windwalker wrote:If you are not Chinese how do you know this
No I don't. Not by personal experience. But I experience it on distance through my wife and her family and their everyday struggle.
The problem, as I see it, is not personal reference, but the fact that as a foreigner, you'll probably never experience China as a Chinese does. So people are mostly fooling themselves if they believe they have a knowledge about China. You can study or work in China for several years without really experience China behind the curtains.
Maybe you're the one being fooled thinking you know and others do not.
The problem, as I see it, is not personal reference, but the fact that as a foreigner, you'll probably never experience China as a Chinese does. So people are mostly fooling themselves if they believe they have a knowledge about China.
Bao wrote:Most people who go to China just want to live in China as a foreigner or as a tourist and have all the benefits as a foreigner. Then it's fun of course. Being a Chinese in China is truly like living in another world.
Bao wrote:windwalker wrote:If you are not Chinese how do you know this
... No I don't. Not by personal experience. But I experience it on distance through my wife and her family and their everyday struggle. And also I hear so many stories about ordinary people in China that I shut down and try not to listen to it. 8 year old children with cancer telling their parents that they don't need to pay their expensive medicines and are willing to die. Retired people throwing themselves out of high hospital buildings because they can't pay for their treatment anymore. A woman throwing her husband's one year old child down a plattform in Beijing airport. So many sad stories.
http://edition.cnn.com/videos/world/201 ... family.cnn
Bao wrote:"The above examples are extremes, not part of everyday Chinese lifes."
Sure they are.
...I was walking a normal street close to an apartment store. I was very close to fall into a manhole. The lid was gone and there was just a round hole straight down. I could probably see 20 meters down. No warning signs, nothing, just a hole in the middle of the pavement. ...
But holy fuck you had better be prepared to sacrifice everything for your cause or you may as well just stay home or go somewhere else because this "ain't no Kansas". I strongly believe that I am part of the last generation of foreigners that will have a chance to learn real TCMA here in China, at the source, because there just won't be anything left and no one here is going to lose any sleep over it.
MaartenSFS wrote:I hardly have any Chinese friends not because I don't understand them or because I'm a foreigner but because I choose not to be a part of a society where everyone is constantly trying to use each other to climb a little higher up the social ladder and would do anything to get there.
windwalker wrote:But holy fuck you had better be prepared to sacrifice everything for your cause or you may as well just stay home or go somewhere else because this "ain't no Kansas". I strongly believe that I am part of the last generation of foreigners that will have a chance to learn real TCMA here in China, at the source, because there just won't be anything left and no one here is going to lose any sleep over it.
We each have our own karma to work through.
Sorry to hear of your trials and tribulations, hope in the end it works out for you.
Anyone studying an art that is tied uniquely to its culture should in my opinion
go to the source to study. Not to live as the locals do but to get an very unique perspective
and hopefully meet some of the founders or family members of the respective art.
Having lived in China, specifically only to study with my teacher there. I found it to be very rewarding, and helped me to formulate my own views and skill sets. Much of it I’m still digesting to this day. I still go back to visit him, but not to live there,
although I will be moving and living in Taiwan shortly...I call it China "lite" for me China after awhile started to feel
very respective in a way that Taiwan does not.
While in China, I did start to do the teach English thing but felt my time would be better spent training. Also as you've noted I too had to really evaluate my own reasons for staying vs making and living life . It's a choice that all have to make,,I found that longer one was there the harder it was or would be to come back..
Reading the accounts of others in China, they seem to differ from mine in the aspect that I never compared it to anything else...China, is China...
One does need to be very clear inside and hopefully have a good inner sense that allows them to meet the “right” people…Lots of “wrong” people around.
I’ve found the MA scene to be a little different in that unless one had a good command of the language one might find themselves in a confusing and bad situation. They don’t play too well with outsiders, the locals have a lot of cultural norms that if not understood will tend to cause problems for those who don’t. Wining at something is not always really winning ...
No it "ain't no Kansas” Its very layered, pays to keep an open mind. I don’t know about being the last generation of anything. My thought are that there will always be those who carry on the traditions its up to the seeker to find them.
MaartenSFS, you are a true seeker, much respect
I think if you do, or when you come back to the US you might find yourself very broad and even a little frustrated as
it “ain't no China”
Happy holidays, best of luck
david
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