Living, Breathing & Game Collecting in CHINA! Lots of photos! Temples, Tech & More

First, I just want to say welcome and thank you for checking out my thread about my life, collecting, and living in China.

Now that, that's out of the way, let's get down to business!

Quick Info: I'm a 23 year old, Canadian citizen, and I'm not chinese. I teach English at a middle school here, and do odd jobs to help pay for my life. I've been here for a few years now.

My Current Location: Zhongshan, China.
Previous Locations: Beijing, Chengdu, and Hong Kong. (Hong Kong, I visit every summer and winter)

Technology in China:
Technology in China is pretty neat, although it's a little different than back home. Although many people think otherwise, there IS a huge gaming, and geek culture here. We have Arcades (街机 - Jiējī), Game Consoles (游戏机 - Yóuxì jī), Handheld Game Consoles (掌上游戏机 - Zhǎngshàng yóuxì jī), Android TV Box (机顶盒 - Jīdǐnghé), Cell Phones (手机 - Shǒujī), Gundam Models (敢达模型 - Gǎndá móxíng), and many more cool things that I will document in this thread.

This thread will cover: Gaming, Technology, Retro Game Collecting, Living, daily life as a teacher (the good and the bad), being a foreigner (老外 - Lǎowài), consumables (snacks, food, tea, alcohol), transportation (Electric, Gas, etc) (电动自行车 - Diàndòng zìxíngchē - Electric Moped), traffic/congestion/business, Online Shopping (Taobao = Chinese Amazon) and much more.

In a sense, you can think of this as your ultimate guide for being in China!

Translation List (other than the ones above) - Work in Progress:

Foreign Teacher - 外国老师 - Wàiguó Lǎoshī
Taxi - 的士 - Dí shì
Nintendo - 任天堂 - Rèntiāntáng
Microsoft - 微软 - Wēiruǎn
Sony - 索尼 - Suǒní
Game Cartridge - 游戏卡 - Yóuxì Kǎ (When looking for games, you can search the console plus 游戏卡 or just 卡, for example: SFC 游戏卡. In China, we use shortform. So, FC, SFC, N64, GC, etc)
Television - 电视 - Diànshì

That's all for now folks! Pictures will come shortly, once I get a time to take some and upload them. Every week, I will post a "sub-topic" inside this thread (about the aforementioned things) with pictures and information!

Here's some photos quickly! (Click on them for them to be bigger. I need to find a better host, so these can appear larger by default!)

This is myself, inside the shopping mall across the street from me.



These 2 are from a "Chrysanthemum Festival - 菊花节". Pretty amazing that these are made out of flowers.

 

I've made this a sticky thread

 

Awesome! I'll be checking this thread

There was another memeber from China, Apox, but I don't know if he is still active. He had a nice collection, but most of his hauls came from ferry trips to Japan rather than local hunting

 

Cool stuff, I will definitely be following this. Thanks for sharing the experience!

 

Awesome! Thanks Yakumo, for making it a sticky!

I also appreciate the interest, everyone!

I'll be sure to keep this regularly updated.

 

Hey Lyth
Do you use this very noisy IM 'AliWangWang' ? I use it occasionally to try and speak with taobao sellers, drives me crazy aha.

I'm curious as to a few things, I hope it's not too personal. But what do you teach in China? How's the shifts in terms of times you're working? Do you find yourself treated differently solely because you're foreigner living in China? And what made you head out there? I'm really interested to hear some stories!

PS: Do you ever get as far out as Shantou?

 

Oh yes, I have AliWangWang. I'm using it now actually!

I teach Middle School English (But I also work as a model). I have pretty easy shifts. I use a bi-weekly schedule, so on one (even) week I have 8 classes, the other (odd) week I have 15.

On my even weeks, I work only morning classes, so I finish at lunch, and I have Thursdays, Saturdays, Sundays and Mondays off.

On my odd weeks, I work 2 afternoon shifts, and 2 morning shifts. I have Friday, Saturday and Sunday off.

Unfortunately, I'm here actually as a work-volunteer program, so I get an "allowance/stipend" instead of a pay, so I don't make much. (However, I could work the same hours and get paid for it, but the contract agreement is sucky).

I havent been to Shantou before, but I've travelled a little. Xi An, Guilin, Yangshou, etc.

About my experience, I'll cover this later on. Stay tuned. But in a nutshell, I've been here for a while, and I'm doing just fine. It helps that I speak some Cantonese though, and that my girlfriend is fluent in it. I couldn't imagine living here and not speaking the language.

 

Just thinking about it, I've never been to Zhongshan - I have been to Guangzhou, Foshan and Zhuhai, though. What do you think of the place? Worth visiting?

 

Well, I live in a small town within Zhongshan, named "Xiaolan". Xiaolan is pretty nice, but there isn't much to do. We have some nice clubs, bars, and outside beer drinking places, and some big malls with arcades though.

Zhongshan itself is really nice. I have an English map for it (which isn't released to the public yet), and it's huge. Along the main river, there's a cruise as well as some bars (without loud music!!), and it lights up at night (supposedly is really tranquil). There's a good amount of museums, including a rock museum (one section has rocks that look exactly like food. Its sweeeeet). I believe theres a hot spring too. There's also a good amount of foreign places in Zhongshan as well. Shiqi is another "part" of Zhongshan that's pretty clean and has lots of palm trees.

Where abouts are you in HK? I visit Tai Po (Dai Bu -大埔) every summer and winter for a month or so. Also Hung Hom, TST and Mong Kok.

 

When I'm in HK, I'm mostly in Sha Tin in the new territories - but I spend most of my time in Shenzhen, now.

 

You've caught my interest. I look forward to seeing more pictures.

 

Glad this thread exist now. I'll contribute a little when I can (I hopefully will be back in china this summer). If anybody goes to shanghai I did find one kind of cool game store while there (out of the many I tried to find and failed).

How do you put up with the humidity there? The one time I was there I was dying. =(

 

I'm near Shenzhen too. The Humidity is strong, but you acclimate to it quickly. The less you use air conditioning, the less you feel the humidity, pretty much.

 

It doesn't seem to work for me. I grew up in southern california which is very dry and every summer when Montreal or Toronto gets very humid I pretty much want to die. =)

 

I'm from the UK so even the humidity in Japan pisses me off. I hate summer here. You are constantly wet all day. Horrid weather indeed. I'm definitely not a fan of humidity.

 

I don't know what it's like where you are, but I found Tokyo in summer much harder to deal with than HK or Shenzhen.

 

Hi everyone!

Big update this weekend! Just been busy with work this week. Got a lot!

 

Small update (due to having PC issues). Picked up some GB games/bootlegs.

EDIT: MAIN POST UPDATED! Now with 200% bigger photos. Yay

 

Did you meet your girlfriend from a show called "You're the one"?
It's the only Chinese show I watch, but apparently it's very popular.

 

No lol. My girlfriend is a foreign teacher just like me.

Heh