I spent a couple of months in China last fall. A few newbie observations and a video travelogue: 

• So many people! No wonder there’ve been waves of migration, resulting in Chinese people all over the world 
• Scale and speed of development is quite amazing. Where a few decades before there was farmland, now there are highrises 
• Very nearly a cashless society: every day business is done on smartphones, using apps like Didi and WeChat 
• Security is everywhere. I never could quite figure out why there were cops in the Metro, for example, seemingly with nothing to do 
• Big cities are clean! Much cleaner than places like Paris or Mexico 
• Communist state? Maybe, but I didn’t see it. What I saw where lots of people hustling, intent on making a buck (sorry, RMB) 
• Chinese national narrative begins with Mao. Visiting the CCCP museum in Shanghai for Chinese is like visiting Independence Mall for Americans 
• Underdeveloped country? Maybe, but what I saw didn’t look that way to me. I didn’t go to the countryside or any poor cities, but cities like Shanghai seem ultra-sophisticated, with high society districts in the West. Chinese high-speed trains seemed to me slicker than anything I’d seen anywhere. Here’s my travelogue: