My guide to how China is changing

Happy Lunar New Year everyone or as we call it in Chinese Chūn Jié or spring festival! Hope everyone experiences lots of happy things this year. I know it's kind of special year for a lot of you since it's the year of the pig. In Chinese tradition everyone gets one year older over the New Year (instead of during your birthday), which means that you've turned 24 (or some multiple of that)! So happy birthday!

Setting off a string of firecrackers on the beach since it's illegal to do it within the city.

This year's the first time ever that I've celebrated it in China. And it honestly it's the first time I've ever really had off for Lunar New Year since it's not something you get off when you live in America. On New Years eve we had a huge dinner with my grandma, cousins, uncles, aunties, with lots of auspicious dishes like fish and geese. We went to the beach and we set off fireworks (which I often forget is actually a Chinese invention). And watched lots of reruns of the new year's programming on TV.

Lighting incense so we can offer food to our ancestors.  

For the past four years I've been traveling back and forth from the U.S. to Japan quite frequently. For studying abroad, for my summer internship, for school, and now for work. And that has indirectly given me lots of opportunities to visit China to see my grandma, and other relatives like cousins, uncles, and aunties. In the past four years I've gotten to visit China five different times (compared to just 2~3 times from age 6 to 18 growing up in the states), and while I can't speak for how China is different from when my parents left in 1995, I've been able to see with my own eyes how China is evolving.

Shantou's old district was very busy over the new years. Swatow is how you would pronounce Shantou in the Chaoshan dialect (which I can't speak D:)

From my experience as an American watching the news, you get this sense that China is this large looming threat to the United States, I think because China's often portrayed as the antagonist, media portrayal of China is often made to intimidate. "Look how fast China is growing, be scared." On the other hand working as a designer in Japan, a lot of what I see is technological innovation in China that is moving in a different direction from how technology integrates into our lives in both the U.S. and Japan.

Driving down a road in Nan Ao, my uncle told me that this place is known as China's Hawaii.

In the past week I've living here and talking to family about how life is changing here in China. So here's a micro-look into China's development from one perspective in one city.

Expanding Infrastructure

The train I took to get to back to Hong Kong for my return flight. Every seat was packed.

China has been rapidly expanding it's network of high speed rails since the early 2000s. These trains are bullet train fast, the kind that doesn't exist in America. Last year when I visited Shantou, I flew into Hong Kong's airport, and took a 5 hour bus from Hong Kong to Shantou. This year, there's a new high speed rail station in Hong Kong, which shortened the ride to just 3 hours by train (which honestly could've been more like 2.5 hours if we didn't stall at Shenzhen for half an hour). To give you some perspective that's like if we could travel from New York to Boston in 2.5 hours. Imagine if there was a convenient way to move from state to state that didn't involve long distant driving or going to an airport. This is the kind of infrastructure that China is spending it's money on. The kind of infrastructure I wish the U.S. was spending it's money on.

Was it a similar experience to riding the Shinkansen in Japan? Not really. Most people I see riding the Shinkansen are business people. In contrast most of the travelers I traveled with on the high speed rail were people going to or coming home to family. Granted, this was peak holiday season, so it's not a fair comparison. Maybe I'll do a blog someday on trains in Japan because, I love the trains.

The Nan'Ao Bridge, which you guessed it, leads to Nan'Ao Island. (Huaxinnet)

One of the days we headed off to Nan'Ao, an Island off the coast of Shantou to set off fireworks (it's prohibited to set off fireworks within the city, but you hear people do it anyway). One thing that was super striking to me was the Nan'Ao bridge. You used to have to take a ferry to get to the island but more recently they built a super long bridge connecting the two so that you can directly drive across the ocean to China's Hawaii (though tbh, I went to Hawaii for the first time recently, I am absolutely in love, and Nan'Ao doesn't hold a candle to it). I was impressed by how freaking long it was, I'm not sure I've been on a longer bridge.

Proliferation of QR codes

Originally I was going to post something useful like a video of someone actually purchasing via QR code but then I found this music video on youtube.

I feel like QR codes in China is something that either you know is rampant in China or you have no idea what I'm talking about. Well, QR codes are everywhere. You know those things that never really took off in America? When's the last time you actually took the effort to scan a QR code?

In China, QR codes are almost the defacto way that people pay for goods now. In America I carry around a credit card. In Japan I fumble around with cash. In China, most people will scan the merchant's QR code, which takes them to the store's payment page where you would type in how much you pay them, and then press pay. And wahlah! The money then gets transferred to their account. There are two primary payment processing companies, one of them run by Tencent that's connected to your wechat account (which is the messaging app of choice in China), the other is run by Alibaba, the Amazon/Ebay of China.

People in China actually scan QR codes. You can put a QR code on your advertisement, and you can reliably count on interested people to scan the code to get directed to your website. QR codes aren't just used for purchasing from stores or people, there are also vending machines everywhere that take payment via QR codes. Here are some examples:

Bike Sharing

Normal bikes costs 1 RMB per ride. Motorized bike shown above costs 3 RMB per ride.

I know I said vending machine, but lets talk about bikes. Dock-less bike sharing is huge in China. There are multiple bike share companies that can be seen cluttering the sidewalks everywhere. These bikes are cheap cheap cheap. You scan the QR code located below the seat and it'll cost you about 1 RMB, or 15 cents for a single ride. You don't have to find a specialized dock, you don't have to worry about any time limits (probably, I've actually never ridden one because my relatives escort me everywhere I go), they're convenient for the consumer but come at a cost of taking up a ton of space.

While walking around the streets of Shantou it's apparent that these share bikes vastly outnumber personally owned bikes. Most people prefer to rent these bikes than buy their own. I was told that their popularity is due partly to the fact that Shantou doesn't have good local public transportation infrastructure so these bikes can be alternatives to buses that might only come on the half hour. Though that seems pretty typical tbh if you are in America.

A pile of broken share bikes.

I walked past a mountain of these bikes just piled up like a scrap heap and I was like smh, people just treat shared property like shit (or like the educated like to say, aghast! The tragedy of the commons!(am I using this right?)) . But my cousin reassured me that this isn't just any old pile of bikes, people with broken bikes are directed towards these piles, they leave it there, then the company picks them up and fixes them up for redistribution.

It is still a mystery to me how these companies are profitable when renting bikes are dirt cheap and people are not taking care of them.

Phone Charging

Tiny phone charging station located at a dimsum resturant.

This box was outside a dimsum restaurant we ate at. You scan the QR code and you can then keep your phone in the box to charge while you eat. I'm skeptical people use this particular one because it looks kinda sketchy and you could probably just pick it up and run if you wanted to steal a bunch of phones at once. But apparent phone charging stations are pretty popular in China. Probably cause everyone's constantly glued to their phones.

Tissue Paper Dispensing

Tissue paper vending machine located outside a mall bathroom.

This one is the funniest example imo. Most bathrooms in China lack toilet paper. In the past it was probably something like if we put toilet paper in the public bathrooms people will steal it. I think we are past the era of stealing toilet paper, so my theory on why there is still no toilet paper in public bathrooms is that people are disgusting.

You know when you walk into a stall and you find that half of the toilet paper is on the floor and there are crumpled pieces of paper scattered everywhere. I think they're trying to avoid that. I personally feel super grossed out when confronted with disheveled toilet paper, and I'd imagine that other people do too. There's no trust in nasty public toilet paper.

This is why people bring around packets of tissues when they go out. You bring your own toilet paper, that way you can trust your paper, and you're unlikely to be a messy asshole. In the event that you forget to bring a pack, pray that you do not need to number 2. Anyway, all this talk was to point out that in this mall bathroom, right outside the door is a tissue paper vending machine where you can scan the QR code and for a little bit of money, gain access to "the loo roll".

Societal shifts

Throughout my week in Shantou, one of my uncles would constantly tell me about how soon life in China is basically already better than life in the U.S. or Japan. I will say that quality of life in China has improved drastically since my parents emigrated in 1995, but as someone who has experienced living in all three, I'm nodding my head yes cause I don't want to make my uncle feel bad...but in my heart it's still a no. Anyway here are a few things I noticed about Chinese society.

Pursuit of trends

Streetwear

It's like wearing COMME des Garson.

China is very trendy, for better or for worse. You know how more recently the Chinese international student look has shifted from poor pHD student to rich hype beast?  I was sitting at a hotpot restaurant, looked down, and everyone was wearing Adidas ultra boosts. And these people aren't even that hype. They were my cousin and my uncle's friend's kids. You go to the mall and the predominant fashion for young people (from 50 to as young as 2) is street wear. Phone cases are Gucci, shoes are those chunky looking Balenciaga that look like you fused two shoes into one. And if you can't afford that you're wearing either counterfeit or a knockoff. Personally I don't really get the point. What's the point of getting expensive hype stuff when the person next to you is paying pennies on the dollar for Soupremes. 

Muji Copycat

This is the inside of a Muji Store (Power Plant Mall)

Muji is a pretty ubiquitous brand in Japan, it sells clothes, travel items, cosmetics, furniture, and is well known for it's stationary. I would say it has as much brand power as Uniqlo within Japan, and has a decent cult following in the U.S. among the designer types *waggle eyebrow*.

This is the Muji lookalike I found at the mall

I was walking around the same mall with the tissue pack dispenser where I found this Muji copycat. I was like, wait is this Muji? Except the logo was different. Except I literally own the same travel-sized shampoo bottle at home. It's not unlikely that the products are the same exact thing with a different logo slapped onto it. I mean many companies do their manufacturing in China, and these factories I suppose can sell to many different brands.

I feel like for a lot of things in China, rather than having their own innovative ideas, Chinese companies just copy what is doing well in the mainstream. This happens a lot in tech. 

Huawei MateBook X Pro review from my favorite tech youtuber Dave 2d.

One example the Huawei MateBook X Pro, it takes heavy inspiration from the Macbook Pro. 

And a broader example is apps. Because the great Firewall of China blocks many of the apps you and I use in daily life (here's a blog I wrote about it a few years ago), China has it's own unique app ecosystem. For Messenger there's Wechat (actually it's kind of creepy when I get a notification that it's running in the background despite me not have had open it), for Google there's Baidu, for Amazon there's Alibaba, for Uber there's Didi Chuxing. You can bet that for every tech giant in not China, China has something like it. These companies have a huge sandbox in China with a captive audience of at least one billion people. Capitalism, am I right?

The Line Bunny

The Line bunny casually hanging out outside the real estate office

So LINE is the messaging app that people use in Japan, I know some people who use Facebook Messenger, but the vast majority use LINE. The thing is, LINE is blocked in China like everything else on my smartphone. Yet, Cony, a LINE mascot has been everywhere in Shantou. Cony was in the claw machines, Cony was chilling out at the real estate office. This really felt like something being popular for the sake of being popular abroad. China has no cultural ties to Cony, the real estate company definitely didn't ask if they could use Cony as a mascot. Why can't you go design your own mascot.

Bonus picture. Kumamon, another Japanese mascot, chilling out in front a buffet resturant. 

Cleanliness

So...the parts of China I've been to, they are not clean places. Japan might have ruined me. Unlike Japan, China actually has trashcans everywhere. In Japan I carry my trash on me everywhere I go because there is a distinct lack of trashcans. In China, there are trashcans everywhere. But there's still a large amount of trash on the ground. Like you know those moments when you're so shook that you don't know what to do. I was going on a walk with one of my relatives, and when they finished drinking their juice pack, they just tossed it on the floor. I mean if we just kept going there would've been a trashcan in another minute, yet they it threw it on the floor. And I kept walking. Cause I was paralyzed.

And it's not like Chinese people are dirty all the time, it's just I've noticed this distinction between mine and not mine. People tend to treat public areas like shit, but you walk into their houses and you've got to switch to slippers cause otherwise you'll make the floor nasty.

Shoe shrink wrap machine at the real estate office.

One interesting intermediate I saw was at the real estate office for apartment condos by the beach. They had showrooms of these apartments you could buy from them and there were these cool machines that would shrink wrap some plastic onto your feet so you wouldn't make their floor nasty.

Anyway, there are people just spitting on the sidewalks, and children peeing behind signposts. I find that even new trendy drink shops tend to look on the rundown side because nothing public ever feels clean. People don't take care of what's not theirs.

Shrink wrapped utensils at the hotpot place we ate at.

One interesting example of this is bowls and utensils in restaurants. At the hotpot place our dishes came in shrink wrap. The restaurant does this to show us that it's clean. After they wash it, they shrink wrap it so you can be sure that no one has handled it with their grubby hands. But then, they bring over a tub of boiling water. Which after unwrapping our utensils, we wash it in the tub a second time. My aunt said that this is largely symbolic at this point, but you've got to wonder how deeply ingrained is this distrust of public items.

Here's a picture of the food at the hotpot place. It was only beef. We ate only beef. It was delicious.

Social Credit System

So the last thing I'm going to talk about is the social credit system. For those who haven't heard of it, the government is attempting to keep a tally on every Chinese citizen, assigning them a score depending on what they do or don't do. If your Social Credit is good, you can have advantages like lower interest rates or better access to public services. If your Social Credit is bad the Government can stop you from traveling by stopping you at immigration or high speed rail stations. This score isn't just based on data the Government has on you (like if you've been breaking laws), it's also based on data that private Chinese companies have on you (like maybe if you buy "items that good people wouldn't buy" from Alibaba). It sounds terribly dystopian, and if you want more information on it you should google it (unless you're reading this from China...which I'm not sure is possible? Since Blogger is owned by Google?) since I am not a subject expert. I have however a few stories of how it's changing China though.

Bike Sharing

Nice and clean share bikes.

So earlier I was talking about the widespread diffusion of share bikes in China. Because these bikes are dock-less you can basically put them anywhere and no one can stop you. A while back they were having problems with people abandoning bikes in rivers and lakes. Now these companies are looking to tie your bike share account to your Social Credit. Dump a bike into a lake, your Social Credit will drop.

Traffic safety

Being in a car in China feels dangerous, especially since I'm not used to it. Lanes are more like suggestions, people weave in and out of traffic frequently, and do not believe in pedestrian right of way. However, according to my grandma, it has gotten significantly better over the past couple years. She said that in the past if you were stuck in the crosswalk when the light turned red on you, you were just stuck. Grandma would stand in the middle of traffic as cars zoomed past her on either side because no one would let her finish crossing. She said that more recently cars will yield in similar scenarios. 

A traffic camera that we passed. Not too different looking from your average traffic camera.

I've noticed a decent amount of traffic police at intersections, supposedly they would call out bad behavior and your Social Credit would drop if you were found disobeying traffic laws. There are also a ton of traffic cameras along the freeway. And they are not discrete. When you zoom past them they will flash to let you know they've taken a photo. They can tell if you're speeding, if you're driving without a seat belt, and they will send you tickets based on your traffic violations. Get caught too many times and you'll get your license revoked. You can be sure that this is tied to your score.

No picture of the poor Social Credit monitor, but the map app alerts you of nearby cameras.

One part of the Social Credit system is that people with low Social Credit will get their photos posted in public areas, kind of like that thing people do with bad behaving dogs on the internet. This is probably to discourage you from doing bad things cause you'll lose face (by having your face everywhere). I thought that this had to be a joke, because it just sounds like something you would do if you wanted people to call your government evil, but lo and behold as we drove by a toll, there was a small monitor right outside of it with eight or so faces of people I'd assume have poor Social Credit. Not quite what I was expecting, I was imagining something more like a time square billboard. I wanted to take a picture of it but it was so fast that by the time I registered what it was, it was already too late. 

So my thoughts on the Social Credit system. Yeah I mean it sounds pretty fucked up. But from an on the ground standpoint I think partly it's just the government trying to stop people from being assholes. China has developed extremely fast for the past few decades, but some people need to do some catching up when it comes to social etiquette. Like please, I know the bathroom has a small line, but if your going to let your child pee in public, at least find something to hide behind.  

For offences like traffic violations and damaging public property I would say it's pretty black and white what is right or wrong. But it's on more grey issues like anti-government speech or cycles of poverty that result in poor Social Credit that make it unpalatable to my westernized self. 

Final Thoughts

I think that China is modernizing in a way that's different from how developed nations today have modernized. Partly it's due to the fact that it's growing up in a era with new technologies like big data and new trends like the sharing economy. 

The old district in Shantou, super lively due to spring festival events. Do you know there are 5 million people living in this city? Yet you've probably never heard of it before.

I think that Chinese citizens are very connected digitally, most people I saw were glued to their smartphones. There are an abundance of ways to interact with the physical world using your smartphone, QR codes being the obvious example, but also things like shaking your phone when a prompt appears on TV for a chance at getting digital Hong Bao (or red envelopes) filled with money.

Copy-paste condos, this picture is from when I went to Shanghai.

I think that it's full of stark contrasts. You see new multi-story condos getting copy pasted throughout the city, but at the same time you have old buildings falling apart also sprinkled throughout. You see the person head to toe in expensive expensive brand name clothes, and you see the auntie standing next to her rickety bike hawking vegetables. You can also see the sidewalk, which are meant for people, but instead parked from edge to edge with expensive luxury cars.

This is the China I see, cobbled together from my experiences over the past few years.

I'm not sure exactly what any of this means, and I'm not exactly sure where things are headed. But one thing that I am certain of, is that China is changing.

Bonus funny picture from when I went to Xiamen in 2017. The couples taking wedding photos outnumbered the rest of the beach go-ers.