China is funny

May 21, 2024

Last month, I visited China for the first time in eight years.

For some reason, I couldn’t stop thinking about how funny everything was. Maybe there’s another word, but that’s the term that kept coming back to me.

Maybe it was the fact that the architecture and planning just seems so random. It seems like they just parodied American suburbanism with tons of cars and ten-lane roads with massive crosswalks.

Or, maybe it was hearing the conspiracy theories that my uncle learned about on Douyin (Chinese TikTok). Ideas that echoed white supremacy ideas, but for Chinese people, like humans originated in China and that Chinese people are inherently smarter than other races.

Or, maybe it was watching my cousin roast the hell out of my uncle for believing the grifter on Douyin that spewed these ideas. My cousin also talked about some of the weaknesses of the Chinese government, which caused great disappointment to my uncle (which he admitted to me as we bought some lottery tickets).

It was definitely the massive plaza (guang chang) that you could only access via underpasses where a bunch of old men were spaced out playing saxophones and other wind instruments. (When we asked a man why there were so many out there, he hypothesized that it was too stuffy inside their apartments.)

I think the humor of my time in China came from the idea that humor is the “subversion of expectations.” I think I was surprised at how developed China had become—it’s now extremely clean, perception of safety is super high, half the cars on the road seem to be electrical vehicles, public transit is clean and reliable, and they are building literally everywhere. It’s honestly impressive what can be done when labor is cheap, there’s a desire to make places better, and there’s a lot of people to actually do the work. I was pleasantly surprised at the fact that Chinese people aren’t as brainwashed as I thought they were.

Yet, I was also surprised how stagnant the culture was. I think China is still pretty poor. I saw some habits that really annoyed me like: tons of smoking, shitty air quality (it’s improved but even NYC air feels fresh compared to some smaller Chinese cities near mountains), and people just pushing to get places (lining up seems to be a foreign concept). Most of the music and cultural references seemed to be based on Western media (a lot of ringtones are still American songs, heard some Taylor Swift blasting in a park).

Of course, there were parts that weren’t as funny. My grandparents are aging, and I felt like the language gap hindered me from having real conversations with my relatives. Many times, I could just sit there passively and smile and nod when I couldn’t understand things.

This has probably been one of the most exciting trips I’ve been on in a while. I can’t wait to go back.

Thanks for reading :)

Last updated December 20, 2024