So I spent the last couple of weeks in one of the most notoriously awkward-to-travel places – China.
And overall, it was great! This is a breakdown of the good, the bad and the ugly, along with some other stories of my trip.
The glaring point - China is not easy to travel. I have a close friend there, a former university housemate, and I was grateful to let her facilitate my visit so that things didn’t go horribly wrong.
And there’s a lot of different ways that your trip in China can go sideways…
First of all, the apps - if you don’t have a WeChat account, you’re done for. No ordering anything, no communication, no payments. Oh, and of course you have to get verified by another WeChat user before you can even use the app.
Oh, and, you need to have your passport on hand. Not just to verify your WeChat mini-app accounts (one new verification per mini-app), but to serve as a ’ticket’ of sorts on public transport (trains, not just planes) and for major tourist attractions.
You can’t access your normal apps on the internet, of course. Unless you have a VPN, that is. Which I did, until it logged me out of both of my phones on my last full day there.
In truth, this was one of the most prominent annoyances for me.
Working online was near impossible, which turned out alright because of how whistle-stop my journey through these places was, but for a longer stay I’d have to look into a more China-battle-tested VPN solution so that I’d be able to keep working.
So there’s WeChat, and a VPN. The other indispensable app in my China arsenal was Amap. Google Maps is out of the question, but this app’s a great alternative, with the added bonus of being able to hail China’s (ultra-cheap) private hire cars and vans.
So, with all of this admin aside (and considering you don’t really need any of this faff when visiting Macau and HK), let’s talk about the rest of the trip, which was great…
First, the food. I’ve been in Asia for coming up to three months at the time of writing now, and China’s food is far-and-away the best I’ve had.
From hotpot to soup buns to pork noodles, everything tasted amazing, and cost in-line with what I was used to in Thailand and Vietnam.
Also, it was simply an experience to walk around. China seems almost completely self-sufficient (which can’t be said for many other nations), and it shows. All the cars are made by companies you’ve never heard of before, and even many of the stores in the shopping centres are different to the West.
The only exception seems to be in high-end fashion. Walking through Shanghai centre, and later Shanghai airport, I’d never seen so many luxury brands clustered in one place. I passed Canada Goose, then Moncler, Gucci, Dior, and headed up the price gradient, ending with Loro Piana, Max Mara and Zegna.
That was just in one airport terminal.
There’s plenty to do in China as well, if you can navigate and organise well.
Our first stop in the mainland was Chengdu, capital of the Sichuan province, in the centre-west of the country (discounting the vast and largely-empty expanse of Tibet).
Chengdu is famous for being home to a Giant Panda breeding base amongst other things, and this was really what we were there to see, but the same day, in the afternoon, we walked around a historical site that was the home of a prolific Chinese poet Du Fu for a while, and walking amongst his thatched buildings was amazing.
Later, in Beijing, we visited the obvious solution, the Great Wall.
Because this is where my friend’s currently attending a year of university, it was also where we did the ’least’. Instead, I sat in my hostel and delivered a Black Friday launch for PARAZETTEL, and we went for a dinner and party in a club that has a built-in supermarket where you take your drinks out of the fridge and put them in your shopping basket before paying.
The music was dire (to the point that it was enjoyable), and a bottle of wine that I purchased mysteriously disappeared. So all-in-all a pretty typical drinking experience.
The day after this, we headed to our final stop, Shanghai. This was similar to Hong Kong in the fact that there was a cyberpunk view from the waterfront, and that there was a lot of Western influence in the city-centre architecture. Apparently the French, British and Americans had a presence there some years ago (like most of the world).
One of the coolest things we did was visit the top of the Shanghai tower, the third tallest building in the world.
The lift that takes you there is the fastest in the world (20 metres/second), and your ears pop multiple times on the minute-or-so that it takes you to get to the top, but the view you get from there is more than worth it…
Following this, I headed back to Bangkok where I sit now, in a Starbucks, writing this before. The things that really stand out, looking back, are the cuisine, the history, the scale of the cities (even Chengdu, the smallest, has a population of about 1/3 of England) and the sheer uniqueness.
Would return. There’s much more to see (Chongqing, Shenzhen and Qingdao are on my list), but first I’ll make sure to get a more reliable VPN.
On the other locations…
Hong Kong was spectacular, with a fantastic skyline, and very, very London-feeling. The downside was the price - my friend and I filtered the booking.com listings by cheapest, and picked the top option.
We ended up in Chunking Mansion, and dilapidated apartment block that had an international market in the bottom. We ended up in the back alleys whilst trying to find our place but if we were fortunate to have entered around the front we’d have been ushered in by a contingent of people on the front porch with the words ‘Guesthouse? You need guesthouse?’.
Our room was about 3x3x4 metres in total, with a (hardly) double bed and nothing else.
But we made do, spending some time down on the waterfront looking at the lights and intuitively seeking out (surely) the only bar in the city that was packed full of English people. I paid £34 for two drinks, twice.
No matter though, because I got merchandise. Two t-shirts from the owner of the bar, both celebrating their 10-year anniversary…
So Hong Kong was hectic and expensive. When we reached Victoria Peak at sunset on our last day, though, it was all worth it…
It was the morning after (following a 3:30 am wake-up) that we made our way to Chengdu – I’ve shared this in reverse order, but that leaves one more place…
Macau.
This one was the strangest. It’s a tall city, lots of skyscrapers and grandeur, but small in terms of area covered.
A gambling city, the main strip is filled with small replicas of famous European monuments. Think Big Ben, the Tour d’Eiffel etc., and they’re all casinos.
We spent time in the Venetian, complete with indoor canals and gondolas, walking across the floors and staring cluelessly at infinite games of baccarat (I checked WikiHow for the rules, it didn’t help), and then we went to the Londoner which was more of the same.
Coloane, the place we stayed, however, could have been mistaken for a pretty town in Portugal. That’s if you could ignore the views of God-knows-what that they were building across the water on the Chinese mainland.
All in all, a perplexing, but entertaining blend. One evening we visited a food market and sat in a square watching the Asian badminton championships, working our way through a bowl of offal.
Very quickly, it seemed, it was time to leave Macau as well, where we took a quick ferry hop across the water to Hong Kong and the clouds looming over Chunking Mansion.
So that’s my last fortnight, all told. Would visit again. China and its various self-administrative regions are such a combination of culture and new experiences and completely worth the bank balance damage, sleep deprivation and near-frostbite (Beijing only for the latter).
Anyway, I’m putting my nose to the grindstone in Bangkok once again now. There’s an event related to my business that I want to attend on the 21st, but after this I’m thinking of saving some money and checking the Worldpackers app for volunteering opportunities (in exchange for board and lodgings) across this part of the world.
We’ll see what I get up to.
Talk soon,
– Theo
P.S. This is a less-polished piece focused more on telling the stories of China and everywhere else. Let me know if you liked it!
P.P.S. There were some images I attached to this email, but Buttondown doesn’t let me attach others for some reason, so I’ve kept them out completely. Follow @tstowx because I’ll post them all there.