Life in China

I’ve been here in Shenzhen for four months now, and it feels like time to talk about life here in China. I’ve had several friends this past week ask what it’s like to live in a city in perpetual lockdown, and considering that we are NOT in lockdown and have not been since I’ve been here, I realize that there is a lot of misinformation out there.

A lot of people, Americans for sure, think of China as some backwards, third world country that, if it DOES have any technology, is sort of ‘duct-tape and tin can’ stuff that barely works and that people don’t really know the difference. Nothing could be further from the truth! This is the most super-modern, technologically advanced place I have ever seen, including Hong Kong (which now seems like a quaint backwater in comparison). Between the bullet trains, super efficient subway, cashless society, electric cars and scooters, digital *everything*…you feel like you are living in an episode of The Jetsons here. For many Americans, their iPhone is perhaps the most modern space-aged thing they own: those are made here in Shenzhen, and aren’t even competitive with fancy phones the Chinese make for the local market.

There is a LOT of construction going on here. This past weekend I took a trip to a neighboring town (50km away) to see some friends, and saw them building an 8-lane highway connecting to a series of massive bridges connecting to a man-made island that was being constructed to house a massive airport. Every town has dozens and dozens of cranes set up, erecting new buildings that are modern and efficient. China is getting ready for the future with careful planning and deliberate use of resources. As someone said…China has more Honor Students than the US has students, and more Engineers than the US has college graduates, and they are putting them to work building this country.

I’ve talked before about the cashless society: everyone here has an app on their phone called ‘WeChat’ that contains all their personal data. Yes, I know my American friends are cringing about how that makes you vulnerable to identity theft (something there is considerably more of in the US than here…) but it also means you can do a ton of things with your phone. Almost everyone does almost all their shopping online, using an app within WeChat called TaoBao that is like Amazon on steroids. It even has image recognition, for those of us who don’t read Chinese: I can call up an image of something on my computer (or even in real life), point my phone at it with TaoBao open, and it will show me that item for sale. I can buy my groceries (and have them delivered to my house within hours), book tickets to anything, buy clothes, arrange a taxi, rent a scooter or bicycle, buy a cup of coffee at a local shop that I pick up when I walk past…if you can think of it, you can do it online.

There are some uncomfortable constraints here, though. Because of their ‘Zero Covid’ policy (basically, taking extreme measures to stop ANY spread of Covid), everyone in the city has to get tested for Covid every 24 hours. There are tents set up all over the place where you get in line, as you approach the tent you show you personal ID code to someone who scans it on their phone, then go to a window where you get the back of your tongue swabbed. They pool every 20 swabs into a common container, and if any single container shows any trace of Covid, then all 20 people have their health code on their phones turn yellow, which means they have to find another station and get tested again. If another container tests positive, they look for the person(s) who were in common to the two containers and they get sent to quarantine. A very efficient way to test 20 million people a day.

Here’s where the ‘lockdown’ talk comes in. If there are several positive tests in a small area, the city will immediately lock down that building or part of town. Anyone who is there: visiting, shopping, eating at a restaurant, sleeping, whatever…has to stay for 3-5 days. No one can go in or out (although people can order food on WeChat that gets delivered to the front of the building) until the time is over. Then they all get tested on the way out.

When I got here, there was a small uptick in cases in a part of town, so the city put that part of town into ‘soft lockdown’, which meant no buses, trains or taxis could run. That meant people could not move around easily. Also, every store and space had a guard at the door checking your health code: if it was more than 24 hours old, you could not go in. That included your own apartment, so everyone became VERY diligent about keeping their tests current.

In my part of town, we didn’t even have a soft lockdown…I was only prevented from going downtown (45 minutes away) to play music, but here in TangLang (my little community) everything was open.

Anyway, I really like it here. I don’t horribly mind the regular Covid tests, although it does restrict traveling outside of Shenzhen (different cities have different rules, and the towns around Shenzhen are considered ‘high risk’, so if you go to any of them you need to quarantine for 3-5 days when you get back…so no one really goes anywhere). But other than that, people here are amazingly friendly, absolutely everyone is in great physical shape, dress well, its by far the safest place I have EVER been, the food is fantastic, I have already made a ton of friends outside of work and regularly get invited to gatherings, and I play guitar at three different venues every week with a whole assortment of musicians.

So no, this is definitely NOT “some backwards, third world country that, if it DOES have any technology, is sort of ‘duct-tape and tin can’ stuff that barely works and that people don’t really know the difference” and we are NOT in perpetual lockdown. And yes, China is going to take over the world someday, because they are organized, efficient, modern, creative and relentless.