Going to Beijing (Patreon)
Published:
2016-05-06 12:38:10
Imported:
2023-11
Content
Shenzhen, pictured above is the city I love best in China, yes I may be biased since it's the first city I came to and the reason I fell in love with China all those years ago, but honestly every time I travel in China I am always seriously disappointed by just how much more developing and also how worse other cities are, Shanghai is stuck up and more or less a foreign city (there are foreigners everywhere and one may be forgiven to think that you're not in China any more, Beijing is unfriendly and touristy, if you're not a local you'll be treated like an outsider (that goes for Chinese and foreigners alike). Guangzhou is unbearably crowded and you'll not walk 10 minutes without hearing someone hocking up a huge throat oyster. Those are the first tier cities, the second and third tier have their charms, slower pace of life, more freedom to get away with behaving badly, however you sacrifice conveniences such as access to good supermarkets that sell safe and good quality foods, coffee shops and international chains too (that's not to say that you won't find a KFC or Chinese Walmart), it gets worse (or better) from there, less infrastructure = slower pace of life = more chaos = more filthy living conditions... Then come the tourist towns which are backpacker paradise, places like Dali in Yunnan and Yangshuo in Guangxi, these towns rely on tourists and are usually pretty clean and have fairly good restaurants and bed and breakfasts, but are usually packed to the brim with tourists and for lack of a better word "foreigners whose potential is limited". I know that my experiences are personal and so I don't want to be overly negative about the prospects of living in other cities around China other than Shenzhen, and so I have decided to revise some of my experiences, I have already re-visited Guangzhou with the idea of looking at it from a fresh perspective(I did and the video is here: https://youtu.be/s1VQk_yw5wU ), honestly my opinion of Guangzhou didn't change ;) but next week I'll be going to Beijing again, this time to finish off something to do with the documentary and also I'll arrange a subscriber meet up. I plan to make a new video about Beijing and who knows, maybe my opinion will change?
- Stay Awesome
SerpentZA