Initial thoughts on China

Sophia and I recently¹ went to China for a few weeks. It was my first time visiting China, and as a coworker put it, it was “my first time experiencing an Asian mega-city”. I enjoyed it, and figured I'd write a bit about the experience and differences from America.

Itinerary-wise, we took a 13 hour flight from San Francisco to Shanghai, where Sophia's parents live. After spending a few days in Shanghai, we flew to Taiyuan, where we visited Sophia's extended family, then took a train to Beijing. We did some touristy things in Beijing, including visiting the Great Wall and the Forbidden City. From Beijing, we flew to Zhangjiajie, where we hiked and took in the scenic views for several days before flying to Chengdu. We spent a day in Chengdu eating and seeing pandas, then took a train to Jiuzhaigou. We admired the beautiful lakes for two days, then returned to Chengdu to catch our flight back to Shanghai. We spent the last couple days in Shanghai, then returned to San Francisco via a 10 hour flight.

Note: I've roughly divided my thoughts into sections, but there's not much of a cohesive narrative or ordering.

Food

Eating was a very different experience than in America. While the food itself wasn't particularly exotic compared to what we eat in San Francisco, it felt like food was a much bigger cultural element. Over three weeks, we ate hundreds of different dishes in a mix of environments. Almost all meals were eaten family style — there were only a couple of quick meals where people ordered and ate their own dish. Compared to American meals (at the corresponding levels of fanciness or formality), Chinese meals had substantially more dishes.

When the two of us ate together, we'd often order one of the restaurants' specials, which were typically composed of a couple large main dishes, a vegetable dish or similar side, and rice. In larger groups, we'd typically order dozens of smaller dishes, running the gamut from small snacks to soups and entire fried fish. The food would often slowly be added to a lazy Susan in the center of the table over the course of an hour or more, with each person munching on a few bites of each dish before moving on to the next one to arrive. I got the impression that it would be a faux pas to order so little food that your guests could possibly finish it.

Lest you think these patterns were particular to restaurants, they repeated when eating at home. We ate several home-cooked meals, most of which were cooked by Sophia's mother, but one that was cooked by their family friends. The six-person meal hosted by family friends had at least 10 dishes, many of which were being cooked one-by-one while the other five of us were eating. Even for breakfast, Sophia's mother would bring out four or five dishes, as well as fry up noodles or similar.

Home kitchens were interesting, and typically seemed to be designed around a double-burner stove built to hold a wok and a large pot. Chinese kitchens don't have ovens, as breads/cakes/etc haven't historically been part of their diet — almost all Chinese dishes we ate could be boiled, fried, or steamed. Kitchens were very small by American standards, with minimal counter space and cupboard room for storing dishes and cooking equipment. I also didn't observe large pantries, presumably because it's easy to get ingredients from a nearby store rather than needing to stock up. Kitchens had a door connecting them to the dining room, which helped reduce smells when frying or cooking fragrant dishes.

Larger gatherings invariably had some form of baijiu at them. Baijiu is said to be an acquired taste, but I tend to like it — while strong, it often has interesting and complex flavours. Those partaking would receive a intermediary carafe of alcohol, along with a small (~10ml) shot glass shaped like a finger-sized wine glass. Throughout the meal, there would be various toasts where one would drink from the shot glass then refill it from their carafe. Particularly notable baijius we had included Moutai, which had a rich chocolatey flavour², and Fenjiu, which was from Sophia's home province and had an herbal and medicinal flavour.

Beyond baijiu, drinks for meals varied. Presumably you could buy alcohol from the restaurant, but everyone we observed simply brought their own alcohol. Cold water was never served — restaurants would serve bottles of water when asked, but no one but me partook. Hot water and tea were much more common, though it seemed like the minor caffeine in tea would be problematic in the evening. In general, I felt like Sophia and I drank much more than others at meals, with us seeming to be the only ones frequently ending up with empty glasses looking around for more.

Restaurants were plentiful and easy to find, likely due to the density and specialization in Chinese cities. Unlike American cities, where you can find food genres from all across the globe, only Chinese food was easily available. We saw some foreign restaurants (Italian, Spanish, etc) in hip new areas, but most areas seemed to only have a variety of Chinese restaurants and possibly some foreign chains like Pizza Hut. Fancier group meals tended to be eaten in reserved rooms, rather than an open dining area, which was generally nice except when people were talking loudly.

Ordering at most restaurants was done via an app³ reachable via a QR code. Typically, the QR code would encode information about what table you were at, so you could simply select the dishes you wanted, order, and pay without talking to anyone. Menus would occasionally have English text, but both they and the buttons in the app were typically in mandarin, making it nigh impossible for me to order. For the most part, we'd choose a restaurant that looked good and then Sophia would unilaterally handle the ordering.

Tipping was not required or expected, and service was generally comparable to America. That being said, good reviews were highly sought out. Restaurants would give you free appetizers or drinks if you left a good review, and were even willing to write it for you if you didn't know what to say.

Getting Around

Transit around China looked pretty much the same as in America, except everything was fast and cheap⁴. For intra-city transport, we mostly used subways or DiDi. For inter-city transport, we flew and took high-speed rail.

The major cities each had robust subway systems; Chengdu's subway system was the smallest, with “only” 13 lines and ~375 stations. The lines tended to look vaguely like a spiderweb, with various rings for rotating between lines radiating out from the city center. Signs for station names were displayed in English and Chinese, and lines were identified by unique colors and Arabic numerals.

We used reloadable Shanghai subway cards in each city, though interestingly you could only reload them in Shanghai. Fares were cheap — around $0.50 per trip, and you only paid at the system entrances and exits rather than per-ride. Trains were frequent, even at off-hours, and we never waited more than five minutes. Accurate times for the next train were displayed on screens in the stations. We rarely travelled at peak times, so trains were typically as crowded as in American cities. We took a couple trips where the cars were solidly packed, but were never packed in like sardines or had to fight to get on⁶.

On a typical subway trip, we'd walk to the station and go through security (metal detector and an X-ray machine for bags), follow the colored signs and floor paint to our train, and wait for a minute or two before boarding. Trips usually took several transfers at intermediate stations, which could involve a fair amount of walking to switch lines, but not much waiting due to the trains' frequencies.

Travel via planes was pretty standard — all airports are pretty much the same. Checking in for flights was done manually by (invariably female) ticket agents, rather than the self check-in kiosks that have become ubiquitous in America. Security was implemented as a TSA-style metal detector, X-ray for bags, and frisking. Unlike the half-hearted or selective frisking I've encountered in America, in Chinese the airport security would fully pat down everyone for 20+ seconds.

We took a couple trips on high-speed rail. The experience was similar to riding Amtrak, except with the trains going several times faster and with hundreds of people desperately fighting to be the first to board. Sitting on a quiet and smooth train while watching the countryside fall behind at over 200 miles an hour was an enjoyable experience⁷.

We rode a maglev in Shanghai to get back from the airport. Sophia's parents live within a couple miles of the Pudong terminus of Shanghai Demonstration Maglev, which travels the ~20 miles from PVG to Pudong in 8 minutes. I had hoped for more from the experience. Its cruising speed was reduced from 268mph to 186mph in 2021⁸, which meant it was slower than the other high speed rail trips we'd already taken. To add to that, I found it somewhat less smooth of a ride than the HSR trips. That being said, it was still cool to ride one of the few maglevs in the world⁹, and I'd love to see more since there are proposals for maglevs with a top speed of almost 400mph.

We ordered DiDis much more frequently than we would in the United States due to the cheap prices. A 10-15 minute ride would be a couple dollars at most, and on some longer rides we paid under $10.00 for 45 minutes of driving. I can't make sense of the economics for most of the rides we took. Gas was priced only slightly cheaper than in California, and many of the cars we rode in cost upwards of $20k to buy. By pairing DiDis with the solid public transit options, it was quick and easy to get around.

We mostly avoided biking because it seemed unreasonably dangerous to do on the same street as the unpredictable motor vehicles, though we did go for a short ride around Tiananmen Square since there was a segment where only bikes were allowed.

Navigation itself would've been challenging without Sophia. Google Maps doesn't work in China¹⁰, and DiDi seems to be the only mainstream app in the Chinese market that has a map and an English UI. The other major navigation apps seem to have some neat features¹¹, but since all the locations and the buttons are displayed in Mandarin I couldn't practically use them. I mostly relied on Sophia to find our way, but also found OsmAnd (which uses OpenStreetMap's data) to be sufficient for statically locating myself on a map.

Driving

Road etiquette and safety varied by city. Shanghai was rather tame, while other cities were decidedly less so. Smaller streets were mainly occupied by scooters and small motorcycles, while highways and other major arteries were the domain of cars. Traffic violations appeared to be routine and only enforced by automated systems, and China's traffic fatality rate is significantly higher than the United States.

While seatbelts are legally required, their use was far from ubiquitous, and I was even told that they aren't necessary in China because it's a very safe country. While the country is by all accounts quite safe, I found this proposal rather unconvincing as our DiDi driver narrowly cut off semi-trucks and rapidly switched lanes to dodge slower cars. Shanghai apparently uses automated cameras to detect seatbelt violations and issue fines, but that technology hasn't trickled out to the more remote regions yet.

Speed differentials between cars on highways were higher than you'd expect, leading to a common driving pattern of rapidly catching up to the car in front, smashing the horn and toggling high beams a few times to encourage them to slide right, then swerving around them when they mostly failed to acknowledge the kind gestures. Lanes were a mild suggestion, with city driving seemingly requiring an uncanny ability to bring one's car within centimeters of nearby traffic. Despite the generally harrowing experience of being a passenger in this environment, we only saw one accident — a minor fender bender in stop-and-go traffic.

A lot of cars were electric, particularly in Shanghai. Most of the brands were domestic, with BYD being notably prolific, though we saw some cars from Tesla and other American brands. Sedans were prevalent, and I don't recall seeing any trucks. Scooters were common. They appeared to mainly be used for food deliveries, and for taking children to school in the smaller cities without as good of public transit. As far as I could tell, scooters were mostly electric. I'm not sure if this is due to economic factors, government encouragement, or because I don't have much experience recognizing scooters.

Most of Sophia's family members owned cars, especially the ones in much cheaper cities outside of Shanghai. I don't have a good sense for whether this is common or if her family is generally more affluent - I suspect it's a mixture of both. Sophia's parents didn't, which makes sense since it's so easy to get around Shanghai without one. We never took a car during rush hour in Shanghai, but traffic felt lighter and quieter in Shanghai compared to the other cities we visited.

Traffic lights looked similar to the rest of the world, but some also had countdowns for both red and green lights. I was impressed that navigation apps could display the time remaining in a light cycle and initially assumed the traffic signals must all be IoT devices, but after reading about it I discovered almost all lights are on fixed timers and that the navigation apps derived the timers based on user data¹². The fixed timers were often extremely long, and when running I had times when I waited several minutes for the light to cycle around a large intersection with only a handful of cars nearby.

Intermediate steps on lights were very brief. Yellow lights seemed to last for one or two seconds; I'm not sure how one could safely go through lights without using a navigation app. Pedestrian crossing signs were fairly similar, where it would often transition from “walk” to “blinking walk” to cars rushing by in a few seconds. People walking in the streets looked fairly healthy — likely because anyone slow was already run down when they started crossing too late to make it.

When traffic met, right of way went to the largest or boldest one. We had drivers turn across traffic, barely clearly buses that laid on their horn and made no attempt to change speed. Scooter drivers rode with impunity down the sidewalk, seemingly confused why I would be walking on their personal concrete. Cars stopped in narrow bike-only lanes, leaving a crowd of irate cyclists and deliver drivers bottled up behind them. When paired with “right on red” not requiring a stop, crossing the street as a pedestrian could be a difficult experience. I had good luck walking directly in front of traffic while staring them in the eye to force them to yield, but Sophia thought that might not work as well for people who weren't as clearly foreign.

Pollution

Based on old stories I'd seen, I was somewhat concerned about the air quality in China. Luckily, it was raining when we got to Shanghai, which meant most of the particulates were removed by the precipitation. AQI in Shanghai wasn't particularly bad throughout the trip, though it was noticeably hazier once the weather cleared up. On the worst days, it was between 100 and 150 AQI, and appeared to vary heavily over the course of the day. I didn't really notice issues with the air other than the haze. Exercise isn't recommended at 150 AQI, but it was hard to notice that the pollution had reached that level, unlike with a wildfire where 150 AQI has me looking for an N95 mask.

Landing in Taiyuan was a different story. Shanxi is the leading coal-producing province, and the plane's approach had us descending through a noticeable brown haze that significantly limit the view. It was hazy enough that I was concerned we should wear N95s outdoors¹³, though luckily we never needed to. Interestingly, the “official” AQI for Taiyuan is generally less than the AQI for Shanghai. Writing this, Shanghai is expected to hit 250 AQI for the next few days while Taiyuan is never above 150.

Smoking was prolific, including indoors and at restaurants. We went outside at several restaurants when people started lighting up next to us. It's a stark reminder of how much rarer smoking is in the United States these days. On the flip side, I didn't notice any vapes, which seem to be rather popular with the youth here.

Raw tap water isn't safe to drink in China, and we didn't drink on the trip. This was particularly surprising in a modern city like Shanghai, so I researched it a bit.

China has significant problems with pollution at water sources, and they don't have convenient clean sources like Hetch Hetchy which provides water to San Francisco. They have various filtration plants that improve on the poor sources but are nowhere near perfect, leaving most areas with some level of contaminants like algae and sewage. Additionally, while new construction has modern standards for plumbing, there are huge amounts of older pipes and storage tanks with minimal upkeep and containing lead and other heavy metals.

In practice, this means you likely won't get sick from drinking tap water in Shanghai, but probably want to avoid it just in case, and it's probably harmful over long periods. We didn't get sick on the trip, but we did consume a prodigious quantity of plastic water bottles.

I didn't get the sense that personal filtration of water, via things such as Brita filters or reverse-osmosis systems, were common. This is probably because most people will only drink hot water¹⁴, so boiling of tap water is standard. Boiling doesn't solve all of the problems with tap water, but it does remove the immediately noticeable ones.

The national parks we visited were very tidy and free of trash. This appeared to be accomplished via significant manpower in a fashion that is completely alien to those used to American national parks. Park workers dotted the landscape, as numerous as grains of sand, each ensuring their small domain was devoid of refuse¹⁵. Running along a “remote” trail, with no other visitors within a kilometer, I even encountered park employees sweeping the morning leaves off the path.

The national parks we visited were clearly built on a different set of nature-related ethics from modern-day America. While there were gorgeous landscapes and opportunities to hike, that's about where the similarities end.

American parks are typically oriented around getting back to nature and removing human influence. Amenities and improvements are rare, and they both emphasize the splendor of the natural world and try to position the visitor inside it. The Chinese national parks we visited did a fantastic job of showcasing their natural beauty, but make no attempt to imply the visitors are part of it. Paths are invariably fenced in and paved or covered in boardwalk. Restrooms, vendors, and photographers¹⁶ are ubiquitous. To see the sights in the parks, one rides gondolas, takes buses, travels up the world's tallest outdoor elevator, and can even do a bit of hiking. After sightseeing, food and souvenirs can be purchased at the crowded mall in the middle of the park.

I don't think this is necessarily bad, but it's a different way of looking at nature than what I'm used to in the US. National parks in America tend to have “sacrificial” areas that handle high traffic from tourists who are only there for photographs, but reserve the majority of the land for people to recreate on. The two Chinese national parks we visited appeared to only support the selfie crowd, with few to no options to get off the beaten path. Maybe one day they'll expand to support more use-cases — there were some phenomenal-looking potential climbs that would certainly be lower-impact than the gondolas we rode past them.

Technology

Cell phones were an integral piece of society. Various things assume you have a cell phone, a Chinese phone number, and a WeChat account. Tourist areas have stands full of batteries that you can rent in order to charge your phone¹⁷.

You pay for everything with your phone, via a somewhat confusing set of competing apps and options that people are presumably accustomed to. The only cash we saw came in red envelopes¹⁸, and I don't recall us ever spending any. I didn't even carry a wallet.

China has an entirely separate app ecosystem with different design principles. Apps typically had a much busier UI than in the English ecosystem¹⁹, perhaps because they're the main interface to the internet as personal desktop ownership is rarer than in the West. There's very little English support in apps, which made them challenging to use when combined with the complicated UIs and unfamiliar UX patterns.

There was cell service essentially everywhere we went, and places where we stayed had acceptable WiFi. We used a prepaid data-only eSIM from Nomad, which wasn't particularly fast but worked fine for accessing non-Chinese services. Having a local SIM was necessary for various actions, so we also carried one of those in a spare phone. Sophia also used this to access Chinese services, which were often unusably slow when using our non-Chinese plans.

Interestingly, a VPN wasn't really necessary. When on a non-Chinese data plan, the data is actually being piped through a carrier that is outside the Great Firewall, and the government allows most traffic through unmolested. From research, it appears that this might be interrupted during times of political unrest or according to other arbitrary conditions, but we were never impacted. A VPN was still useful when using WiFi, since otherwise no “standard” sites were accessible.

Chinas has cameras basically everywhere, and facial recognition was common. In Zhangjiajie National Park, the entry gate took a photo when presenting our tickets and passports, then all the other gates in the park used facial recognition to let you through²⁰. In one airport corridor, a large screen displayed the names and flight statuses of people walking past.

Cultural Differences

China is considered to be a low risk country for violent crime. The number of cameras probably has something to do with this, since it would be hard to avoid being caught. Walking around cities, even in dark alleys at night, felt safe. That being said, guards and razor wire were a frequent sight.

Labor was clearly very cheap. Food was delivered immediately for fractions of a dollar, and taxi or DiDi rides cost so little than I'm not sure how they're able to recoup the price of the cars. Streets were generally clean, due to a sizeable cleaning workforce that would be unfathomable in America.

Squat toilets were prevalent, though most places that served foreigners also had a standard toilet. While they seemed like a less sanitary option to me²¹, they're viewed as more sanitary in China since your skin never contacts a public surface. I was initially concerned that I'd be forced to use them, especially in the crowded national parks with large bathroom lines, but I quickly realized that no one wanted to use the non-squat toilets! After that, I simply skipped the line and found a vacant seated toilet for myself.

Accessibility was basically non-existent, which is surprising given China's significant elderly population. Ramps were rare, and I even saw some ramps with wheelchair signs on them that bypassed only a portion of the steps and thus provided no value. Squat toilets seem challenging to use with limited mobility. Elevators were common in apartment buildings, but typically required climbing stairs to get to, and weren't anywhere near omnipresent in the subways.

I was typically the tallest person around by a decent margin. This isn't particularly unusual in the United States, but it was novel to have an unobstructed view over a crowd thousands strong. My height made the busier areas feel pretty manageable, and I think people gave me more personal space than they would to others. I stuck out a bit and children occasionally commented, but I was pleasantly surprised that no one wanted to take pictures with me²².

People generally talked much louder than is normal in the United States. I don't project by default, so I believe people had a hard time hearing me²³. Personal space also wasn't really a thing, and pushing to get through crowds seemed at least common, if not socially acceptable.

National ID was needed for anything that involved travel — plane tickets, train tickets, hotels, national parks, etc. As a foreigner, my passport was used instead, which mostly worked but typically needed special treatment. Typically someone would need to manually enter in my passport information rather than scanning my ID, or it would require calling someone. Luckily Sophia's parents handled a lot of our travel arrangements, because I think doing it on my own would've required purchasing most tickets in person.

Overall

China was full of contrasts. The cities were clearly technologically advanced, but we couldn't drink the tap water. Cocktail bars sold delicious $20 cocktails right next to small shops providing hearty meals of stewed offal for $1. We saw breathtaking natural vistas with McDonalds erected on top.

Overall, I enjoyed the trip²⁴. I certainly had complaints with some things, but others were clear improvements over America. The government clearly had a presence everywhere, but it was less intrusive than I'd thought it might be, and we didn't have any bad interactions. The people we talked to were friendly, and the food was fantastic. Many thanks to Sophia's family, and particularly her parents, for helping with the logistics of traveling and letting us try so much great food.