In 2025, I took a 3 month trip to Asia, and China stood out as one of the more interesting countries I visited1.
I flew from Singapore (SIN) to Shanghai (PVG) on Spring Air, then exited through Busan (PUS). In China, I stayed mainly in Shanghai and Suzhou.
The vibe in Shanghai2 – and China broadly – felt like work hard: think 996 culture, eat-sleep-code-repeat, build-an-empire hard. Factories run all night, startups push updates daily, and engineers learn AI frameworks faster than we debate which one to use.
I wanted to visit Shenzhen – China’s Silicon Valley – but didn’t have time.
In China, US tech platforms like Google, YouTube, OpenAI, X/Twitter, Instagram, and Wikipedia are blocked. I had to use a VPN to access them.
I tried the Chinese tech equivalents: e.g. Baidu for search, WeChat Pay for payments, and Bilibili for video. I thought they were easy to use, and liked the density of UI elements, which pleased my ADHD brain.
I feel that Chinese (Xiaomi, Huawei) EVs are quite impressive as they look sleek and futuristic..
- Thanks to the 240 hour visa ↩︎
- https://paulgraham.com/cities.html ↩︎
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