couldn't explain further, that would be enough to trigger a response)
Providing the English speaking audience the Pinyin gives them a chance to be understood in that situation. The translated only name is more likely to be unrecognized by the lisstener.
It doesn't seem so bizarre when you go into the Montreal metro and the signs say "Gare Bonaventure" instead of "Bonaventure Station", and that's in a country where English is nominally a supported language.
But I don’t think English is a nominally supported language in Quebec. IIRC all of Canada outside of Quebec requires dual signage in english + French, but Quebec only requires French. I’d guess Gare bonaventure is an artifact of that law rather than a translation strategy.
If what the grandparent's linked Economist article says is true: "The province of Hainan has launched a campaign to 'clean up and rectify' kindergarten names by purging a variety of words, including 'world', 'global', 'bilingual' and 'international'", it does make me feel somewhat sad, as I would hope that many of the terms they list as falling out of favour should remain positive and aspirations for us as a species regardless of the political winds in Beijing.
In Malaysia it is depend on which part of Malaysia. Not all Malaysian Chinese can speak Mandarin. Certain part speak Cantonese or other dialect.
In Taiwan street signs do mostly have English translations. A lot of citizens speak English, especially night market vendors. You'll also have a lot of native English speakers in Taipei due to expatriation from US and Canada.
In Singapore signs officially are in English. And it's one of the four official languages, which means most people speaks English.
In Malaysia people usually speak at least 4 languages. Because it was ruled by Britain before, people speak English fairly well.
Lastly, in China, well, nobody is traveling there now. International travel is down 97% this year, even after reopening. And if you're doing business there, well, there's no point understanding the contract in Mandarin because most likely it won't be enforced, and will favor local business anyways by the courts. What's really screwy is the government has replaced most of the English translation on street signs from a literal translation to phonetic translation of the mandarin sound. So even if your read the English part of the sign you cannot understand it.