I’ve just returned from China after a 3 weeks trip. So I would like to give my full impressions of the current state: the good, bad, ugly, beautiful. So if you only want to hear good things or only bad things about China, please go somewhere else.
Before I go into it, to give some context about me: I grew up in the US since 10 years old. The last time I was in China was 2009. I speak Chinese natively, and also read and type Chinese proficiently with no issues. These are the results of my own interest to keep my Chinese at high levels through practice, reading Chinese novels, and self-learning in general. Before visiting China I’ve also done shit tons of research. I watch CCTV and CGTN on a daily basis. I still have parents who visit China on an annual basis who will tell me about what to watch out for. I read about China on sites such as quora and global times regularly. I watch travel vlogs and China base commentators on China regularly. And I also had a lot of preparations, such as both buying international pass and buying a Chinese SIM card the first day I was in China, even went ahead and opened a bank account in China (it ended up not being used however because I was told to wait three days for it to activate and I didn’t have time to go back to a bank). So needless to say I did not go into China blind.
The cities that I’ve visited on this trip: Shanghai, Nanjing, Hangzhou, Suzhou, Chongqing, Chengdu, Xianyang, Xi’An, in that order. I’ve also transited in Guangzhou. So basically I went to all the places that are considered the historic heartlands and origins of China and Chinese civilization, with the only exception of Beijing that I didn’t go because it’s too cold in wintertime.
Overall impression of China:
It’s definitely the best bang for your buck place to visit. Things are ridiculously cheap. You can pay very little for high quality accommodations, food, gifts, tickets, transportation etc. If you ever go to China, I highly recommend that you pamper yourself a little. Book a more expensive, convenient hotel for example. Depending on where you go, you can literally pay 40–50 USD per night for a hotel that would be the equivalent of 200–300 USD in the west. For example, this is the hotel that I’ve stayed in Chongqing (that’s my childhood friend on the sofa btw not me):
This is the view outside the window:
For those who are familiar with Chongqing, this is literally the equivalent to a hotel with a bird eye view of the Times Square in New York. During nighttime it’s just so friggin gorgeous. Unfortunately when I was in Chongqing it was very foggy, but still beautiful.
The price was 46 USD per night, my most expensive hotel. 😆Yep.
However, China is definitely the least convenient country for foreign nationals to travel, mostly because of their payment system (you always need good data plan or WiFi everywhere, not like in other countries you just swipe a credit card wherever you go which is much simpler), and also many places you have to pre schedule with your passport for entry, at online sites and apps that won’t always work smoothly on your foreign data plan cell phone. And even if you buy a Chinese SIM card and use the Chinese sites, there are problems such as sometimes they auto delete the first letter of your passport ID number, so when you try to get into the places the IDs won’t match. I honestly don’t know how foreigners can travel in China without knowing the language or have a guide. You can download a translating app but the translation isn’t always accurate either. I guess that’s why there really aren’t so many foreigners traveling in China. I can count them on one hand. Of course, I also went at off season, but still compared to other countries, China is definitely not a foreign tourist friendly country. But I suppose some people are just very skilled travelers who are very good at finding their way around anywhere. I cannot hold anything personally against China on this aspect because clearly they want to do their own thing independently of the western hegemony. So it’s frustrating but oh well.
So what I liked about China:
Definitely hands down the infrastructure. The infrastructure in China isn’t just grandiose, but also done with fine taste. In highly developed cities you can see a lot of psychology of aesthetics have gone into organizing everything. The roads for example are wide and spread out, buildings are huge but thoughtfully designed. When you walk down the road in some of these areas you feel small but also a sense of awe and serenity. Like everything is gigantic but also just so comforting on the eyes at the same time.
This is a photo I took in Shanghai. The photo really doesn’t do it justice. When you are there just looking over at the horizon, you half expecting flying cars around those giant skyscrapers. It’s like you are on another planet, and that this is the place for every sci fi movie to be filmed. It blows every city in the US out of the water. And you also realize that unlike what some western China-smearers will tell you, it isn’t just for show. The people who immediately benefit from all of this are the native Chinese people who are living there. Because once again, it’s the thoughtfulness of it all that makes it impressive, not just built to impress foreigners.
In Shanghai I also loved the fact that the names of the roads are very easily found and clearly labeled. Unfortunately not all Chinese cities are like this.
I also really like the fact that so many buildings are now built with Chinese characteristics, rather than the Soviet-style dreary rectangular buildings that I was used to growing up as a child. It makes the atmosphere in China so much better and makes China much more attractive to travel.
(Photo I took on top of the Great Goose Pagoda in Xi’An. I was actually born in Xi’An, raised in Guangzhou. But Xi’An is now so different from what it was before, you can see below, so many Chinese style buildings are spurring up when before it was not considered an attractive city to visit).
And of course, cultural heritage sites are now organized and built exquisitely. So if you want atmosphere you’ll get it anywhere.
Of course, you can’t talk about Chinese infrastructure without the transportation. Transportation in China is vastly expansive. You can go anywhere with the metro or Didi (taxi). And the prices are ridiculously cheap (at least to westerners). The metro generally costs no more than 2.74USD, and the Didi costs about 1.65USD to 3USD, for distances that will take 15–25 mins by car. The most we’ve paid for Didi was to get from Xi’An to Xianyang (about 1 hour and 20 min by car), which still only costed us 8USD. The high speed rail is also very expansive, can take you to any city and you’ll get a very smooth ride despite the train going 143+ miles per hour. And the prices are around 23 to 30 USD only, for one hour to 3 hours ride distance. The metro is built just like any metro in anywhere in the world so it’s the easiest to navigate. You can buy a ticket at a kiosk machine, Alipay never had any issues with this, and then follow the lines which are always very clearly labeled. The Didi is very cheap and if you keep using it you get a lot of discounts, but it can be hard to find where to get on the car because lots of times the driver cannot get to where you are because they can’t stop there, or the GPS can have issues with the accuracy. I eventually learned to always go to a well known landmark and call or message the driver where I am exactly and that saved a lot of trouble. The high speed rail you have to be very careful with your booking because changing tickets on a foreign phone is a pain. Alipay on a western service phone is not set up the same way as a Chinese service phone. So if you make a mistake you have to go to a manual change station which also isn’t always easy. In some places they cannot access your booking with foreign Alipay. So basically, for high speed rail try not to make any mistake or having to change ticket while booking, or it can be troublesome. Domestic flights are generally okay. You have to always go manual with a foreign passport, but in airports generally people are more helpful and will point you to the right direction if you ask for help. I like the security checks in Chinese airports much better than the US counterpart. The security check people are less intimidating, and make fewer troubles for you. The security check pathways are also straight and short, instead of huge turn wheels like in the US that sometimes will make your luggage caught in something and not moving somewhere. This is one big positive change in China because definitely this isn’t the case decades ago.
One thing that when you arrive you immediately realize the infrastructure superiority is the airport. The Shanghai airport was so straightforward and easy to navigate compared to any US airport. I’ve transited in Japan and it was difficult to find my way around the Japanese airport (you also had to take a bus to go to T3 for some reason). But the Shanghai one? In, go straight, out. Easy Peazy.
And of course another thing I loved was the food and drinks. Not a huge fan of the dessert tho but then again I generally don’t have a sweet tooth compared to other people. If you visit any highly rated upscale restaurant in China, you’ll get great food anywhere, even though each region will be unique. My Turkish friend who traveled with me has declared that there isn’t one type of food he didn’t like. My favorite however is Shaanxi food (both Xi’An and Xianyang). Because it has the best comfort food (e.g. noodles, stuffed bread, homemade stews etc), not just luxury food you get in high level restaurants. Another huge thing in China that I will most definitely miss is tea, especially milk teas. China has several milk tea Chain stores kind of like the tea equivalent of Starbucks. But the milk teas are so heavenly and the quality of the teas are astonishing, with exotic and luxury tea bases from all kinds. Such as Chagee (Cha Ji literally: Tea Princess). Maybe one day the business can come to the west as well. One can only wish. I loved it so much I had to buy one to go: the Da Hong Pao (Big Red Robe) milk tea. I think I’m lucky that it didn’t seem to go spoiled with 15 hours + travel. Because unlike in the west, they not only give you a lid which has an opening that you can open and close, they also additionally seal it for you underneath the lid, and when you want to drink it you can puncture the seal with straw. This is so much more thoughtful packaging than in the west where your drink just spills all over as you carry it.
What I didn’t like about China:
I’m sorry to say that the social etiquettes in China still need quite a lot of work. (Except for some very international hubs where people are clearly trained to be very polite and helpful) Chinese people still don’t find some basic courtesies natural to do, such as saying hello, goodbye, thank you, please, your welcome etc. Again, in more formal business settings they are trained to do these things, but working class common people don’t have a lot of these habits. I’ve had several incidents where I say thank you and they are speechless and don’t know how to respond back.
One thing I will say about this is that clearly the Chinese authorities are working hard to make a change on this aspect, because you see signs everywhere telling people to behave (or how to behave) in a civilized manner. For example, this sign you’ll see everywhere you go in China:
It translates to a set of “socialist values” that people need to adhere to, which is: strong and wealthy, free, patriotic, democratic, equal, dedicated (to work), civilized, just, trustworthy, harmonious, lawfulness, and friendliness.
Basically, everything that is good for society is part of “socialist values” (lol).
But in China, clearly it’s still going to take at least a couple of generations for people to behave on such a standard. You still see spitting everywhere (I had to constantly watch the road to not step on any), even on important cultural heritage sites which I personally found spitting on them to be highly disrespectful, not just disgusting. Smoking in restaurants is also still quite prevalent. And again, while services in business settings are generally very good, you’ll encounter some extraordinarily rude people in China that you won’t encounter anywhere in the west, at least for the same time frame and similar touristic places that you’ll be visiting.
For example, when I was at the high speed rail station going to Chengdu, I accidentally dropped something going down the escalator. Now, in anywhere in the west, people’s immediate instinct was to pick it up. But there, a Chinese woman yelled: “who dropped this!” And then KICKED my stuff away so I had to scramble to retrieve it back. Needless to say I was quite shocked and that nearly ruined the rest of my trip that day.
Another time I was departing from my hotel with my luggage which only had stairs, and I was too exhausted and was still recovering from my illness, so I didn’t have the strength to lift my luggage to go up the stairs. I saw this security guard wandering around the hotel looking bored, and very politely asked if he could help. He instead yelled back at me: “What?! Piss off! Do it yourself!” Not even a “sorry it’s not my job.” Again, not something you’ll find traveling in the west anywhere, people will either help you or politely reject you.
I’ve also been called stupid a couple of times when I asked for directions, mostly because when you ask for directions, Chinese people in general don’t seem to have issues wasting your time. They tend to wave at some vague direction and go like: “over there.” And when you ask for clarifications, you’ll get a couple of: “are you stupid or something? It’s over there!” scoldings. Like, dude, if you are gonna yell at me, at least yell something useful. “Over yonder” (as one of my friend comically remarked when he heard my tale) is not helpful whatsoever.
Of course, all of this does also depend on where you go. Places that are more international and foreign tourist friendly sites, Chinese people, especially younger people, tend to be more patient with you. But again, there is a clear difference in instinct. In the US for example, even if people feel that you are a bit on the slow side, they help you, simply because you need it. When I visited Spain, I’ve literally had people who came out of the train that is leaving in 2 mins to walk me to the train that I had a hard time finding, before going back. In China however, if you are perceived to be on the slow side, people are more likely to feel that you are just a waste of their time.
Now I know that at this point some people will argue with me that it’s because China is more crowded. But sorry, very crowded places in the west, and also in Japan, a high population density country, these things just don’t happen while you are traveling as a tourist. So it doesn’t have as much to do with crowdedness as people might think. Other people may tell me that this is not their experience as a foreigner. But my perception is that if you are a foreign looking person, Chinese people tend to be more willing to go the extra mile to help you, because of a “face saving” culture. But I don’t appear or talk like a foreigner, so they treat me differently. For example my airport direct taxi (I.e not Didi) ride to my hotel the first night in Shanghai I got charged 270 RMB (37 USD), whereas my Turkish friend who came one day after me was only charged 170 RMB (23 USD). So you do see a big difference. Even one didi driver quipped that a foreigner losing his bicycle in China got it back in 30 mins. Chinese people losing their kids sometimes they’d have to wait for years.
What surprised me about China?
The thing that stood out to me the most is that in every region, native dialects are much more prevalent than I originally thought. I thought that after so many decades of people only being taught to speak mandarin in schools, the local dialects would be disappearing. But the complete contrary is true. People speak their dialects not only comfortably, but proudly and as the default, and that is whether it’s younger or older people. In fact, in most of these places, they expect any mandarin speaker to understand their dialect. If you speak mandarin to them, they won’t switch to mandarin to speak to you back. They simply keep on going speaking their own dialects. Even if you tell them you have a hard time understanding them (which I do sometimes, for obvious reasons), they will still keep going trying to make you understand in their dialect (lol). It’s kind of like if you don’t understand these dialects you are perceived to be somewhat retarded, like not being able to read traditional Chinese. Of course, in places like hotels, railway stations, airports, banks, certain luxury services the main mode of communication is still mandarin. But they speak local dialects to anybody who comes speaking the local dialect. Didi drivers are almost all speaking to you in local dialects. The dialects however vary from person to person, not just region to region. So some people speak in the local dialect that is closer to mandarin (these I can understand more of course), others speaking the same would be completely incomprehensible to me. When I was in the Guangzhou airport, announcements are also made in both mandarin and Cantonese. Showing once again the special status of Cantonese, contrary to what some people on quora will tell you that somehow Cantonese is being eliminated. It’s clearly especially being preserved. How you feel about that is up to you.
Another minor thing that surprised me is that the air quality in China is really good. I heard from some people traveling there that the pollution is still very bad. But at least in the places that I’ve traveled, I did not perceive an obvious bad air quality. This is definitely a huge change from decades ago where you can smell smog in the air, or at least the air obviously smell different from the air in the states. This time I don’t smell anything and I tend to have very sensitive smell. Of course maybe the pollution happens in and around Beijing which I didn’t visit. The sky is still not as blue as the skies in the US where I live, but again, it’s much closer than you would think.
One thing that I had both a good and bad experience in is the Chinese medical system. On the fourth day of my travels I developed a high fever of 39+ Celsius (102+ Fahrenheit), I was in Nanjing and had to use the state hospital system. The hospital was not well organized, lots of rudeness and wasting your time, long waiting times and not having places to sit (I could barely stand then as you can imagine), the bathrooms didn’t have soap (in China another thing you won’t be used to is the deficiency of toilet papers, soaps and trash cans compared to the west). However, I was able to get an IV of four bags of medicine for my illness on the same day which saved the rest of my trip. I only spent around 100 USD for the visit. IV in the US is completely unaffordable and only reserved for very serious illnesses. But it is very strong and after the first bag I was immediately feeling better. So, while there are still clearly lots of issues with the Chinese state run medical system, there can be no comparison when it comes to cost and efficiency.
What does the west get right or wrong about China?
Right? I would say, unless they have some real knowledge about China, practically nothing. Even the free speech issue is very nuanced and I would say it’s more of a cultural thing than CPC being authoritarian thing. After my visit to China I still make this conclusion solidly.
What do they get wrong about China? Well at least in China’s current state, it’s fundamentally the opposite of what they say. What I generally perceive is that the Chinese government is trying their best to fix China as best as they could, many of the actual issues clearly lie with the people themselves still being somewhat backward and not being able to catch up fast into a progressive modern society. This I speak not only from what I’ve encountered but also from stories I hear from my own extended families. Of course, westerners will say that this is also the result of communism. But clearly, the governing party has evolved, and unlike the US, they want to actually fix things. So there is really no surprise that people have such high trust in the CPC.
Chinese people are also not brainwashed as westerners think. I’ve encountered Chinese people with many different views. Yes, many saw on the news and believe some propagated information at face value. But I’ve encountered Chinese people who are both very patriotic, like everything in China is just as good if not better than the west, and Chinese people who believe everything in China is worse than the west, and of course everywhere in between. And they speak their mind about their views comfortably. So there is no secret police everywhere waiting in the wings to arrest people. I feel much more comfortable around Chinese police than the American counterpart, even though they are more prevalent and numerous than American police presence. An example of Chinese police patrolling:
He’s riding on this little scooter thingy moving around like an ornament, reminded me of Wall-E from Pixar. There is a cuteness to it all 🥰. There was even a grandpa admiring his little moving machine while he passed him.
Was the Trip Worth it and Will I be visiting again?
The trip was definitely worth it and I will remember it for the rest of my life. I also encourage anyone to travel to China to make up their own minds, despite inconveniences you’ll be having. I would like to go there again however, I realized from this trip that my health is really the main deterrent. Almost every time I travel internationally I get quite sick. And as a result of this trip I think my mycoplasma came back because I couldn’t stop coughing. So that’ll be a big consideration for me to travel again, especially since I will be heading into my 40s soon so my health will only deteriorate.
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