SHANGHAI is one of the easiest Chinese cities to get used to and many expat newcomers want to get "in" to the culture. But for some newcomers, the gulf is too wide. They can't make it work and they want to get out. Yao Minji listens to expats.

A typical and clichéd tale of culture shock in China revolves around the dinner table. When a foreigner is invited to share a meal with a Chinese family, he doesn't know how to use chopsticks and gets confused when everyone sticks their chopsticks into the same serving dishes.

He (typically he) is also mystified or put off by the contents of some dishes but fears he will offend his hosts by not eating them.

This rarely happens today, at least not in Shanghai, where most expatriates consider one of the easiest Chinese cities to adapt to.

The international city barely requires any accommodation if one is determined to live a Western-style life. The expat can live in a Western-style house or apartment among expat neighbors, be driven to his or her office by a personal driver, send the children to international schools, dine and hang out with other foreigners at Western restaurants and bars on the Bund and elsewhere.

This privileged lifestyle was typical in many ways of expatriates in Shanghai in the 1980s-90s and of some today, but many expats nowadays, who arrive much younger, are looking for a way "in" the local community and culture.

Their most frequent complaints include Chinese people jumping the queue, fighting for taxis, paying a higher "foreigners' price," among many other irritants.

Some fit in so well that they feel more awkward when they go back home for a visit.

Hideki Azuma, 39-year-old co-CEO of HMA Architects & Designers, is enjoying his ninth year in Shanghai and always sticks very close to the person lining in front of him so that nobody can cut in front.

He has gotten so used to doing this that he tends to do the same thing when goes back to Japan for a visit. He also scares Japanese taxi drivers when he tries to open the car door. In Japan, the taxi doors are automatic.

Confront and struggle

Some other expatriates continue to confront and struggle with cultural differences that range from appearances and the definition of politeness to personal space and values.

"One key example is my appearance," American Samantha Jones, from Rockville, Maryland, tells Shanghai Daily. "I'm 5-foot-10 (nearly 1.78m) and not super thin. I wasn't very confident about that fact in the US, but in China it is so much more a part of my daily life. A couple beer-bellied businessmen aside, I'm often the biggest person in the elevator. For women, that's traumatizing."

She has accepted the size issue with the encouragement of a close Chinese male friend who treats her with tough love. "This is actually very Chinese - giving you the brutal truth whether you want to hear it or not and just telling you to find a way to deal with it. This way of addressing my size and other issues has really helped me come to terms with challenges I've seen other foreigners continuously struggle with," Jones explains.

"It helped me accept my size in a way that the American politely-ignore-the-obvious style never did," she says.

Jones adds that her Chinese friend and his genuine acceptance of her are a big encouragement and help her accept Chinese culture and society.

Jones arrived in Nanjing in Jiangsu Province four years ago as a student learning Chinese and moved to Shanghai two years ago. She calls herself "a bit of a bookworm" and finds her indoor and quieter lifestyle more accepted here in China than in the States.

But four years on, she calls her current situation a "breaking point" because having dug deeper and understood more about the culture, she now realizes how significant and numerous the cultural differences are.

"I've seen many foreigners at four years experiencing the same problem," she says. "I find many aspects of Chinese culture (Shanghainese culture in particular) to be off-putting."

She cites issues such as the emphasis on money, status, prestige, power and personal advancement seemingly at all costs. This includes building relationships, especially marriage, to advance oneself, Jones says.

On the surface, Jones and others find everything is modern and westernized, but not so deep down. It's profoundly different and not as accessible as newcomers had thought. After all, it is the Orient, it is China.

Foreign residents today arrived much better prepared than their predecessors; they are better informed thanks to the Internet, books, TV and government and private exchanges between the two countries.

Quite a few speak Mandarin, or enough to get by. They don't get stared at or asked for photos as much as earlier-arriving expats because they are no longer the only foreigners on the streets of Shanghai. But surprises come from all directions and it is not always easy to figure it out.

"In my view, very few expats feel comfortable all the time, but that doesn't mean they aren't fitting in to a large extent. I think most Western nations stopped talking about cultural assimilation as a positive 20-odd years ago.

Expats come to grips with Shanghai or find the door

Now we tend to recognize cultural diversity as something valuable in and of itself. Nor is full assimilation into Chinese society really legally or even culturally possible," says David Foote, a New Zealand anthropologist currently working on a project studying Shanghai's expats.

"But if you define fitting in as feeling at home here most of the time, then I think anyone who lives here for more than a few years has to find a way to do that."

French businessman Francois (who asks that his surname not be used) is one of those who couldn't find the way. After two months of a honeymoon with the city and six months struggling with all kinds of problems, he finally decided to go back to Nice in early May.

"I had thought China was a very homogeneous and centrally controlled place, like it was always portrayed in the Western media. But I arrived here finding it completely the opposite - it is so heterogeneous and complicated that I don't even know how to explain to my friends back home," he tells Shanghai Daily.

"I was sincerely and pleasantly surprised at first, enjoying every day by finding the place different from expectations. That was my honeymoon with the city," he recalls.

Barriers

But that didn't last long, as he started to realize such complexity represents huge barriers to his understanding of the culture. "It's normal that you always have people on different sides in any countries, but here in China, it's not even two or two sides, it's like 10 or 20 different sides and it just gets so confusing," he says.

He remembers how he learned the Shanghai dialect phrase bang bang mang, literally meaning "do me a favor," and used it for bargaining. It worked from time to time until he got into a fight one day at a flea market.

"I still don't know why and how it happened. I simply did the same thing I was always doing and they felt offended while others didn't," he says.

It was the same time that he started to "feel strange and like an outsider in my office."

"My Chinese colleagues are all great and polite on the surface, but I was one of the only three foreigners in the office and by then, I could sense a very distinct line between them and us," Francois recalls.

"I understand very little Chinese, but sometimes I can feel that they are talking about me in a not very good way. When important decisions are to be made, they always shuffle the responsibility to us, probably because we are the foreigners. When I ask some of them to share some of the more difficult tasks, they also complain to each other about 'the foreigners ask for too much and should just mind their own business'."

Such feeling of "them and us" is not uncommon for expatriates.

"Everybody is very polite and friendly, which creates a nice working environment. But there is still a certain 'them and us' feeling. Locals may feel the expatriates come here and get paid more," says Jonathan Edwards, partner at British executive recruitment company Antal International Executive Consulting.

"There is definitely still a gap, and we really feel that our next generation of managers should be local people, so we try to socialize as much as we can and make locals feel we are all in this together."

Edwards, in his 10th year in China, lived in Beijing and Guangzhou before moving to Shanghai and has traveled extensively within the country.

He encourages newcomers "to be as open-minded as you can, don't judge people before you arrive, and don't judge the city or the country just because of a few unpleasant incidents."

Getting 'in'

Edwards lives in a shikumen (stone-gated) apartment in downtown Shanghai, with most of his neighbors being elderly Shanghainese. He finds living in this way very helpful in assimilating into local culture.

"Food plays a big part in all culture, but especially in Chinese culture," he suggests. "Food is a great way to know about the culture. Don't eat McDonald's. Chinese people like to see you are trying the local food."

It also worked for tall American Jones, who really appreciates healthy Chinese food of all sorts, including fungus, jelly fish and yam, which can put off quite a few foreigners.

Jones also suggests newcomers to find an "in" - "one aspect of society where you can dig in really deep and become a real expert, like Chinese history, philosophy, language, tea, medicine, fan dancing, etc."

"Cultivate a strong circle of friends/support network. Recognize that you are a guest here and you don't have to like how things are done in China. The occasional bad China day is unavoidable, but you won't get much mileage out of feeling superior about it either," anthropologist Foote concludes.

(Kasumi Hirokawa contributed to the story.)