Latest / bit of a Rambler / 130 Ramble On

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130 Ramble On · bit of a Rambler

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hey, they're folks. My name is Kai, and I am
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: a bit of a rambler. I like to travel, learn
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: and tell stories. And today we're going to ramble on.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: So I was about to get to China, to Beijing,
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: tell my friends, and really just a few close friends
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: and then some acquaintances. But it's been a long time
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: since I saw my close friends. Wait a minute, I
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: didn't finish Busan, Busan fancy crab dinner.
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't have that.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: In previous episodes, I went, was it the last night
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: in Busan? It might have been, but the last night
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: I thought, I did the Giant Seaweed party, so whatever,
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: one of the last Anyway, I was walking along the coast,
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: as I did every day because that's the way I
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: get to all you can eat buffet. And it's the
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: Busan coast. So it's beautiful and a lovely walk with
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: twenty foot wide sidewalks.
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: It's so nice.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: And I how did I get Oh?
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: I walked.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: I walked around the entire district of Hayande and on
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: my way back before I hit the buffet, which I
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: was just gonna it was night. It was like eleven thirty.
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: It was really late at night. And I was just
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: gonna like, hey, finger gun at the buffet I go
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: to every day, and then keep on walking and a
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: couple blocks like not even I think it was one street,
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: not like not a full block, but like one alley
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: way behind, so maybe maybe fifty feet beyond the entrance.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: Right before or before I got to the entrance of
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: the building that was closed because it's midnight, I saw
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: a restaurant for crab. And the thing is, when I
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: was in Japan talking to those tile people, I mentioned
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: the wife's friend stopped in. She had just come back
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: from South Korea, and she said that the crab in
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: South Korea was the best 's ever had. And I
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: take that with a grain of salt, because you hear
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: that a lot, not specifically about crab, but people who
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: don't travel often if when they try something in a
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: new setting, it usually becomes the best thing they've ever
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: had because their palate is so used to their routine,
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: basically their city there setting, so when they try something
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: that might be as good or maybe not as good,
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: but with a new flare on it. And this is
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: totally legitimate that it makes total sense why people would
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: say that. I just always take it with a grain
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: of salt, because anybody who go somewhere for a weekend,
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: especially if they're spending a lot of money, a lot
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: of the time, it seems like they want to believe that, Yeah,
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: I spent six hundred dollars going to this one restaurant,
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: but it was worth it because I spent six hundred
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: dollars so grain of salt. But I was interested because
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: I hadn't had like a big I don't know if
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: I've ever had a big crab dinner at a sit
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: down restaurant. I've certainly had seafood buffets and dose have
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: been amazing, but I not even at a sit down dinner.
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: I've certainly had crab diner. I've never buy myself chosen
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: to go into a restaurant and thrown down for a
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: fresh crab dinner. So I walked in there and I
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: asked the lady if I could see the menu, and
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: it was like fifty sixty dollars, I can't for one crab.
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: It was roughly that much US dollars, and I was like,
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: that is a lot. And those all you can eat
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: buffets with all you can eat crab, I've had some
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: ahazing crab at some all you can eat buffets before,
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: so I was like, it's probably not where there and
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: I went outside. But you know, I told the lady
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: in Japan, you know what, I'm gonna try the crab
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: when I go to South Korea then, And I'm thinking, like,
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: what if it is the best crab I've ever had,
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: and I'm just a caveman. So I went back in
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: and I asked her if I could see the crabs,
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: because I asked her, are they fresh crabs? Yes, so
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: I asked if I could see the crabs, And they
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: have a straight up not aquarium, but they have like large,
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: well oxygenated tanks with very healthy crabs not sitting there,
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: like moving around, like coming up against the glass and
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: stuff like puppies at a pound. Which is a great
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: metaphor because I selected one the first one that caught
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: my eye, and she went back and snipped out its brain,
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: which is the human way to kill a crab in
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: case you don't know. And yeah, it was cool that
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: she led me back there to see their operation. And
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: it was again busan, so it was spotless. It was
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: incredibly clean. The tanks were spotless. The crabs, like I said,
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: looked super healthy and energetic. And then she humanly dispatched
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: this crab in a second and then steamed it up,
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: took me to my table, and she brought out three
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: different rounds of side dishes, so that I literally had
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: about a dozen side dishes before the crab even came out.
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: And I was just seeing kimchi and whatever, pickle ginger
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: or whatever the heck now pickle ginger is the normal thing.
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: I got so much good stuff. Ooh, when I got
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: one fried pancake. I love all the fried pancakes in
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: different Asian countries, like I like the Chinese GM being
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: probably the best, but maybe that's just because I'd beaten
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: at the most. But when you get a good fried pancake,
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: which is popular in East Asia, and for some reason,
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: we just make cake, we make pan cakes. US pancakes
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: are too bready and sugary, and for me, for me,
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: I like a thinner, tougher, savory pancake.
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: I'm just not.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: I don't like a lot of sugar except every now
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: and then I buy a lemon tart cake for myself.
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: So what am I talking about. I do like sugar.
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: I'm just a dummy. It's exactly what I was just
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: talking about.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: Oh, look, I traveled, so the other food is better.
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: I'm the same thing I'm complaining about. I anyway, I
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: love savory Asian pancakes as they're called when you translate
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: it to English. I don't know what the Korean one's called.
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: I only know the.
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: Chinese name for one for those, and I probably knew
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: the Japanese one when I was in Japan. But as
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: soon as I leave a country, if it's not Chinese,
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: the language gets relegated to the back of my mind,
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: and I'm like, when I go back to that country,
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: we'll just bring it back to the forefront. But until then,
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: it's basically all locked in a vault on your hasseo.
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: Thanks Korea. Was that talking about side dishes? So I'm
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: already happy eating these side dishes?
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: And one of.
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: Them, dang it, I don't I got a find a
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: picture of the side dishes? Yeah, let me check. Okay,
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: I found the picture. But of course, for the first
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: time forever, my internet is slowed down.
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: I don't know why.
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: So it's loading like a nineties nude dancer page on
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: the internet with a fifty six came out. Um, so
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: I'm just waiting for the side dishes to load. This
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: is so funny that it's this is how it's loading.
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: Oh, bacon, that was it? Okay?
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: There was a There was a dish of Korean bacon,
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: which is very thick cut and usually it has a
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: lot of fat. These only had one thin strip of
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: fout in the middle, and then either side was tasty
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: pig belly. And then I got three sauces.
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: Okay in the pan.
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: I'm seeing pickled spicy cucumbers, egg corn, potato salad, something
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: can't recognize at kim chi tofu oh, and my pickled
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: bean spruts, which are like my favorite. But dude, that bacon.
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: She brad that out and I ate that And I
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: was like this, if like you, I don't know if
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: you should bring this out before you're about to serve
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: a crab dinner because four thick cut pieces of perfectly
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: cooked bacon, Like, why even get a crab? And this
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: is incidental? It says, it says the side dishes you
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: can order for five thousand, five thousand and one, and
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: the crab dish was seventy or eighty thousand one something.
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: If I'm I don't know if those numbers are I
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: guess I can check. No, never mind, I don't care.
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: I'm not gonna check.
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: But the price of all of the side dishes was
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: like two US dollars. Maybe it was like nothing versus
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: the fancy crab dinner that I got.
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: And after I.
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: Ate the bacon, I was like, oh my god, I
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: could have just got this bacon like that would have
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: been good for me. And I had a draft beer too.
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: That they had.
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: I was just like, if you're gonna go have a
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: fancy dinner, let's have a nice draft beer with everything
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: as well, because you're gonna have so many interesting savory flavors.
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: And then she brought out the crab and the crab
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: was immaculately prepared. It was beautiful, and it was staged well.
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: It was in a square bamboo tray on top of
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: a hot steaming thing so it would stay hot. And
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: I cracked open one of those giant legs and ate
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: the crab meat, and it was good. It was probably
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: the best crab meat I have had.
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: That's probably not true.
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: It was good crab meat. I will say that it was.
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: It was very good crab meat and obviously extremely fresh.
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: Like I chose it. I saw her kill it as
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: she steamed it. She brought it straight out to me
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: ten minutes later. It was extremely f They catch them
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: right off the coast there. This was extremely fresh crab,
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: no doubt, and it tasted extremely fresh, and the subtle flavor.
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: Was very good.
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: She brought out a hot pot that I think I
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: was supposed to put the crab in. I was just like,
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: not into that at all. I just wanted to test
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: the flavor of this crab if it was as good
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: as I heard about. And the flavor and freshness of
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: the crab was amazing. But I really like Chinese food,
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: and they have a brown seafood sauce that they fry
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: clams and crab and all sorts of seafood in. And
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: it's not there's not even I don't even think there's
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: a name for it, because I've never seen it explicitly
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: listed as like a brown sauce on any menu, And
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: there's not a type of dish that it is, and
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: it's not in one region or another, although it seems
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: to be more popular in the north of China than
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: the south, because the South of China they just steam
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: and boil everything and they don't add on sauces. It's
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: very bland food in the south of China, but in
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: the north of China you have a lot of the stronger,
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: saltier savory sauces and flavors and all that all that stuff.
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: So there's this brown sauce, and I was like, boy,
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: this crab's good. And if you were just trying to
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: be a fancy boy with elegant crab dining, I get
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: this is very good, but that bacon knocked me on
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: my ass, and that brown sauce that is so popular
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: in certain places in China is insane and compliment seafood
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: so well.
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: So I did like the crab a lot.
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: I'm very happy I went and got a big fancy
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: dinner for myself so that I don't have to worry
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: what a big fancy spread is like if I see
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: that again sometime. And it was fun buying a big
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: fancy dinner. But I mean, if I was there another week,
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: I would probably go to that place and just get
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: the side dishes for two dollars because that's insane. They're
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: so good and they cost basically nothing because they're like, well,
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: everyone's coming here for the crab, guess what give me
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: the soybeans and the bacon and the savory pancake. That's
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: my Jim Jams. That's give me that crap. So I
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: did have a very nice crab dinner of a like
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: that I have not enjoyed before. And I was very
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: happy and felt very privileged to be able to do that,
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: and that this place was open until midnight. And I
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: just rolled up at eleven thirty and she was like, yeah, totally,
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: I'm ready to do it. I'll show you my crabs
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: and you can choose the one you like from the
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: tanks and we'll I'll dispatch it and steam it up
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: for you and you'll have ten minutes later with the
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: draft beer and all these delicious dishes. Yes, it was wonderful,
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: there's no denying that.
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: It was.
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: Just I'm not gonna pay sixty dollars for that crab
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: again next time. If you can give me ten plates
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: that bacon for twenty dollars, yes, please, plus all the
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: pickled spicy bean sprouts I can eat, and kim chi
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: good gracious, and twenty flip and savory pancakes. Maybe it
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: was like five bucks, but I don't think it was.
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: I think it was.
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: I think it was like five thousand one. I think
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: it was two dollars or something crazy like that. Anyway,
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: I had to bring that up because that was a
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: significant thing. Like I had basically promised this lady in
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: Korea or in Japan that I was going to try
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: when I went to Korean, and then I was in
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: Korea and I just I was just passing by at
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: the right time, and it was right there, and the
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: crabs were healthy and everything seemed right, and I left
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: because I was like, no, it's too expensive. And then
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: I was like, no, man, this is a this is
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: an experience that right now in your life you are
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: able to enjoy. So yeah, it's silly for you to
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: spend whatever it was sixty bucks on a crab, but
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: I mean you'll remember it. This is an experience like life.
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: Who knows how much life we all have. Enjoy it, like,
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: take experience what you can while you can. You lucky,
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: sob and so I did, and I'm very happy I did.
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: I was right on the coast where they fished these
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: crafts from. It was wild, it was great. It's a
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: great experience. Okay, I will say this is about the
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: restaurant that is the most energetic I have ever seen
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: any crabs ever in my life. They were all like
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: hopped up, like they weren't like churning the water, but
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: they were just moving around curious, like like they were
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: in the ocean on the hunt. They looked like real
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: moving crowd. And they're big too. These were like larger
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: than your rip caage sized crabbed. They could they could
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: give you a hug. Basically, these are big old crabolos.
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: That was cool.
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: That was one of the last things in Busan, and
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: I wanted to mention that next on the list is
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: China Baby.
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: Is Beijing Baby, my friends.
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: So I land in Beijing, I get up. It's incredibly
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: easy to get to the airport. Oh I told you
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: that that girl was digging her nose and I was like,
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: that's China Baby back home and she I can't remember
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: if I actually saw her on the flight.
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: But I land in Beijing and it just the air
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: is so gross still, and I was so bummed out,
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: even though I know it was because I did visit
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: like a couple of years ago and the air.
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: Was still gross.
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: Now, I want to bring this up because like, the
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: air's not gross in China, China is an enormous country.
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: It's almost literally to the acre, almost the exact same
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: size as the United States, including Alaska. China is huge,
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: so when you're not inside a city, the air is clean.
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: And that's not just because it's huge, but because Chinese
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: people love even more than US Americans, who love living
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: in population centers. They are an urban people.
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: They a mass.
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: That's why you have China towns in every country because
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: when they move somewhere, they get together and they stay together.
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: So everyone in China, four times the population of the
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: United States one point five billion ish are living in cities,
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: and there are a lot of cities, and one point
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: five billion is a lot of people, but globally, it's
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: not that many people to fit into a space, especially
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: with apartment buildings that can hold a couple ten thousand people.
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: Maybe that's not that many, but I mean, yeah, two
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: thousand people and they have thousands of those buildings. That's
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: millions of people in every city.
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: It adds up.
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: They are in population centers. So if you are not
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: in these cities in China, you'll be shocked at how
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: clean the air is. It's quite clean, and the water
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: is probably not as clean Actually, to be honest, Okay,
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: China never made a Clean Water and Air Act. If
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: Hijin Ping hadn't seized power, they probably would have enacted one,
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: just because I think that's the most embarrassing thing about
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: China esthetically visually presentably, like the human rights abuses, awful,
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: like no social security, all these kinds of things that
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: are terrible, like politically in the country, those are a problem.
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: But they works so hard to put tend that they're
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: such an advanced country. But if you land in Beijing,
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: which unless you okay, so when the Olympics happens, or
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: when the president lands in Beijing, they literally shut off
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: all of the coal factories in the city and they
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: pump in electricity from other cities, and they do that
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: specifically so that you won't see the smog. And that's
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: what I mean, the smog. It's so embarrassing for a
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: country that wants to say it's an advanced country and
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: they are. Look, no, lie, They're building twice as much
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: solar power every year they're installing. Just one country, China
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: is installing twice as much solar power as the other
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: one hundred and ninety nine countries in the world combined.
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: So they are doing their part in terms of renewable tech,
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: and they have the most advanced renewable tech. They're totally
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: they've won the race on solar panels and EV's and
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: I don't know about chip manufacturing if if Biden, Biden
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: got the Taiwan people TSMC, but Trump has totally messed
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: that up. So I'm pretty sure because of Trump that
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: the horses out of the horse. He's off the cart.
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: China is they were already inching forward ahead of everybody
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: else with EV's and with eight years of scientific regression
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: under Trump the US, I mean, there's no I don't
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: I I do not see how the US could possibly
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: catch up to the technological progression that China has been
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: able to pull ahead with because of the scientific regression
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: under Trump. And you can see it there byd Their
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: evs are are taking over Europe and Australia certainly, they're
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: they're completely taken over Asia, they're getting into South America.
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: It's just there's no and solar panels are completely everywhere.
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: They're only Chinese. There's no other country that's coming close
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: to manufacturing renewable green technologies like China is. But This
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: is what I'm saying. They're so far ahead in those
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: renewable green technologies. When you land in Beijing still in
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: twenty twenty six seven, whatever, it's crazy because it's still
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: smoggy and it does not need to be. They have
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: filters that you can literally put on smokestacks, and that's
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: where all the smog is coming from. They don't they have,
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: like they've replaced so many of their cars with electric cars.
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: At this point, the smog is not coming from the cars.
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: Some of it's coming from the car tires, and some
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: of it's coming from the cars, but primarily it's coming
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: from these coal pow fossil fuel power plants close to Beijing.
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: So when a diplomat fly or whatever, they shut down
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: the coal or events going on, they shut down the
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: coal plants. You have a clear blue sky in Beijing,
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: and there's a when you go to China. You can
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: ask anybody who lives in Beijing. It's called Lantienne, which
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: is blue sky day or yeah yeah Lantian. It's that's
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: literally like blue day, but they mean it's a blue
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: sky day and they're not like ah Lantian, bubbah Lantian.
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: Usually means they shut down the coal plants today. But
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: they have the technology. And if you google any look
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: up any city, look up Dubai. Right, look up Dubai.
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: It's a huge, popular, very boring seeming town. I haven't
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: been there, it seems is it fun? Someone let me
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: know if Dubai is fun. I just someone just came
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: back from there. I was never interested in going there.
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: And someone just came back and they were like, it's
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: pretty boor you don't have to go to Dubai. And
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: I was like, but then, how will I climb that
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: skyscraper that Tom Cruise did an I five or six
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: five And they're like, don't worry. That technology he used
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: to climb the skyscraper is in reel anyway, And I
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: was like, guy, don't you remember the technology failed? He
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: only had one of them. And he's like, yeah, but
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: one is still the technology.
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: That isn't true.
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: So I think it's crazy that China is putting all
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: of this effort into pretending and being honestly an advanced, green,
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: renewable country, but they won't. They won't make their capital
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: city that everybody goes to look amazing.
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: I brought up Dubai because Google images of any place
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: you want, Dublin, Ireland, whatever, Marrakesh, Morocco. I don't know
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: the capital of Tanzania. Wow, I gotta go to Tanzania.
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: I've been thinking about that a lot lately. I guess
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: maybe Africa's next. I've only been to Morocco. Maybe Africa's name.
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: But you can look up any city you want to
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: around the world, and if you look at the Google
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: Images or whatever your search engine is images, those are
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: real pictures of that city. If you look up Beijing, China,
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: look at the sky behind the city, they are all
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: doctored photos. It's very clearly not a real blue sky
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: because true blue skies where there's no smog so that
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: you can see that is obscuring the blue sky is
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: very rare in Beijing. So there are almost no pictures
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: on the internet, and the first one hundred results in
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: whatever search image like you look for are going to
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: be fake blue. Basically really just photoshop select this area
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: make it look blue even though it's gray and the
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: city is still gray, and that sucks. But you know what,
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: I'm visiting my friends. I'm only going to be there
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: a couple weeks. I can handle it, and I don't
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: even think it's as bad as it used to be,
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: because it's not great, for sure, you can. Stepping off
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: the plane, I instantly tasted the smog. And I haven't
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: been in a dirty city, a dirty air city, a
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: smoggy city in a long time, because I that's one
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: thing I noticed more than anything else. And it's funny
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: that I lived in China for six years, three of
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: them three and a half in in Beijing, just sucking
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: it up. But landing there after so long living in
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: non smoggy areas, I could as soon as I stepped
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: off the plane, my nose was just assaulted with like
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: smoke and metallic odors, and it's just so the smell
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: is right there and it's not pleasant. So I was
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: bummed out because I was hoping, against hope, just why not.
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: Maybe I would land and they they would have decided, eh,
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: you know, let's just fix the smog this year, and
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: there'd be no smog and i'd land. I'd see my
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: friends and they'd be like, hey, why don't you just
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: stay here. I'd be like, okay, I can do that
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: now because the air isn't disgusting. No such luck it's
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: still smoggy. So I do think I I honestly believe
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: that one year soon they're going to click onto this,
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: unless they unless they try to annex Taiwan and then
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: they get in a war and everything will regress. But
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: if they keep doing what they're doing and just trying
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: to look good, they're going to realize. Hi Jinping is
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: going to realize some years soon that there's still an
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: embarrassment because they're because of the smog. That is embarrassing
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: to claim that you're an advanced nation and to choose
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: to have dirty air for thirty million people living in
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: your capital city. And I think one year he's going
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: to realize that, and they'll just put filters on all
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: the smokestacks and then that'll be that, and it'll just
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: be done. Then that'll it'll be like the It'll be
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: like a utopian city, you know, except for the humans
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: rights abuses and the one hundred percent surveillance and AI
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: face matching and all that kind of stuff. But it's
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: an incredibly convenient city to live in, which is what
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: I want to talk about, because the smog is still there.
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: But like every single other trip I have taken to Beijing.
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: Since I left seven years ago. I've stopped over now
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: and then to see friends, or stopped by for a
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: week or whatever, and it changes by the month, and
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: I'm there every year or two, and it's just insane
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: how rapidly everything is advancing in Beijing compared to every
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: other country that I stopped by. Similarly, like the US
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: is a little i mean politically much worse, but technologically
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: and infrastructurally the exact same, except for deterioration, as it
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: was fifteen years ago when I left the first time.
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: Beijing is a generation ahead or two. Honestly, a generation
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: or two ahead in infrastructural technology and convenience and comfort
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: for its regular citizens.
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: It is so crazy.
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: When I showed up fifteen years ago, everyone still used cash.
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: It was a cash country, and even credit cards were
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: like eh, and some hotels took them, but like I mean,
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: local credit cards, like nobody. It just wasn't a thing. Now,
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: fifteen years later, they have finally integrated foreign credit cards
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: into their national payment system through we Chat. This is
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: a revolution, and I can tell that because there is
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: there is a crazy amount of non Chinese people in Beijing.
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: Now I still get looked at in Beijing. But when
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: I was in Beijing, of I was one of one.
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: I was one of my school, Me and my school
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: people who worked in my school, the other foreign teachers.
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: We were the only foreigners I knew other than like
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: other schools. But when I was walking down the street
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: in Beijing, I never saw a non Chinese person ever
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: fifteen years ago. Even when I left, it was super
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: rare to see other non Chinese people. Seven years later,
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: however long it's been, Beijing was packed with foreigners and
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: it was like some Chinese people when I was in
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: Beijing this trip asked me like, wow, you're white. I
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: don't see foreigners a lot. This is crazy. And I
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: was like, if you go two blocks north, there's like
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: fifty of them walking down the street. It's weird. There's
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: a bunch of us. And he was really surprised to
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: hear that. But they all stay in their neighborhoods, so
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: he probably never walks that far north. I think it
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: was literally one block, and I was telling him like,
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: they're right up there, but you know what, they are concentrated.
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: They do stay in like hostels, near the hostels and
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: near the places. As soon as I went away from
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: the touristy areas. There were zero tourists. There were zero
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: non Chinese people. Again, so that's where I spent a
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: lot of my time while I was in Beijing. Okay,
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: let me try and go and order here.
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: So I get into the Beijing airport, and again they
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: advanced so quickly. So I'm just looking around, like, whoa
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: this this airport is advanced, like everything, everything is different.
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: I've been to the pecking Beijing airport. I literally don't
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: know how many times. I'll say like forty times, many
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: many times. And I land this time. It's only been
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: two years since the last time I was there, but
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: it's all it's it was getting a little more streamlined
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: every time, and now everything is streamlined. The things are electric.
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: They have those electric gates that just scan your passport
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: and go. And I did have to talk to an
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: immigration guard, but I wasn't waiting in line that long.
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: And there were it's Beijing airport, there were I don't
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: know how many let's say, three hundred people probably in
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: line ahead of me to go through customs. I got
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: through it in like fifteen minutes. I'll say it was
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: just twenty people a minute just going straight through. It
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: was very efficient, and they must have They recently added
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: so many seventy countries or something to ten Davisa free travel,
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: so they must have realized, we're going to have to
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: revamp our entire immigration system because if we're going to
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: let all these people, we're gonna have a lot more
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: tourists coming to Beijing. And they are right, and they
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: are getting those, especially with medical tourism. That stuff's gone
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: up four hundred percent in the last five years in
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: Beijing because it's so cheap. They finally invested in their
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: medical infrastructure in the past couple of years, and I
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: wouldn't have gone there fifteen years ago. Now I'm considering
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: medical tourism in China, especially because I can speak Mandarin.
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: I'll feel a lot more comfortable going there than a
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: lot of other countries. Probably not more than Thailand, though,
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: because they all speak English, and I know their medical
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: care is top notch for longer than the past five years.
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: But it's just I mean the yeah, the hospitals and
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: the airport, they all just look amazing. So anyway, I'm
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: going through immigration, I get up to the counter. Dude
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: sees me and he asked me, what are you doing here?
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: And I'm like, oh, we sure you cool, We'll Poni
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: olds I Joey sure Honjo make contientmen, which is like,
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: I'm here for just traveling. I have friends here and
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: it's been a long time since I've seen them, so
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: we're just gonna just see my friends. And he's like, oh,
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: oh Joe, he's excited. I can speak Chinese. And I
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: was like yeah, yeah, and he's like cool, So where
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: are you staying? And I told him and he's like okay, great,
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: and then he's tip tapping on his computer and then
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: his there's like one security guard walking back and forth
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: or immigration officer I guess, between all the different counters,
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: like the one in charge, shift manager or whatever, and
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: he comes over and in halting English, he he asks
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: me like and uh, why are you visit here Beijing?
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: And then the guy behind the counter is like taoi
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: joan I shall which is like he can speak shinyes,
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: it's not a problem. And the walking one is like
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: oh okay and he and he goes away, but like
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: the one behind the counter wanted to, like, you know,
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: claim ownership of the tourist who can speak Mandarin.
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: Because that's so it's so funny.
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: That happens a lot like if you, if you can
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: speak any Mandarin, you go with your friends if you
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: if you speak Mandarin, and then like the the waitress
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: or hotel clerk or whatever, it's like, I'm sorry, I
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: can't understand your orgn friend. Even if I'm speaking Chinese,
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: my friends will always be very territorial, only be like,
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: excuse me, he can speak Mandarin in in Mandar like tawe,
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: don win Tanya, like listen to him sick, And so
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: there's a very yeah, there's a little like this is
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: my foreigner who can speak And this immigration guard clearly
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: was like, uh, he can speak Chinese. Okay, Terrence, get
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: out of here. So Terence walked away and he was happy.
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: And this was weird.
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: I had a ten year visa, and on this trip
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: I entered into China, and my tenure visa. Each I
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: have unlimited entries, so it goes my attended one and
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: each time I enter, I get sixty days, so I
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: can stay in sixty days and then I'll have to
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: go on a visa run or I just go to
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: the next country like usual. And my immigration guard told me.
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: Okay, sixty days.
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: I was like, whoa, but my my passport, my visa
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: expires in thirteen days, so I think I know I
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: have a ten day visa. I actually want the full
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: thirteen days, but I don't think I get sixty And
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: the immigration guard looked confused. Which is going to happen?
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: Immigration guards and officers, they don't know. I've had this
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: so many times, like they're not up to date on
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: the they know that the day you know, it says
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: sixty days on my visa. That's what this dude knows.
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: And that's in many countries. I had my visa to India,
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: that's not a tourist rich country either, and they were
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: very confused with the visa, with the official visa from
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: the government. It took me ten minutes to get past
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: the immigration counter because they had to call people over
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: and they were just like, what even is this thing?
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: He's not staying for five days, he wants to just
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: stay here, and like this is the document and so
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: this wasn't odd at all that I think he had
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: the wrong thing, but he stamped me and he said, no, no,
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: it's okay, it says thirteen. But since the visa is
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: still valid. You have sixty days even past the end
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: of your visa. And I was like, wow, that's so great,
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: thank you so much. Hey, maybe I'll stay sixty days.
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: And they was like thank you, have a great day.
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: And I was like bye, And I walked past the
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: immigration counter into China and in my head I was like,
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: there's no looking way I'm staying past thirteen days. No
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: way am I risking that. Yes, the immigration officer told
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: you that. Whatever the immigration officer tells you, never assume that.
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: It is like if you're supposed to get ninety days
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: and the immigration officers like you have thirty days in
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: the country, that is true that they get to set that,
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: they get to tell you how many days you're in
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: the country. But if you know that the visa law
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: in the country you're visiting allows for ten days and
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: the guy says, hey, you have forty days here, don't
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: believe the officer unless the date is written on there
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: and their signature is on there, which does happen in
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: some countries still, but most of them don't do that.
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: Just go by the official posted things on the government's website,
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: the dates you're allowed to be in there. If your
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: my visa expires in fourteen days. I want thirteen days.
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: He is telling me I can stay sixty days. That
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: is crazy and would be unique. That would be a
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: very lassez fair visa policy in the strictest authoritarian regime
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: on the country aside from like North Korea and Afghanistan.
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: Ron I guess like they would be crazy if he
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: was correct, and maybe he is. But there's no way
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: I am risking overstaying my visa in any country. I
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: never have I never want to, but especially not in China,
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: where they you know, they track and know everything. Ever,
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: and that's I have a bunch of friends there, It's
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: my favorite food in the world. I don't want to
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: There's so it's it's advancing so much faster than any
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: other country I've heard of, and I'm seeing these changes
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: every year. I would be very bummed out if I
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: couldn't visit there for some period of time or ever again,
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: not see my friends again, if just because I listened
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: to an officer tell me I could stay sixty days,
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: when when I cannot imagine why that would be the case.
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: So I get into China, I'm excited to be there,
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: and I'm very excited. Actually, I'm just drooling thinking about
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: all of the food. I'm like, thirteen days. How much
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: of this food can I fit into my body in
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: thirteen days? And I will tell you it is a lot.
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: Turns out, turns out I still have the capacity, which
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: no one should be surprised by. You've heard these ramble
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: On episodes every single country. I surprised myself, not really
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: by eating an absurd amount of food, but I'm like,
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: oh my god, Okay, so I have to eat huge
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: tubs of spicy frog. I have to eat whole ducks.
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: I have to eat bags of mango dried mango. I
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: have to eat fifty thousand beers because I'm friends with
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: a bunch of drinky drinks drinking drink friends. I have
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: to get the gmbing for sure, immediately, a savory crep
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: in Beijing. There's so many things I have to eat,
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: and that's like all I'm thinking of because I've in Beijing.
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: I've been through this airport a billion times. Turns out
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: they've changed everything again, and it's so.
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: Easy now.
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: Because my sim card has made it easy. This is crazy, Okay.
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: The credit card integration is already insane. There's no minimum,
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: so literally a two cent one cent transaction fee, which
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: you could come across in China, that is an inexpensive
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: country to live in. Charge out to my no fee
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: credit card. Great, it goes straight through there we chat
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: payment system instantly and that works at the ticket machine
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: for the bullet train into the city. It has never
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: been that easy for me because because they say they
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: integrate foreign credit cards and debit cards into their national
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: payment system. They have said that for almost a decade.
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: Not true.
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: I've never known anyone with a working integration in the
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: ten years that's been correct.
• 39:15
  Speaker 2: Until this year.
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: I heard before this trip that it is finally working
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: for people. So I try to add my card again.
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: It adds it like normal, then says it doesn't work,
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: so I remove it. I add it again and it
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: says success, And I was like, excuse me. So I've
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: never done this before, and I have been to I
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: mean I lived there for six and a half years.
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: I've visited Beijing multiple times the past seven years since
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: then or however long, and all of a sudden, I
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: am connected to the national payment system. All you have
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: to do is register your credit card, add it to
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: the wee Chad app. That's it, and then you just
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: scan QR codes, just like everybody else in the country
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: scans QR codes. So all of a sudden, I'm connected
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: to things like I've never been before. You don't need
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: a physical card to write subways and trains anymore. You
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: scan the QR code with your phone and that's it.
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: It subtracts it. It is incredible to have that level
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: of access that all my friends have had, because that's
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: what the national payment system is. So what I was saying,
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: fifteen years ago I showed up. Everyone's still using cash
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: by the time I left six and a half years later. No,
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: I guess seven and a half years later, because I
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: took a year off to travel.
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: Whatever.
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: It was twenty nineteen, and almost everyone had stopped using cash.
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: They used QR codes in the span less than a
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: decade seven and seven years, seven and a half years,
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: they went from the entire country using cash, basically the
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: entire country using to the entire country using QR codes
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: in seven years a one point five billion people. That's
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: quite a paradigm shift.
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: Blew me away.
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: I couldn't use it, but my friends were all using
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: this their QR codes by that time and I was
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: still using cash. And I like cash. It's very useful.
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: Everyone always accepts cash.
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: It's good.
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: If you just want to use cash, that's fine, do that,
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: But I like the next step. I'm always interested in
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: the next thing. And I wanted to use QR codes,
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: but I never could. When I had a bank account,
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: I did, but I could never connect my foreign credit
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: card to it. So after I shut down my bank
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: account when I left to twenty nineteen, every time I
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: visited since then, I couldn't. I would have to open
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: up my bank account, and I never want to go
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: to a Chinese bank again.
• 41:32
  Speaker 2: They still take forever.
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: I assume I haven't been there a couple year, and
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: all of a sudden, I can use the QR code
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: just like I had my old Chinese bank account, except
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: I'm using my foreign credit card, so I'm getting cash
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: back for every single purchase on my no fee travel
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: credit card. And it's instant, and it's now for everything.
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: It's for the bike shares, so you can just boop
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: QR code rent a bike right across the city for
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: five hours, cost fifteen you one, which is about two
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: dollars for five hours renting a bicycle and there's a
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: cap on how much it starts at, like two rem
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: and B which is thirty cents roughly, and the cap
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: is fifteen after fifty REMMB, you can ride the bike
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: infinite and it'll just that's how much it is fifteen
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: rem ANDB per day to rent a bicycle two bucks
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: a day, and the bikes are good. I rode around
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: for five hours multiple times. It's very convenient.
• 42:27
  Speaker 2: Actually, my ID.
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: Didn't get verified for the bicycles, but so my friends
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: just zapped them. They just QR coded them for me.
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: But if I had just applied for the ID verification early,
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: I didn't apply for it until I was just about
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: to leave Beijing. But if I applied for earlier works
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: for everybody. I saw plenty of foreigners riding bikes, so
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: that's amazing. You can use your QR codes for the
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: public buses, for the subways, for the tickets to and
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: from the airport, for every single restaurant in China, for
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: every single store in China. Everything uses QR codes attached
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: to WhatsApp or allipay, but what or sorry we Chat
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: or alipay, but everyone uses we Chat, so I just
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: have that one and it worked everywhere for everything.
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: So here I am.
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: I get off and I'm like, oh my gosh, is
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: it gonna work. I find out that my japan simcard,
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: which is based in Hong Kong, automatically bypasses the Chinese
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: Great Firewall, so there's no VPN. I have to use
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: another incredible convenience. I have this Japanese simcard, and for
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: the first time in my life, I don't have to
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: use a VPN in China. I just have instant access
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: to the actual Internet because it's based in a non
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: Chinese country, Hong Kong. So I'm just yeah, I just
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: had real Internet access, just like if I was using
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: a VPAN, except I don't have to use a vpn'
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: I don't have to circumvent the Great Firewall. I have
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: a satellite link to another country. I'm an extra national
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: inside China. It was pretty cool to find that out. Okay,
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: and now I can QR code everything. So I get out,
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: I say bye to my immigration official friend, I scan
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: that QR code, I get on the train. I bullet
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: trained to the city in ten minutes whatever thirty from
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: thirty miles away.
• 44:17
  Speaker 2: It's so great.
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: It travels at three hundred kilometers an hour. I'm now
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: in Beijing, my home, my truly, my second home, my
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: adult home for sure, and I'm like, if this air
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: didn't suck, I might be convinced to just stay here.
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: But the air is bad, and so I'm only going
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: to stay for a couple of weeks. I make that decision,
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: and my thirteen days especially, I don't want to screw
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: up the visa thing, like I was mentioning. But I
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: get in there and I message my friends I am here,
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: and we're all happy and messaging each other. And then
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: I reach into my pocket and realize I took a
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: lighter on the plane. Never done that before in my life,
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: but I no, I didn't. Was in my pocket. I
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: can't remember now, but it was in my pocket or
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: the back pocket, something like that. But the first time ever.
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: I was looking for my charging cable and I was like,
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: what the And I pulled out a lighter and I
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: was like, uh, oh, that's I didn't even know you
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: could do that. You think they would notice, But I
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: have been on a hundred flights, so maybe statistically you
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: get through now, and then UH don't recommend. I do
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: not recommend that that's a bad idea, don't do that,
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: But that's so crazy. I thought I should mention it
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: allegedly unless anyone's paying attention, in which case I didn't
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: do that at all.
• 45:35
  Speaker 2: Oh man. And then I'm in Beijing again. It just
• 45:38
  Speaker 2: feels so good to be back.
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: I can read all the signs and I see the people,
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: and it's been so long since I've been in a
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: country other than the US where I can speak very comfortably.
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: When I was in Central South America, my Spanish came
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: back and I was like, ah, I'm finally speaking to
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: people like correctly again. But I land there and while
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: my Mandarin sucks, I can still talk to everyone and
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: get my basic point across and understand them. And this
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: is a country with all my favorite food and my
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: favorite conveniences. And now I'm here again, and my conveniences
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: are more convenient, my comfort is more comfortable. So I
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: walk down the street. I decide to just walk from
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: the airport to or from the subway station from the
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: airport to my hotel, which is I don't know, I
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: don't know how far away it was. It was a
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: couple miles whatever.
• 46:33
  Speaker 2: Oh no, you know what. I didn't even do that.
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: The first day I got out of the subway station,
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: I had to meet my friends because they're on the
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: northeast of Beijing and I was staying in the southwest
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: of Beijing, and the northeast is pretty far away from
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: the southwest. It's like an easy forty minutes on the subways.
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: Beijing is a huge city, so I was like, I'm
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: not going to see these guys a lot. I'll just
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: see them the first day and then I won't have
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: to constantly take trips up there. And they're at a
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: very inconvenient subway station, so to get from the southwest,
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: I actually have to transfer at least twice to get
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: to their neighborhood. So I was like, you know, it'd
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: be better. When you come from the airport, you'll be
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: in the northeast. Just see them now tonight, and then
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: that's great. You'll have seen your friends. You don't have
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: to subway up there the day after you get to
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: the southwest Citty subway all the way back up to
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: the northeast, and it was fun. They took me to
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: a uh chuar place Chwanchwan. It's like Chinese barbecue, so
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: it's like Chinese meat skewers, and it's not my favorite
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: Chinese barbecue place. I'm sorry, Sean if you're listening, but
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: it is pretty good. It's just not my style, not
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: my favorite style anyway. But we ate a bunch. But
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: I was already I was like exhausted because because in Korea,
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: I had been playing Expedition thirty three, that video game
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: a lot, and then I was walking like five hours
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: a day, so I was pretty exhausted. And then it
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: was a travel day, so I slept in the airports,
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: but I landed Beijing kind of tired, and then and
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: then it was the evening and I was pretty tired.
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: And then I went to dinner with these guys and
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: it was really fun. We had a couple beers with
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: him and his family, and I had some food, but
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: by like I don't know eleven, I was like, oh, well,
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: I'm going to die soon. And luckily his kid was
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: super tired too. Everybody around the table was getting tired.
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: And usually I am just at a place if I
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: like it, I'm like, let's just stay here till four
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: and am I'm fine, We'll just be here till four
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: in the morning. But they were all getting tired. And
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: I was like, hey, we're all getting tired, so let's
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: go to bed, and they let me go to bed, luckily.
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: But it was really fun seeing everyone because I just
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: saw them for their wedding like a month ago. It
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: was crazy to see them again that soon and just
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: some of my best friends in the world right there.
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: As a traveler, that's very nice to see someone a
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: month later that I like to spend time with. And
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: it was Yeah, it was a very fun dinner. And
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: then I got on the on the subway and I
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: zoomed off to the southwest. I luckily got the last
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: train and it stopped. It stopped two subway stops before
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: where I wanted to get off. But I like walking
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: around Beijing and I feel very comfortable there. And oh
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: you know what, on my way to meet them for
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: that Chuar, I actually had two different gmbings, the savory
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: crap pancake and two beers on the way there.
• 49:42
  Speaker 2: Maybe that's why I was tired, because I'm.
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: Walking down the street and I see jambing, which is
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: one of my favorite foods in China, and I just
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: walk up and I'm so curious if my credit card
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: linked we Chat QR code payment scanner works correctly, and
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: I I talked to one and I asked the guy
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: and I'm like, hey, I'm a foreigner speaking Mandarin. He's like,
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: I don't care. And I was like, it's always funny
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: to meet the one person in Beijing who doesn't care,
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: because everyone else is like, what are you doing speaking Mandarin?
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: But every now and then you'll run across someone who's like,
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: I couldn't give a crap if you're not Chinese and
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: can speak my language. Super rare in the country. Always
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: funny to meet someone like that. Dude was just too cool,
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: too cool for school. So I scanned it works instantly,
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: goes through.
• 50:29
  Speaker 2: I get my jambing.
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: I was like, well that was nice. That's a very
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: convenient payment system, more convenient than cash. So I go
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: down to I walked down the street and I was like,
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: you know what I want this? This is with this jambing
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: a beer And I walk into a store Jesu do
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: a shout yeah, and she's like li kui and I
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: was like, great, six quy six remmb and I take
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: out the Yuba the U eight new version of Yanjing
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: beer that is less poisonous than the other ones.
• 50:57
  Speaker 2: And I scan her qrco.
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: It goes so instantly and boop, and I get a
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: little eighty three cents whatever on my credit card. Automatic
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: notification thing working perfect so far, and I'm gonna spoil it.
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: It worked perfectly the entire time I was there. There
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: was no problems except for my ID verification for the bike,
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: but that was just because I didn't apply for the
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: bike app until the end of the trip. I didn't
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: need it, but it just kept working. I got another
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: gmbing and I got another beer at different stores. I
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: got some dried mango I did like I mentioned. I
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: got some pistachios. I got more beer from another store.
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: I got a high tie, which is Nori the dried seaweeks.
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: That is my favorite snack. I got a duck leg,
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: which is a favorite snack from China.
• 51:47
  Speaker 2: But the duck leg suck.
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: Now. They all taste processed and crappy, so that was
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: a real bummer to find out. I bet I could
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: find a good brand if I kept looking. But ooh,
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: duck neck though the duck neck still tastes awesome and
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: they have more fun on air. Dried duck neck snacks
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: now in Beijing, and they have snack specific stores, which
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: is really great. So you just go in there and
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: you can buy like one packet of twenty different kinds
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: of snacks and super cheap beer. And yeah, I bought
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: a ton of things. I scanned my QR code every time,
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: no matter what the price was, It just once or
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: instantly worked fine, just like I was swiping my credit card,
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: except it's the we check payment system that the entire
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: nation uses. But it was just as convenient as it
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: was more convenient than me using an actual credit card,
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: which doesn't work with some banks. But there's only one
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: payment system in China, so if it works once, it
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: works every single time. It turned So someone did message
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: me on the in the Lemming community and they said
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: that when they went to China it didn't work for them.
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: So if it's a business account, it always works. If
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: it is a personal account, you cannot transfer directly, but
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: you can like scan it from a distance networks sometimes.
• 53:01
  Speaker 2: I don't know why, but I found that out.
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: But yeah, if if they have registered with a business,
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: or if the person personal person has a foreign credit card,
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: you can transfer money to them. If they do not
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: have a foreign credit card or have not registered with
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: the international wit chat system. It does not work sometimes,
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: but this guy who messaged me on let me said
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: they were having problems with some businesses which I went
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: to every I mean I must have made five hundred transactions.
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: I was constantly buying like fifty cents here, somebody cents here,
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: and just like fifty trips to literally a one day,
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: I would do like ten trips to the same place
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: for one more be er if I'm sitting outside with
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: my friend so and I never had any kind of
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: any kind of issue, and I haven't heard of one
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: with any of the people that I met in my hostel,
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: any of the non Chinese people, So it seems like
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: the payment system is more integrated now than I have
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: ever heard of it being. It was amazing and so
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: convenient the entire time I was in Beijing, okay official,
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: I went to by Vinegart because I had a private room.
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: So I got to the hostel two subway stops away
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: from where I was. It's already past midnight, but there's
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: still some snack places open. I probably got a beer,
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: and they're about like half a mile apart the subway stops,
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: so it takes me a mile, takes me whatever twenty
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: minutes with my rucksack, maybe walking carelessly whimsically down the road,
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: having froudicking down the road, happy to be back, and
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: I can't find the place. And I was like, oh no,
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: because it's the first time I ever used I think
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: I used booking to book. Oh no, I used trip.
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: I must have used trip to book a hotel in China.
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: I've never done that before. When I was living there,
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: I just used cash. I walked up and talked to
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: people and then gave them money. So using an online
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: app to book a hotel was very a new experience
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: for me. But I did eventually find the place after
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: walking around for a while, and I went up escalators
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: and walked in. There was very pretty girls behind the desk,
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: and I was like, hey, I'm checking in in Mandarin
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: and they were like, great, give me your ID. I
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: don't know if I give them my ID. I must
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: have given them my passport or something. I cannot imagine.
• 55:21
  Speaker 2: I didn't.
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: I gave them my ID and my reservation number and
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: they showed me to my room and the light stopped
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: working immediately, and I was like, cool, I get to
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: go ask the pretty girls to help me, and I
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: tried to fix the lights like four times because the
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: fuse kept flipping and I couldn't do it. And then
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: I asked pretty girl to come help me. She walks
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: in the room and turns it on and then just
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: stays on, and I was like okay, And so every
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: time after that, I just kept flicking the fuse up
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: until the light stayed on and that worked fine. Just
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: had to, which is very Chinese. You just have an
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: electricity that trips the fuses all the time, but if
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: you just keep flipping the fuse back up, it'll work fine. Look,
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: China has its problem still, and they're advancing so quickly
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: that culture just doesn't have time to catch up.
• 56:13
  Speaker 2: It's China.
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: So I walk in and I'm like, oh man, there's
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: still a faint smell of smoke, which means some of
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: these mfors are smoking in their room, which is gross
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: and don't do that. People won't do that in other countries,
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: but China doesn't know that yet, so there are still,
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: particularly the older generation, that smoke in their rooms. In
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: the non smoking air. There are there are non smoking
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: signs every two feet in this hostel, and walking up
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: the stairs one day, I see a guy smoking literally
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: in front of and facing the no smoking sign, not
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: like looking.
• 56:48
  Speaker 2: At the sign, just like right next to.
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: It, just vacantizes, just smoking in front of a giant
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: as big as his body no smoking sign.
• 56:56
  Speaker 2: They just don't.
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: That's not a no smoking still has not caught on
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: in China yet. It's more popular with the younger crowd,
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: but not everybody. Oh my gosh, you're almost an hour already. Okay,
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: I get into my hostel. My room is pretty nice,
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: but not the nicest because it is China, so there's
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: no windows, but there is ventilation coming through the window,
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: which is nice, except some of these mfors are smoking,
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: so you can. It's not perfectly clean, but it's pretty
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: clean by Chinese standards, especially. This is a clean room.
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: I have a private toilet, a private shower, and a
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: large queen size bed and a work desk, and I'm
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: pretty happy. It's for some reason expensive. For some reason,
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: Chinese rooms are still expensive and I don't understand why.
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: Like this room was sixteen dollars a night a little
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: over that, so that's almost five hundred US a month.
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: Hotels as long as I have been in China, they
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: have been expensive, fifteen years ago, they were one hundred
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: yen per night, which at that time was like one
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: hundred that's almost twenty dollars. It's like, yeah, that's like
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: sixteen dollars. That's crazy. And they're still sixteen dollars, which
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: is insane because if you've been listening to this podcast
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: at all, one of the greatest things about China is
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: that rent costs nothing. Rent costs eighty US dollars for
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: a studio apartment, or like, if you're paying four hundred
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: US dollars per month, you're buying a penthouse in an
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: apartment building like you're buying a nice house. So, but
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: for some reason, hotels have always been expensive in Beijing.
• 58:34
  Speaker 2: I guess. I guess that's just I have no idea.
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: That just must be the culture because they're not super nice.
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: They're certainly certainly not nicer than temporary living you can
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: get in other countries for a quarter of the price.
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: I really don't get that, and sixteen was the cheapest
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: in Beijing. The average, I would say, for like a
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: budget traveler is thirty dollars a night for a room,
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: which is absurd, and you should never pay that. That
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: is crazy. You should contact me and I will figure
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: something out because I don't. I don't know what they
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: are thinking. And everyone was talking when I was in Beijing.
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: They're saying, like, so many people are leaving Beijing now
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: because other cities are getting richer so they don't have
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: to move to Beijing to get a job that you know,
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: so the hotels need more, you know, they're not charging
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: as much. But the hotels I talked to because I
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: was like, my room, it shouldn't this is a crazy amount.
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: Especially if I'm staying there longer, like for a week
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: or something, I should be able to negotiate lower. I
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: talked to a few hotels and they were all booked
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: up full, and these were like one hundred different rooms.
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: All the young people in China, it seems like they
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: like these are Chinese people renting these youth hostels. It
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: seems like they just either I don't know, they don't
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: have they don't have family in that city that they're
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: moving to, or they just have no way.
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 2: That's the thing.
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: They're so dependent on the systems created by China that
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: they don't think it's weird they only have one option
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: that they only have one. They can only go on
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: Sea Trip to find everything. They have no other It's
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: not like they have Booking dot com, Hotels dot com, Agda,
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: Airbnb and all this stuff. Those things are all banned.
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: They have one choice. They have to go on sea
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: trip or we chat like which is sea trip, and
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: find a hotel. In that option, they have to pay
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: whatever it says, because they only have that one option,
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: so they just don't. They wouldn't even think of going
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: into the city, walking around looking for a benguan like
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: a youth hostel, and just asking how much the money is,
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: because that's not what the government tells you to do,
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: and that's not what culture tells you to do in China.
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: Cultures like yeah, use the app, use the app that
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: everybody uses, and pay whatever they ask.
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 2: That's how it works. Okay, I'm in, it's been an hour.
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 2: I'll talk.
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: I got so much China stuff to talk about. Uh.
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: I had a great time and there's much more to
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: talk about it. I will talk to you soon. You
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: can talk to me at bit of a Rambler at
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: gmail dot com or a bit of a Rambler on
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: Blue Sky and Lemmy, I'm just hanging out. I hope
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: you're having a great day.
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 2: I will talk to you soon. I will talk to
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 2: you soon.