China is honestly light years ahead of the US. I live in one of the most expensive cities in the US and am here on vacation for a month traveling through China and it is insane how far ahead of us they are. From the high speed rail system that I have been using to go from city to city, the absolute cleanliness everywhere, no crime, no worry about getting pick pocketed/mugged, nice friendly people, no homelessness, no tent cities, affordable/cheap prices for food and basic necessities. Every little town I pass I the high speed line had massive construction going on from high density apartments to infrastructure. Honestly the only complaints I have is that the entire country is hot as balls right now and the food situation is a bit rough as a person who's both vegan and a somewhat picky eater, they only seem to have mainly Chinese food everywhere and as good as it is I need some variety in my diet and it is hard finding all vegan places as well.
I honestly I have now come to realize that the reason we are so strongly propagandized against China in the US is that it would break the average Americans brain if you saw how well they are living here compared to the absolute under-devoloped shit we put up with in the US.
Ask me any questions you have and I can also post pics if interested!
Been to Guangdong, Beijing and Wuhan for work as early as this February. Very mixed experience for me. Rent is extremely variable depending where you are, can be as low as 100 $ a month for a rather shitty place up to several tens of thousand for places in the city of various quality (including abysmal).
Food is REALLY cheap, you could eat at a restaurant 3 meals a day and spend less than 10 buck in total, even higher end restaurants are much cheaper, for other stuff like clothes it varies, they are cheaper in general but not even remotely like the food.
There are definitely homeless people even children, it's just that many Chinese cities are organized in sort of like "areas" so if you don't look in the right places you won't see them. Based on my experience I can sort of make up 3 or 4 types of areas (this is China so each area can be the size of a city itself):
Corpo Block. A large area sold out to corporations or other large institutions (banks, embassies etc.). Squicky clean, glass skyscrapers and trees, pretty much only offices and no one lives there, beautiful but also soulless and boring
Generic Block. Most of chinese city areas look like this. Ugly buildings, very clean but kinda of uncanny, some green here and there, lots of people, smog. Still better than American suburbs for sure.
The Slums. Trash, some homeless people, crappy place overall. Looks like someone fed Blame! pages to stable diffusion and had them colorized.
"Trad Block". Beautiful, clean, some traditional oriental urban aesthetics incorporated with modern buildings. Legitimately wouldn't mind living there, unfortunately the most rare type
Traina are fast, punctual and clean, but overall the experience is something out of Brazil (the movie). Taking the train is more complicated than flying. Firstly, as a foreigner you can't buy the ticket like a normal humanoid, you need to go to a special office with documents and shit (this is true for lots of things, foreigners are basically second class citizens, tourists or not). Then they'll check you when you enter the station, they'll check you again when the train arrives, and the one more time before boarding the train, finally they'll check you when you leave the station, also, occasionally they'll complain for BS like carrying a shaving foam and other TSA-like BS
Its almost as if they aren't citizens at all
Humanoid?