In China, no Facebook and no Google and no Wayz and Evil Surveillance State!!!
I genuinely lol'd when they called Yelp an 'essential' app.
I can’t believe that Chinese services are not provided exclusively in English. They don’t even have an app for crossing the street! You need to press this “button” thing. Their utensils are not even wifi-enabled!
If anything I’m likely to think “Why are there so many white people here?” because it means I’m in a super overpriced tourist area
What are you talking about? US street signs are always in Simplified Chinese, (English) Latin Characters, and Cyrillic
1 Visa process sucks yes,
2 roaming plan that's an L on your country's ISPs, but is annoying. Download stuff you need beforehand (maps, translation stuff like languages on google translate)
3 you don't need a Chinese sim as a tourist,
4 nobody uses a credit card outside the US just use your debit card,
5 same goes for the next point,
6 I didn't stay in hotels (stayed with a family) so idk
7 No it doesn't, not the metro nor the intercity ones. Which ones do?
8 Which ones that you'd need as a tourist?
9
Are you seriously complaining that the people in the other country you're in use a different languagethis was written by a netizen, not an american. I can understand it makes things more difficult than if everything were written in English, but I don't expect streets signs to be in a language I can understand when I travel anyway?10 Use a VPN you Dingus, also should download all maps before going anywhere so you don't need a connection in the first place.
11 Again use a fucking VPN
4 nobody uses a credit card outside the US just use your debit card,
The US has made debit card fraud common because many places still swipe as opposed to chip which means you can have unlimited liability if your cash gets stolen from your account. Credit cards are limited to $50 liability by law but this is mostly waived in the event of fraud.
What do you mean by this? I said that USians shouldn't be surprised they can't use their credit cards, and should use their debit instead.
Do you mean that the US has no fraud protections related to debit cards, meaning that you guys won't want to use them?
That's wild why is there no fraud protection on debit cards? Like can't you just call your bank, say it got stolen, have em block the card and reimburse you? I can do that from my bank app, don't even have to call
With credit card fraud, the card issuer's money is at stake. With debit card fraud, your money has been stolen.
From this article: https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/credit-cards/credit-card-vs-debit-card-safer-online-purchases
If card information has been stolen and potentially fraudulent transactions have been made, two laws protect your rights. For credit cards, the primary law is the Fair Credit Billing Act, or FCBA. For debit card transactions, the Electronic Funds Transfer Act (EFTA) applies. While these laws offer some similar protections, knowing the differences is key to understanding why it's safer to use one type of plastic than the other. According to the EFTA, your potential liability for fraudulent debit card transactions is virtually unlimited. You have up to 60 days to report a lost or stolen card under the EFTA. After that, you simply lose whatever money was taken, even funds siphoned from linked accounts. The exact liability limits under the EFTA are: Lost or stolen card reported before unauthorized transactions: zero liability. Lost or stolen card reported within two days: $50 liability limit. Lost or stolen card reported within 60 days: $500 liability limit. After 60 days: no protection. It's important to note that if your card is not physically lost or stolen, you have 60 days to report fraudulent transactions with zero liability. If only your card number is stolen, the 60 days start from the date of the statement on which a fraudulent transaction appears. Under the FCBA, your maximum liability for fraudulent credit card transactions is $50. If you report your card lost or stolen before any fraudulent transactions occur, your liability is zero. Many credit cards promise zero liability for all fraudulent transactions.Incentivizing consumer credit was a key step in making the USA what it is today.
Interesting. Enough protection to go on holiday with it, but damn that's wild
That's probably how they hand out more credit cards
By locking essential features behind a debt trap high interest rate credit card
Yeah they've got a totalitarian credit score system (makes you think)
Tbf if you use a credit card exactly the same as you would use your debit card the interest rate is 0
If you pay off all your IMF/World Bank loan payments on time your interest rates don't look awful
The primary purpose of a credit card is to be predatory and the fact that they don't provide basic features such as a fraud protection on a debit card further emphasizes that
The workaround here is that debit cards are actually credit cards.
All debit cards are issued as either Visa or MasterCard and when you go to purchase something, you skip pin entry and run it as credit and Visa/Master Card instantaneously issues you a line of credit equal to what you spent then pays off that credit from your bank. Thereby putting your transaction under the protection of a credit transaction.
I believe banks eat a small fee for this.
There are private protections like that, but not much in the way of legal protections like for credit cards, so if you don't notice very quickly or are using a service that doesn't have those conveniences, there may be more lasting damage done by debit theft (though if you are very slow in catching it, credit fraud is infamously pretty destructive too).
It can vary by bank. Someone I know had her purse stolen a few years ago and getting the money back was a huge pain in the ass
The discover card was fixed in an instant, the debit card caused problems.
The US has made debit card fraud common because many places still swipe as opposed to chip
I love how the molten-core centre of the global capitalist financial empire still hasn't themselves adopted chip and pin lol what the fuck I'm so confused every time I visit the USA and I can't even use my fucking Interac card half the time
Yeah I’ll go months tapping 90% of places and chip the other 10%, and then I go visit my parents in their tiny mountain town and it’s all swiping
If people can get through the process of applying for a tourist visa to a foreign country, they can figure out how to install a basic VPN tbh
One of the ones I use don't even let you choose the location of the VPN, it's just no options, click "on" and it auto routes you to one. You can't even see where it routes you through lol
Barring the VISA it seems like all very minor gripes to me, but maybe I'm incorrect. And yeah I kinda expect people to understand how to click the "on" button on an app.
Really? I'm surprised.
Googling "10 things to remember before visiting China", VPNs are mentioned in the top three articles 1 2 3
Listen you don't have to respond I'm being a smart ass rn lol, I recognise traveling to China, especially outside the major cities, isn't as easy as e.g. traveling to Italy. But I don't think I'm out of line for thinking it's not that difficult either.
roadsigns are in Pinyin in China? goddamn is that generous. motherfuckers bending over backwards letting foreigners with different scripts read signs and you complain?
where are the fuckin signs anywhere in western europe or anglolands not using latin scripts?
for the purposes of me not being wrong we are excluding germany from 'western europe' at this time.
It is part of central Europe depending on how you demarcate it, so you're good!
In Denmark the mayor of a border town one or up a single bilingual town sign as a goodwill gesture towards the local German minority and to reciprocate the widespread practice of bilingual town signs in Germany. The next morning angry locals had torn up the sign.
The line between being nice to westerners and knowing that if they can’t read your street signs they’ll be a danger on the roads
I haven't been back to China since the lockdowns, but at least in Beijing and Shanghai the street signs have been in pinyin for decades now. I'm not even sure what the difference is for most streets. Like "Tai Ping Yang Road" vs "Tai Ping Yang Lu"? I guess it could get a bit dicey if it's "Huai Hai Zhong Lu" vs "Huai Hai (Middle) Road" but like... it's not that hard is it?
I wish my country was at that point. It's always a huge disappointment to see locals doing everything for whitey while smiling like a performing monkey
Some of these items are a great pitch for touring there. As a white person, why would one feel such a need to be surrounded by white tourists? I hate tourist traps in general the vast majority of the time, so I don't think I'd be comforted by more Hawaiian shirts on the Great Wall or whatever.
Edit: "hundreds of countries"? Aren't there like 195 or so?
Well the whole thing is. Baidu maps isn't even in English. Guess you need to use a VPN.
China no longer gives a fuck about Western tourists
I mean let's be honest this probably applies to all foreigners. You'd probably have a much worse experience visiting as a south-Asian person than a white person in terms of discrimination. And they're one of the top 5 countries with the least immigrants per capita in the whole world (0.1% of the population), China unfortunately seems to like closing its doors to everyone
All of these are either extremely exaggerated or straight up lies. Source: I am in China right now.
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Visa process for China wasn’t all that bad and was relatively quick compared to another much worse visa experience.
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My phone plan covers roaming, free data (throttled after 5 GB) and $.25 a minute calls, and doesn’t require a VPN or anything else.
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Got an eSIM online as a backup due to the throttling and it works great. Also don’t need a VPN for that.
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Credit cards are accepted at places that cater to foreigners, but it’s easy for foreign visitors to set up AliPay and you can use that pretty much everywhere.
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Again, AliPay is easy to set up and accepted at most places.
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This is just straight up BS.
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I don’t know about train travel but foreigners can use subways just fine at least. They even have everything in English as well as Chinese.
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Haven’t had any issues with this and passports are accepted as ID any time I’ve purchased tickets for anything.
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They do have enough English on road signs to know where you’re going. You’re not going to be driving in China anyways and even if you were, map apps work just fine. The street names are pinyin because they are Chinese. What else would they be?
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No issues accessing these on my primary phone plan or eSIM even without a separate VPN, and I can also access anything on non-mobile internet with a VPN.
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Again, no issues with a VPN. I can even access hexbear dot net to let people know that Winnie the Pooh being banned in China is completely made up.
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Pretty sure cash is still king most places. At least, I often see the narrator on Little Chinese Everywhere YouTube using cash.
Anyone can download a VPN it's literally free on the app store.
Cry ab it.
A mass media campaign of rampant sinophobia might also have something to do with it.
The person in the screencap said that that barely saw any tourists in 2018, which is pre covid.
If you go to a western country as a southern country citizen, you'll end up having the same issues
"i can't believe i can't go to a whole ass other country and not use my funny-money card, have all the signage be in my language, and use my home cell phone plan and apps to figure out what place has the best burger and fries without talking to anyone."
fuck tourists. learn to travel. if you want to go to "China" but not enough to have to figure anything out, the Epcot World Showcase is right there. you can get sodas and snacks and buy trinkets.
good for them
