I lived in China and Taiwan for 1 year:
Here's three things I learnt
(as someone who loves tech design and people).
1) Make your own opinions
2) Surveillance Safety State
WeChat, QR Codes and technological uniformity
3)
Chongqing city skyline at night - Chongqing city
Old man writing poetry with water, practising calligraphy - Yunnan, Kunming
Water town at sunset - Guizhou province
TV satellite tower - Guangxi province
China:
I spent 5 months travelling extensively throughout 'The Middle Kingdom' (as it refers to itself in Mandarin) meeting many people, learning the language and seeing many contrasting places from megacities to rural water towns. I went there to travel but also to investigate things I was curious about in industry, technology and culture.
As a country that is quietly viewed by the West with, to say the least, apprehension - I wanted to go to China myself to make my own opinion. I realised I hardly knew anything about the physical country, culture or its people and only what I saw on the news - despite it being one of the most important socio-economic and political countries in the world. After talking to many open-minded Chinese people young and old, asking questions, seeing things first hand and embracing different views with an open mind - my opinions changed, some stayed the same and I gained new ones I hadn't even considered.
China is famous for being a very heavily surveillanced country. I experienced first-hand how effective this was when I lost my phone in the Chengdu National Panda Park and miraculously was reunited with it after trawling through hours of CCTV footage with the park team and very helpful local police. What is usually unknown about China is that it is an incredibly safe country day to day - you can leave your belongings outside, walk home late alone unbothered etc. My home city of London is an equally surveillanced place, yet the two things I just mentioned are points of concern for Londoners. There's a plethora of societal reasons for this but it seemed an interesting comparison.
As someone interested in technology, design and people - China is a very interesting country. WeChat, a super-app developed and owned by Chinese megalith TenCent, essentially combines social media, messaging app, mobile banking, food delivery, booking taxis etc. I would use WeChat daily to pay for accommodation, buy food, and 'add' people I've met - it was pretty essential for getting by in China. The majority of transactions in China are paid for by scanning QR codes via your WeChat or AliPay app. This makes navigating around China an incredibly seamless experience - yet for foreigners using the app, there are still some restrictions. 1.4 billion people all nearly using one super-app is something of a technological phenomenon and it was so interesting to experience such large-scale technological uniformity but also rigidity.
I will speak about Taiwan in a following post. I would happily talk more about my experience and am interested to talk more people about this subject. I plan to continue learning Mandarin and revisit China in the future.