While surfing the professional networking site LinkedIn recently, I came across someone with an intriguing job title: China expert. 

A quick Google search then revealed dozens more individuals and businesses also listed as "China experts." 

How wonderful I thought. I never realized this resource existed, and in such abundance. See, I've been living here for four years trying desperately to wrap my head around the country, the culture, the concept of China. But as soon as I learn something, it's contradicted.  

China cherishes its supposed 5,000 years of history, but carries out massive demolitions to make room for its future. It's the world's largest polluter and its largest investor in clean energy. China can literally move mountains, tame rivers and reach to the moon, but struggles to innovate. 

It's estimated that 100 million Chinese live in dire poverty while another 90 million have become obese. One recent poll found 87 percent of Chinese are satisfied with the country's direction, but another found that only 6 percent are happy. 

The Chinese people are famous for being able to "eat bitterness," and equally famous for their high suicide rates.

Some of the highest savings rates in the world and the hundreds of millions of migrant workers traveling across the country for meager wages show people willing to buckle down and sacrifice. But pervasive corruption and tainted goods highlight people taking shortcuts to make a quick buck. 

China offers unrivaled hospitality toward strangers, but also intricate webs of relationships penetrable only with material offerings. China is egalitarian but discriminatory, puritanical yet promiscuous. Dogmatic ideology sits alongside flexible pragmatism. There's enormous mobility and suffocating bureaucracy, inspiring activism and depressing passivity. People are brainwashed and enlightened, both spiritual and cynical. On top of all that, anything learned Monday is obsolete Tuesday , thanks to economic, industrial, political and social transformations on a scale never seen before. 

It seems China is a massive and diverse society that's constantly changing and impossible to ever achieve expertise on.

But thankfully we have the "China experts" to make sense of it all. They could just as reasonably call themselves "happiness experts" or "Earth experts." 

If they understood anything about China, they'd recognize the absurdity of that title.

Equally absurd is meeting Chinese people who assume that, because they're Chinese, they have a comprehensive grasp of their country. 

One of my biggest pet peeves is being told, "You just don't understand China." 

"You're absolutely right," I say. "And neither do you." 

Nobody does. Understanding China at any given moment is like an ant trying to guess a movie's plot while standing on the theater screen. It might be able to make out bits and pieces from where it's standing, but the colors it sees will present biases. It can walk around and ask others their interpretations, but it'll never see the big picture or fully understand what's going on. The screen is too big, the movie is too complex and the ant is just too small.  

Speculating on China's future is an equally hopeless task. 

In that case, China is a raft packed full of people barreling down an unforgiving river at night. There are seen and unseen hazards everywhere which people in the boat and on shore have different views of. Those steering the boat at the front might be dedicated and competent, but often avoiding one danger means hitting another. Nobody can really know how the voyage will turn out. 

With China's influence and power expanding by the minute, "expertise" on the country is becoming a hot commodity. 

Cheesy metaphors aside, everyone from seasoned diplomats to one-week tourists are chiming in their two cents, and there's nothing wrong with that. China is a fascinating country and its significance can't be overstated.
 Whether someone is doing business or simply has a stake in the future of mankind, China is a place worth trying to understand. 

Some resources for knowledge are more valuable than others, but none should be taken as an absolute authority. And those seeking services from self-proclaimed "China experts" should save their money. 

With China's size and complexity, any attempt to understand it must start with a little humility.

The author is a master's candidate of Global Business Journalism at Tsinghua University. ericfish85@gmail.com