Scattered thoughts after a trip to China

I came back from China with a suitcase full of souvenirs and a head full of questions. I thought I was going on a trip; instead I got a lesson in humility. In the West we grew up believing we are the centre of the world. After sixteen days across Beijing, Xi’an, Chongqing, Zhangjiajie and Shanghai, the feeling is different: that centre, if it hasn’t moved already, is becoming contested.

A gaze that has changed

Even before leaving I had noticed a strange shift. A few years ago we looked at the East with a certain sense of superiority. Today it’s the opposite: Eastern culture has won us over, and sometimes we almost idealise it.

Then you actually get there and you understand why. In two weeks it’s impossible to see all the contradictions of such a huge country, and I don’t pretend I did. But what I saw is a country that works. You feel safe on every street, at any hour. And above all you meet wonderful people: helpful, curious, always ready to make friends with a foreigner who can’t say two words in their language.

A future that hasn’t reached us yet

Technology is the first thing that strikes you, and it never stops.

On the high-speed train there’s a QR code on your seat. You scan it and order food from a restaurant in one of the stations ahead. The system works out when you’ll pass through and the food arrives at your seat at exactly the right moment. Put like that it sounds like science fiction. There it’s normal.

Then you look up at the street and notice the cars are almost all electric. One day we asked a taxi driver where they charge them, since not everyone has a parking space or a charger at home. He told us there are stations where everyone goes to charge at the end of the day. Charging a car is faster than a few years ago, but it’s still time taken out of your evening. And they do it every day, because the country chose that direction.

It struck me deeply: a civic sense I struggle to imagine back home.

Cities that change face every year

The other thing that leaves you speechless is the speed. Chongqing is an ancient city, yet in a few years it has turned into a vertical metropolis. It seems to change face every year, and it does so with a plan, building enormous infrastructure.

Chongqing East station, opened in 2025, is today the largest railway station in the world by size. And yet you walk in and everything works: fast, orderly, with punctual trains and prices that look like a joke next to ours.

The price of all this

And here comes the question that never left me. All this efficiency has a cost, and the cost is a part of your freedom. Cameras, checks, a system that decides many things for you.

As a Westerner, the instinctive answer is that the price is too high. But when you see everything working so well and you walk at night without ever feeling in danger, part of you wonders whether it’s really such a bad thing. I don’t have an answer, and I don’t think two weeks as a tourist are enough to have one.

What I do know is that before leaving I would never have asked myself that question. And that may be the most important thing the trip left me.

Are we really so different?

Then at some point you get the opposite doubt. Are we really that far apart?

In China I saw the same consumerism we see at home: the hunger for clothes, luxury cars, brands. Western streetwear is everywhere and Adidas almost looks like a second uniform. In some ways we’ve all become a little alike.

But there’s a detail that made me smile. Western brands themselves have understood that underneath this likeness there is a very strong cultural identity. Adidas, for instance, has collections made only for the Chinese market, full of references to their culture. They’re beautiful, and today they’re taking off here too. We look alike, yes, but each of us stays ourselves.

The trip I’d already seen on TikTok

The last thought is the most uncomfortable, because it’s about me. China is a beautiful country to look at. It has plenty of substance too, but it’s famous above all for its looks. So famous that, thinking about it, I had already seen almost my whole trip on TikTok before leaving.

And that shows how easily social media sways us. Many things that look incredible on screen really are beautiful, but they don’t always give you what you expect. Furong, the village on the waterfall, is spectacular to see, but it didn’t move me much. Fenghuang, which I knew far less about, enchanted me.

And above all, the moments I remember most are the ones I had never seen on any screen. A chat with a taxi driver, an evening in an ordinary bar, a street taken by chance. Those were mine alone.

What I’m taking home

If I had to sum it all up in one piece of advice, it would be this: go to China, but not to remake the video you’ve already watched. Use an itinerary as a guide, not a script, and leave room for the unexpected. That’s where the trip stops being the same for everyone and becomes yours.

I left thinking I'd see a faraway country. I came back feeling the world is much bigger, and much less centred on us, than I believed. It was the best lesson of all.