What do foreigners in Beijing and Shanghai think of each other?

Quora users: I love these two cities and have lived in them. I like to compare "Shanghai vs Beijing" to "new york vs San Francisco" and "Moscow vs St Petersburg"-meaning "chicks, money" vs "hipsters, culture", so it tends to attract foreigners of related styles. I also noticed that foreigners who have just arrived in a city often can't put it down, and another one can't stand it. So it must be something deeply rooted in the urban characteristics.

How do foreigners living in Beijing and Shanghai view each other?

What do foreigners in Zhihu, Beijing and Shanghai think of each other?

The following is the comment section.

Answer 1 Kevin D. Aslan, who lives in Shanghai (Kevin D. Aslan, a foreigner in Shanghai)

There is a big difference between foreigners in Shanghai and foreigners in Beijing: localization.

Simply put, it is much easier to survive in Shanghai than in Beijing. I don't have to know anyone from China. You can find most of the food you want, and you can develop in a small circle of foreigners, feeling like you are at home, without communicating with local people.

It is difficult to do this in Beijing.

One of the reasons behind this, to some extent, is that there are many headquarters of international companies in Shanghai-these companies often prefer to hire foreign employees. At the same time, Beijing is the most famous state-owned enterprise, and English can be unimportant.

There are so many great parties in Shanghai that you won't waste your time learning Chinese? In order to live a better life in Beijing, it is necessary to study Chinese hard.

At the same time, Beijing tends to attract more American students-usually these students have studied Mandarin for many years and studied the history, culture and literature of China.

History explains this difference to some extent-if a Frenchman can name a city in China, he will probably say Shanghai. We used to have a concession there. It is the Pearl of the East. Ask an American and he will say Beijing-because of Nixon, the Olympics and so on. ...

So, what does this mean for foreigners in these two cities? Well, foreigners in Beijing look down on foreigners in Shanghai and think that they are weak and difficult to integrate into the local area (in fact, many people from other parts of China are also difficult to integrate into Shanghai).

Answer 2 Greg Blandino works in Beijing, China (a foreigner in Beijing).

It's hard to find something that can better summarize the views of foreigners in Beijing on our Shanghai brothers than this post on Reddit: "Starbucks-do they have cocoa chips and Frappuccino in China?" (The content of the post is as follows:)

Many foreigners in Shanghai are French. They earn much more than us and are hired by "real" companies or industries with high salaries. Instead of Weibo, who runs a lesbian basket weaving commune in Hebei, working as a part-time teacher in Happy Giraffe International Bilingual Kindergarten, she pursues music career and her dream of becoming an art and food reporter, or spends all her money on hutong quadrangles to experience the real old Beijing for several years.

Shanghai parties are cooler and better than ours, with hotter models, more whistles and less blue ribbon beer or China edition. Foreigners in Beijing like to use Line or Whatsapp (Facebook's mobile social platform), and bind the bank card and WeChat as an important achievement. They will tell you excitedly that they used Taobao to shop for the first time last week. They will strongly doubt that taxi drivers will take them around a long way, but they think that drivers are too poor and should get extra money.

Meanwhile, in the northern capital ... a foreigner from Beijing chose to practice Tai Chi or something like that with an elderly China instead of flirting with Russian models.

Foreigners in Beijing have an atmosphere of "losers who can't go home". They felt it necessary to leave their motherland and try their hand in China. They do as the Romans do. They don't eat food without borders. They have local friends who travel together (not English-speaking girlfriends in China, of course). They may not have a suit. Because they often inhale "smog" every summer and winter, they will die 5 to 10 years earlier.

Oh, I almost forgot: foreigners in Beijing ride flying pigeon mountain bikes, dead flying bicycles or some other bicycles. Foreigners in Shanghai ride electric cars.

Answer 3: yevgeny Bakhtin lives in Beijing, China (a foreigner in Beijing).

I love these two cities and have lived in them.

I like to compare "Shanghai vs Beijing" to "new york vs San Francisco" and "Moscow vs St Petersburg"-meaning "chicks, money" vs "hipsters, culture", so it tends to attract foreigners of related styles.

I also noticed that foreigners who have just arrived in a city often can't put it down, and another one can't stand it. So it must be something deeply rooted in the urban characteristics.

Answer 4 Sean McDirmid lives in Beijing, China (2007-20 16) (foreigners in Beijing, 2007-20 16).

Not so good. I mean, they are different cities far away. Hell, outsiders are a little scarce in Beijing, so we don't miss each other too much, except when chatting up in Sanlitun bar. I think there are more foreigners in Shanghai, but I guess they are similar to us?

Answer five stones and live in Shanghai.

I heard a foreigner's joke in Shanghai:

"If a foreigner from Shanghai starts to look down on a foreigner from Beijing-you have been in China for a long time."