Ask an unsavory element ...

The 28 contributing authors of Unsavory Elements ("Stories of Foreigners on the Loose in China"), last did an AMA – Ask Me Anything – session on Reddit over the weekend. It's a window into the lives and writing of some folk who've been in China a long time, and is worth skimming in full. There were questions and answers across a wide range – from cross-cultural dating to toasting baijiu – but I've selected a few of them here that relate most generally to the expat experience. Enjoy.

TheDark1: Tell us about your biggest "What the blank am I doing here" moment in China. It might give everyone some kind of understanding of what it is like to be an expat in China, which is after all the general theme of the anthology.

dsandhaus [Derek Sandhaus]: I'll never forget one spring day during my first year living in Shanghai. I felt like I was just starting to get a handle on life in China, the world was full of possibilities, and all the other nice things that go through someone's head on a beautiful day with lots of sunshine. I decided to splurge on dinner at an upscale shopping mall and, while I was waiting for my chicken at the deli counter a felt a hard slap on the back of my neck. I looked behind me and nobody was there, but several women and their children were looking in my direction with horrified expressions. Others were pointing.Then I saw it - the bloody corpse of the rat that had fallen from a considerable height onto the back of my head. I'll say this about living in China: It always kept me honest.

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hongk0ng: Are any of you ashamed by Tom Carter's teen hooker story in this book?

mattpolly [Matthew Polly]: I thought it was hilarious. I also thought it was brave, because I knew he would catch a lot of flack for it. The politically acceptable tone to write a story about foreigners visiting teen prostitutes is moral outrage or ethical hand-wringing. 'My god, how reprehensible!' Instead Tom went with satirical glee. I believe in so doing he gave a much more accurate portrayal of what happens all the time in China than if he'd chosen to moralize. Frankly, I'm proud to be in the same collection as Tom's story. Nothing offends me more than Western liberal piety applied to the Chinese as if they were some hapless people who need to be defended from themselves.

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dev201: I'd like to ask the authors if they could go back and live their experience again, would they do it differently?

tomcarter [Tom Carter]: I think the unpredictability and sheer chaos of daily life in China is the best part about it, and pretty much everything I've tried to plan here has gone awry to various degrees. Case in point: the teaching ad I responded to on Craigslist back in 2004 turned out to be a scam; I was jobless and homeless my very first week in Beijing! But that "bad" experience led to other things that set me on an entirely different course, which brought me right here now. So, no, I wouldn't do a single thing differently.

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PM_Me_Your_Neckfat_G: How do feel about all these expats and their bitterness toward China? You think it's because, for the first time ever in their lives, they are out of their element and are for once the minority?

alanpaulgw [Alan Paul]: Sounds like a good theory. I really don't know, but some people just trail bitterness wherever they go. People have a fundamental misunderstanding that when they go somewhere new they will be new people. You do have an opportunity to reboot, which can be fantastic, and was for me. But you do not suddenly abandon all your flaws.That realization can lead to bitterness and be turned against your new home.

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dev201: Have any of you thought of returning home? Why or why not? For those that have gone home, what was the factor in your decision?

Kay_Bratt [Kay Bratt]: At almost five years living in China, I felt that it was home. When we would come back to the states to visit for a few weeks in the summers, we longed to get back to our life in China. However, family responsibilities ended our Chinese adventure and we were forced to return to our American lives. It took several years before we felt comfortable here in the states. The return was especially difficult for our daughter, having no prior experience of being in public schools and missing those formative years where girls learn to protect themselves from the viciousness of other girls. We returned just in time for her to start junior high and we likened her repatriation to a goldfish being thrown into a pond of piranhas. She didn't stand a chance in the mean-girl-circles. With a few lingering emotional scars, she survived it and is in college now, but she is very far from the average 18-year-old American girl. She's much more centered, cultured, and strives for a career that will allow her to return to China.

BruceHumes [Bruce Humes]: I AM at home in China. What I find a bit bizarre is being asked daily when I'm going home ...

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Khanbaliqist: They say that 'absence makes the heart grow fonder'. Has leaving China behind changed your feelings or views about China as compared with when you were here?

chinacuckoo [Mark Kitto]: Since returning to the UK my feelings and views about China, if they have changed, it is only in that they have been confirmed, and reinforced. The best example, and confirmation for me that I did the right thing, is the joy that my children now find at school. In China they hated it, to the extent it made them ill. Admitted, it is a private fee-paying school in the UK, but we were paying for them to go to the state school they attended in China, so that is not part of the equation. At my first teacher parent meeting here I all but wept for relief and joy. Otherwise, I miss friends and certain aspects of life in China, but I am in no way ‘growing fonder’ of the country as a whole.

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SimpleRy: I'm 25 and planning on moving to China early next year to teach English, preferably in Shanghai for a year or so. If you could only give one piece of advice to someone moving to China from the US, what would it be?

danwashburn [Dan Washburn]: Travel outside of Shanghai often, and interact with locals as much as possible. (And bring a gas mask.)

solimine [Kaitlin Solimine]: If you're a woman, bring tampons. No, partially kidding - but in all seriousness, find a post outside the major cities if you can stomach it! Enjoy!

grahamearnshaw [Graham Earnshaw]: Try to leave as many of your preconceptions as possible in the departure lounge

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seanDwhit: Any tips on how to haggle like a champ?

dsandhaus [Derek Sandhaus]: The important thing with haggling, in my experience, is to be more annoying than the person trying to sell you the item in question. Note that I say annoying, not rude and certainly not aggressive – both guaranteed losers. The best (read: most annoying) strategy I developed was something I called the reverse bargain, wherein I started with the price I wanted to pay and lowered my asking price every time they made a counter proposal. They try to explain that I am supposed to raise my price in a negotiation, but I pretend not to understand and keep dropping it down to the point where I'm offering jiao (essentially nothing). Usually this will amuse them or wear them down enough that they'll offer something close to what I originally wanted to pay.

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mheyk: as a working poor American would you advise me to spend the last of my severance pay ... to pay for a ticket to go to china to get my job back and live there?

[No response]

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Also check out our Q&A with Unsavory Elements editor Tom Carter here