Marc Lou (@marclou) “I spent 14 days in China, and it was my favorite trip in a while. It changed so” — TopicDigg

I spent 14 days in China, and it was my favorite trip in a while. It changed so much since I visited 11 years ago that it felt like a new country. Here is what I liked about China, and what I didn’t. 1. EV adoption is huge. 100% of scooters are electric. You can walk on busy streets and it’s surprisingly quiet! It made me enjoy cities again. 2. It’s so convenient. All restaurants let you scan a QR code to order and pay. You can order a taxi and drive 100 km for $30. The malls are so big you can spend an entire day there. 3. Value for money is top notch. Hotels are new, food is delicious, and yet everything is super affordable. Chinese people are really committed to doing their best, and you can feel this everywhere you go. It’s very humbling. 4. Chinese people are super friendly! We made friends everywhere we went: restaurants, hotels, taxis. I memorized Chinese sentences like 是免費的嗎？ (“Is it free?”) and I would repeat them to outdoor vendors for fun. They would laugh and come slap me on the shoulder! I even got a free ice cream doing this ^^ 5. Internet is a gamble. The Great Firewall blocks a lot of websites. You need a VPN and eSIM to access Western websites. And it’s not guaranteed to work, so it’s tricky to get deep work done. I used Revolut eSIMs. It’s expensive, but most websites worked. When I called my parents during the trip, they couldn’t believe how modern China is. For most people in the West, China is still a third-world country. There are 17 cities with 10M+ inhabitants. Most of them were built in the last 30 years. When I was in Hangzhou 杭州, I felt like I was in an ant house. Very crowded, yet super modern, quiet, and organized. My wife and I loved the trip so much. We’ll come back next year and get lost in China because there are so many wonderful places to go.