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Hi everyone. And welcome back to your favorite segment New Zealand Under The Microscope.【闲话新西兰】, hi Simon.

你好, hello, kia ora.

So the sense of community is definitely a pro living in small town. What about some of the cons? Did you feel like I just can't get used to this, especially initially.

So there are a few things I mean the lack of food options was a big thing, like I really miss Chinese food; entertainment, I mentioned karaoke before, there was karaoke, but you'd have to go to someone's house to do it. Karaoke in the sense of like karaoke rooms. This does not exist.

If I wanted to go to the... there was a supermarket but it was fairly small. So the shopping options were fairly limited; and public transport, there was no public transport if you didn't have a car, you had to walk, because New Zealanders traditionally live in houses with big gardens, not apartments. Walking into town could actually be quite a distance.

I see, what about the quietness? Because one thing that I couldn't take when I just spent a few days in English countryside, it was too quiet. It was driving me crazy. How did you handle it?

That didn't bother me to be honest. I remember like when I first moved from New Zealand to Beijing, I... this was the year of 2000 and I was staying in Daxing district, and I would just get woken up every morning by thousands of bicycles and bike bells. I struggled with that. I did not struggle coming back to New Zealand with the quietness.

I think it's also because you grew up in a smallish town. Right?

I grew up a in a city of about  65~ 70,000 people. So a small area, a low populated area.

When you move back after all these years living in Beijing to this 4,000 people town, did you notice that your lifestyle has changed or your perspective about things have changed?

Absolutely, hugely.

So when I lived in Beijing, I had this... it was almost like a feeling of being invincible in some ways, you could go out. It felt like anything was possible in China, that might have just been the time that I was living there around the Olympics, prior to the Olympics, and around the time of the Olympics.

It was very high profile...

It was just fanatic and it was always stuff going on. There was always opportunities and people were just so optimistic and positive. I was caught up in that. I loved it.

Coming back to New Zealand. Everyone was very sedate, very quiet, probably quite pessimistic compared to the optimism that we've been feeling in China.

Am I to understand it's kind of like people in Beijing especially back then, no matter if you're Chinese or not Chinese, you felt like there's so many opportunities, so anything can happen, I can make something out of myself. I don't really know how big a success that I can land in the future.

But going back, it's more like how your life's gonna be.

I'd say so, I've obviously got older as well. So I've been back in New Zealand, living in New Zealand for the past 10, 12years. I've aged as well. So I'm quite happy going to bed at 9 o'clock.

Actually, this is my next question. What is the life like in small town, New Zealand, if you have to walk us through a typical day, not just you, I know you have your business, you have actually a lot of things to do, but for an average New Zealanders living in a small town. What is their average day like?

Yeah, most people that live in small towns, I just like everyone else. They would either go to school or have a job. In small town, New Zealand, unemployment is probably a bit higher than in the cities. So there will be.. I mean unemployment is still fairly low, but unemployment does exist. New Zealand has a pretty good social welfare system.

So if you are unemployed, you get paid weekly. The chances are if you're living in a small town, everything is gonna be much cheaper.

True.

So sort of attracts unemployed living. That said people would get up just like in the city, there's lots of cafes and things, and in small towns people would go to work. Everything just sort of shuts down at around 3, 4 pm though, so cafes a lot of retail shops, a lot of retail shops would just shut down at 3 o'clock or 4 o'clock.

If you get off work at a regular hour 6 o'clock, then you can't go to any shops or restaurants?

Restaurants would stay open in the evenings, restaurants would probably open in the evenings, but cafes would be closed. A lot of your retail shops would be closed, people would go shopping during lunchtime, most of the time.

Supermarkets will usually stay open till about 6:00 or 7:00 pm, in small towns and big cities, they’re maybe till 10:00 pm.

Yeah, but people will generally go home by 6 o'clock, they're eating dinner, they'll have dinner at home and then they'll watch TV or go for a walk in the evenings.

And most people would probably go to bed around 9:30, 10:00 o'clock.

What do people do for fun? I'm not expecting a real nightlife, but that just sounds like there's no entertainment.

Yeah, so we talked a bit about community, right? So that's quite common for people to have parties or gatherings at their houses on a Friday night or weekend, over the weekend.

There would be restaurants, there might be a pub. I know you've done a lot of recordings that talk about the culture in the UK.

So, like pubs.

You would have talked about pub life I'm sure.

So we have those, although in New Zealand's case it's probably more sports bar than club.

I see.

So think pub but slightly less classy with more sporty people I see.

This is basically a community where everybody knows everybody, so everybody also knows everybody's gossip, what is going on.

Exactly. So there will be probably quite a bit of gossip. There would be quite a lot of stuff going on behind closed doors, which would be then gossip about.

All right. I think that's similar in all of the smaller towns or villages or communities around the world. In China, I'm sure is the same, but how is the infrastructure you said like there's no public transport.

But say if I would like to live in a small town in New Zealand, for example, if I had kids, then do I have to take my kids, do they have schools there? Or usually you have to take the kids to a bigger city?

Yeah this is something which is quite interesting, so New Zealand for its population has absolutely remarkably good infrastructure.

We don't have the high speed trains, or the mega highways that you have in China because our entire country has a population of just over 5 million people.

True.

But for a country with such a low population, we have some pretty amazing infrastructure.

We've got a fiber internet network throughout the country. So we have, in some of the fastest internet speeds in the world. We have decent routing network, we've got most cities would have a regional airport.

So traveling is expensive, but it's possible. Even a patutahi, my little town of 4,000 people, it had an airstrip. You could fly a plane into the town.

I know this because I tried it. I had some flying lessons and  I flew out of the airstrip in a patutahi.

That sounds amazing.

I mentioned to you before we started recording that today we're expecting a power cut.

Obviously our infrastructure is not great. It's not perfect, but for an area with very low populations, it's certainly good.

Regards to schools, there are schools throughout the country. Unlike most countries, including the United States, we have a central government which monitors the education system.

So public schools.

So regardless if you're studying in a wealthy area of Auckland or a relatively poor area in a rural town, you're going to get a very similar education experience.

I see.

In some ways, if you're studying in a rural town, you might have more opportunities because there are more scholarships available. There are more sort of specialty programs and less competition for them.

I see, less competitive.

Exactly.

So a patutahi, a town of 4,000 people. There were three primary schools and one high school.

I'm actually quite amazed by how many schools, just 4,000 people, especially considering how many kids are there. That says a lot about education in New Zealand I would say.

So patutahi college, when I was working there at the local government, we managed to get a scholarship to send a patutahi college students to China.

So every year we were sending 5, between 5 and 10 high school students to go and study in China, and then for them going from patutahi, town of 4,000 people.

To China is gonna be a major challenge. It's gonna be a culture shock.

Those particular students I think they were going to Nanchang in Jiangxi province. And Nanchang is not a particularly big city by Chinese standards but it's still about 4 million maybe.

I don't know, I'm assuming it's huge by New Zealand standard.

And just seeing their reactions and hearing their feedback about how amazing the places, how many people there are, how many different types of food there is, it’s really good.

It's really cute.

Now, as we're coming to the end of discussion, I would like to ask a general question though, do you think people living in New Zealand, anything kiwis feel that sense of isolation, do they feel isolated living very far away from other countries? And also do people living in small towns, do they feel isolated? And if people could choose money is not a problem or any of these infrastructure, logistics is not a problem. What would kiwis choose, city, town, or what?

Yeah, so I think it depends a lot on where people are within their lives. So do New Zealanders feel isolated from the rest of the world? No, I think most kiwis are very happy to be far away from the chaos which is happening in the rest of the world.

I can get that.

Often when you're young, when you’re 18, 19, 20, all you want to do is escape your parents and see what's out there.

So people of that age, they want to move to a big city or go overseas and have their overseas experience.

But then your average kiwi when they start raising a family they are getting a bit older. A lot of them would love to move back to a small town. A patutahi is a really good example. I know a lot of people who are trying to find land to buy land there so that they can move to a patutahi, build a house and have a rural lifestyle. The problem is there's only so much land that can go around, so a lot of people are just not able to do that.

Okay, so the final question is, what is your plan, you are now living in your hometown which is a town of... what 15,000 people, what is the population there?

It's just under 70,000, 65- 70,000 people.

Okay.

Big city.

Are you gonna settle there though? For the long term.

In my happy ideal world, I would have an apartment in China. I'd love to get back to China and spend 6 months of the year over there. And the rest of the time, I'd like to buy a block of land. So a fairly big block of land and build my own cabins, have a basically a retreat and escape, solar panels on the roof. So an off grid lifestyle. So I have the both worlds, big city, China.

Both worlds.

And rural New Zealand.

I think that's probably a lot of people's dream as well. All right, thank you, Simon for coming to the show and talk about lifestyle in small town, New Zealand, and can't wait for our next topic.

Perfect, well, ka kite. Thank you and goodbye.

I'll see you next time. Bye.