I needed a more nuanced picture of China, and fortunately I struck up a conversation with Maggie. Maggie is Chinese and works at a family-owned café in Chongqing, China. I asked her what the best and the worst things about living in China were, according to her.
The Good About China
Low Cost of Living
“Rent, food, coffee. Everything is cheap, and that’s good, isn’t it?” Maggie mentions as the first positive thing about living in China.
And that is something I can definitely relate to. Mostly because I come from a country where the cost of living is significantly higher, although salaries are higher as well.
In China, many people are generally not paid very much. The monthly salary for an average Chinese person is around 5,000 yuan, which corresponds to about 4,500 Danish kroner, Maggie explains. That is why I was a little surprised that Maggie also thought the cost of living was cheap for a Chinese person …
However, I got the explanation that it is very normal for a Chinese person to eat out at restaurants several times a week, even when they are alone.
Easy and Fast
“If you want to buy something, you just use an app, and it gets delivered within a maximum of 30 minutes,” Maggie says and adds:
“You can buy anything from medicine to someone who comes and washes your dog. It’s so easy, fast, and worry-free. They just come and leave again once you’ve received what you ordered, and there are no bad moods. Everyone is polite.”
In China, everything happens on one app or another. I can easily see that for a Chinese person it must be very convenient not to have to move from the couch once you get home after a long workday.
And even though as a foreigner you first have to learn the system and remember what the Chinese symbols mean—because it is not written in English in the app—I must admit that many things can be accessed with the snap of a finger, and that is hard to complain about.
Safety and Security
Maggie explains:
“People always say that Singapore is the safest country in the world. But that wasn’t my experience when I was there. The streetlights weren’t very bright, and there were homeless people on the street when I walked through the city late at night. But in China it’s very safe. You can go outside alone whenever you want and feel secure, even as a woman.”
I myself have not been to Singapore, but as a solo female traveler in China I can confirm that it does feel quite safe here. Chinese people are friendly and helpful, and there is so much surveillance that no one dares to commit anything illegal, because it will not escape the attention of the state.
The Bad About China
Get Married — or You Are Worth Nothing
“Marriage can be a big pressure. If you are my age—I am 38 years old—and single, then you are strange. But if you get married, you live for the family, and there are many young people in China who feel forced to follow this path that their parents have laid out for them,” Maggie explains.
Neither option sounds particularly appealing. At the same time, I think that norms about marriage and starting a family also exist in Denmark and the rest of the world. However, I do think the pressure is greater in China, and that you stand out more if you do not follow your parents’ path in this regard.
Low Income
“Income can be very low if you are not part of the upper class or at least the middle class. In China people say that you should always surround yourself with people who are financially better off than you. That way you can manifest a better future for yourself and your family,” she explains, adding that “many young people who have just graduated choose to keep living with their parents because they cannot afford to move out.”
Job Insecurity
The third bad thing about China was difficult for Maggie to come up with. I tried to help her and asked whether the lack of freedom of speech was something that bothered her.
She made a face and said: “Nahhh, most Chinese people don’t think much about politics. As an individual you can’t really do anything anyway. So you might as well not try and instead just focus on yourself and your family.”
What about job insecurity? I asked.
“Yes, maybe. I have been rejected more than a hundred times by employers and spent four years finding a job. Many young people in China spend around two hours commuting to and from work every day because it is so difficult to be lucky enough to find a job close to where you live.”
Maggie does not really engage much with politics, and I actually understand that. The success of one’s own family is probably enough of a concern in itself, so why spend energy on something that will most likely only make life even more difficult?
My meeting with Maggie has definitely enabled me to have more complex reflections about what kind of country China is. Through Western media I have primarily been presented with the negative sides of China. But by being in the country myself and talking to people like Maggie, I also see that we can learn something from each other’s answers to the question:
What is a good life?
See the full interview with Maggie in the video here: