Experience the little differences between China and USA
Our Yahoo class group is exploded these days with views from our classmates who went back home to China for a visit and those who came to California for a US-visit.
Cost of living is really cheap in USA
One of my Chinese classmates took her family to California to visit Stanford with the hope that her daughter will carry on her unrealized dream to go to Stanford. The family took a vacation in CA, did some sightseeing and did a lot of shopping. Cheap is the one word that they described their experience. Indeed labor and IP property are the two things that US is more expensive than China, everything else such as food, clothes, even housing and car are cheaper in US. My classmate ate quite some blue berries, cherries, and raspberries, they were so good!
Beijing is a chaos, too many liars; Hangzhou is a paradise even though it has too many people
On the contrary, one of my classmates went back to China and visited Beijing, Hangzhou, Shanghai and surrounding areas. Beijing was chaotic. There were many “black cars” and cheaters on the street try to trick people. Hangzhou was a beautiful place, definitely nice to live there. However the housing is so expensive that we among the group mocked each other that those of us who have lived in US for many years really don’t have the purchase power to buy any house in Hangzhou. The houses in Hangzhou are for the super rich or “the immortal beings” like the ones in books or movies. Hangzhou has a restaurant chain called 外婆家The Grandma’s. The food there was awesome. Zhuji 诸暨, a small place near Hangzhou, was quiet, off the beaten path and beautiful. The Zhuji ladies are famous for their beauties.
DIY
Our family does many things ourselves, one of the reasons is that the labor is so expensive. Three year ago we had a designer designed and installed half of our landscape. Why not the whole landscape? Because half of the landscape labor plus material cost us already $8000. So we learned from the design and finished off the rest half landscape ourselves one year later. Last week, our family also re-leveled our patio; it was a huge job with many steps. Even with the older boys helping my husband and me, it took us 4-people almost four full days to re-do the patio. Imagine what it will cost if we hire people to do this! So DIY is popular in US and it saves money.
Today there are many views on the internet on the differences of China and USA. To know the truth, one ought to live like the locals do to truly experience the way they live, shop, and get around.
