Traffic didn’t seem to be much of an issue in Shanghai or Xi’an. I saw traffic once while in Shanghai, but the roads were mostly pretty empty. Chongqing had traffic, but never bumper to bumper and only in the highly space constrained tip of the city where the rivers converge.

I took this video to highlight the roads leading to the center of Shanghai. Pay attention to 1) how new the roads look and 2) how few cars are on them.

Aerial View of Shanghai

I was very excited to see the Huawei, Xiaomi, and Hero stores in mainland China. It’s illegal to sell a lot of Chinese consumer electronics in the US so it was really cool to see this “illegal” technology in person. Compared to what’s available in America, the software feels a generation behind, the hardware feels competitive, and the design innovation feel a generation ahead.

Phones

China has 3 distinct phone ecosystems:

iPhones: iPhones are the premium international option and are about a fifth of the market. They are the most expensive phones and were, until recently, technologically the most impressive. Apple has 2 distinct app stores, one for Mainland China, and one for the rest of the world. Access to these app stores depends on the location tied to your AppleID and linked payment methods so you can’t easily access one or the other by crossing a border.

Everything Not Huawei: This includes Vivo, Xiaomi, Honor, and Oppo and is about 65% of the market. They all run on Android operating systems and use Qualcomm (American) or MediaTek (Taiwanese) chips. When sold internationally they run Google-supported apps (Google Play Store, Youtube, Gmail, Maps, etc) and when sold locally, because Google is blocked, they run only apps from each brand’s Chinese app store.

Huawei Phones Huawei phones are the premium domestic option, but there is a lot of competition and all Chinese brands compete across all price levels. Huawei had the same system as the rest of the Chinese phone companies; their phones had an Android operating system that ran Chinese apps domestically and Google apps internationally. In 2019, the US forced Google to cut off Huawei’s access to all Google services and Huawei lost its ability to sell phones that run anything other than Chinese apps. You can still buy Huawei phones outside of China and the US, but there’s no reason to unless you only want to live in the Chinese app ecosystem. Because, Huawei is now largely a Chinese only brand, they developed their own operating system, HarmonyOS, and are positioning themselves domestically like Apple did when they created iOS. They’ve also developed their own Kirin line of chips (which are a generation behind), so they’re the only Chinese brand whose software and hardware is entirely Chinese.

Everyone I know in Hong Kong has an iPhone. There’s no reason to buy a Huawei phone outside of mainland China, but other brands like Xiaomi, are widely available here. They run on Android and use the google ecosystem the same way a Samsung phone does. Their reasons for choosing iPhones are that it 1) works with the Apple ecosystem, 2) is built for English speakers and the Western internet, and 3) Chinese phones have a bad reputation for adding filters to photos.

Laptops

The Huawei Matebook Fold is an 18” screen that folds to 13” for portability. When unfolded you can use the top half as a screen and the bottom half as a virtual keyboard, use the whole thing like a big tablet with a stylus, or use the whole thing as a single giant screen laptop with a physical keyboard.

Software

My understanding from messing around in the Chinese phone stores, using the Chinese apps I’ve downloaded, seeing what other people do on their phones in public, and using Chinese websites and AI, is that Chinese software is not as good as what’s available in the West. Visually, Chinese websites and apps are cluttered and don’t rescale well if you change your browser size. There’s text everywhere and it kind of resembles Trip.com’s aesthetic where it looks like you’re always one click away from getting a virus. Even in Hong Kong, websites look like they’re from the early internet. I think this is less of a problem than it would be in the West, because most of what you use your phone for can be accomplished in Alipay or WeChat where the mini-apps generally work very well. More details in “The Internet” section.

Hardware

Chinese phone and laptop hardware is competitive with Western hardware because a lot of it is Western hardware. Samsung and Xiaomi use the exact same Snapdragon chips in their phones. Huawei’s hardware is a generation behind because they’re developing their own proprietary hardware. Chinese batteries last longer and charge faster and Chinese phone and laptop screens are brighter, but these are design choices that Western companies could impalement if they wanted to. Phone cameras are better on Western phones, but, again, the hardware is the same, the phones are just designed differently. I tried the max zoom (10x) on the Huawei Pura 90 Pro Max (950-1,250USD), and the 10x zoom on the iPhone 17 Pro Max (1,300-2,170USD) in the Apple store and they both seemed to be equally better than my iPhone 13 Pro Max. Chinese phones process images differently than Western phones and the result is widely thought to look worse, but I think the quality gap is closing as software improves and as more Chinese phones implement phone camera add-ons.

Design Innovation

Chinese tech is way ahead of Western tech when it comes to doing new and interesting things. When I was in middle school, there were all kinds of new and interesting phones that were just coming to market. The phones were all shapes and sizes and slid and flipped in interesting ways with keyboards and pens and d-pads. I get the same feeling walking through Chinese tech stores.

Every Chinese brand has phones that fold. I’m not sure what the use case for them is since they’re impossible to use with one hand and awkward to use with two when flipped open. Everything designed to work on a phone is designed to work with a standard phone aspect ratio, so when you flip open one of these phones, nothing looks all that great. The best-case scenario is that it looks like a tiny square iPad. The square aspect ratio also leaves a lot of empty space at the top and bottom when watching videos. Every flip phone I looked at had a decently hidden seam where the screen had to bend, but none of them were flawless. That said, the folding is genuinely very cool and is probably the direction all phones are headed once the technology and software get a little better.

Huawei Mate X7

Huawei Pura X Max

Some of the phones fold vertically, which I think is a better use case for the folding since it maintains a phone-like aspect ratio and it protects the screen. Some phones have screens on the back that show the time, notifications, and allow you to see yourself when using the back camera for selfies. I like that a lot.

Huawei Pocket 2

This is the Huawei Mate XTs ($2,945-$3,311) and it is the top-of-the-line tri-fold phone. It’s roughly the same size as an iPhone with a case and, given that I can’t imagine how you’d be able to put a case on this, it probably feels about the same as an iPhone with a case in your pocket. I don’t think this will be the future of phones because why carry around two additional screens attached to your phone when you can accomplish everything you need a phone for with just one? But the technology is really interesting and if they add one more fold along the top to go from three screens to six and throw in a foldable keyboard, you could potentially have a laptop that fits in your pocket.

Huawei Mate XTs

No more carrying your earbuds in a case in your pocket! Now you can keep them in your watch. Is it stupid? Yes. Do I love that they’re trying it? Absolutely!

Huawei Watch Buds

Prices

Every Western product costs roughly the same as what it does in the West. You can’t go to China and buy Nike shoes at a discount. In fact, they might even be slightly more expensive because Western goods are considered to be more premium than domestic brands. These Timberlands boots at a mall in Shanghai for example are $235. The costs of domestic Chinese goods vary widely. Li-Ning is a premium running shoe brand in China and their flagship running shoe costs $385.

The Malls

A Mall in Shanghai

The first is international Western brands that Americans would be familiar with (Nike, Adidas, Lacoste, etc.). These are not that interesting as it’s the same as what you’ll find in America and make up about a third of stores.

The second are established Chinese and Unfamiliar-to-an-American Non-Chinese brands (Bosideng – Chinese, Hazzys – Korean, and Aigle - French). As an American, I think we believe that, because of America’s spending power and cultural influence, if there is a brand or product worth buying, it will be available in America. This is however, not the case, and Americans are actually starved for choice when it comes to physical retail. This second category is the sweet spot for shopping, where you can find interesting items that are unavailable in America.

The third is Chinese brands that adopt Western names to appear to be established foreign brands (Frognie Zila, Autason, and Vskonne). They have fake backstories about being founded in Europe, while everything is made and sold exclusively in China. The quality of the apparel is, as far as I can tell, basically the same as any other mid-tier Western brand and the clothes are priced to match.

As an example of why it’s so much fun to walk through a Chinese mall, I walked around the men’s clothing section of 2 malls in Shanghai and wrote down the names of every brand I’d never hear of.

Not all of the malls were amazing. I found 4 that were almost or completely empty of patrons, but it was the middle of the day on a weekday and they were outside tourist areas. I got the sense that, like a lot of China, they overbuilt and demand hadn’t caught up. But the majority of malls were busy and lively with tourists and families and were a lot of fun to walk through.

Tourism

Tourism in China is primarily geared towards Chinese tourists. For international tourists there is a lot of English around, especially on public transit and at tourist attractions like museums, and I got around just fine with only English and a translator app, but the English is there to accommodate you, not to cater to you. I could get to where I needed to go with just English and understand things at a very surface level from the English provided, but I relied on the translator app a lot to really understand where I was, what I was looking at, and what was going on because when it comes to exploring a city any deeper than surface level, the target audience is visiting Chinese people.

After covid, American tourism to China fell off significantly and it felt like a jump scare anytime I saw an American. By far the majority of tourists were Chinese. Of the international tourists, most seemed to be European. Shanghai was very cosmopolitan and tourists didn’t stick out too much. The international tourists in Xi’an were mostly European families, but were again, not that common. Chongqing had a lot of white tourists. There were significantly more white tourists than the considerably more interesting cities of Shanghai and Xi’an. They also seemed to be mostly solo travelers, or young couples. Chongqing has blown up on social media recently as a futuristic cyberpunk megacity so I can see why people would be interested in going, but I never would have guessed that it, a city deep into the mainland, would have been more popular for international tourists than Shanghai, the coastal and easily accessible financial capital, or Xi’an, the ancient capital city and home of the Terracotta Warriors.

Museums

I visited five museums on my trip, The Shanghai History Museum, The Xi’an Art Museum, The Xi’an Museum, The Emperor Qinshihuang’s Mausoleum Site Museum, and the Shaanxi History Museum.

Museums in China are largely the same as museums in the US and Hong Kong with three key differences. First is that the museums are for Chinese tourists, so the wall texts for all the art and artifacts are in Chinese. Most of the wall texts also have an English translation next to them (although not all of them), but it doesn’t really matter because of the second difference, which is that the wall texts both in Chinese and English are largely worthless. The wall texts next to each piece will give you a title and dates for what you’re looking at and scattered around there will be longer paragraphs explaining generalities, but there’s not the kind of in-depth analysis and contextualization that would allow you to really learn anything about what you’re looking at. I translated some of the Chinese wall text that didn’t have English translations and it was more of the same. It was either basic facts or what felt like the writing of a government spokesperson about how important the dynasty was to China and how the legacy of the cultural heritage related to whatever you’re looking at. This, disappointingly, made the museums feel like hollow warehouses of antiques despite the objects within being incredibly interesting. Lastly, Chinese museums had a lot of tour guides with big groups of tourists following them around and I imagine it’s because hearing someone explain what you’re looking at and being able to ask them questions is really the only way to learn anything, but this has the unfortunate consequence of clogging up the museums with big groups of people blocking walkways in front of whatever object they’re stopping at. The only time I felt really claustrophobic was in the Shaanxi History Museum, whose tickets you had to buy days in advance, and which was overflowing with tour groups.

The Shanghai History Museum - this was in the base of the Oriental Pearl Tower, felt largely directed towards tourist who were there for the tower, and told the history of Shanghai through large dioramas and period rooms with wax figures. I really enjoyed walking through the streets of early shanghai with the wax figures in the shops visibly and audibly selling dried fish and medicines, weaving baskets, and forging metal tools. Life in Shanghai changed incredibly quickly in the 19th and 20th century and I’m not sure you could come up with a better way of conveying the experience of what the city was like than by creating miniatures of the streets and businesses that evolve through time as you walk through them. For being a museum tucked away beneath a landmark, I think they did a great job, 4/5.

The Xi’an Art Museum - I was confused as to whether this was a real museum or a tourist trap given that it was open late into the night in Datang Everbright City, but the exhibits were genuinely interesting, with the most memorable being one depicting a New Year celebration in 1991 as seen from inside a Chinese living room and one of clay figures celebrating the Spring Festival in the 1960s and 1970s. It was a fun break from the excitement of the pedestrian street outside, 3/5.

The Xi’an Museum - this museum was disappointingly sparce, despite the size of the building, with the only notable exhibition being a few rooms of ancient jade. Chinese jade is controversial, there was not much information provided contextualizing anything, and apart from the 3,000-year-old jade carvings being very cool, I didn’t really get very much out of this museum. 2/5

The Emperor Qinshihuang’s Mausoleum Site Museum - this museum was located next to the pits containing the Terracotta Warriors and allowed you to see them, their weapons, and other artifacts up close. The warriors are the coolest things I’ve ever seen, but I wish the museum provided more information. The museum only offered Chinese language tour guides and for English you had to hire your own unaffiliated guide. The wall text in the museum was enough to roughly piece together the history of the place, but I still had to do a lot of googling to learn about how the ceilings collapsed, how the site was lost to history, what happened to the weapons, and how researchers were able to separate the shattered pieces of the warriors from the surrounding clay of the collapsed ceilings and walls and reassemble them into nearly seamless figures. A 5/5 museum that loses a point for needing a tour guide, 4/5.

The Shaanxi History Museum - this was the “real” museum of the trip. It was the only place in China where I had to buy the tickets not only in advance, but multiple days in advance, instead of at a ticket counter or on my phone on the same day. The exhibitions within covered thousands of years of the area’s history and ran into the same problem described above where the objects are fascinating, but there just isn’t enough context provided to understand how the pieces fit together into a historical narrative. It was also shoulder to shoulder throughout the entire museum and packed full of tour groups clogging everything up. I think if you’re a Chinese tourist with a guide it would be a 4 or 5, but as a solo English-speaking tourist, 3/5.

Tourist Attractions – Tourist attractions are very affordable. The Shanghai Tower Observation Deck + The Tuned Mass Damper Show was $39.58. Entry to the Large Wild Goose Pagoda was $1.48. The zoo was $3.69. The Xi’an Museum was free. Walking on top of Raffles City + some add-ons was $37.63. Entry to the Terracotta Warriors complex was $15.14. I would search the attraction on Alipay or Trip.com or scan their QR code at the ticket office, buy tickets through their mini-app, and then scan my passport to enter. I never felt like I was getting scammed or overpaying at any of the attractions I paid for.

Scams – I have three experiences I want to write about, cleaning products, street vendors, and tea. Once when I was in Shanghai and once in Xi’an someone came up to me, started cleaning my shoe, and trying to sell me a cleaning spray. I’m pretty certain they were part of an MLM that sells cleaning products and, while they were convincing, they were happy to move on to another potential customer if you started to walk away. Street vendors and tourist shops were everywhere and sold a lot of the same touristy items in each city. They’re more diverse and interesting than what I’ve seen in American tourist shops including things like fancy rice wine bottles, engraved dried gourds, fans, silver and cinnabar jewelry, and combs along with stuffed animals, necklaces, figurines, puzzles, and toys. Some of it was genuinely cool and I brought back as gifts, but a lot of it was only valuable to an undiscerning tourist. That said, none of it felt significantly overpriced or like the shops and vendors were scamming people. Finally, a lot of shops in tourist areas sell the exact same tea. There are a handful of large baskets full of dried fruits and berries and leaves and someone holding small cups for you to sample. The sales people are very insistent that you try the tea and the tea is very expensive. I’m not sure why it’s the exact same tea everywhere when there’s so much opportunity for variety, maybe it’s because it’s mostly cheap dried fruit and very sweet to appeal to tourists. This is the only thing I experienced in China that I would genuinely consider to be scammy because of how expensive it is and how forcefully it’s marketed everywhere.

Overcharging – I was not concerned about overcharging when buying from street merchants in China. I would often state my intention to buy something before asking the price or when going to pay, I would point my phone to them so they could type the amount into Alipay themselves. China is a high trust society so I wasn’t concerned about them jacking up the prices after I stated my intentions to buy or typing in a higher number. None of the prices they stated or typed in were more than I expected and the number always matched the price tag if I had seen one.

My hotel was located right next to Yuyuan Garden, a 16th century Ming Dynasty garden, and Yuyuan Garden Bazaar, a modern-day Disney style tourist attraction. The Bazaar feels magical. It’s for tourists, but every city I went to in China had an area that felt wonderful to walk around and shop and explore. I’m not entering a building or buying tickets to a park or experiencing a product a corporation designed to extract money from me. There’s consumerism, a lot of the vendors sold the same cheap tourist souvenirs, teas, chopstick, fans, bracelets, lotions, and charms, and it was all newly built facades to give the impression of a historical space, but, it’s also just a part of the city, that anyone can walk through. One minute you’re exiting a subway station looking at the LED office tower skyline, and 10 minutes later you’re in the Ming Dynasty. Part of the experience are the costume shops with outfits, wigs, makeup, and props who help Chinese tourists dress up to look like figures from imperial China. The quality of the costumes varied, but generally they were stunning. A lot of effort must have been put into the hair and makeup and the clothes were layered and elaborate. It was really striking to walk around with dozens of regular people dressed like nobility from centuries ago.

Yuyuan Garden Bazaar

Shanghai is split by the Huangpu River; the west bank is The Bund, miles of colonial-era style customs houses, hotels, and administrative buildings, and the east bank is the financial center of the city with massive LED skyscrapers.

Shanghai East Bank Waterfront at Night (Oriental Pearl Tower on the Left, Shanghai Tower on the Right)

Shanghai West Bank Waterfront at Night (The Bund)

On the east bank, the Shanghai Tower is world’s third tallest building and has the world’s highest observation deck on its 121st floor. It cost $39 to go to the top and to see the tuned mass damper that keeps the building from swaying in the wind and is, by far, the coolest part of the building. I was lucky it was a clear day and I was struck by how spaced out everything was. It doesn’t look like a city short on space.

The tuned mass damper weighs 1,000 tons and is topped with a 7-ton jade statue. It rests on massive hydraulics that oppose the direction it swings to counteract the swaying of the building from the winds. Paying to see it comes with a laser show that’s supposedly tuned to the swaying of the damper, but it was just an average light show and never could compare to the coolness of the enormous block of steel itself.

Shanghai Waterfront at Night

The west bank’s colonial-era buildings are visually nice, but unless you’re staying in one or want to spend a lot of money at a restaurant, they don’t really offer anything beyond being aesthetically interesting. Following them along the waterfront leads you to Nanjing Road, an enormously wide and long pedestrian street with classic tourist attractions like food halls, souvenirs, and a museum of chocolate, as well as high end malls, restaurants, and street vendors. It even has trackless trains that drive people back and forth. It once again felt like I was inside a Disney Imagineer’s dream for a city’s pedestrian street.

Nanjing Road

The US has 1 city larger than 5 million people, New York City at 8.6 million. According to Wikipedia, in 2020 China had 23 cities with over 5 million people and Shanghai alone had a population of 22 million. However, NYC’s area is listed as 778 square kilometers, while Shanghai is 6,341 meaning NYC has higher population density than Shanghai. This felt accurate; there was not the density in Shanghai of Downtown and Midtown Manhattan where the sun can be prevented from reaching the street by rows of skyscrapers. Chinese “cities”, with the exception of the center of Chongqing, which is a thin strip of mountain jutting out between two rivers, encompass areas significantly larger than American cities so the populations are extremely spread out and the cities don’t feel especially dense.

The closest direct comparison I could make in terms of how Shanghai felt was Hong Kong with suburbs. Both cities have European colonial architecture along a waterfront that used to be for commerce, both have ultramodern skyscrapers, and the public transit is obviously identical, but Hong Kong doesn’t have suburbs with Main Streets and low-density residential buildings. One night I wanted to see the bars so I went to Julu Road in the Former French Concession and the experience would have been immediately familiar to anyone whose been to an American college town. The neighborhood had tree lined streets with low rise apartments over boutiques, ice cream shops, wine bars, and artisanal restaurants. The bar street, whose only traffic were the Ubers to and from and the people hanging out, had a dozen small open-air bars holding 5-20 people each. Maybe it was just the right night to go out, or maybe it’s the rose-colored glasses of being a tourist, but walking through the streets of Shanghai surrounded by so many people enjoying all that there is to do felt like an idealized version of America that I’ve only ever been able to experience in parts.

Xi’an was incredible and was, by far, the most fun city I’ve ever been to. It is incredibly rich in terms of history, culture, food, amenities, and things to do. It was the capital of China for over 1,000 years and the starting point of the Silk Road, so all across the city are interesting pieces of history. The city center is surrounded by an enormous 600 year-old wall that you can rent a bicycle and ride around. There are 1,300 year-old pagodas designed to house Buddhist relics and 600 year-old bell and drum towers to signal the start and end of the day. Just outside the city are the 2,400 year-old Terracotta Warriors, which are the coolest things I’ve ever seen. The descendants of the Muslim Silk Road traders occupy a significant portion of the city center, in what’s today known as the Muslim Quarter, and they make the best food in China. The city itself is just as modern as any other Chinese city and has extensive pedestrian streets lined with bars, restaurants, and street vendors.

The Drum Tower is at the end of the street and just a couple of blocks over in the dead center of the city is the Bell Tower. I never got a chance to explore either, but they’re lit up spectacularly at night and there are always dozens of impeccably dressed women in traditional dynastic clothing taking professional pictures all around them along with throngs of tourists and street vendors.

Xi'an Drum Tower

The Pedestrian Streets

After a dinner of incredibly dry fried fish, I decided to spend my last night in Xi’an exploring the city streets. Towards the center of the city, I found the street shown in the video below. It had food vendors lining the center of the street and restaurants and bars on the sides. It was a perfectly warm night, the street was illuminated by the neon signs on the buildings, and all the restaurants and bars had plastic seating and folding tables that spilled out on the streets and blurred the line between commerce and a cookout hosted by friends. As I get older, liminal magical spaces have become harder to find, but this place carried the whimsical blissful energy of ‘my youth, my friends, and this beautiful night out will never end’. In another lifetime the boys and I would meet up at BeiDajie station after class or work, wander through the city streets buying sliced watermelon and chicken cartilage from street vendors along the way until we reached the street to eat and drink and wander and laugh deep into the morning.

At the end of the video, I go into an arcade facing the street. I spent $10 on credits and played games for an hour, late into the night. It was full of brand-new machines; the racing games had hydraulics and fans around the seats and some had VR headsets for an even more immersive experience. Think about the arcades you’ve been to and when the last time was that you were in one that wasn’t crazy expensive and didn’t suck. Xi’an felt like it was designed for people to explore and hang out and live and enjoy themselves. I wish every city would learn from Xi’an.

Xi'an Street Food and Arcade

The double speed video below is of the Beiyuanmen pedestrian street that my hotel was on and that ended at the Drum Tower. It’s obviously there primarily for tourists, but the people did a phenomenal job of making it feel magical in a way Disney’s Imagineers could only dream of. I’m sure as a local it would get old, but the combination of bright lights, street food, and open until late-at-night energy that culminates at a 600 year-old piece of history at one end and the Muslim Quarter full of fascinating ancient and modern culture at the other, that you’re able to experience for free feels incredibly foreign and wonderful as an American.

Beiyuanmen Pedestrian Street in Xi'an (2x)

The final (double speed) video is the entire length of the Datan Everbright City pedestrian street, a 2km long Tang Dynasty themed street located at the foot of the Giant Wild Goose Pagoda. This wasn’t the my favorite street; the food wasn’t the best and the shops had a lot of not so interesting tourist merchandise, but there were people performing, singing and dancing, enormous Tang Dynasty themed statues and murals, light shows, amusement rides for children, malls, museums, and interactive visuals along the entire length and it inspired a sense of wonder even after walking it 5 times.

Datang Everbright City Pedestrian Street in Xi'an (2x)

The Wild Goose Pagodas

The Pagoda was in a really beautiful park that also contained the Xi’an Museum. It was rainy and humid and I’d walked my soles completely smooth so I was slipping on the sidewalks, but it was really nice going from the middle of the city straight into what felt like a very quiet and private outdoor space.

The City Walls

The center of Xi’an is surrounded by a 600 year-old 14-kilometer-long wall with a moat around it. The wall is continuous and large enough that the tunnels cut into it for traffic are not visible from on top so walking around the perimeter really gives the impression that the interior is a totally encapsulated and separate part of the city. The wall is well maintained and includes a lot of the original features that were intended for military use. The moat is wide and, apart from bridges for traffic, uninterrupted around the entire wall. Across the drawbridge is the portcullis and gate house and beyond that is a large open air walled in stone square facing an enormous arrow tower where archers would have attacked anyone who breached the gate. Behind that is another open square where invaders could be attacked from the walls and at the back of the square are the stairs that lead to up to the top of the walls. The walls have the same issue that I talked about with museums in China in that they don’t really provide very much information about the history and restoration, but I had a lot of fun walking around them and imagining what it was like when they served a practical purpose.

When I first arrived at the gates, I was surprised by people in traditional costumes marching across the bridge. I’m not sure how often they’re around and I never again saw anyone in costume during the couple of hours that I was there, but it was very cool to see.

Troops Leaving Through the Xi'an Gates

The top of the walls are 14 meters wide and slant slightly towards the interior. The area around the south gate had a handful of vendors and a good amount of tourists and people in traditional clothes taking photos. About a hundred yards in either direction were bike rental stations and most of the rest of the wall was empty except for people riding their bikes around.

Riding a bike around the wall was easily one of the coolest things I’ve ever done. It was a beautiful sunny day and I should have worn sunscreen, but the breeze was perfect and the ride across the mostly flat cobblestones was absolutely perfect despite the bike being a bit worn. Going around the perimeter of the interior city was a great way to see a lot of it very quickly and I was surprised by how many interesting things there were to see that I never would have found otherwise. Ancient temples and taverns, interesting architecture, pedestrian streets, luxury residences, and parks. I felt like I could have spent months exploring Xi’an and would have still been able to find interesting things to do that would have been the absolute highlight of a trip had I done them in other cities.

Biking on the Xi'an City Walls

The Terracotta Warriors

The Terracotta Warriors are the coolest thing I’ve seen in my life. The estimated 8,000 figures were built around 246 BC to protect the tomb of Qin Shi Huang, the emperor of the Qin Dynasty, and were lost to time until accidentally discovered by a farmer in 1974. The emperor’s tomb remains sealed underground with no plans for excavation, but archeologists are working to excavate the nearby tomb complex containing the warriors.

The Terracotta Warriors in Pit 1

I went through all three pits and the museum twice because the warriors were so incredibly interesting. The scale of the pits and the intricacies of the warriors make it immediately obvious how it took 700 thousand people 40 years to create and how 50 years of excavations have only just begun to fully explore what’s buried.

The museum giftshop is where I bought the coolest thing I own, a replica of a terracotta general made and painted by hand by local artisans who work with the museum. It’s made with clay from around Pit 2 so apart from being a couple thousand years younger, it’s basically the same as holding a real terracotta soldier.

(As a note, I try to be thoughtful about the souvenirs I buy, not buying anything that’s cheap plastic garbage or anything culturally sensitive. The entire area is made of clay so the material the figure is made from is practically inexhaustible, the artisans work with the museum, and the funds partially support the preservation efforts so I felt okay with buying this figure.)

Shanghai and Xi’an felt like they had identities that were purposefully integrated into the everyday experience of the cities, while Chongqing felt like a city of mostly apartments, offices, and sparsely populated malls that officials added LEDs to try to manufacture a cohesive identity. I went to dozens of stores in each of the three cities both to look for souvenirs for family and friends and to see the unique items that were tied to the cultural history and identity of each city. Xi’an had the most diverse and interesting shops unique to the city, selling Terracotta warriors, dried gourds you could have engraved, thick horse plushies and figurines (hilarious iconography from the Tang Dynasty), gourd shaped bottles with baijiu (grain liquor), hand carved wooden figures, and incredibly sought after cookies. Additionally, every city sold the same tea, fans, stuffed animals, silver jewelry, lotions, puzzles, toys, and cinnabar bead bracelets. Unfortunately, these were the only objects I found in Chongqing. I was hoping they would have items tied to their cyberpunk aesthetic or that were unique to the city’s history, but the stores felt like they were either entirely utilitarian for locals’ needs, were generically commercial big brand stores, or were the lowest tier of tourist souvenirs that could be found anywhere.

Additionally, while Chongqing has its own distinctive cuisine, Chongqing hotpot, and while it was delicious, I think most tourists would really struggle to eat that much oil in a single meal. It was, unfortunately, the primary cuisine of the vast majority of restaurants in Chongqing and I had a harder time than I expected finding Chongqing food that wasn’t hotpot.

I’ve spoken poorly of Chongqing, but it is genuinely incredible how they’ve managed to build such impressive architecture at the confluence of the rivers and the LEDs that are everywhere are dazzling and truly make it feel as if you’re in a videogame.

Chongqing is famous for three things, the hotpot (already discussed), the architecture (Raffles Mall, Liziba station, and the disorienting buildings and parks existing simultaneously at street level and eye level with the 20th floor of their neighbors), and the LEDs (Shibati, Hongya Cave, and the city generally).

The Architecture

Chongqing is geographically similar to New York City in the way the two rivers combine to create three distinct areas. Manhattan is (roughly) a long peninsula that sticks out between the Hudson and East Rivers that meet at the tip, with Jersey City and Brooklyn on each side. The Yuzhong District of Chongqing is a long peninsula that sticks out between the Yangtze and Jialing Rivers that meet at the tip, with the South Bank and North Bank on each side.

The Yuzhong District is what people envision when they hear Chongqing and it’s where I spent most of my time. The biggest geographic difference between New York City and Chongqing is that Chongqing is built in the mountains and the Yuzhong District itself is built atop a flat-top mountain with steep sides. Walking around the middle of Yuzhong is the same as any other city, but when you get withing 5 blocks of the coast, the pavement drops off precipitously.

The Top of Raffles City in Chongqing

Another piece of famous Chongqing architecture that you’ll see everywhere online when Googling Chongqing is Liziba Station. On the internet it looks like and is described as a monorail line that passes straight through an apartment building. In real life, halfway up the building is a monorail station and the floors below the station are full of monorail and Chongqing gift shops. So, it’s less of a monorail line punching a hole straight through an apartment building and more of a monorail station with businesses beneath it (and possibly apartments above it?), but it was cool to see nonetheless.

The Monorail Passing Through An Apartment Building at Liziba Station

Donghuimen Bridge

The LEDs

Street Food Next to Deyi World

Boy Group Under the LEDs of Deyi World

Shibati During the Day

Hongya Cave is arguably Chongqing’s most iconic feature after Raffles City Mall. It’s an 11-story interconnected complex of traditional stilt buildings built into the cliff face, that are painted red and white and are absolutely covered in yellow LEDs. My pictures don’t do it justice, and it’s worth a Google. I first went there during the day to explore and find lunch and was disappointed to find that most of the businesses are closed during the day so I returned at night later in the week. Hongya Cave’s ground floor is a floor below the lowest street level and is lined with street food, bars, restaurants, souvenir shops, and ear cleaning booths. It was fun to get a sugarcane juice and dumplings and wander around amongst the throngs of tourists, but the contents of the shops were not nearly as interesting as what was offered in Shanghai and Xi’an. The first two or three levels are open air spaces, but the higher you get in the building, the more it becomes fully enclosed shops and the less interesting the floors become. There are a handful of elevators that will take you up to the different floors, but with this being one of Chongqing’s most publicized attractions, I wanted to explore every inch and slowly meander my way up through the stairwells. There are throngs of tourists at the ground level, but the middle 7 or so floors were sparely populated, and were mostly a handful of souvenir shops, empty spaces, and studios for tourists to get into traditional dynastic clothing for photoshoots. I felt like most people were there for photos of the exterior and to walk the first couple of floors, which makes most of the building feel like a disappointing waste of space given how much potential it has to contain worthwhile attractions that carry through the interior the excitement and energy on display across the exterior.

Hongya Cave at Night

Lastly, I want to be really careful about how I write about people’s behavior so I’ve saved that commentary and what it’s like to be in a Chinese society for the Conclusion at the end of the website. That said, I want to note in the Chongqing section that the people there had significantly more antisocial behaviors than I experienced in Shanghai or Xi’an. Chongqing had the feel of a city that adopted modern infrastructure faster than the people adopted modern social norms when compared to a city like Shanghai. While it was in no way a major issue, the honking, jaywalking, aggressive mopeds on the sidewalks, spitting, littering, pushing to board the subway car as soon as the door opens, and the like did detract from the overall experience.

Chongqing Panda Moving Around

China’s economy is Socialism with Chinese Characteristics and it’s ruled politically by the Chinese Communist Party. As a tourist, being in China is indistinguishable from being in a Western Free-Market Capitalist economy. The point of my trip was to understand how being in China feels and the economic system of China feels, as a tourist, the same as any other country. The only other thing that’s socialism/communism related that I have to say is that there is hammer and sickle iconography identifying CCP buildings and landmarks and references to socialism in posters scattered around the cities like easter eggs that are fun to find.

I saw the poster on the right in Shanghai. It says it’s is from the Office of Spiritual Civilization Construction of Shanghai and lists the 12 core socialist values of Prosperity, Democracy, Civility, Harmony, Freedom, Equality, Justice, Rule of Law, Patriotism, Dedication, Integrity, and Friendliness.

America has an immense amount of clout internationally. Nearly every person I know in Hong Kong wants to visit America for tourism or move there for work. The two Chinese people I spoke to in Shanghai and Xi’an spoke very highly of the US and expressed interest in visiting one day. My understanding is it’s a combination of our universities having a reputation for being the best in the world, the wages being very high, America being a strong country, and the immense amount of culture and propaganda America exports everywhere.

Universities

The most common reason given for why people here like or want to go to America is that America has the best universities in the world. I don’t think this is literally true from an academic perspective anymore, but they are consistently ranked the among the best in the world and a degree from one carries a lot of weight here. American universities are very expensive and difficult for international students to get into and they’re a stepping stone to getting a job in the States.

Careers

American jobs pay significantly better than the same jobs in Asia and wanting a career in America is the second most common reason for people wanting to go. Granted, I don’t think people here take into account all the additional expenses for things in America that are cheap or free in Hong Kong, but a six-figure entry-level position here is, as far as I can tell, unheard of and in America there are opportunities to work your way up to salaries that don’t exist in Hong Kong. Some older people also point out how good American pensions are, although those largely don’t exist for young people anymore.

Strength

America is seen as a strong country, especially under Trump. The American economy, cultural domination, and military are seen as aspirational and Trump is seen as the strongman he portrays himself as. Whether or not he’s good for the American people or the world is secondary to the America First values he proclaims and his ability to do what he wants without being bogged down in bureaucracy. Trump’s ability to accumulate power domestically and globally and to use his position as president to bully other countries into doing his bidding is seen as increasing and demonstrating the power of America broadly. This feeling about Trump is not universal, none of the Hong Kongers I know personally are fans of Trump, but I have heard it from older Hong Kongers and from both of the people I spoke to in China. America being a strong country however, is a widely acknowledged fact amongst everyone.

Culture & Propaganda

I think the above reasons that people give are easy for them to point to when asked why they like America, but I think at a more fundamental level people here view America favorably because of the tidal wave of culture and propaganda that America exports everywhere. American music, movies, actors, artists, tv shows, video games, alcohol, technology, celebrities, politicians, companies, candy, holidays, sports, apparel, food, soda, websites, and news media are omnipresent. I would bet anything that any random person in Hong Kong would be able to name something from America in every one of those categories. When I first moved to Hong Kong in October 2025, every new person I met, after hearing I came from New York City, asked me about Zohran Mamdani. How many Chinese politicians who aren’t Xi Jinping could you name? There are more Yankees and Dodgers hats in Hong Kong and China than in any place in the US outside NYC and LA because every mall sells them and people like the branding. Chinese malls have American stores and Chinese stores with American sounding names that pretend to be American. They also play a mix of Chinese and American music while you shop. Every Sunday in Hong Kong, the migrant domestic workers fill the parks where they karaoke to, mostly, American pop songs. The Shanghai Tower had a small collection of things to look at while waiting in line for the elevator to the top. Most of it was architectural diagrams of the building and the city, but they had one piece of sports memorabilia, a basketball signed by Kobe Bryant.

I think a lot of Americans would disagree that American propaganda exists or think they’re immune to it or that they could recognize it or that’s it’s just ads put out by Republicans, Democrats, and PACs or that it’s the mainstream media or copaganda or Hollywood. That’s not a topic for this website, but it is an opportunity for me to share one of my favorite jokes.

A KGB spy and a CIA agent meet up in a bar for a friendly drink.

I have to admit, I’m always so impressed by Soviet propaganda. You really know how to get people worked up,” the CIA agent says.

“Thank you,” the KGB says. “We do our best but truly, it’s nothing compared to American propaganda. Your people believe everything your propaganda tells them.”

The CIA agent drops his drink in shock and disgust. Thank you friend, but you must be confused… There is no propaganda in America.”

First Person Accounts

I had conversations with two people while in China, an employee of a small pedestrian street bar in Shanghai and recent college graduate and entrepreneur in Xi’an.

The bar was one of many small, open-air establishments along Julu road. I ordered my drink and the person taking my order struck up a conversation. There were other customers, but it wasn’t especially busy, and she asked if I’d buy her a drink as well. I figured a drink in exchange for a local’s perspective was a fair trade and we talked about Shanghai and the US. I told her how I was from New York, but was living in Hong Kong and how this was my first time in China. I should have said “mainland” and my poor wording resulted in a puzzled look from her. She gave me tips on where to go in Shanghai for shopping and when I asked her what she thought of America, she responded in a way I think a lot of Americans want to think of America. She said she thought highly of America and that she would love to go, but unfortunately, it’s very difficult for Chinese people to visit. I asked her why she liked America and she pointed to how good the universities are. The conversation moved on after that, but her opinions seemed in line with what I’ve heard from people in Hong Kong.

While I was sitting on a bench next to the Big Wild Goose Pagoda in Xi’an a couple of young guys came up to me trying to sell cleaning products from their backpacks. Something similar happened in Shanghai where a woman suddenly started cleaning my shoe while explaining to me the benefits of the product. These guys didn’t speak much English so we communicated through translation apps and I relented to buying a bottle of the product in exchange for asking one of the guys a few questions. He explained that he was a recent graduate of a local business school and that he and his friend were entrepreneurs with their own cleaning products business. Their backpack was full of about a dozen different products that they were very talented at pushing. Given that they were selling the same products that I had seen in Shanghai, I assumed their business is the bottom rung of an MLM where they buy all the products, get marketing training, and do all the selling themselves.

Between the sales pitches, I asked him what he thought of America and he said he liked it because America has so much freedom. I asked what he meant by freedom and he said we have so many guns. I asked about Trump, he said he was doing a good job because he’s a strong leader. I got the sense that he saw Trump the way Trump wants to be seen and that Trump’s actions to disassemble global hegemony and liberalism in favor of a monopolar America First world are those of a good leader.

When I asked about China and if he felt like he had less freedom than Americans, he started speaking in proverbs. I got the sense that talking directly about the government wasn’t going to happen and that he was very used to discussing China in a roundabout way given how quickly he was able to recall proverbs. When I pointed out how good the infrastructure is in China and how much better it is than in the United States, he gave me a proverb about how the legitimacy of a leader is tied to how well the leader provides for the people. I’ve heard that sentiment a lot in Hong Kong when talking about the infrastructure here and how incredible it is that everything works. The response is usually along the lines of “of course it works, that’s what the government is there to do”.

The last thing I asked was whether he felt most people in China were optimistic or pessimistic about how things were going. I got another proverb, but this one translated to something along the lines of people need to get on board or be eliminated. That was a startling turn of phrase so I asked for clarification and he replied that the state moves forward and society develops and if people want to be a part of that, they need to get be supportive of the movement. People who are against it, will not receive the rewards of society and will drop to a lower class and out of society.

After that he asked if America had many mosquitos, did a sales pitch for bug spray, I thanked him, and we went our separate ways. I think we all know someone who went into MLMs after college so I took everything he said with a grain of salt, especially given that his job is talking to tourists all day, but I thought it was useful insight.

Electrical Outlets

Chinese Welfare Lottery

Vending Machines

Smoking

Alcohol

Broken English in Writing

There are three types that I think are worth mentioning:

A few times per day I’ll run into typos or poor translations. They’re usually errors that would be caught with basic spelling and grammar checking software. Basic English isn’t uncommon here so it’s funny to see errors in places like museums and malls where you’d imagine all writing is reviewed by multiple teams before it gets printed on a sign. Almost every restaurant I went to with a physical menu had English translations on the menu. Maybe 1 in 5 of those would have some kind of typo. Menus that have a misspelling, I’ve found, will also usually spell the word correctly elsewhere on the menu. It makes me think the English is hand typed rather than translated and copy pasted and that the menus are made in a program that doesn’t have English spell checking. It’s never made it difficult to understand anything, just a funny quirk.

The second much less common type is intentional broken English. When advertising to people for whom English is not their first language, it can be easier for them to understand if you drop the conjugations and simplify the sentence structures. I very rarely see this as I’m not often in those spaces.

The third type is the silly complete gibberish English sentences printed on tee shirts. This does exist, is very rare, and I’m unsure if it’s ironic and intentional or how it happens or why people wear it.

Toilets

Squatting toilets, aka pootty toilets, are common. The less international the area, the more common they are. I didn’t find any hotels anywhere that had squatting toilets; my rooms all had Japanese style toilets with varying levels of features. Malls in central Shanghai only had standard Western toilets. Malls in Xi’an either had a mix or were entirely squatting toilets. The High Speed Rail, surprisingly, had both.

Rentable Power Banks

Chongqing Ear Cleaning

Ear Cleaning Ad in Chongqing

Phone Booths

Restaurant Etiquette

In every restaurant a hostess brought me to my table and pointed out the QR code for the menu. About half of the restaurants had physical menus as well. After you order the waitstaff brings you a receipt along with your food and they will check in on you during your meal. Half of the time, at the end of the meal you bring the receipt to the hostess stand and pay there, but the other half where you’ve ordered through the phone, you pay your bill in the app and walk out. This always felt like dining and dashing and I always looked to make eye contact with a server before leaving to ensure I wasn’t forgetting to do something. But because I order through Alipay and WeChat, the restaurant has my real name and ID associated with my order so it would be impossible to get away with not paying. But it still felt weird to just disappear.

It also felt weird to leave a mess at the table. In fast food restaurants and food halls, an employee comes around to pick up your trash and clean the tables so people will just leave big piles of garbage. Garbage cans in McDonalds for instance are available and you can bring your tray, but someone working there will take it for you once you reach the bins. At very casual street-side restaurants people will throw trash like chicken bones, napkins, peanut shells, etc. directly on the ground while eating and when they’re done an employee will sweep it up. It felt weird to leave a messy table in places without a waitstaff, but it’s what people do and I could get used to it. What never felt comfortable was the way people left their garbage. I had grilled oysters in a food hall in Chongqing where I’d take the oyster out of the cardboard bin to eat it and the shell went back in the cardboard bin when I was done. When I finished, the whole meal, napkins and wooden utensils included, could be picked up with one hand and thrown out. The table in front of me also had oysters and left it so that each shell would need to be individually thrown out and the table would need to be cleaned. I can understand having janitorial staff throw trash and clean tables, but leaving your trash in a way that makes more work for those people just doesn’t sit right with me.

The Homeless and Beggars

My first night in Shanghai I went to a McDonalds in Yuyuan Gardens, a very touristy area. There was some seating and kiosk ordering on the first floor, but the majority of the seating, in person ordering, and food pickup was in the basement. After I got my order and sat down in the sparsely populated restaurant a disheveled man came up to me and I think was asking for money. I apologized, as I didn’t have any cash and wasn’t yet comfortable using the apps, and he moved on to the other tables. The other patrons seemed sympathetic and the employees didn’t ask him to leave. Outside the restaurant on the sidewalks of the Yuyuan Gardens tourist area were other people clearly asking for money, sometimes directly next to the security officers who stood at the entrances to the inner parts of the bazaar. Every night the police closed the streets in the area to make it pedestrian only and they stood by their cars at the intersections. I never saw the security or police interact with the people asking for money.

In Xi’an on the tourist pedestrian street in the Muslim Quarter there was a man with severe physical deformities who was there every day asking for money. There was also handful of other disheveled individuals in a nearby plaza doing the same.

I saw maybe 10 people asking for money across the above three locations and I did not see any anywhere else in the cities that I visited. I don’t know anything about what China provides for the destitute or what it allows for when it comes to begging on the streets. I wanted to include this section to highlight that beggars do exist in China and that, as far as I can tell, the police and the state don’t seem to bother them.