Why I’ll never go back to China

I need to preface this rant.   When we got to China we were approximately 45 days into our trip.  I think a bit of trip fatigue was setting in and we were still adjusting to life on the road.  In addition, China on the whole simply has A LOT of people so it’s a different environment than I’m used to.  This post is just my opinion and I’m sure there are others who had a great time in China.  Ashley did not come away disliking China like I did so perhaps I just didn’t adjust well to the different “culture” of China.  I will also fully admit that I became frustrated very early during our time in China and I just couldn’t snap out of it.   However, months later with time to cool down and look back on it I still feel exactly the same.

Why China is Terrible

Government Control
It’s one thing to read about oppressive governments and how bad it is and an entirely different one to experience it first hand.  The moment we stepped off the train in Beijing they are blasting you with propaganda about how great and powerful their country is.   It’s not.  The government here restricts the internet, controls the press, does not allow people to speak negatively about their country, has a crumbling infrastructure across every city we visited, has smog so bad it’s a health risk to citizens, and prevents their citizens from learning anything outside what they want them to learn.  The government in China is holding their citizens back and they make visiting their far more difficult than it needs to be.   China wants to project this image of a global power in the world when they are far from it.  What lies behind the slick city skyline and the things you see on the news is a crumbling system of control that keeps their citizens in the dark and prevents progress.

Standing in Line
Standing in line does not exist in China.   If you stand in the back of a line you’re a sucker, no one does that.  You simply walk up as close to the front as you possibly can and squeeze your way through.   Chinese people do not care that you are waiting in line and they will just step directly in front of you because they can.  It’s not because we were foreigners, they do it to their own people as well.   In addition, it’s not just 1 or 2 people hopping the line, it’s like half of people will try and form a line and the other half are happy to ignore the line and just walk up to the front and squeeze in.   At the great wall of China they had to employ people solely to keep Chinese people in a line with no cutting.  That’s absurd.  This wasn’t a one off situation, it’s EVERY time there is a line regardless of how long the line is.  3 people deep? Nah, I’ll be number 1.

Subways and Elevators
Getting on the subways and elevators in China was one of the worst experiences.   On subways everyone forms a wall in front of the doors on both sides.   When the doors open each side is shoving and pushing to get on/off.  Why? Why in the world do you not just let the people off and then get on?  It’s faster AND you don’t have to make life difficult for anyone.  Elevators were the exact same situation.  Every single time the elevator doors open we have a packed elevator and there’s a wall of people blocking you from getting off.  Unbelievable.

The internet
The internet in China is not really the internet.  The government decides what you get to see and let me tell ya, it’s not much.  Google maps doesn’t work in China because China blocks everything related to Google.   That means you’re flying blind on how to get from A to B.  In Beijing we were completely lost without google maps.   Figuring out the next place you are staying or what to do is painful.  Getting any work done is painful.   Basically the internet in China just doesn’t exist.  We could hardly use it and getting anything done took hours when it should have taken 5 minutes.  A massive inconvenience when you’re traveling and absolutely ridiculous to control what your citizens get to see.   Cell service?  NOPE! I got 2 sim cards.  1 worked on the Edge network but painfully slow (barely check email).  The other sim card didn’t work at all.   Internet cafe? NOPE!  Gonna need a local phone number that can be tied back to your identify so that almighty Chinese government can keep an eye on you.

Dirty Cities / Smog
China is a very dirty place.  Liter is everywhere and nothing has been cleaned for years on end.  There is no sense of pride by the people and they’ll just blatantly throw trash on the ground and live in filth.  To top it off, you are battling constant smog in China.  It can literally make you sick.  I got sick in South Korea from the smog that came over from China.   I’ll be honest that I never knew smog was a big deal until I went to China but it definitely is.  They are slowly killing their citizens there with the smog and you can feel it when you’re there.

No Social Manners
The amount of extremely rude behavior in China was off the charts.  The old lady shoving me in the back, the guy trying to shove his bag between mine on the conveyor belt, and people sitting in front of the best view on the tower, are just random examples.  The people in China are just straight up rude all the time.  It’s the most inconsiderate place I have ever been in my life.  If you hold the door open or do anything to be remotely civil they give you a weird look.

Scams
Scams can happen anywhere, that’s just something that happens across the world.  However, we were warned about scams non-stop from the time we entered the country and sure enough, someone still scammed us and then got physically aggressive.

Food
The food in China was pretty bad generally speaking.  If you spent money on a nicer meal you could definitely get decent food but your average meal here just wasn’t good at all.  They leave bones in everything so you spend half your meal digging out all the bones. Fun!

“Culture” is not an excuse

I hear people say, “They just have a different culture”.   That’s bullshit.  ISIS has a different culture too.  Culture does not excuse the way people act in China.  The worst part about the culture in China is that it’s so wide spread that it would take generations to make any meaningful changes there.   I have a very negative outlook on China and it didn’t stem from one single experience.  Every single day in China you battle all the things mentioned above.   You can’t relax because you’re constantly getting shoved, constantly threatened by scams, and you’re in a dirty run down city with inconsiderate jerks.

Positive Things about China

Here are some of the positive things about China:

• They have places like Outback steakhouse and the Canadian sandwich place that aren’t Chinese
• There was a beer festival that was mainly westerners
• They have planes that can quickly get you out of China
• Beer costs just 32 cents at convenience stores so for about $5 you can forget you’re even in China

Sarcasm aside, there honestly wasn’t a lot (at least for me) to like about China. The Great Wall and Xi’an was definitely the highlight of our time in China and I thoroughly enjoyed that part of it.  Beyond that, everything that I enjoyed was Western, people from other countries, or had nothing to do with China at all.

Should you visit China

Maybe.  If you’re thinking about going to China I would offer up the following suggestions.

• Only visit China if you have visited a lot of other places or if you’re on a long RTW trip like we are.  There are MANY (basically anywhere) other places to visit that are much better than here.
• If you do visit China, keep it short and hit the highlights.  Most people visit China to go to the Great Wall and it was definitely cool to see and worth the trip.  Xi’an was also cool.  Beijing and Shanghai are just mega big cities and there’s really not a lot to do there that I found too interesting.   I’d keep it to just a few days per city, hit the highlights, then move on.
• Booking a tour might be a better way to go.  We were booking things on our own and figuring it out as we went.  If you had a preset tour that walked you through your entire stay in China that might be a better way to go.  I tend to avoid these things because I like the flexibility but in China I think they are a good option.
• Plan ahead.  We did not really do any planning before we got there and that hurt us big time when we were there.  The internet is not really available there so you have to know where you are going ahead of time and plan your activities.  It’s possible to do there, but it’s a big headache and extremely time consuming.

Goodbye China

After writing this post, I basically can’t go back to China anyway because they’d probably throw me in jail for having an opinion.  That’s fine by me because I will never be going back to China.  I wouldn’t go back if it was a free trip, not even joking.  Sorry for all the negativity in this post!  I didn’t want to gloss over or sugar coat what China really was for me.