For those who don’t know: I am an American expat living in China. People often think I am lying about this, or are shocked by it. Some people will ask me questions about life in China and I will sometimes answer their questions. I try to avoid this topic as there are no benefits if I talk about it. If anything, it almost always results in negatives. However, there’s two things I want to talk about. I’ll write about the other one next time. Right now, I feel it’s important to talk about why I don’t talk about life in China because even with me saying what I just said there will be people who are already trying to take it out of context. I’ve seen it countless times when describing life here.
Let’s go back to when I found out I was moving to China. Before I moved here I had tons of people that tried to get me to not do it. A lot of people were saying all sorts of things that I knew weren’t true, as I had been to China before I moved here. One person, who won’t be named, gave me lots of shit for it. Going so far as to call me a traitor. In fact, moving here caused our friendship to end. When he asked me why I was going to move to China I said, “I can’t find a job here. Work is work.” He then replied with, “Why didn’t you come to me if you needed work?” I then showed him texts of me doing that and him telling me I’m good enough to find work on my own. So, I did. Just not in the US.
I’m sure you’re really wondering if that ended the friendship. Well, it did. It didn’t just end that one. It ended many others. Week by week as I was packing and getting ready to move to China I found my social circle was beginning to shrink, daily. In fact, when I left the US only about 6 friends saw me off. However, my online social circle stayed the same. None of my online friends left me, yet. This made me realise it doesn’t matter if it is online or real life friends that people will just leave when they disagree with how you choose to live your life. Once you’ve proven you’ll no longer be controlled or considered “of use”. Most people in our lives are fakes. There was no explaining to them about how China really is. Anything I said they fought back on until I just stopped trying.
Now, I am leaving the US. While I was in Detroit, waiting for my flight to Beijing, a friend on Twitter makes me promise to post daily. That way they know I am safe. People are messaging me. People I’d never met. Some of the people I knew most of my life had left but I still had these internet friends. I felt good. It helped a lot while I was struggling when I first moved to China. My bank in the US locked my account every time I withdrew money; despite me calling them and telling them I was moving to China. I had lots of weird struggles when I first moved here and it was my internet friends who helped me get through all of that crap.
This changed about a month and a half of moving here. See, when I came here originally I wanted to document life in China. I wanted to show people the truth of China. Both the good and the bad. However, I learned this was impossible to do. No one wants the truth because it clashes with their views. So, my online friends would ask me about life in China. I’d answer their questions honestly. They would then get mad at me because I was confirming their views on China. They started to fall off too. They would call me a CCP plant, an agent, that I had been compromised, and many other things. Why? Just because I told the truth. I had someone send me a picture of a “slave encampment” in Beijing. It was a mall near where I lived. I went there daily. Even when sending them a picture of me going in it they called me all sorts of names and deleted me.
This caused me to start looking in to content about China on YouTube and Twitter. Holy shit was this an eye opener. If you’re neutral, or slightly positive, man do you just get shit on and harassed. Where if you’re saying bad stuff, it doesn’t matter if they were true or not, you get all this fan fare. This is why I do not post about China. I’ve already had people try to fuck with me living here because of this. A lot of people assume I am being censored by China, or Chinese people. No. I am being censored by Americans. By westerners. By people who have never been here and I am questioning their narratives. The funny thing is, you don’t have to say something like, “The CPC is great!” for people to attack you. You can mention something slightly positive and people will treat it as if you said the CPC should control the world. That you’re gargling their cock daily for free food ration coupons. Anything neutral, or slightly positive, is seen as “CCP propaganda”. It’s fucking retarded. With that said, when I would bring up negative things about China I would also got shit from Chinese people over it. I would be considered an ungrateful guest. Even if they were fair criticisms. No matter what I post people get upset and try to fuck with me.
(Ed Note: You’ll notice here I said both CPC and CCP. CPC is the name of the party. CCP is what journalists have called it forever because they never do any research into the shit they’re covering. That’s not a statement about journalists and China. That’s a statement about journalists in general. From Kotaku to WaPo.)
Why don’t I mention “fair criticisms”? When I have done so in the past people have taken them wildly out of context. One of the biggest mistakes I made when I first moved here was talking about these things. Any foreigner here will know automatically what I mean when I mention public bathrooms, gov paperwork, APP character limits, and more. These are fair criticisms. However, people take them wildly out of context and spread their out of context ideas as my own. I’ll actually going into APP character limits, because this one gets thrown at the west all the time too. So, in the west we don’t allow names that are less than 3 characters, most of the time, when signing up for something. Sometimes it’s 4. Chinese names can often be 2 characters long. This is a valid complaint Chinese people have. Same with APPs not accepting different languages. However, in China there’s the opposite issue. They will place a character max. There are government APPs I’ve signed up for that didn’t allow more than 6 characters for your full name. I’ve used some that don’t allow for spaces and your name must match how it is on your passport. This has caused issues, several times, while living here. Just like the west’s 3-4 character minimum causes issues for Chinese people living overseas. Even writing this I am worried people will take it out of context and I am trying to edit it in ways to prevent it to be, but I know it’s a wasted endeavor.
Moving to China taught me a lot about people. While it sucks to have lost lots of people I considered close friends. It still taught me something. I hope you’ll enjoy these small glimpses into life here. How I’m censored by everyone to just live my life. I’ve heard rumors of people who moved back to the US who were “pro-China”, see neutral, and people tracked them down and fucked with them to so they would lose their jobs back home. This is why outside of a few topics I won’t open up about life here. I’ve seen my words used and twisted too many times.