I bet in the countryside in those towns with one car the guy with the car still manages to make a traffic jam somehowThis reminds of an old comment about messing up a one-car funeral.
This is a great place for me to list…Top 5 Reasons I Hate Beijing
5. The vast scale of the city. Getting around takes forever. If you aren't taking a cab and need to get from one corner of the city to another, it's a half-day affair.
4. The nouveau riche. It's great you have money (probably embezzled or gained through crony capitalism, but complaining about that would just reveal jealousy), but we're all waiting for you to develop a bit of class. Shouting, spitting, and smoking heavily in nice places doesn't show how powerful you are. It shows how fresh from the countryside you are. Ditto going to the opera and watching a movie on your iPad. Dump the crewcut, button your shirt (hiding your gold nugget necklace), and quiet the fuck down until you learn how to be civilized.
3. Horrific traffic. So you decided to spring for a taxi rather than being squished on the subway? Well guess what, it's rush hour. No, no, I don't need to know what time it is. I can tell you, it's rush hour and traffic will be shitty. Get ready to sit in the cab and listen to crosstalk for the next forty minutes.
2. Sky-high rent. US$750 to live in a shithole that was built in the 1980's and hasn't been remodeled since? No thanks. $1200 for a recently-built place? No thanks again. Sure, you can find a cheaper apartment…like one of those out on the border with Hebei. That still counts as Beijing, right?
1. Air pollution. Beijing's air is often (if not usually) literally hazardous to our health according to WHO standards. The Chinese government lies about it and covers it up, of course. (Some estimates say that Beijing's air pollution lowers residents' lives by five(!!!) years.) Get ready to drop $1,000 on air filters and put aside all vanity as you walk around wearing a pollution mask. Like jogging or other outdoor exercise? Forget it, unless you also have a deep interest in experiencing a 18th century coal-minder grade case of black lung.
Actually, I can't wait to leave Beijing.
Avoid this post if you're looking for facts and figures. Read on if you're interested in salty opinions and such.
There are several reasons I love Changsha and exactly five reasons I don't. Although I won't mention the former here, we can still paint a dirty picture of this horrid city quite fairly without assumptions and remember that in spite of all the terrible things this city has to offer, there will always be something there for everyone.
5. The Name
There must be a story behind the name that no one cares about. The sound it makes exiting a persons mouth is akin to the sound of the chain on your bicycle breaking.
4. The FoodGrow a sack. In fact, no, you're right, I'll just go eat some squeaking mice in Guangzhou or dump an assload of sugar on everything up in Shanghai - and there's always that mmm mmm Mantou bread of the North! I love me some plain white bread.
In Changsha a person can find any number of restaurants that cater to most any flavor their looking for. If a person is not familiar with the city, they will likely find themselves swimming in a chili powder infested spicy pepper dungeon.
3. The PeopleThe yelling is all of Hunan rather than just Changsha but the people themselves have helped me out of jams several times and I'd take them over Shenzhen, Hong Kong, Shanghai or most Wuhan people any day of the fucking week.
This one is hard for me to mention, because I like to think I like everyone. I don't. Why does everyone yell in this town?
or dump an assload of sugar on everything up in Shanghai
Super spicy food is one of the bonus features of Hunan (along with super-spicy girls akakakakak).
If it weren't for all the Hunan restaurants and my wife's spicy Jiangxi cooking, I'd have to eat bland Guangdong food all the time.
Avoid Gaungdong then. They hate any flavor besides "water" and "oil" here.
I first noticed it in a restaurant. The place was strangely quiet, and at one table a group seemed deep in prayer. Their heads were bowed, their eyes hooded and their hands in their laps. I then realised that every one, young and old, was gazing at a handheld phone. People strolled the street outside likewise, with arms crooked at right angles, necks bent and heads in potentially crippling postures. Mothers with babies were doing it. Students in groups were doing it. They were like zombies on call. There was no conversation.
Every visit to California convinces me that the digital revolution is over, by which I mean it is won. Everyone is connected. The New York Times last week declared the death of conversation. While mobile phones may at last be falling victim to etiquette, this is largely because even talk is considered too intimate a contact. No such bar applies to emailing, texting, messaging, posting and tweeting. It is ubiquitous, the ultimate connectivity, the brain wired full-time to infinity.
The MIT professor and psychologist Sherry Turkle claims that her students are close to mastering the art of sustaining eye contact with a person while texting someone else. It is like an organist playing different tunes with hands and feet. To Turkle, these people are "alone together … a tribe of one". Anyone with 3,000 Facebook friends has none.
The audience in a New York theatre now sit, row on row, with lit machines in their laps, looking to the stage occasionally but mostly scrolling and tapping away. The same happens at meetings and lectures, in coffee bars and on jogging tracks. Children are apparently developing a dexterity in their thumbs unknown since the evolution of the giant sloth. Talk is reduced to the muttered, heads-down expletives brilliantly satirised in the BBC's Twenty Twelve.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/apr/26/everyone-connected-death-of-conversationQuoteI first noticed it in a restaurant. The place was strangely quiet, and at one table a group seemed deep in prayer. Their heads were bowed, their eyes hooded and their hands in their laps. I then realised that every one, young and old, was gazing at a handheld phone. People strolled the street outside likewise, with arms crooked at right angles, necks bent and heads in potentially crippling postures. Mothers with babies were doing it. Students in groups were doing it. They were like zombies on call. There was no conversation.
Every visit to California convinces me that the digital revolution is over, by which I mean it is won. Everyone is connected. The New York Times last week declared the death of conversation. While mobile phones may at last be falling victim to etiquette, this is largely because even talk is considered too intimate a contact. No such bar applies to emailing, texting, messaging, posting and tweeting. It is ubiquitous, the ultimate connectivity, the brain wired full-time to infinity.
The MIT professor and psychologist Sherry Turkle claims that her students are close to mastering the art of sustaining eye contact with a person while texting someone else. It is like an organist playing different tunes with hands and feet. To Turkle, these people are "alone together … a tribe of one". Anyone with 3,000 Facebook friends has none.
The audience in a New York theatre now sit, row on row, with lit machines in their laps, looking to the stage occasionally but mostly scrolling and tapping away. The same happens at meetings and lectures, in coffee bars and on jogging tracks. Children are apparently developing a dexterity in their thumbs unknown since the evolution of the giant sloth. Talk is reduced to the muttered, heads-down expletives brilliantly satirised in the BBC's Twenty Twelve.
It seems they're just catching up with us well-mannered beasts.
Changsha Sucks. Don't go there.
Leave it all for me
I have a friend from Australia who absolutely LOVES Changsha ... he said the girls there were gorgeous, and he loved the city and the food! Any truth to these so-called FACTS? mmmmmmmmmm
--GA
Changsha Sucks. Don't go there.Please also do not go to Nanjing. Leave it all for me.