Why All Westerners Should Visit China
In China, everything — literally everything is different compared to the west.
Since I was a teenager and attended my first Chinese class, I had a huge urge to visit China.
In 2015 during my 3rd year of university studies, I got a visa for a year and 2000 euros in a scholarship to make my dream come true.
China was the most mind-blowing experience of my life. In China, everything was different.
When I mean everything — I literally mean everything.
Because China is politically isolated and I moved to a cheaper tier 2 city (tier 1 cities like Shanghai are more westernized), there was very little western influence in the culture.
South-East Asia is also a great place to visit (I lived 3 months in Vietnam), but the countries have become playgrounds for westerners and they are not similar isolated bubbles as China.
When I lived in China, English was nearly useless and you had to learn Chinese to be able to survive in the day-to-day activities.
The written language was the hardest part since you had to learn how to deal with Chinese characters because otherwise the taxi driver didn’t know where to go.
Food was completely different and you couldn’t get a fork or a knife to eat your meal. When I first arrived to China, I barely could eat with chopsticks and eating out was an embarrassing mess. By the way, western Chinese food is NOT the same as actual Chinese food.
Apart from the biggest brands such as Coca Cola, the groceries were all from local brands and most things you could buy from the stores were weird anyway (i.e. all face creams painted your face white).
It wasn’t just the physical buildings and even cars (Chinese knockoffs and Chinese brands because western goods are heavily taxed in customs) that were 100% different, but the virtual world wasn’t the same either.
In China, Facebook, Instagram, Gmail, Google, Twitter and most western websites are all banned which means you cannot use them without VPNs. Basically the entire “internet” is different.
This means that for every social media app, chat app, map app, etc. you would have to use a Chinese app that is often in Chinese.
What was surprising was that many apps (such as WeChat) were better than the apps we have in the west.
In China, phone is the number one device and not many uses a laptop. When it comes to mobile development, China is ahead of the west — you can do anything with your phone like pay everywhere for everything with AliPay.
So the main ingredients of life: environment, language, food, people, internet were completely different. What else?
Even the values and ethics were different. You don’t really understand it until you see it first hand.
In Europe, success is demeaned and demonized. People don’t have a good relationship money and standing out is bad.
European culture is very communistic, socialistic and controlling (everything is regulated)— not free and capitalistic as the culture in USA. In Europe there is no “winner-culture” at all.
In US at least half of the population are somewhat capitalistic — in Europe there is really only one party (=all parties are fundamentally left-wing although some of them call themselves center or right) and this one party is more left-wing than the Democratic Party in US.
Although China is a communist country, the communism is not the same as we think in the west. It’s a weird mix of capitalism and State control.
China’s values were completely opposite to Europe’s: success and money weren’t only good, but they were the worshipped gods of the society. They were the things that were put on the pedestal and which everyone cherished.
All the celebrations were about money, power and success. In weddings the families would spend as much as possible to show off everyone how rich they were. Even the official color red stands for money and success.
Money and success are so pedestalized in China that during the Chinese New Year crime rates go up because young men need money to prove their families how successful they have become.
Because China is still developing, you could also see the gap between the rich and the poor.
You could literally stand next to one of the highest skyscrapers in the world and see homeless people nearby.
For the first time I realized how good standard of living in Finland actually is and how well the country takes care of the people who are less fortunate.
I saw some of the sickest people I have ever seen in China — people who were dealt the worst possible hands.
I saw both sides of the ultimate reality and that everything the westerners take for granted, could actually be anything else.
