November 3, 2020
Shanghai, Suzhou, Hangzhou, Huangshan, Nankin
An extremely interesting country, worth visiting if only for its "closedness" and being part of the daily life of virtually most of the world. A visa for Poles costs about 300PLN and is valid for 3 months - worth it!
I remembered the country as quite peculiar - you can feel its isolation from the rest of the world. The inability to use typical services like google, gmail or popular social media sites like facebook or instagram without the VPN required some preparation in advance. The English language is practically unknown, even in the tourist centres - the only way to communicate was through translators. Instead, QR codes are widespread. They were sometimes the only way to view a menu and place an order at a restaurant, and were used for a mobile pay with Weibo (a Chinese social media app that would be difficult for a tourists to set up). Yes, mobile payments are wildly popular in China, and since European cards won't always work, stacking on RMB is mandatory.
Moving on to the most important thing - food is, by dafault, spicy. One of the first phrases I learned was "bùyào là" - "don’t want spicy food". For my weak European taste buds it was an absolute life-saver. In China, I encountered Sichuan pepper for the first time in my life - a fairly common spice, that gives tongue a characteristic tingles, which I at first took for some kind of allergy. I didn't like it back then, but now, out of sentiment, I use Sichuan pepper often. Staying on the subject of food, plastic was everywhere. Even when ordering boba tea (tapioca tea stores were on every corner) it wa