Two Weeks in China: A Highly Unstructured Sprint Retro

After two blissfully lazy days melting poolside in 33°C Yangshuo heat (seriously, so humid) and exploring the town by night, it was time to move on. Bags packed, I embarked on the classic traveler's shuffle: bus from Yangshuo to Guilin airport, onto two planes bound for Osaka, capped off with a high-speed rail journey to Kyoto. Japan awaits!

Before diving into the land of sushi and shrines, I wanted to jot down some reflections on my two weeks in China. Now, let's get this out of the way: this isn't intended as a "clueless white boy foreigner critiques China" piece. As I've mentioned before, I genuinely believe China's focus on infrastructure, social services, and uplifting its people points towards a future where they play an even bigger role globally. This is just... my experience.

On Speaking Chinese (or Trying To)

Thanks to my parents' foresight ("If 1 in 4 people will be Chinese, 1 in 4 of my kids will speak it!"), I endured (and learned to love) Mandarin lessons from age 5 until my junior year of college. Fast forward about seven years with zero practice, and yeah, there was significant rust. Like, shipwreck-level rust.

Honestly, though, I was pleasantly surprised. Not only could I navigate the more rural spots where English was basically non-existent, but vocabulary started bubbling up from the depths of my subconscious over the two weeks. The sentence structures and basic grammar, drilled into my brain by a formidable Chinese Tutor who would come to our house every Sunday to just speak with me, were still lurking in there. It's amazing how much linguistic PTSD... I mean, learning... stays with you.

Because I started young, my accent and tones aren't completely tragic, and a few locals genuinely believed in my fluency. This led to a few amusing scenarios:

• Asking a simple question in passable Mandarin, only to be met with a verbal firehose of words I absolutely did not understand, leaving me looking like a deer caught in high beams. Most times, though, if they slowed down, context clues and the odd recognizable word helped me muddle through.
• Overhearing two high-school-aged girls in Guilin point, giggle, and say something incomprehensible in my direction. My deadpan "我会说中文" (I can speak Chinese) was met with faces turning paler than bleached tofu. Priceless.
• Watching adorable elderly stallholders excitedly call over their coworkers, asking me to speak Chinese for them like I was some kind of talking exhibit or show.
• The almost palpable relief washing over hotel staff when I cut short their valiant-but-strained attempts at English by just switching to Chinese.

One thing that did surprise me was the overall level of English proficiency. Outside of front desk staff and the locals I met for drinks in Shanghai, it was almost always easier to communicate in my rusty Mandarin than their English. I guess I'd (perhaps naively) expected a bigger shift, especially among younger people, since my last visit over a decade ago, but there might also be a political dynamic at play too that I couldn’t see.

On Chinese Culture (The Tourist Edition)

Okay, let's talk culture shocks and observations. There's definitely a palpable "every person for themself" vibe in many public interactions. Think jostling onto trains, the complete disregard for orderly queuing (makes you appreciate the British, honestly), and the relentless need to smoke everywhere. And the spitting... oh god, the phlegmy hawking. If I heard one more KRRRKKK-PTOOEY land inches from my shoes, I might have lost it.

I chatted about this with a local guide in Shanghai, and he put it bluntly: There's a strong sense of civic duty and an even stronger sense of family duty. Beyond that? It's largely individualism. In a country pushing 1.4 billion people, maybe elbowing your way through life feels like the only way to get anywhere. Honestly, it's contagious. By week two, I'd stopped politely waiting for people to exit the metro; I just merged into the human flow. Survival of the pushiest.

Then there's the concept of 差不多 (chàbuduō), which roughly translates to "close enough" or "good enough." It's a mindset that often prioritizes convenience and speed over precision or quality. While sometimes practical, it can also manifest as a general lack of polish or attention to detail – think instructions that aren't quite clear, things that don't quite fit, or service that feels perfunctory rather than thorough. It felt linked to that individualistic streak – get it done quickly, move on, don't worry too much about the finer points or how it affects others down the line. Let's just say it occasionally led to... minor frustrations.

And the smoking. Look, I grew up with a smoking dad, had my own questionable phases in high school and college, and appreciate a good puff now and then. But nothing prepared me for China. We're talking ~300 million smokers and a state-owned tobacco behemoth churning out nearly half the world's cigarettes annually (2.4 TRILLION!). Cigarettes are dirt cheap, and frankly, it felt like curbing smoking wasn't exactly top of the national agenda. People smoke everywhere: train stations, inside lobbies, inside temples, in public restrooms, in their cars, and terrifyingly, on the walk from the airplane gate to the plane itself. As someone from France, a country hardly shy about nicotine, who’s used to seeing brasseries in Paris lined with smokers, I was still genuinely taken aback and grossed out.

China, especially outside the major international hubs, isn't the most diverse place. as someone who’s always been the “archetype” of wherever I’ve lived (cis white man living in Europe and North America), being somewhere I constantly stood out, attracting stares and double-takes, was... an experience. It certainly offered some perspective on what minorities likely experience daily in Western countries. In Yangshuo, I met some Senegalese guys and chatted in French with them. They told me locals had, on multiple occasions, tried to "check" their skin colour by licking a thumb and trying to rub the black off. Wild.

Finally, family and the "Golden Child" effect. The one-child policy ended in 2016, but with birth rates still plummeting (around 1.1 children per woman – well below replacement), its legacy lingers. At nearly every hotel, I saw the same dynamic: four grandparents, two parents, all orbiting a single child who could seemingly do no wrong. Now, being an uncle to four energetic niblings has massively increased my patience for kids. My patience for parents who never say "no," however, is razor-thin given the amazing examples of great parenting I’ve seen from my brothers and sisters in law. Watching a tiny tornado of unchecked chaos wreak havoc because they've never faced consequences makes me want to practice my punting skills and see how aerodynamic a 5 year old can be.

Conclusion

Despite the gripes above (and trust me, there are bigger issues I haven't touched on, partly because I'd like to be allowed back someday!), I genuinely loved my time in China. The landscapes, the food, the deep history, and witnessing the collective effort to build a modern, functional society filled me with a strange kind of optimism.

It has its quirks and its problems, for sure. But reconnecting with the language and the culture after so long was fantastic. It felt both familiar and entirely new.

That's the China chapter closed for now. I've been in Kyoto for a couple of days, and it's already proving to be an absolute blast. Stay tuned for Japanese adventures!

As always, love to hear your thoughts 💝.
— Lionel