Sooo… yeah! I don’t really have IRL friends to chat about this so I figured I’d make this post. Didn’t want this to be super consequential like hosting an AMA or anything since it’s just me going back to where I was born but yeah
A few funny observations and maybe conversation starters:
- Everything I read in the US seems to talk about how China is simultaneously a futuristic paradise and an authoritarian hellscape… both seem fairly overblown. There are a lot of public transit and the food is amazing though
- The rumors are true, in China they really use Wechat for everything. Wechat is used for payment (almost no one uses credit cards or cash), booking tickets, … and all of these are tied to your national ID and your face recognition. It’s a bit terrifying
- There are sooooo many ads everywhere! Heck my parents’ apartment building has an ad billboard right in the elevator, and this is apparently the norm. On the app store the Microsoft Edge browser literally got a 5-star rating and was praised for not running ads… it’s that bad.
- My god the internet is atrocious compared to the US, and having to do half of the stuff I need to with a VPN doesn’t really help. It’s so bad that I was missing my Gentoo days of compiling packages from source…
- I thought there would be a ton of anime stuff, especially since I had the impression that Mihoyo games (the company that developed Genshin Impact, Honkai series, etc) is a topic of national pride… I think I have made a mistake. I have met three cosplayers just walking on the street so far though, so the culture definitely is there
- I like rhythm games and I’m delighted to find out there are maimai DX cabs everywhere, this thing is impossible to find in the US. Haven’t found SDVX or IIDX cabs, or even CHUNITHM cabs though… Also China apparently has their own Pump It Up clone (not DDR, PIU) with four more outer arrows. Imagine the five PIU step keys and four more outside…
- Lemmy.world is somehow not blocked by the Chinese internet firewall. Not that I feel safe browsing Lemmy with the type of posts I make… On that topic, my own little web domain isn’t blocked lmao I can still use SearXNG as usual
Adding on to this nonsense…
Most of the futuristic paradise is just chinese government propaganda overflowing. Most of the authoritarian hellscape isn’t really seen by normal citizens. My aunt saw police catch a pickpocket once. She felt sorry for the pickpocket because they were beating the crap out of him.
Wechat, yes, sometimes they will ask for your national id in places, but not often because nobody fucking carries that. The good news is I had family all over the place, so they just paid for everything out of their accounts.
Ads are everywhere, but most ads are just walls of text. I can’t read chinese, so it’s actually very easy for me to ignore it anyways.
The last few times I went, we went from dialup to ISDN to DSL. I remember the first time I went back, we got a microwave. We couldn’t use it for a while because it would blow the apartment circuit breaker.
A lot of the niche cultures are just hiding in places. There’s a lot of hiding places. Over the times I went back, Beijing went from 3rd ring highway to 5th ring. I had to take like two hours of bus ride to get to a Magic: The Gathering store.
Chinese PC gaming sucks ass. It’s either rebranded western games, or just pay-to-win gacha games. It’s been like that since the 90s. Black Myth Wukong is a big deal, because it’s one of the first big time non-gacha chinese games.
Most of the younger generation are very global. They’ve had a taste of the unfiltered internet and cannot go back. That’s not to say they have the correct perspectives on things, but there is a distinct lack of the imperialism that the older generation has. Some of the older generation is global too, especially on western movies. My uncle liked to watch western movies that I snuck in.
Every time I go, somehow, there always happens to be some government bigwigs in town, which makes all the factories shut down. The air is actually very clean without the factories.
One of the best and worst things the government did was preparation for the 2008 Olympics. They tore down every single building in the city that was only one story high (and some higher ones), and rebuilt them into at least two story high buildings. In the process, they also redid the streets, which also included clearing out the street vendors. RIP tricycle cooks and kebab vendors.
Oh boy on the point of Black Myth Wukong and Beijing’s loss of culture…
I don’t even know if ppl in China can play Black Myth Wukong without going to a specialty arcade due to the nature of its release, which IMO would feel so wrong for ppl who live here…
On the part of Beijing losing its culture, my parents decided to take me on an extended trip to Southern China, and I’m so surprised to find ancient Chinese temples and stuff here… Beijing tore all of those down… I guess Beijing is just miserable to live in now lol
One of the things my cousin asked for when she came over was a laptop, which she proceeded to install World of Warcraft on. When she got tired of a job, she just quit, because fuck 996. A lot of the younger generation just hole up at home and work occasionally.
The other cities are still ok (for now). Whichever city my mom’s family is in had street vendors that use QR codes, so there’s at least some integration into “Modern China”.