I don't think that's how Americans see China?
In any case, Starbucks in Asia is pretty upscale compared to the US. It serves a different (and wealthier) demographic.
In any case, Starbucks in Asia is pretty upscale compared to the US. It serves a different (and wealthier) demographic.
My wife is from Thailand and I've lived there for a while, I've noticed the same thing there with Western fast food chains. We think of KFC, Dominos or Maccas as junk food but over there, they are considered "mid range", as a result they are much cleaner and better staffed, the venues have much nicer seating etc. - this is especially true in regional areas, much less in Bangkok and other urban areas where I guess the novelty factor is long gone.
For Thailand specifically, The Pizza Company's[0] back-story is kinda interesting, which is that they used to be the local Pizza Hut franchisee, and then "something happened", and they simply rebranded while serving almost identical menus. The founder, an American-born Thai white guy called William Hienecke[1] is also a super-interesting guy to read about.
You'll see techies who think China is all open modern Shenzhen, and are surprised when they visit and Gmail doesn't work (at least, that was my experience hosting a computer science conference in Beijing in 2011).
My wife has wechat/pay, so it won't be a big deal when we go back. Starbucks will take foreign credit cards (or at least they did?), you could suffer at McDonalds though. I wonder if the xiaochi's still take cash?
And yes I think long long ago the WeChat setup would expect a Chinese ID number, but for at least some years now they've accepted passports as an alternative.
But very recently (in the last six months) they've started allowing foreign cards for WeChat pay. So you can add a card and pay for things in store, but not access the more general money transfers, red packets, etc. that people do with it. I guess those have stricter KYC requirements, plus they are keen to stop money getting out of the country.
Smaller places I never _see_ take cash, always WeChat, but I suppose that doesn't strictly mean they won't take it.
I'm really wondering how the hole in the wall xiaochis (e.g. 成都小吃, this is mostly a Beijing thing) work now. I'm guessing they would be the first ones not to take cash anymore if they didn't have to.
Then again, I often find in China that workers/officials/whatever make up the rules on the spot, depending on what they know how to do, or what they consider too mafan. So maybe some will just 'feel' like you need a visa and others won't.
I get a similar thing in hotels where they can't be bothered to register my passport with the PSB, because they don't get many foreign visitors and so e.g. the computer to do it is not turned on. So they just don't do it.
I would guess you could get a hole in the wall to take cash most of the time, I just never see it done. One problem with cash in China is that the largest note has a pretty low value given how inflation is going and how costs are in tier one cities. Chinese people seem to think this is some kind of image management thing, where if they issue a larger denomination everyone will start freaking out about inflation. But I guess it's moot given how cash is losing favor anyway.
My landlord used to make me pay my rent in cash, and we have to pay three months at a time. So I would withdraw 18,000 RMB from an ATM to take to my landlord. Thankfully, there are a couple of ATMs in Beijing that let you withdraw up to 10,000 RMB at a time, because when I had to use a normal one, everyone behind me in line was pretty angry. Then I would put it into my man purse, which was really fashionable in the 00s, because cash was king and you needed a lot of 100 RMB bills to buy things.
I used to adhere pretty strictly to the rules. Like I'd go register at the PSB as I moved around, all that stuff. At the time I figured, well, it's China, maybe they have some centralized place they're recording all this and they'll approve my next visa faster. But I've met other foreigners who just do not care about any of that, never register, and they get much better visa offers than I do. It's just a huge chaotic machine really.
You can talk to one official who'll tell you it's literally impossible to do X, where X is some thing that massively impacts your life there. Go to a different office or speak to a different person and oh yeah, you want to do X, no problem, and it's done in five minutes.
That drives some people crazy but I recommend anyone to experience China at least once in their lifetime. It's a very perspective-changing place.
Different PSBs in Beijing had different policies though, Haidian was looser than Chaoyang (or at least the ones I had in each, both Haidian and Chaoyang are huge and probably have multiple ones).
Before I lived in China for 9 years, I spent two years in Switzerland. You do not want to mess with the contrôle des habitants, Swiss police/officials are not very understanding. I delayed my exit from Switzerland for one week (to attend a conference) and it became a huge deal even if Americans are firmly on visa waver. Mostly the opposite of China.