Here I have gathered three of those I found the most interesting during my stay there!
Probably everyone has heard of the internet firewall that China uses to filter online content in its territory. The conversations I had during my visit revealed to me that apart from filtering content, the firewall has another, maybe even more important purpose: to prevent foreign powers interfering with Chinese affairs. Looking at world politics nowadays, the role and importance of this actually makes a lot of sense.
Apart from this, there have been significant changes in the way they filter online content. As soon as you step into the country, Google refers you to the local search engine on its landing page. Amazon has announced this week that they are closing down their online services in the region, as they cannot keep up with the Chinese competition. And Google Maps was added to the blacklist two weeks ago, joining YouTube, Facebook, WhatsApp and Netflix – among many other services. This makes it especially interesting that Chinese president Xi Jinping openly admits that he maintains his Instagram profile (which is also blocked, by the way) using a VPN service.
I realised as soon as we took off from Los Angeles that getting by with my plastic cards in China would not necessarily be the smoothest ride. I flew there with the local Xiamen Airlines, where you can only use Alipay (the Chinese equivalent of Amazon) and WeChat to pay for onboard purchases. I kept calm, thinking that I would surely have more options available in the country itself. I was wrong – even businesses as small as the freshly squeezed orange juice stand on the street corner only accepted local means of payment. And I realised how serious the situation actually was when I missed the first 5 minutes (!) of the premier of Avengers, whilst desperately looking for an ATM. 🙂
Talking of WeChat, it is a very interesting application, and I find it surprising that Facebook is so slow to catch up with it on the European and American market (Mark Zuckerberg just made an announcement this week to add payment features to the Messenger app) . WeChat is a mobile application functioning as a kind of mixture of WhatsApp and Facebook – working as a social platform while also letting you manage instant messages.
And beyond all this, it is also a fully functional payment system, allowing you to make purchases on the online systems accessible through the application, as well as in other shops.
You cannot generalise the cultural environment in a country the size of China, so I will focus on Shanghai and some bigger cities in its vicinity.
Zichun, my interpreter, told me that he otherwise works as an English teacher, which is a very prosperous business in China right now as everyone is studying English. And regardless of how difficult it is to get a visa to Europe or America, many dream of visiting abroad one day.
If you think that China is still completely isolated from the world, I would like to point out that the above-mentioned Avengers movie was premiered in China two days before anywhere else in the world. And there wasn’t a soul who wasn’t up for a chat about superheroes (to be honest, that was about the only thing we could talk about due to the language barrier ☺ ).
The picture below, taken at one of the most famous temple complexes, also tells a lot about the changes going on in the country.
I also have to mention that starting from my flight, interacting with the locals was a very pleasant experience. They are incredibly polite, and even the simplest act of handing you a bill is done showing utmost respect. And even though the more frequented places are rather crowded, I never saw people pushing or heard them raising their voices. On the top of that, they don’t accept tips at all – it happened to me several times that they ran after me as I left a shop or restaurant to return the money that I had left them.
Now put this picture together and you will see that China definitely worths a trip!
Traditions: Two heartfelt goodbyes and many counted blessings at the American chamber’s Thanksgiving banquet on Friday.
