In this article I’m not trying to talk negatively about China. Without a doubt it’s a country with splendid views and a long rich history. Visiting China was very fulfilling for me. It was always my dream. After almost a month over there I felt exhausted and I was happy to be back home. I want to share with you couple of observations that you won’t see in travel magazines yet they are real.
1. First and foremost they look down on our Western culture. They talk so badly about us but yet they are the biggest copycats in the world if comes to United States. I don’t mean only take DVDs or clothes, I mean everything Fake Apple stores,fake STARBUCKS srore, fake Barbie stores, fake restaurants. Honestly I don’t mind it. I like to buy sometimes some fake purse or something but why bash on a culture you take many of your ideas from?
2. Corona virus? We hear so much about it. So China has said to its people that US army brought the epidemic to them? Thoughts? How this conspiracy theory could work if the epidemic outbreak started in Chinese City of Wuham? Till 2017 you they only could have one child. After 2017 ban was lifted. I.5 billion people, why don’t introduce some virus to control population? Now they are so good and cleared from the virus where there rest of the world is drowning? Most important medicine in the world is made in China. So world is dying and we have to import medicine from China. Corona virus makes us so dependent on China? How did we let that happen? In Western culture we rescue miners that are trapped in a mines, what do they do in China 400 miners trapped underground, too much money to save them. What Chinese did, drop the rest of the mine killing all of them. China executes 3 times as many people as the rest of the world combined!!! Life in China doesn’t matter, you’re only a number.
3. How is this possible that all those websites are blocked in China? Google YouTube Facebook Wikipedia Netflix Instagram Twitter Tumblr Pinterest List go on and on. The Communistic propaganda machine wants to have power over the people with what they watch and read. To brainwash them to just be a cog in the machine and build a blindfolded army against Western influence.
4. I thought that USA is famous for its ghost towns after the gold Rush. I was wrong. I was driving through China and one evening my mom goes; “look in all those sky scrapers there are no lights in any of the apartment”. It gave me chills. I felt like driving through Chernobyl. It was empty, no lives there. Chinese government wanted to boost economy so they started building this humongous high rise building, new towns and cities… Now they are ghost towns. China has 64 million vacant homes, including entire cities that are empty. Did you guys know that the world’s biggest mall is actually in China…. But it has been 99% empty since 2005. So creepy.
5.It is harder to get Visa to China than to USA. I went with my polish travel agency from Poland but as a USA citizen I had to get a Visa over here. Oh I thought it’s going to be piece of cake. Oh I was so wrong. Just when I think of it, it gives me anxiety. I was rejected two times in the embassy. I had to provide exact flight number and times, and at that time even my travel agency didn’t know my exact flight itinerary. To make it even better, my embassy asked me names and dates of each hotel I will be staying at. I was going to China with an organized tour, so I didn’t have to worry about hotel, I was very wrong. Almost 4 weeks of China and needed names of 16 hotels to be provided in Chinese. This was beyond ridiculous. If I didn’t already plan the trip i wouldn’t go jumping through all these hoops just to get a Visa. I waited for all the hotels names, my travel agency was sick of me and I still ended up to taking a private company to get me Visa for only $150 extra on top of everything. So give yourself enough time and preparation for China trip because they really don’t want to make it any easy for you. Even though you want to go there support their economy as a tourist.
6.Exchanging money in China is like in 1970. It’s another big cluster of problems. If you think you’re going to exchange money like it should be normal, you are so wrong. It’s a still communistic country so you have to watch out what you are doing. I went with a whole group of people. Once we got there we had Chinese guide assigned to us and on the bus she took out her backpack and stared to exchange our money just like a street dealer wow. That’s apparently one way of exchanging money. Second way to exchange money is at your hotel by the front desk. But with this method was one problem. Very often when we got to hotel and wanted to get money they were out of money to exchange �������� what a country, what a deal.
7. If you are claustrophobic, scared of small spaces or fear of large crowds then you definitely need to think twice before going to China. Every single place you go, there are millions and millions of people. that will take you out of the comfort zone you are used too. Wherever there was something to wait for there wasn’t a line form, people would just mass up and push. All of them would go in at the same time without any courtesy to others. People in our group were so fed up with lack of manners, that they started to block them to get to us, so we had a chance of taking photos in most places. Finally if you enjoy nice quiet dinner, you can forget about that as well. Burping, slurping, chewing with their mouth open and making loud noises while consuming the food is a complement to the chef in Chinese culture. It’s not my thing but the food was still really good and i would let out a tiny burp after for the chef.
8.Be prepared with the weather. We went in June thinking about this being a nice summer vacation. Nope. Forget it. Temperatures were close to 90-100 degrees Fahrenheit with 95% humidity. I thought my mom going to faint almost every day. What makes the experience even more unpleasant is that for China has horrible air pollution. Smog is there so advanced that sky almost every day is grey. You rarely will see a blue sky. Out of three weeks, we only had three days with blue skies after heavy rain.
Best time to go there is April through May, or September through October.
9. China has many weird rules. For example they take your passport at the hotel when you arrive and they will give it back to you in the morning. But only if the room is in perfect condition. You can’t take anything from the room, even the tooth paste or any samples they will give you. So in the morning when you leave the room they run to your room check if you didn’t still the toothpaste :):):):):):) One person from the group had little too much to drink so he packed remote control by accident. I thought they won’t let him leave China because of that! It’s so bad