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I came back to China after being in the US for 10 years and just want to chat about stuff
(lemmy.world)
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
How reliable is it to set up Wechat and link it to payment? Are you using it as foreign visitor or citizen? Is it linked to a domestic/foreign bank account, pulling money in-and-out for every transaction via ACH, or does it work as a bank account of its own that you charge up with money for later use? That's my fear with visiting China - it's nearly impossible to set up a "domestic" account even as a long-time resident because of the amount of documentation that needs to be put together. And even a "foreigner" account is difficult to get through the setup process and takes many days to activate. And some visitors complain how their account arbitrarily gets disabled anyway randomly a few days later, possibly stranding them in the middle of a trip. What if you are a permanent resident/citizen and your domestic account gets randomly disabled? How do you get through life if everything uses Wechat and cash is not even accepted? Do you become a non-person?
So I am a Chinese citizen... Wechat is linked to a person's national ID (Shenfenzheng), and all the payment systems assume you to have that link between your national ID-Wechat in order to work. In fact a lot of times it would also scan your face/fingerprint/etc assuming those are linked... I think if there is a parallel, it would be Elon Must/Peter Thiel's wet dream where Paypal actually killed the credit card industry and became the primary payment system in the US
So the funny thing is... I barely saw any foreign persons during the past week at all; the only ones I can tell who are obviously foreigners (clearly not ethnically Chinese) seem to be either living close to the embassy/consulate district in Beijing of clearly here for work. And with all the surveillance and everything expecting you to have a real ID, I genuinely don't know how a foreigner could survive in China in this day and age...
Unironically if everything goes haywire I would just ask my parents to drive me to their hometown where I have relatives who live off a farm so... I don't have an answer as to "account gets randomly disabled". I guess if that happens you would really just become a non-person as you said
It's surprisingly easy to survive. Alipay and wechat both allow for foreign bank cards to be attached, you just typically also have to do a verification when you charge something through them (which is fucking annoying when you have to verify getting a water at 3am after a night of drinking). Never got a random deactivation though I do see it happen. Usually to people who don't get on much. If I needed to use transit that requires an ID like the high speed rail or a flight, I just take my passport and it gets sorted out pretty easily.