原創翻譯：龍騰網 http://www.laaxth.live 翻譯：東拐西拐 轉載請注明出處

Cole Masters, Writer | Travel Blogger | English Teacher
Living in China is both a pleasure and a torment, sometimes at the same time.
I live in a second-tier city (Guiyang) in China’s third poorest province (Guizhou). I haven’t had the ‘normal’ Beijing/Shanghai/Guangzhou expat experience. My house is in a communist-grey apartment building and if I mount the roof I can see into a giant village of farmers where people think it’s a good idea to burn their trash.
I’ve stopped bothering with speaking English.
Without further ado, we’ll get into why living in a pseudo-rural area of China is a pleasure.
I’m a star. That’s right. Students literally clap for me when I walk into the classroom. Girls approach me and ask for my we-chat. People ask to take pictures of me or sneak them on the subway. And when I start speaking Chinese? Forget about it. I’ve done literally nothing special and get to feel like Ryan Gosling for it.
I’m catching a glimpse of the real China: Forget the privileged urbanites. I’m surrounded on one side by regular city-dwellers and on the other by slash-and-burn peasants. I meet the richest of the rich and poorest of the poor. I schmooze with businessmen and government officials and cackle with taxi drivers whose mandarin is worse than mine. Every day I’m faced with the real China, always in flux, ever welcoming, and never, ever dull.
I do whatever I want: I’m no longer sold on the fact that the USA is the land of the free. I’ve been needlessly pulled over and given noise tickets too many times. Here, though? I drive on the sidewalk. I could jam electric guitar until 7 AM and no one would bat an eyelash. I sneak into construction sites, parks, abandoned buildings. When I get caught? I fire off some Chinese with a smile and get left to my own devices. Maybe it’s naive, but I really can’t imagine getting into trouble near where I live (not that I’m looking for it, really, I’m not…)
I travel often and cheaply: Tibetan areas are some of the most remote on the planet. Thanks to China’s new highways and railway system, I spent a week climbing a random mountain, alone, for a pittance. Getting there and back was not only easy but fun. And just enough bad things happened to make it all a true adventure, without any of the financial woes serious travel often incurs.

生活在中國既是一種快樂，也是一種折磨，有時候同時存在。
我住在一個二線城市（貴陽），位于中國第三窮的省份（貴州）。我沒有一般的北上廣外國人經驗。我的房屋位于一個灰色公寓樓里，如果我爬上屋頂，可以看到一個巨大的村莊，那里的村民認為焚燒垃圾是可以接受的。

不用急，我會說明一下為什么生活在一個偽農村地區會是一種快樂。
我就是個明星。是的，我走進教室的時候學生們會鼓掌歡迎我。女孩接近我要我的微信號。人們要求和我照相，或者偷偷在地鐵上給我拍照。我幾乎不用做什么特別的事情，就可以獲得明星般的待遇。



Environmental woes: The village I live next to? They burn their refuse/trash every day. Sometimes the haze is literally purple. I get stuck behind Chinese ‘semis’ and nearly asphyxiate daily. Some of the rivers near my apartment are ectoplasmically green. F****** Walmart sells endangered giant salamanders for human consumption. It’s safe to say that, at least where I live, concern for the natural environment is pretty slim.
Politeness faux pas: People like to spit in Guiyang. And by spit I mean hack from the utter depths of their lungs and loogee on the sidewalk. Sometimes I’ll see a girl that I think is rather pretty only to turn the other way and hear the dreaded lungal vibrations. People smoke everywhere. I stopped yelling at them about it unless it’s in the elevator (because I have asthma). And let’s just say that Guiyang folk and Westerners have a very different idea of queuing means.
Workaholicism: I once slept on the couch at my workplace, a private school. To my woe, music started blaring over the loudspeaker at 6:30 AM to wake the students up. They’re in class by 7:40, have an hour for lunch, out of class at 5:40 PM, have an hour for dinner, and then back in class until 10PM. I’ll let you do the math on that. That hour at lunch? It’s siesta hour. Because neither students nor teachers nor general employees can seem to sleep enough at night.
I could go on, but it would be ill-advised to go any further with how I feel about the effects of recent history/culture and how those things negatively affect the living experience of foreigners.

環境問題：我旁邊的那個村莊，他們每天都在焚燒垃圾。有時候霧霾真的挺嚴重。我幾乎都要窒息了。我住處附近的一些河流都變成綠色的。至少在我居住的那個地方，人們對自然環境的關注還是相當薄弱的。

沒禮貌：貴陽的人們喜歡隨地吐痰。我指的是那種從肺部深處咳出來，然后吐在人行道上。我有時候我看到某個女孩，感覺還蠻漂亮的，可是她轉身做出了上面那種動作。人們到處抽煙。除非是在電梯里抽煙，否則我懶得管他們（因為我有哮喘）。而且貴陽人和西方人對排隊的理解完全不同。

工作狂：有一次我在我的所工作的私立學校的沙發上睡著了。早上6點半喇叭就開始響起，把學生弄醒。他們7點四十分就到班級上，一個小時吃午餐，下午五點四十分下課，一小時吃晚餐，然后回到班級，直到晚上十點。中午那一小時其實是午覺時間，因為學生，老師以及其他工作人員在晚上的時候根本沒睡飽。

The honest truth about life in China is that it is what you make it. You’ll need a high level of tolerance for every tier of BS imaginable in order to acclimate to the place.
Once you’ve developed it, however, China becomes pretty awesome. When you’ve got a grasp on the language and know what to do, and how to do the things you probably shouldn’t do tactfully, then it’s easy to have a blast. You can save a ton of money, meet a bunch of friends, and travel all over the place.
Like any place in the world, China has its trade-offs.
So, a pleasure and a torment. But I’m still here. That has to count for something.

總之在中國的生活就看你自己怎么過了。你需要有極大的忍耐力，才能適應這里的生活。
但是一旦你適應了，那么中國就是一個相當棒的地方了。當你學會了中文，并且知道怎么在中國生活時，你就會如魚得水。你可以存下很多錢，遇到很多朋友，到處游玩。
像世界上任何地方一樣，中國有其利弊。
所以既是享受，也是折磨。但是我還在這里，這說明了問題。

Chris Ebbert
Amazing answer!! Thank you so much! I have always wondered what it might be like to live and work the way you do. I lived in Shanghai and Beijing for three years, the typical luxury expat experience you mentioned. And I always felt the “real China” was probably different from that.

樓上的回答真棒！非常感謝！我一會想知道像你那樣工作和生活是會一種什么樣的感覺。我在北京和上海住了三年，就是你說的那種典型奢侈的老外經歷。我一直覺得“真正的中國”可能不是這樣的。



Adam Hu
I get what you're saying, but it's misleading to say that the split between rural and and city is the “real” China - it's 900 million vs 400 million
Guiyang is ranked 56/61 tier 2 and above cities in China for GDP.
Like, rural/suburban Louisianna or Kansas isn't the “real” US, they are ranked near the bottom in same terms.
Frankly I think the term is useless. There's no such thing as the real China. It's all real. But it certainly doesn't represent the median, definitely not the average.

我明白你的意思，但是你說城市和農村的分野才是“真正”的中國——9億 VS 4億人。
在中國61個二線和以上城市里面，貴陽排名56。
就像路易斯安娜和堪薩斯城的郊區和農村地區不是“真正”的美國一樣，它們在美國的排名與貴陽在中國的排名差不多。
坦白說，我認為這個形容詞是毫無意義的。根本就不存在所謂的真正的中國。所有一切都是真實的。但是它絕對無法代表中間水平，更無法代表平均水平。