Does anything change?

Scrolling through old forum posts from almost 20 years ago I came across this link https://newsarchive.berkeley.edu/news/students/2004/china/china6.shtml. The chinese american ABC experience still applies today (I was 2 years old in 2004!) China has developed so much over the years, but it also seems as if some things will never change. An interesting topic to ponder over. 

Ah, the perpetually offended. 

If it's any consolation 20 years later,  I am finding China is a LOT less welcoming than it used to be. 

I used Qunar for years and years for train tickets, air tickets, hotels, etc. I had relatives come visit and couldn't use it  to book their train tickets. I even had their passport info saved from years ago the last time they visited.  I tried 12306 app and it wouldn't work even after I uploaded photos of their passports. 

I got the distinct impression they were supposed to arrive, travel to the train station and once there, show their physical passports and buy tickets for trains that would be long sold out by then. 

Turns out, nobody said anything but all foreigners are supposed to use Trip.com now for tickets of all kinds. 

I tried using their web page and it was deliberately slow, with screens saying, "tired of waiting, download our app!" and displaying a QR code to Google Play, which is blocked in China. 

Trip.com are the bastards that ripped me off on my honeymoon when I booked an all-inclusive hotel in Bali, only to find once there I only had a hotel and no all-inclusive. 

Someone at the company had obviously  pocketed the difference in price. After calling and reporting this, they offered  airport transfers in compensation.  I had already paid for a taxi to the hotel. I had a printout of my confirmation, nothing was done. 

After my relatives had gone back, I'm trying to get back home from Shanghai.  I opened  Qunar again and it had deleted my passport info entirely. I tried to re-add and it would only accept a Chinese ID card. Just like in the old says, no option for 护照. 

Then I use Trip.com and the price is higher than Qunar. 

The whole experience was genuine "F you go home laowai" vibes that I've never felt before. 

Sure, plenty of "no passport" option in the past  but that always seemed from neglect or  "nobody ever thought about that". 

A major travel service deleting a long-time customer and the only remaining option is more expensive can't be a coincidence, it's deliberate enemy action. 

On 12/1/2025 at 5:38 AM, vellocet said:

 

If it's any consolation 20 years later,  I am finding China is a LOT less welcoming than it used to be. 

Interesting! Since I have gone back to the US, I sometimes wondered about that. Your example is of an on-line event. Do you more often run into the same behavior in person these days? I usually found China welcoming face-to-face; just wondering if that has also changed to any great extent. (I realize it is impossible to extrapolate or generalize too widely from one individual's experience.) 

For what it's worth I was in China in September this year and it felt pretty much the same as it's been for a long time now, ie. not so much 'f you go home laowai', more 'laowai...computer says no'. At an everyday social level, people are still welcoming and happy (ish, heard 卷 being said all day every day)

On 12/1/2025 at 7:38 PM, vellocet said:

Turns out, nobody said anything but all foreigners are supposed to use Trip.com now for tickets of all kinds. 

Nah. you're wrong. My friend came to visit me this past April from the UK and I uploaded his passport into 12306, it filled in his details for me and I bought is tickets no problem. Also have another laowai friend here who has never taken the train, so I bought his ticket the same way and we went to Tianjin. That was last month. The only thing I noticed was there was a message saying that they hadn't confirmed their emails, but regardless the tickets were purchased and worked just fine. I also know many other foreigners that use both 12306 and Ctrip with no issues whatsoever. Ctrip works smooth as silk for hotels, I have booked hotels over one hundred times over the years and can't think of a single incident.

I don't think there is any substantial price difference between Qunar and Ctrip. My wife will use Qunar, I use Ctrip, and when we compare its always 差不多 - Ctrip includes tax when you are looking at hotels/tickets, Qunar does not show you the tax til the final bill, but they end up about the same. Never encountered anyone with these kinds of Ctrip/12306/qunar problems you describe. I don't use Qunar myself, because I collect the Ctrip points, but pretty sure I have at least one non-Chinese friend who does. Maybe make sure you don't have some old version of all these apps.

On 12/1/2025 at 7:38 PM, vellocet said:

If it's any consolation 20 years later,  I am finding China is a LOT less welcoming than it used to be. 

It's you, mate. I've been here continuously since 2012 and there's no "less welcoming". My laowai friends would all say the same. Life all around is better here than it ever has been.

On 12/1/2025 at 7:38 PM, vellocet said:

The whole experience was genuine "F you go home laowai" vibes that I've never felt before. 

I don't get this in Beijing or any of the many places I've traveled to.

On 11/28/2025 at 3:23 PM, ez said:

The chinese american ABC experience still applies today (I was 2 years old in 2004!) China has developed so much over the years, but it also seems as if some things will never change. An interesting topic to ponder over. 

I can't speak for ABC's because I'm as Caucasian as they come. But as for discrimination against abcs, It's all plusses and minuses though. In the early years of learning Chinese it's going to be a lot easier for an Asian looking person to get natural Chinese language interactions than a white dude - even if they have the same low level ability. 

I also use the train app with no problems, so not sure what that's about. Plenty of other apps I have had the "NO ID, no dice" experience though.

I do a market stall in the village just over every weekend now, and people are overwhelmingly friendly, almost certainly do better business because of being foreign; do still get the occasional knobber and microagression but nothing to write home about, mostly starting off talking to you in a funny sing-song foreigner accent but then usually backpedalling when they find I speak Chinese pretty well. Certainly think it's fewer idiots than a Chinese person doing a market stall in my home town would meet.

How do you run an illegal business without getting busted up by the police?  Around here even playing guitar at a bar got a foreigner arrested and deported. 

Even for Chinese, they shut down all the street carts long ago.  Not modern. I guess they have them for the occasional festival. One with foreigners who drove all the way from Yunnan. 

On 12/2/2025 at 11:50 AM, vellocet said:

How do you run an illegal business without getting busted up by the police? 

The business is legal, we have a trading license. The market is fairly well established and now run by an agency on behalf of the village committee, gets a lot of day-trippers coming out from the city to enjoy our mountains and fresh air. They've mucked about a bit shifting locations and changing fees charged and so on, preferred it when it was self-organised, but having the official stamp of approval saves any of the sort of bother you mention.

On 12/1/2025 at 7:38 PM, vellocet said:

I tried 12306 app and it wouldn't work even after I uploaded photos of their passports. 

12306 works for me and all of my foreign friends who have visited me, we are all able to add passports? The hardest part was just translating the screen and figuring out what we had to click to add passports. I guess I would suggest using xiecheng, it works flawlessly. I am able to upload my passport, and can even see flights bought for my passport in the xiecheng app even when they aren't bought by me or purchased off another site, the same goes for 12306. I think it's something to do with everything being public, as long as you have an id number you can find out everything about the person in China (which is both very convenient and very scary )

On 12/2/2025 at 11:10 AM, suMMit said:

I can't speak for ABC's because I'm as Caucasian as they come. But as for discrimination against abcs, It's all plusses and minuses though. In the early years of learning Chinese it's going to be a lot easier for an Asian looking person to get natural Chinese language interactions than a white dude - even if they have the same low level ability. 

Although I never experienced what it was like 20 years ago, I'd say it's better. I've only had good interactions (or just the common America questions), and if I don't want to appear as an abc I just keep my mouth shut and no one is the wiser . My accent is probably on the higher levels for abc's so for simple conversations people won't look at me like I'm stupid. I also don't go out of my way to announce I can't read, but I'd assume if I did I'd get some looks or comments. 

And yes, I believe because I am an abc I will be able to experience a cultural side of China that most foreigners won't be able to, while also still being given a fair amount of patience from locals because I am still a foreigner in their eyes, just less than a white guy. I don't teach english so haven't been discriminated on that front.

All in all very happy I am an abc.

On 12/2/2025 at 12:06 PM, Jim said:

The market is fairly well established and now run by an agency on behalf of the village committee

Is the market in Beijing? Would love to visit 

On 12/4/2025 at 11:34 AM, ez said:

Is the market in Beijing? Would love to visit 

Yes, we're out in Changping in a village called 辛庄; featured on one of the local TV stations last weekend, including interviewing me and the wife. Market is both days every weekend.

On 12/2/2025 at 12:06 PM, Jim said:

The business is legal, we have a trading license. 

How do you open a retail business with a trading company license? 

That's allowed to buy and sell cross-border because it has an export license, but as far as retail, that's a different kind of license. You mean a WFOE, right?

That you own? 

Or if your wife owns it, you're legally employed by her trading company as a foreign expert, but now I'm curious how you got a foreign expert certificate for a low-level service job

Ah, anyway just typing this out I figured it out, it's dodgy, never mind.  I won't upset someone else's apple cart.

On 12/4/2025 at 4:58 PM, Jim said:

Yes, we're out in Changping in a village called 辛庄; featured on one of the local TV stations last weekend, including interviewing me and the wife. Market is both days every weekend.

Do you mind if I ask what you sell and what other sorts of things are at the market? I wouldn't mind coming out there sometime too.

On 12/5/2025 at 7:12 AM, suMMit said:

Do you mind if I ask what you sell and what other sorts of things are at the market?

We do homemade bread and cakes; there's clothes, handicrafts and a few other speciality foods at the market, plus antiques and knick-knacks and the like.

On 12/2/2025 at 12:43 AM, abcdefg said:

Just wondering if that has also changed to any great extent. (I realize it is impossible to extrapolate or generalize too widely from one individual's experience.) 

Post-covid China is different.  Around here we lost a LOT of foreigners. I haven't seen a traveling foreign businessman in a long time. 

Since the double rectification, the only English teachers left are in public schools. A few foreign   managers and a few oddballs like me, but that's it. The positive part is that the foreign trash are all gone. I know one fellow who is using an old-fashioned dodgy business visa to live here but he just moved to Shanghai. It worked, I waited another one of them out again. 

It's like the old days again, when we were few and pretty much knew each other. Except China is modern now. I watched some of my old ebike ride videos from 2012 recently and wow have things changed. No more dangerous trucks spewing filthy exhaust. There used to be derelict structures and lots full of debris in the city.  In America this would signal " high crime area" but here it was just that they hadn't cleaned it up yet. They've gotten around to it. 

No more taxis refusing rides or unavailable at peak times or loading up on multiple passengers. 

Ever since Sam's Warehouse opened last year, I declared China basically a first world developed country. They've come so far, so fast. My brother was here recently and very impressed by the trains. He said that was his favorite part of the trip. 

On 12/7/2025 at 12:58 PM, vellocet said:

loading up on multiple passengers

ah yes, I both loved this and hated it too, had some very awkward rides but also some of the best random conversations with strangers

12306 works fine for me, but there are persistent reports that some have problems with the initial passport registration. 

As for whether it's changed for the better, do you want to go back to the days of FEC, when buying your special price foreigner's train ticket meant a trip out to the station because the small city ticket offices didn't sell them? Or when you'd end up traipsing around in the rain with your stuff at night looking for a place that would take you the foreigner? Or when plane tickets were almost unbookable without connections? Etc.

I don't think anyone was here then.  I've never seen an FEC or a Friendship store. 

I remember the bound books of naked women in the gift shops of  hotels for foreign businessmen though.

I thought we all got here when China was admitted to WTO or after, which is what got the ball really rolling on opening up. How would anyone have any reason for being here, even? no  foreign business and therefore no demand for English teachers. Strict visas instead of handing out F visas like candy to anyone with a letter from a trading company. 

It's why I got here, boss wanted  China  cheap and he had a felony conviction so he wasn't able to get a passport and travel. 

I guess I just have to go down to the train station and register with 12306 manually.  Like I said, less and less welcoming. Or pay the trip.com higher price. 

On 12/11/2025 at 12:09 AM, vellocet said:

Like I said, less and less welcoming. Or pay the trip.com higher price. 

The higher price is just a 30 rmb difference if you don't buy with 12306, just use alipay. I would argue that as China has modernized, it has become more welcoming to foreigners who they believe bring value to the country - I know if I were to start a business in the Chaoyang district as a foreigner, I would get office space rent completely subsidized year 1, 50% off year 2, and a ton of other benefits. (Even more if I or someone else in the business had a PHD). White worship is a lot more toned down, you are more than welcome to vent about how you miss those days but claiming the entire country is less welcoming seems like a stretch.