Shanghai or Mexico City?

[Chava61]

Originally Posted by jaytr

A lot will depend on your cultural preference and openness. Both Shanghai and Mexico City have huge populations, with waves of people moving in for better opportunities (read: money, jobs).

Language: Mandarin is very tonal. If you're really good with picking up foreign languages, you can at least learn conversational Mandarin and some very basic reading/writing, which are absurdly complicated. Spanish is extremely easy to learn, in comparison.

If you're adventurous, go with a short-term job plan in place (a job offer before going) and be flexible enough to seize any new opportunities that arise.

In Shanghai, the first language is Wu Chinese/Shanghainese which is the local dialect although Mandarin Chinese (the official Chinese language) is used as the lingua franca.
On the other hand, in Mexico City, the language is Spanish (Castilian Spanish).

[Dusty Rhodes]

I remember quite well the first time I flew into Mexico City. It was night. The plane went into a banked turn coming into the airport,and the lights of the city went over the horizon, lights, as far as there was land.

[anahauc]

Originally Posted by DrVanNostrand

Mexico City is notorious for its crime, pollution and corruption. You couldn't pay me to move there based on those three factors alone.

Mexico, as a country, has a lot of problems in general right now.

I'd much rather go to Shanghai, but that's just my opinion. I could live with censorship, but I couldn't live with rampant crime or police corruption.

some people talk's and writes crap.hating countries. and people north america, anahauc, is and alway's will be part of the aztecs and maya's the people who live's here now in so. call america, where do they came from..????/ follow every onces root's cortez christobal colon, whom. they discover ahahauc,=america,, please if you all hate mexico.. the iligals are those whom claim to be native american.s we the mexican's as you all call us, where were here before any of this europeans came here, and kill more then 30.000 indigenous, maya's aztecs incas annazazies. we do not have any thing agaisnt any race. like they said the fox never sees her tail. alway's see some alse tail. take that to the bank...

[Dusty Rhodes]

China is as racist, perhaps more so, than was Selma, Alabama in the 60's. "Gai-jen" is not a friendly term. I would go with Mexico because you would more easily fit in, Mexico is friendly, for the most part, the language, latin based, is much easier to learn for an outsider, than a language based on hieroglyphics. (pardon the spelling, if wrong; if not wrong, well.....yeah, I planned it that way!!!!) The populace will be friendly and helpful, all you have to do is try to learn their language, be respectful and have a sense of humor, you will get along fine. Because of the Spanish influence, manners and mannerism in Mexico, tend to have a european basis. In china, there is no way to predict when you are gonna mess up big time without understanding what you did or why they found it offensive. If you are lucky, in china, after 5 or 10 years they may come to consider you as a tame barbarian and you may be tolerated, but, it is still most likely that you may never be recognized as an intelligent human being.