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Ask HN: Is it difficult for non-Chinese to work in China?

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Re: Ask HN: Is it difficult for non-Chinese to work in China?

#61

Post by xiaoma »

Yes, there is xenophobia. One would either have to live in an English-language foreigner bubble or under a rock not to notice it. There is also xenophilia. Many call it a "middle-ority complex".

Also, people are at risk every now and then simply due to news cycles and political issues: http://shanghaiist.com/2016/07/16/nike_patriot_attack.php

If you're not too ambitious and you keep your head down and stay in your foreigner role, it's fine. If you do business or really try to dig in and advance long-term, you'll have tremendous disadvantages. On the other hand, if you're white, especially Nordic-looking, and you speak Chinese well, you'll have a tremendous advantage in networking with powerful people most Chinese would not have access to.

Re: Ask HN: Is it difficult for non-Chinese to work in China?

#62

Post by allan_s »

Hello

I'm a French Software engineer and I've been working in China for 5 years (and now back in France)

As someone who has worker in IT both in the education part (I was teaching CS in a 3 tier small city of 4 million inhabitants) and a startup/webshop in Shanghai I can only recommend you to try the experience.

As other have said life there is extremly different. If you're in Shanghai/Beijing, you can still find places to eat/live that will make you feel like home, but I think it's missing the point.

I would say the more you're ready to try to "mix in", the bigger the opportunity will be. I finished with a near fluent Chinese fluent level (I can perfectly follow business and informal conversation, and get the rough meaning from written contract in Mandarin) and I think that's what definitely helped me to finish CTO of the company I was working in. (~60 employees, 99% Chinese, doing businesses with other Chinese companies)

Chinese is a very easy language once you've stopped trying to relate to English and you see start seing learning chinese as gathering "sentences" and speaking Chinese as "i take this sentence I heard last time and I replace this word by that one" (as there's no conjugation, plural etc.) and it will definitely helped relationship of any kind, especially if you look "foreigner"

On the technical side, speaking chinese will help you enter in the companies were people still do php4 without framework nor testing nor versionning (SVN if you're lucky) because there's no harsh competition. So arriving in this kind of company with your ability to bring them even what you would consider "plain old MVC framework" will increase their efficiency by several times. (and if the company was there, it's that it was profitable, most of the time because of the manager/commercial having a good network, so if you're now able to make technical side profitable too, they will soon ask you to supervise/teach/manage the whole set of developers). And you will be invited to meeting with the customer too as it will give face to the company "hey we're a good company, we can hire laowai foreigners".

There's a lot more to say but I think most of people here have already covered the other aspect of living and working in china

Re: Ask HN: Is it difficult for non-Chinese to work in China?

#63

Post by civilian »

Take some time browsing the /r/China subreddit. It contains a lot of westerners who live in China. https://www.reddit.com/r/China/

I travelled in China (Beijing, Chengdu and some smaller towns) for three weeks. It was different! Their customs are different but not that hard to get used to. I think that as a (white) American, you will have positive racism applied to you. It's crappy but it's true.

Re: Ask HN: Is it difficult for non-Chinese to work in China?

#64

Post by stevesun21 »

johansch wrote: post #47
raihansaputra wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess if you are working professionally in the tech space, you'd just spring for the 5-15 bucks a month to have a vpn.

There was some noise about the GFW doing clever stuff(tm) to identify VPN traffic and punish the local IP for that. Was that real or hype?

Try shadowsocks it designed and made by China :-)

https://shadowsocks.org/en/index.html

Re: Ask HN: Is it difficult for non-Chinese to work in China?

#65

Post by msvan »

bogomipz wrote: post #57
msvan wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had beers with the P1 team in Beijing about 3-4 years ago, so I probably met you too :) Seemed like a cool little company at the time. I'm surprised that you were able to get a Z visa (?) as I thought that required a degree? OP: I can recommend living in China for the experience alone. You'll be treated differently, but xenophobia is not the word I'd use. I'm white and my experience was pretty great, though I'm not…

I don't agree. English in Beijing is not so common, but Hong Kong its very common.

My point is not that you will have enlightening discussions in English with the average Beijinger, but that there are lots of people who live in expat areas and mostly hang out with expats and Chinese people who speak decent English. Some spend years in China without knowing a lick of Chinese.

Re: Ask HN: Is it difficult for non-Chinese to work in China?

#66

Post by stevesun21 »

jason_slack wrote: post #60

I know the OP asked about an American working in China. However, I am an American, living in the US, working remotely for a company in China, about 3 years now. I thought I might offer a perspective from the opposite way. The only difficulty I have is language. Sometimes I feel like I am being very clear about something and I still can't convey it. So I take a step back and break it down into a list. This helps. The…

Lol, you just create a joke! "Na Ge", good one.

As childhood, some of parents (like mine) forbid us to use the words during our talk/speech because it is kind of make you sounds uncertain.

Re: Ask HN: Is it difficult for non-Chinese to work in China?

#67

Post by GordonS »

cleric wrote: post #11

Hello. Im a Swedish Sofware engineer and I have been working in Beijing for the last ~4 years. As others have pointed out, China is huge, and I have no experience from working in Hongkong or Shanghai where the vibe is more international, or so they say. So what to expect? Smooth sailing, as long as you can deliver. There is a lot of companies that value English speakers in general, so dont be surprised if you get pam…

I've never experienced any real xenophobic in the biggest cities in China, such as Beijing or Shanghai, but it has happened to me and my family in smaller cities such as Nanjing

Re: Ask HN: Is it difficult for non-Chinese to work in China?

#68

Post by johansch »

univerio wrote: post #54
johansch wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was some noise about the GFW doing clever stuff(tm) to identify VPN traffic and punish the local IP for that. Was that real or hype?

That's definitely real. Normal, unobfuscated VPN will result in packet drops after a couple of minutes. Even obfuscated VPN will trigger packet drops if you send too much traffic.

Thanks for that - it's great to have a confirmation. Obfuscated/unobfuscated VPN traffic, what is the actual difference at protocol level?

Re: Ask HN: Is it difficult for non-Chinese to work in China?

#69

Post by GordonS »

jason_slack wrote: post #60

I know the OP asked about an American working in China. However, I am an American, living in the US, working remotely for a company in China, about 3 years now. I thought I might offer a perspective from the opposite way. The only difficulty I have is language. Sometimes I feel like I am being very clear about something and I still can't convey it. So I take a step back and break it down into a list. This helps. The…

Hah, when I first heard na ge (more like nay ge in Beijing) my first thought was "I'll bet a lot of American ears prick up when they hear that"

Re: Ask HN: Is it difficult for non-Chinese to work in China?

#70

Post by jason_slack »

GordonS wrote: post #69
jason_slack wrote: post #60

I know the OP asked about an American working in China. However, I am an American, living in the US, working remotely for a company in China, about 3 years now. I thought I might offer a perspective from the opposite way. The only difficulty I have is language. Sometimes I feel like I am being very clear about something and I still can't convey it. So I take a step back and break it down into a list. This helps. The…

Hah, when I first heard na ge (more like nay ge in Beijing) my first thought was "I'll bet a lot of American ears prick up when they hear that"

and mine did as it was being used like every other sentence. Younger and older were using it alike. I'm glad I asked for clarification.
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