You can go from bliss to complete frustration in a matter of seconds. The inability to read the language is frustrating. The different Mandarin accents of Putonghua and Changshahua are noticeable to me, even though I cannot understand the words. The people are bent on helping you, but at times it is annoying because you realize that they cannot help you and instead are wasting your time.
Of all the things in China, the incessant honking and the non-stop crowding and pushing (in lines, to the bus, etc.) are hitting the hardest. How can it be, that a Communist nation, faces such problems with inefficiency?
I have relegated to the fact that with 1.3 billion people, their is little to be done to make sure people use crosswalks. There is little to be done to introduce tact (or dental floss for that matter). There is little to be done to reduce the fact that people bathe and kill fish in the same place. Most likely, the sidewalk outside of their house/restaurant or store/house or Mahjong gambling shop/house. The Chinese literally shit where they eat.
It is a filthy, disgusting, stinky place. Yet it is mesmerizing and in some respects very American. But, when you walk past the child pissing in the drainage ditch, or see the thousands of frogs bagged up for slaughter at the market, or dodge the woman throwing out dish/cooking water onto the street, you realize that "developing" is an understatement.
China is at a break-neck pace to become the world's lone superpower and in the process, there is little time for cultural sophistication to catch up with technological and economic prowess.
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