Top 5 Reasons I Hate Changsha

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 Food

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 People

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?

2. The Weather

If you ever spot something resembling a blue sky in this place, get down on your knees or something and thank whatever you believe in for allowing such a monumental situation like that to occur. For every city in California that has wonderful year-round weather, there is one city in China that takes all of the sh*t weather. That is Changsha.

1. The Traffic

There are plenty of cities larger than Changsha that somehow manage to manage their traffic. Let's hope that the subway gets finished and works before ignoring engineers, enjoying  kickbacks, or leakage from the Xiang fooks it all up.

Cool post JShep!

4. Well, don't go to Sichuan Province, then. Hunanese food is what they feed teething infants there.

1. This may be wishful thinking on your part. I've never seen a city where the traffic was anything remotely like sane. As I've mentioned before, traffic everywhere in China has only one 4-word/character rule: "I want go now!"

The main thing I hate about Changsha is the dialect which is vulgar and nasty.

And I have to disagree on two points

1) the weather is fine in the summer- many a blue day! Although the jump between 0 and 40 degrees in the seasons is a bit much
2) I love Hunan food and all of my chums who formerly taught here say that's the thing they miss most about Changsha

Yeah, agree with RD about the traffic. My girlfriend's parents live in a small quite well to do city which isn't very busy at all (a bit like a small city in Europe) but still they manage to conspire to make the traffic chaotic sometimes.
I bet in the countryside in those towns with one car the guy with the car still manages to make a traffic jam somehow

Drifing a wee bit off topic, but I think Kit is onto something.

I bet in the countryside in those towns with one car the guy with the car still manages to make a traffic jam somehow

This reminds of an old comment about messing up a one-car funeral.
I've been living in the same mid-sized city off and on for more than 9 years, and the traffic situation has gone from funny to crazy to seriously compromising the liveability of the city. Part of it is caused by the endless construction (first of more elevated roads, more recently of an underground that may never be completed), but mostly its the increase in volume coupled with the fact that drivers still try to drive as though they were the only car on the road. Daily I see life-threatening stupidity exhibited in the form of "no one's going to hit me if I do this."
A larger herd of lemmings is still a herd of lemmings.
/Rant over

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.

Amen my brotha! A big hearty Amen to all of the above.

 "Ditto going to the opera and watching a movie on your iPad."


  what, sersiously? you experienced this? I would have gone apeshit.



 "Sky-high rent. [/color]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?"

cheap compared to Ningbo. property here is ridicularse.

 

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.

Doesn't sound like you know how to say it correctly then. Are you one of those guys that pronounces it "Chang (as in gang) Sha"? If you say the city's name properly it sounds fine (with tones and shit, brah). And the name literally means long sand - they named it after the big island in the middle of the river we now know as Tangerine/Orange Island.

4. The Food

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.

Grow 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.

3. The People

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?

The 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.

The rest of your post is solid.

To Tom - Dialect sounds like home to me.

Super spicy food is one of the bonus features of Hunan (along with super-spicy girls ).

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.

or dump an assload of sugar on everything up in Shanghai

Word dawg, When I got here I wondered why all my children had no teeth and seemed to be permently hyper.

Super spicy food is one of the bonus features of Hunan (along with super-spicy girls ).

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.

Trying some real Chinese food, particularly super spicy fare, is one of my motivations for wanting to teach in China. If tears aren't running down my cheeks, you haven't made it spicy enough. 

Avoid Guangdong then. They hate any flavor besides "water" and "oil" here.

Avoid Gaungdong then. They hate any flavor besides "water" and "oil" here.

  you could easily be describing Ningbo

sounds like this is 'lets take a dig at china' thread.  Goes against the grain. come on guys, we are guests in this country. If you don't like it go back to your country.

I get the need to have a moan now and again but lets think in the way of a local if they were to read this thread. Kind of distasteful i think.

People need to bitch and moan a little from time to time.  I love this place and never plan to leave, but I'm still happy to whine about little things from time to time.

BTW - Don't avoid Guangdong if you don't line non-spicy food.  Just stick to the larger cities with tons of factories - those places have food from all over China.  I just tried a new Hunan place on Saturday night with a Guangdong friend.  She ordered everything with mild spices - it still came out pretty hot.  I was amused.  She wasn't.