Hehe it is a pretty big problem. I think one time we were organizing transport to my extended family's home, but the uncle responsible for buying our train tickets forgot mine (or my sister's, he only got one child ticket XD). And so we ended up notifying to guy in charge of the station and we snuck out. I guess it is an example of corruption, since we did break the rules thanks to a guy misusing his power and allowing the rules to be broken. I mean, there's a lot of this backdoor, personal connections stuff going on - my mom still complains about job opportunities she didn't get because the person who did get in had connections - but that would have meant she would've never met my dad <3 This problem is much much bigger than my personal anecdotes, in scale and intensity. A lot of it has to do with local governments not being accountable and the central government taking away their revenue tools. If the people there waste money yet don't have the ability to collect taxes or fees (since most of them got abolished), they will turn to nastier ways of grubbing for cash, like evicting landholders and so on.
I'd think I can jump back and forth between Western and Eastern culture pretty easily. And for the most part I do, and that in no small way helped by China's modernization over the years. Especially in the big cities, foreigners are a norm, and people don't really think anything of me being a foreigner anymore. I was solicited by a person promoting English lessons while in Shanghai (those, and other prep school businesses are huuuge nowadays) but I told her I came over from Canada and didn't need them (in Chinese of course ^^). I dunno, she kind of just shrugged it off XD she still made me fill out the form because she had to meet her quotas though dammit. Stupid sales quotas.
Clubbing is interesting. They're not very exclusive (though maybe that was cuz my friend is white), like we've gotten into one with Lamborghini and other sports cars packed outside. They're probably dominated by rich kids, since no 20-something-year-old should be able to afford toys like that. Actually, it depends on the club really. There was a cool one in Shanghai which had a lot of students, not rich kids, and foreign students/tourists too, so that was interesting. I think they were European. Of course, there are always those upscale clubs aimed for rich foreigners which we'd never get into XD
I do have nationalistic feelings. Not gonna lie. There's a lot of reasons for it, but I feel that I'm attracted to the "civilizational" notion of China, the People's Republic of China for what it is and the ideals I project onto it, as well as the people of China given our common history and struggles. I don't see a mainland Chinese as any different as someone from Taiwan or Hong Kong or Singapore or the rest of Southeast Asia or the rest of the world really. It's not racial either, I see everybody as equally Chinese, whether they are Mongolian or Tibetan, Muslim, Buddhist, or atheist. I honestly think that if somebody wanted to "be" Chinese and put in effort (to be defined), then they would be :P I don't know how common this view is though.
Ehh, goal-orientation is bad? Is something like habit-orientation better? I do hope that you find the study soon though, I need to get cracking double quick. What's your culture?
