Don't Try to Teach English in China

Why did I only teach English in Shanghai for six months? Because China is a horrible place, and that's pretty much all there is to it. For example, in 2007, I suffered from food poisoning for two straight weeks when I lived in Shanghai. Seems that even at Kentucky Fried Chicken, an American food chain, you still can't make the Chinese workers cook chicken properly!

My guess is that the local Chinese workers smile, nod, bow, and all that, when the American franchisee is there to supervise things, but then, just as soon as the door closes behind him or her on their way out, it's right back to Chinese style chaos and rule breaking for the sake of expediency. Or to cut corners to save money and time. Whatever the case may in fact be, welcome to the wild, wild East, where nobody seems to be able to wait for anything. Not for very damn long anyway.

And rules? From what I've personally witnessed over the years in China, Taiwan, and South Korea, most people in Asia just plain seem to rule-averse. One hates to stereotype, but if you spend any appreciable time in East Asia, you will quickly see that most Asians simply don't abide by any rules, regulations, or standards. Not the way we are taught to obey the law in the west anyway. So you can forget about food safety guidelines too, or any of that fancy stuff we tend to think is so very, very important.

Where There is No Punishment, There is Only Crime

Just plain SELFISH

An all too typically rude, selfish (oblivious to everyone else but herself) "ajumma" lady in South Korea suddenly decided that it would be okay for her to park illegally, directly in front of a parking garage exit with only one entrance and only one exit, while she went shopping in the grocery store across the street!

Naturally, the person waiting in the black car was honking their horn profusely -- and may have even been late for work, but did the woman who'd parked illegally even bother to hurry to move her car? Of course not! She just acted like she had done absolutely nothing wrong.

But hey! It was just another little moment of shame for the people of Far East Asia, who are so shameful so very often that, instead of actually trying to actually clean up their own act, they have, for literally thousands of years now, made an entire CULTure out of pretending that they're not doing anything wrong to begin with! You know... to "save face."

So, sadly, you tend to see this kind of thing in Asia quite often. Every single day, in fact, because Asians aren't supposed to get angry in public. Or display pretty much any truly genuine emotion except totally fake "happy."

You see, that sadistic, repressive A-hole, Confucius, apparently wasn't big on public displays of "negative emotion," so I think that must be why, to this very day, so many Koreans, Chinese, etc, etc, are constantly going around doing things in broad daylight, every single day, that are really, really rude, selfish, and just plain totally wrong. Because they know that nobody is going to take issue with them, much less have the guts to so much as tell them off in public.

Because there is crime and there is punishment, and when there is no punishment... there is only crime.

And besides, Asian cops (who are actually bothering to do their jobs) are almost non-existent in many countries in Asia in most cases. Seriously. You hardly ever see an Asian police car in Korea, Taiwan, China, etc. And when you do, there are usually two cops in the front and two in the back. Yep! The car is full! No room to put criminals even IF they did come across any! But these four stooges (who usually look all too typically effeminate and completely ineffectual) appear to just love to joy-ride around like that with their lights flashing! Just like a group of dumb little boys who have absolutely nothing better to do than play with bright, shiny things....

I even once asked an adult student in Taiwan why the cops there seemed to do almost nothing at all, except drive around every now and then and try to show off. He replied something to the effect of: "Those crim-nal, they see cop car come... then, they drop what they do, and run away!" Yeah... right. Okay. Well, now we know!

Ahem.

Again, the problem with that kind of moronic "thinking" is that there is crime and there is punishment, and when there is no punishment, there is only crime.

So, as a result, most people in this part of the world just tend to walk around on a daily basis being totally and completely self-absorbed, horrifically passive-aggressive, and often totally obnoxious much of the time. Because they know that in most cases, they can get away with just about anything - just as long as they pretend they're not doing anything wrong, and they remember to flash that big, dumb, toothy, fake "smile." You know... for their "big face" (aka false pride).

Yep. Welcome to something very much akin to Asian Hell.