Hello,
I'm a Westerner but I engage in Chinese spaces from time to time relating to technology and software for other perspectives and assistance. However, some of the sites I want to explore require you to have a Chinese email (qq.com, 163, yeah.net, etc) to use them. I've tried to sign up to no avail - they require Chinese phone numbers and using ones from SMS rental sites don't seem to work, either. I really just want an email from China. Any help?

Does the website/connection/latency handle users in China well or much better to live in North America?

I'm wondering if for example the connection is good enough / won't be too laggy a connection from a town in China to a US east coast student

I wonder because the website looks kind of old. But it seems like recently they added Chinese as an on-demand teaching subject (meaning you don't have to schedule a time, you just wait until a student shows up)

Pretty sure its minimum wage pay for the USA (a bit confused, that seems to vary by state), not sure if you have to sign up while within the USA or not? Do you need a USA social security number/tax ID number to sign up on tutor dot com?

Anyone tried this?

How hard was it to pass their online test to qualify to be a tutor?

I work in elder care and have an old Chinese client. She and her daughter love to give me food. I like Chinese food but many times the food they offer is types I am not a fan of (bean pastries, je. I don't want to be disrespectful but both are very insistent that I eat what they give me.

I don't eat what my client gives me unless it's prepackaged because she tends to leave food out (it's easier to refuse her because she will get distracted and forget she gave me things so I can put it away when she's not looking) But her daughter will bring in fresh food from restruants or markets and offer it to me.

I've tried insisting I just ate or am going to eat soon, or that I'm on a diet or even that I don't like it but they still insist. I get nauseous eating many of the foods and it ruins my appetite for the rest of the day on occasion.

The client is a first generation immigrant and her daughter born here but studied in China, so both are very cultural in how they offer and make food. I know they are doing it to show they care but it's still uncomfortable.

I don't want to be rude but I also don't like feeling pressured to eat things. Any advice is appreciated.

If you ask the exact same question on Alibaba's Qwen or Tencent Yuanbao on your laptop browser versus on the phone app, you would probably assume you are talking to the same AI searching the same internet.

A recent study tested that across 614 Chinese questions on China's four biggest AI assistants, which are DeepSeek, Alibaba's Qwen, ByteDance's Doubao and Tencent Yuanbao. They ran every question three times on both the web browser and the mobile app, checking 160,860 source links.

It turns out the phone app and the web browser on the exact same AI barely even use the same websites:

A few other things from the study stood out:

• On Alibaba's Qwen, 64.2% of identical questions did not share a single web link between the laptop browser and the phone app.
• Even when a company or product was mentioned inside the web pages the AI pulled up, the AI still left 91.7% of those brands out of its written answer.
• On DeepSeek and Yuanbao, which show little footnote numbers in the text, 39.3% of the links listed at the bottom of the screen were never actually used in a single sentence.
• About 13% of the brands the AI recommended were not in the cited web pages at all. The authors note their scraper only read the main text of pages and skipped pop-ups and page code, so some of those names could be hiding in page metadata rather than coming purely from the AI's memory.

On Chinese AI apps, the web browser gives you a research tool while the mobile app can quietly turn into a walled-garden shopping mall.

The study is called "What Do Chinese-Language Generative Search Engines Cite and Surface? A Large-Scale Empirical Study" (arXiv:2607.15771) by Tao Zhen, Yue Liu, Gege Zhang and Yixuan Niu, submitted July 17, 2026.

For anyone using DeepSeek, Doubao, Qwen or Yuanbao in China, have you noticed the mobile apps pushing you into their own shopping and content ecosystems much harder than the web versions, and which one do you actually trust right now??

Hi, I am new in China and looking for a good manicure place. Anyone can recommend a good salon with high hygiene standards in Dunhuang, Lanzhou or Beijing?

Thank you!

Hey y'all,

I'm from the Philippines with a Filipino passport, and given what's happening in the West Philippine Sea / South China Sea, I'm pretty much on my country's side. Whatever your opinion may be on the matter (if any), I regularly defend the Philippines' sovereign rights in its EEZ online, even calling out state-sponsored social media accounts that push the narrative that we should just let it happen or go as far as to insult us. So if you can't tell, I'm not exactly a huge fan of the CCP.

BUT I LOVE Chinese culture and history!

I've always wanted to go there, visit multiple cities and provinces, enjoy the delicious food, and meet the people there. I'm even studying Mandarin and have Chinese friends, including folks I met online. I genuinely have no issues with Chinese people and Chinese culture in general (I even admire their infrastructure for the most part... and their trains!), my criticism is directed at the CCP and its policies, especially towards my country.

That said, I'm wondering: given my opinion on the CCP, if I plan on applying for a visa to travel to China in the future, is there a high likelihood they'll just reject it 'cause of this?

Thanks in advance guys!

Context 

This Document is Written from a Canadian specifically Calgarian perspective, not all of what I talk about will be relevant to everybody. When I went to China I had many unanswered questions and found it hard to find information about particular things. I wanted to create this as a reference for someone who wants to travel to China. 

Before You Land

Flying to China 

When flying to China we flew on Air Canada, then transferred to Air China. Flying on a Western airline to China is worth it if you care about being certain of seat selection and other information. Although the flight we took with AirChina was outstanding, with food on a 1:30min flight and plenty of leg room. If you do book through Star Alliance with a connection to AirChina any additional information will be difficult to find, to do seat selection we had to use Live Chat on the Air China website through Google Translate. 

Your Name in China

Using your Name in China will be more difficult then you expect for local apps, Western Names often do not work properly on domestic services, generally you will need to play around with the order that you put your name, First, Middle, Last does not always work, for example when ordering food to your seat on the High Speed Train required First, Last, then Middle names. The best way to circumvent this is to use Alipay sign in for things.

Your Passport in China

In China you may be shocked by the amount of times that you need to use your passport, it will be required for everything online, from renting bikes, to booking trains. It is also required in person when getting entrance tickets to parks etc. In addition to the necessity of the passport it is required that you carry it on your person at all times by law. 

Your Privacy in China

In China no where you go and nothing you do in public spaces is not on surveillance. You are being watched. All you need to do is to keep politics out of your Trip.

Your Phone in China

Important Apps

This is going to be a long section because in China your phone is your most important asset, without it and a decent understanding of how to use it, you will be stranded, without money, communication, travel, food and everything else. The first thing you need to do is download Alipay, Wechat, Amap and Trip.com. Starting with Alipay, you need to download this app before you leave for China, as you will need your Western Phone Number to Sign up, Make sure that you Upload your Passport, Verify with your face, Link your western Credit/Debit Cards. These are all extremely important to do because without them your experience in China will be severely limited. Next Wechat, I found while I was there I used We-Chat less then Alipay but if I did not have it it would still be limiting, so follow the same steps with We-Chat as Alipay. Next Amap is an amazing navigation app for transit and biking. Once you have signed in make sure to switch it to English in the settings. Finally Trip.com this app allows you to have a fully English interface to book tours, buses and trains, this is just like a normal travel app it just works in China. 

Data Plans (E-Sim)

Data Plans, When you travel to China one of the most important things is Phone Data, without it you will not be able to function or talk to loved ones, when we visited (July 2026) One of us used a Rogers Roam Like home plan and the other used a Holafly Plan, the Rogers Plan worked flawlessly the entire trip, allowing us to both use Chinese apps and Western apps like Whatsapp and Google Translate, the Holafly sim was less good for the first 3-days of the trip, one of our phones barely functioned, then after spending 1hr on support with Holafly they gave me a new sim that worked perfectly the rest of the time, so I can not recommend Holafly. In addition to data, some make the choice to use a VPN to access their home countries' internet no matter where the E-Sim route their data. Some options include Surfshark and Nord. Keep in mind that using a VPN with local Chinese internet does not always work and should not be relied on. Often online there are conversations about the necessity of a Local phone number, we found that while this can sometimes be an issue it is usually solvable with some creative button mashing, and not worth the risk of putting a Chinese sim in your phone. 

Powerbanks 

If you travel to China in the summer it will be hot and your phone will drain 4x faster than it does at home, to mitigate this make sure you get a powerbank for your phone, when you fly in China you need a CCC certified powerbank, you can either buy one locally, we found an Anchor travel unit with the logo in a BestBuy at home the other option is you can buy any powerbank once you land in China from Xiaomi or other trusted local brands, neither is an incorrect approach if you want better value buy one while in China and if you care about the certainty of having one buy one at home. Also before we Left Home, Air Canada Emailed us a link to a declaration website to declare items. 

High Speed Trains 

This Heading applies both in and out of China, while some attempt to use the 12306 (Offical Website) website to book we just used Trip.com and paid the fee, it worked perfectly every time and the booking fee is 100% worth it. After you have booked your ticket there is the station experience, when traveling on Trains in China you do not need a ticket your Passport is your ticket, try to arrive 30mins to 45 mins early or even earlier to large stations if you do not want to cut it close, once you arrive just look at the departure boards (they flip between English and Chinese) find the gate on your app and pass through the manual channel, where a person will scan your passport and you can go through. Each train carriage has a number on it that will correspond with your Trip.com app information so find your seats. In our experience the upgrade to First Class is not worth it because the Second class train cars are extremely comfortable and in some ways better, because you can walk up and down the trains to get a movement break. For food on the train you can either buy from the dining car which had decent food for ok prices or you can struggle through ordering food to your seat, to do this open your alipay, click the scan button then scan the QR code find the station you want tap on that then tap order food pick your food and navigate to the payment screen, once on the screen you will be asked for you name, try multiple configurations, if it asks you for your western phone number try putting it in as many ways as you can eventually it might work. If all of this feels daunting I encourage you to give it a try. High Speed trains are an amazing experience and one that everyone who travels there should experience. 

Booking a Hotel 

When booking a Hotel in China we stuck to trusted western brands like Holiday Inn, to book a hotel, the platform we used was Booking.com but we do not recommend it, becuase for our side trips we used trip.com to book the hotels and they generally had better deals, therefore we recommend booking with them. Everything will be fairly normal when booking hotels, if you are staying in a major city smoking will likely be banned in all rooms, but if you are in a smaller city they will likely have both smoking and non smoking rooms so make sure you book what you need. When we were in our main Hotel in Beijing we ate everyday at the included breakfast buffet which was a great way to have breakfast quickly and start exploring. 

Warning 

If you are the type of traveler who prefers to have a slower, more relaxed trip, self guiding in China may not be right for you, there are lots of unknown things and it does take effort to have a great time. 

When you Arrive In China 

Stepping of the Plane

When you first step off the Plane follow signs to either connections or to exit, you do not need to scan your fingerprint at the self service stations, becuase they will scan your fingerprints again anyways, just go towards the immigration desk and enter into the general channel, once you are through follow the normal transiting procedure. 

Transportation to the Hotel (Beijing) 

Transport to the Hotel can be a difficult experience, because it is your first time navigating in China. Most major Airports have a metro connection and a rideshare zone, do whatever you would prefer. If you are taking a car, (we did not use any taxis while we were their so can not comment on them), but we did take DIDI (Chinese Uber) to take a DIDI follow signs to Rideshare Zone and Open your Alipay app, then navigate to the mini app area where you will see the DIDI icon, sign in with your Alipay and immediately go to settings and change the app to English mode, DIDI is one of the only chinese apps that has an excellent full English experience, you will need to communicate through text with your driver where in the garage you are which can be difficult. When you program in the destination of your Hotel, assuming you booked a Western brand it should show up easily and you can navigate there. Next if you Wish to take the Metro to your Hotel you should open the Amap app and put in your hotels name in English, again if you booked a Western hotel you will have no issues finding it, tap the transit icon and click on the metro option, when you get to the station look for ticket machines, they have an English button at the bottom look at what the final stop you are getting off at is, tap that stop and buy your ticket you can pay with Alipay Wechat or Credit card. It will give you a plastic card for a ticket, tap it on the top of the fair gate then follow Amap directions until your station. When you get off at your desired stop, insert the ticket into the slot on the front of the fair gate and exit the station. There are multiple exits for each station check within the Amap navigation. It will tell you which exit is the best one, follow that because sometimes the nearest crosswalk is far away. After you have exited the subway station, just walk to your hotel. 

Public Transit

In my experience (Beijing, Shanghai, Datong) in the two big cities, public transit was incredible, it can take you from wherever you are to wherever you need to be, just open Amap app and use that to navigate. While the ticket machine is simple to use it is not time efficient, for this reason we recommend getting the transit card for the region you are in, to get one just open the Alipay app navigate to the transportation tab and get a transit card. Once you have got the card it will show up as a QR code in the transportation section, to use  it walk up to fare gate position your phone in front of the scanner and scan in, then when you are leaving the metro in any station scan again and it will calculate the price, this means you can change your plans of where you want to get off while on the train. When riding the bus make sure to scan on and scan off, you will need to get a separate transit card for this which is available in the same section. With my extremely limited experience, in the small city of Datong, transit was not as viable, so we took DIDIs

DIDI

DIDI is essentially Uber for China except it is reliable and affordable, to access it open Alipay and then open the DIDI Mini-App, and go to settings and change it to English. From there the app is very intuitive, basically just Uber. A small warning, some DIDI drivers will cover up the seat belt plug, because I did not feel comfortable with this I did put on my seatbelt. 

Money In China

To purchase things in China, the easiest way and cheapest is Ali-pay, make sure that you link your credit card. When you pay with Alipay using a foreign credit card , under a particular limit there is no foreign transaction fee. To pay, just show the vendor the QR code and they will scan it. But for some smaller vendors they will have you use the QR scanner, and it will bring up a pay amount just type in the amount and pay. Another cool feature that is available on Alipay is payment passwords, you can set a code so when you pay you must type it in. 

QR Codes in China

In China most things you do will be through QR codes. To use them, open your Alipay app and click in the top left corner and open the scan tab, this will bring up a camera feed and you can hover over any QR code and it will open the relevant Mini app or link. 

Restaurants in China 

Just eat wherever looks tasty, almost everything will be affordable and very good.

Washrooms in China  

In China, public washrooms in Beijing and Shanghai are near basically every destination, in our experience they have both western toilets and squat ones. They are almost always clean and well stocked with soap and other products.

Air Quality

The air quality in Beijing, and Shanghai when we were there was excellent, clean air. We felt comfortable hiking and biking around. Although we can not speak for other parts of the country, on the train when the doors opened in Nanjing the air that came in smelled absolutely horrific. You may still need to be careful of where you travel outside of the Beijing or Shanghai concerning air quality.

Shoes in China 

Depending on how busy you like to have vacations, you will probably walk anywhere from 8 000-30 000 steps a day, so make sure to pack very comfortable shoes for walking. 

Booking things in China 

A lot of the time you will find very limited information on Google, and Chinese search apps, in this case the best ways to find reviews ect. is a We-chat Mini app called Dieanping, on which you can search for all sorts of things, reviews etc. Because this app is Chinese it does not have English, to fix this on We-Chat tap on the top right of the screen on the three dots menu and click translate this will translate it to English, then to search, take whatever you want to search and put it through Google Translate, and then paste the result into the search bar, this is best way to find out if something actually exists and if it good. After you have decided what you want to do there is a few options of Booking that activity, the one that we found worked the best way just use Trip.com, yes the price is inflated and does cost more then if you just bought it direct but often that is not an option, because many things require real name verification that is almost impossible to navigate with an English name and passport. It can be better to book on Trip, the other option is asking someone at the front desk to help you book things, since they can navigate Chinese apps and are familiar with western tourists they can help you. 

The Great Wall of China 

The best thing that we did on our trip and one of the highlights of my life, is going to the great wall of China, you may have already googled about the great wall and found that the Badaling section with a direct high speed rail connection, while you may want to go here, (we did not) we heard reports that it was extremely busy and not that fun. Instead the best thing to do is to go on Trip.com or Booking etc (We used Trip) and book a Shuttle Bus+Ticket combo for the Jinshanling Great Wall, our bus left from the Dongzhim bus station and took us directly to the great wall in about 2.5 hours. When you get to the station go in through any of the entrances to the bus terminal on the first floor. It is entirely buses on that floor, then find the Beijing tourist information booth and they will check your name. (unless the details have changed) The bus ride was absolutely beautiful and a nice way to see the country. If you are going to take anything from this document I think you should go on this daytrip, it is worth it. We almost had the wall to ourselves, I managed to get multiple photos without any other tourists, a rarity in China. A small warning must be included, on our way back from the Great Wall the bus pulled off the highway at a security checkpoint and we had exit the vehicle to pass through metal detectors,  they also took our passports and made sure all travel documents were good, and we were through in a short amount of time, even considering this I believe that the experience is one of the best things you can do while in China. 

Weekends

A small warning, in China everything is always busy and if you think weekday crowds are busy the weekends are insane, everything is constantly packed. Another small piece of information, one thing we noticed is when you go to places that are extremely cool, the main attraction is unbelievably busy but the small side rooms or other areas are empty, so I encourage you once you have seen the main sights go and explore around. 

Random Malls

One of the best ways to cool off or to have lunch was to stop in a random mall, wherever you are chances are there is a mall close to you that will be airconditioned and have an amazing food court so try it out. 

Safety

From a violence perspective China is very safe, you will never feel like you might be in danger, we walked around in the dark at 10pm and never once felt unsafe. If the 80 year old grandma feels safe exercising at night you will feel safe walking, we also saw lots of kids and solo travels out and about late into the evening.

Tiananmen Square General Advice

Visiting Tiananmen Square is a must see part of your trip, it is an awesome place to see in person, the best way to get to it and to visit the national museum of China, is to buy access to the national museum. We purchased our tickets through Trip Advisor but you can get them anywhere, they will email you a link to the tickets before you visit. To access the museum, get off of Metro Line 1 at the Tiananmen square stop and follow signs to the National Museum, make sure that you are in line 1hr before the museum opens. Do not visit on a weekend, it will be terrible. Once you are in the museum B-line for the basement exhibits, they are some of the best exhibits in the museum and have a massive line in the afternoon, once you have finished those exhibits explore the museum to your hearts content, the museum has a small cafeteria but nothing significant, so you may want to bring a lunch (we saw lots of people eating lunch while sitting on the stairs) once you are done the museum you will exit into the Tiananmen Square secure area, where you can explore the entire square. At this time it is a great opportunity to visit the Forbidden city, to get tickets the easiest way is to purchase an English language tour on Trip.com. To access the forbidden city there are multiple underpasses to get under the road and stay in the secure area. If you have some time to kill, a park with direct access from the secure area is one of the only places in China that feels truly secluded. If you are facing the Mao Zedong portrait,  to the right of the main entry is a small side gate, where you can pay an almost meaningless fee for access to a beautiful park in central Beijing. Enjoy your time there and when it is time to leave, make your way towards the exit and you will find a large open plaza where your tour guide will meet you. They will have a flag with their colour and logo and check you off from the list. Once you enter the City you can either stay with the tour or split off and go and explore by yourself, this worked for us and we were able to get same day tickets to the forbidden city this way. After you exit the forbidden city there will be a large amount of tourist buses, (we did not ride one so we do not know if they are a scam or not) then it is a small walk to the nearest metro station to get where you are going. Finally as far as we can tell there are no actual tourist ticket booths available at any attractions in China, and the best way to book is outlined above.

Weather 

We visited China in mid July to early August, it was very HOT (for a Canadian living in Calgary) but the thing that really gets you is the humidity (for context Calgary is usually between 10-40% in the summer) you will be constantly sweating so bring white shirts, dont bother with a rain jacket if you are limited for space because you will be thankful for the rain, or if it really starts going down just take a break in a mall. Instead it is very important to bring an umbrella, we and everyone else used to constantly create a little shade as well as when it rains. Another thing you will notice is airdrying clothing in your hotel room will probably not work due to the humidity so make sure that your hotel has a washing room if you do not have enough clothes for every day of the trip. For Beijing, all of those things made the outdoors barely tolerable for extended periods of time, Shanghai is a different story. I could not tolerate outside for more than 1hr at a time, so make sure that you are prepared for the heat if you are coming in the summer. Due to weather my Iphone (15 Pro Max) got incredibly hot to the touch, throttled and drained battery like crazy, it also was not happy about being plugged in outside, so make sure that when you get a break to cool your phone down, take it out of its case etc, and charge it then with your powerbank. (see the section on water)

Bikes

Bikes are an amazing way to get around in China, they are extremely affordable and make it so easy to get to a metro station but they can be challenging to set up. The bike company that worked the best for us was Hello Bike (The Blue ones) to ride, scan the QR code on the bike through Alipay, then verify through real ID, in addition to this make sure that you get one of the bike discount cards, they offer great savings and make the bikes basically free. Be warned some of the bikes are not in perfect working order so you may have issues with some of them. Riding around China on a bike is mostly a very positive experience. Almost every road has a protected bike lane, but electric mopeds frequently buzzed us as we rode by. 

Renting a Car in China

Don’t
public transit and DIDI will get you anywhere.

Translate Apps

Assuming you have purchased an E-Sim and can use the western internet, the best translation app is Google Translate, it now has AI powered translation so you can hold a full conversation with someone in Chinese. You can also download the language if your phone is being finnicky. Apple translate also works ok, but lacks the more advanced features of Google Translate. Additionally often the Alipay and We-chat translation is very bad and can make navigating mini apps hard, to get around this you can either (if on a iphone 15pro or later, not sure about android) take a screenshot and when it detects Chinese translate, or get the person that you are traveling with to hold their phone above while in google translate camera mode, funny as this sounds it works very well. 

Water in China 

Almost all water that you can buy while out in the city in China will be room temperature, if like me the last thing you want as you overheat is lukewarm water, the best thing to do is bring insulated water bottles and a backpack, your hotel will give you bottled water everyday, we put that in the Mini-fridge and the next day poured it into our water bottles to drink throughout the day. In addition to this, water is not drinkable out of the tap in China. But you can get room temperature or hot clean water from free dispensers, at most major tourist sites and transport hubs.

Security In China (Mostly Beijing)

Airport style security checks are very common in China, they are found before entering most museums, before getting on the metro, the train. When going through the Metro security (when I went to Beijing) you did not have to scan your phone etc. but you did have to take off your backpack and place it in the x-ray. Sometimes they will ask you to show them your water bottle and they will use a device to scan whether it is actually water. While metro security is very fast, 1min or less, Airport/Train/Tiananmen security is more in depth, just listen to what they are saying or motioning to do.

Police in China (Mostly Beijing)

Police in Beijing were incredibly friendly and helpful to us, whenever we needed help we could approach a police officer and ask. They helped every time, so if you have questions or need help doing something, do not be afraid to ask. 

Outlet Type

China uses a mix of EU/North American Outlets, all of the hotels that we stayed in had the two pronged outlet connector for North American Charging Bricks, Just make sure that your device is compatible with 220 volts it will say on the back, for example I could not bring my electric toothbrush charger because it does not work with 220 volts. If you want peace of mind you can bring a universal power adapter, I did not need it though.   

Specific Things We Did in Beijing, Datong and Shanghai

This is by no means even close to a complete list of all of the things to do, just our experiences and things we learned that we would like to share with others. 

Beijing (10 days)

• National Museum of China
  • One of the best museums I have ever been to
  • more info is in the Tiananmen Square Section
• Riding the Metro for fun
  • Very particular interest of mine 
• 798 Art Zone (the arts district) 
  • Make sure you visit after 2:00pm most things are closed before that
• Shougang Park (a renovated industrial park)
  • Good if you have more time in Beijing
  • Has a cool temple on the Hill
• Tiananmen Square
  • More Info Above 
• Forbidden City
  • More info above
• Beijing Zoo
  • Amazing panda exhibit the rest of the zoo is quite good as well 
  • Ticket available on walkup - Through We-Chat 
• Lama Temple
  • Absolutely amazing place, just be respectful with your camera. 
  • Ticket Required but available on walk-up
• China World Mall
  • Extremely Expensive, but great if you just want a break from the heat and somewhere to walk around
• Great Wall of China (Jinshiling)
  • Highlight of the Trip more information above 
• Military Museum 
  • Tailored to a Chinese demographic almost no English translation, interesting to learn the non NATO perspective on military related things 
  • Ticket available on walkup, you need to buy the ticket from the ticket booth before getting into the entry line
•  Night Street 
  • Great way to spend an evening
• Visiting a NIO House (car dealership)
  • Great way to cool off 
  • Definity try sitting in the back seat of one of the cars it will blow your mind
• Fahai Temple (300 Year old Ming Murals Near the Olympic Grounds)
  • Definitely worth the visit and price, getting to see perfectly preserved Ming murals is simply amazing, keep in mind you can not bring any belongings into the building and there is no english guides so you will miss the context
  • Ticket Available on Walkup
• Walking the Olympic Park area grounds 
  • Applies mainly to the Summer olympic grounds as they are connected to a lovely park
  • Worth it if you have a lot of time in Beijing  
  • No ticket required
• Summer Palace
  • Great experience, you can reach it on either the Tram or Metro, you can buy tickets on the spot and they are reasonably priced
  • It is quite busy
• Capital Museum 
  • Quite good museum on Beijing History, no ticket required just Valid ID
• China Railway Museum
  • Great if you like trains 
  • Great Gifts for Train Fans
  • NO AIRCONDITIONING
  • Ticket Available on Walkup 
• Beihai Park
  • Lovely Park in Central Beijing, has one of the oldest trees still living, it was not open on the day we visited
  • Ticket Available on Walkup  
• Hutongs
  • There are many Hutongs (Historic Neighborhoods)
  • One of them is near Fahi Temple (Shijingshan)
    • Not very touristy, there are not many shops but it is still a lived in community, very interesting if you like history 
  • One of the most Touristy Hutongs is South Lugogu Lane
    • Lots of shops great place to get gifts but sometimes overwhelming  

Shanghai (1 Night Train Trip)

• The Shanghai Tower
  • Pricey but an amazing experience, extremely cool to see the whole city from the second tallest tower in the world (by tallest useable floor) 100% recommend 
• Shanghai Museum-Pudong Branch (2024)
  • Amazing Museum (In my opinion better then the National Museum of China), easily spent 8hr here saw ¾ of the exhibits but had to leave to catch the train
  • Free admission no ticket required just valid ID
  • Has multiple restaurants 
  • Great place to get gifts 
• Walk the Bund 
  • Best at night, amazing experience, about 1.5 hours
• Visit Shanghai F1 Track 
  • We visited when there was nothing open, you could not really see the track
  • Would not recommend unless you don't mind wasting a few hours to see a cool sign
• Yu Garden 
  • Absolutely amazing garden central Shanghai, we bought tickets in advance. 

Datong (1 Night Train Trip)

• Yungang Grottoes 
  • We bought Tickets in advance from Trip.com 
  • Absolutely amazing also incredibly busy
• Hanging Temples 
  • Very cool to look at
  • If you want to climb the actual temple, make sure that you are at the visitors centre by 6:00 am and get in the right line (take a photo set to long exposure then translate) to buy tickets
  • This will still not guarantee tickets 
• Mount Hengshan
  • There is a cable car to the top, I do not recommend it, it is quite expensive and if you don't mind a bit of exercise there are many cool temples on the way up to visit (including a gong that you can ring)
  • At the top they sell reasonably priced chilled Coke/Sprite 

Thanks

I wrote this document because it has most of the answers to the questions I had when traveling to China. I apologize for the length of the document, and any poor writing.

Just wondering if there’s anyone at all who does this from their home in China and posts online to their audience? Especially when information is controlled.

(This article is excerpted from A Century of the CCP: The History, Present, and Future of the Chinese Communist Party.)

Studying history makes it easier to predict the future. What the future of the CCP will look like can be gleaned from the historical traces it has left and its current state. On the basis of what has already happened, and by considering the particular political and social environment of the present era, one may anticipate its various possible paths forward.
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Based on the CCP’s history, characteristics, and nature described above, the CCP is clearly a political organization exceptionally skilled at constructing state power and manipulating populations. Its organization is highly disciplined and rigid (referring specifically to loyalty, dependence, and cohesion), and its top leadership acts with caution, decisiveness, and strong resolve. On the premise of maintaining its ruling position as the bottom line, the CCP demonstrates unusual pragmatism, flexibility, and resilience. It can adapt to changes in the situation, make effective use of favorable circumstances in its environment, continually update its policies, and extend and consolidate its own existence and development.
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For example, the “People’s Communes and People’s Communization Movement” and the Cultural Revolution led to economic collapse and social chaos in China, yet the CCP always held a tight grip on political power. Even when famine and upheaval spread across the country, it successfully killed off the sprouts of any domestic political opposition and cut off any possibility of effective external penetration. Not long after Mao’s death, the CCP leadership decisively abandoned class struggle and dogmatism, moving toward reform and opening-up. After the 1989 June Fourth crackdown, in the face of domestic and international pressure, the CCP insisted on one-party rule in the political sphere while also insisting on deepening economic reform, raising high the banner of the “socialist market economy,” successfully absorbing the shock, creating the “Chinese economic miracle,” and stabilizing the regime, gradually forming the “China Model.” Meanwhile, even as economic liberalization advanced, the party’s control over political power and public opinion remained strict and, in fact, grew stronger. The CCP never gave the opposition any real opportunity to participate in politics.
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Today’s CCP has embedded itself into China’s existence and development by constructing the “China Model,” making itself “inseparable” from China. This so-called “China Model” means that political authoritarianism and economic openness operate simultaneously and in coordination. Through a stability-maintenance apparatus and the “low human-rights advantage” it creates, it encourages, induces, and forces citizens to participate in economic production, and then allocates the fruits of labor according to the relative strength of power. It relies primarily on the violent apparatus to suppress all discontent and resistance, enabling society to operate according to an order set by coercive power.
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This model is the opposite of Western liberal and open societies that value equality, yet it possesses extraordinary vitality. In fact, due to its “low human-rights advantage” and centralized power advantage, it sometimes proves more competitive than Western models. The formation of the “China Model” has given the CCP the confidence not to “take the Western path,” and even to export the “China Model” to developing countries, positioning itself as a rival to the Western world.
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The “China Model” can be traced back to ancient China. During the long history before the Opium War, China was essentially a self-sufficient, self-contained social system, with its own political logic, economic structure, cultural characteristics, and social relations fundamentally different from those of the West. Over two centuries of harsh Manchu rule further damaged and reshaped China, isolating it from global civilization. Despotism and the institutions that supported despotism—including the Qing period—were essential components of China’s traditional system.
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After China was drawn into globalization, all its aspects came under dramatic external impact, yet this did not destroy China’s own social ecosystem. Although the CCP claims to be a revolutionary party and once exhibited a radical tendency to destroy tradition, in reality it unconsciously, and at times deliberately, emulated Chinese tradition. After the Cultural Revolution, the CCP openly embraced tradition and used it as a tool to resist “Westernization.”
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The “China Model” constructed by the CCP is built upon the existing traditional Chinese social system, and what is old often carries great stability and continues to exert ubiquitous and enduring influence in modern society. The CCP’s reliance on tradition has been highly successful. China’s traditional institutions, culture, and the various experiences and habits that have survived to the present are inexhaustible resources for the CCP’s rule, serving as its trump card against modern civilization originating in the West. From Mao to Deng to Xi, the reason they could secure their rule under the banner of “socialism with Chinese characteristics” did not truly rely on “socialism,” but rather on “Chinese characteristics.”
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The prosperity or collapse of the economy and whether the material living conditions of the people are sufficient are crucial to determining whether a regime is legitimate and stable. In the past several decades up to the present, and even into the foreseeable future, the CCP will continue to take reform and opening-up as its foundation, maintain considerable economic freedom, leverage the regulatory role of the state, focus on economic development, and raise living standards.
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Although Xi Jinping is not enthusiastic about reform and opening-up, the line he actually implements (especially his economic line) still follows the basic direction of reform and opening-up. As long as such policies continue, China will not resemble certain “failed states” that collapse when economic crisis erodes public confidence in the regime. From Deng Xiaoping onward, successive CCP leaders have indeed “grabbed hold of the crucial point” by “grasping the economy.” Compared with Mao-era ideological mobilization, which could stir temporary fervor but could not endure, tangible economic benefits bind people’s loyalties much more effectively.
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The distribution of economic gains is indeed extremely unjust, yet the general improvement in living standards compared to the past is also a fact—even if that improvement has resulted from the leaps in productivity brought by the four waves of industrial revolution that swept the globe, rather than being the personal achievement of the CCP as a single party group.
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In ancient and modern times, frequent peasant uprisings and rebellions occurred because living conditions were extremely harsh: hunger and lack of clothing were constant. Facing death anyway, people rose up to gamble for wealth. Today is different. Even for the lowest classes with no status, no education, and no connections, as long as one is willing to do hard labor, eating three simple yet sufficient and palatable meals a day is not a problem.
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Recently, over the past hundred years, the comfort level of human life has improved to an astonishing degree. Ordinary people are now able to enjoy material conditions and services that even ancient emperors, mobilizing the resources of the entire country, would have found difficult to obtain. In addition, technological development and industrial upgrading have greatly reduced the average intensity of labor compared to the past, and significantly increased labor safety. As for the upper-middle strata, they are even more easily able to live in environments of great material abundance and quality. These are the groups with the greatest capacity for social transformation, and they are the beneficiaries of China’s distinctive political-economic model, with no material motivation for revolution. To resist the regime means imprisonment, torture, loss of life, and implicating one’s relatives.
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If we exclude pursuits related to rights and dignity at the non-material level, then from the perspective of pure interest and basic material needs, people today no longer have any necessity to risk their lives in resistance. As for injustice and unfairness, resistance would only lead to greater and heavier injustices afterward. On one side, survival is possible through labor; on the other, there is the iron fist of the stability-maintenance apparatus. The vast majority of people will make the instinctive choice, even if such survival lacks dignity, decency, and freedom.
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Human desires are bottomless, yet humans are also easily satisfied, depending on how the environment guides them and how the system disciplines them. The “nipple entertainment” produced by industrial civilization works on the vast majority of people, and its cost is very low. Most importantly, the CCP regime not only possesses the “carrots” of such “nipple entertainment,” but also the “stick” of a stability-maintenance apparatus supported by violent force. As long as the economy does not collapse or experience severe decline, the CCP regime can continue to maintain itself for a long period. (The tremendous growth of productivity and technology after World War II has weakened and obscured the extent of harm inflicted on the people by the CCP’s tyranny, and has provided enormous assistance for the CCP to claim legitimacy in governance. Not only in China, but the consolidation of the Kim dynasty regime in North Korea is the same. This issue is complex and could be discussed separately in another article, so it will not be elaborated here.)
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The gains and losses of social governance are likewise important factors related to the legitimacy and stability of a regime. “Social governance” refers to the management and services delivered by the regime and its affiliated forces toward the state, citizens, and society. Its effectiveness manifests in many areas: the economy, technology, rule of law, public security, infrastructure, social welfare, education and healthcare, and so on. Social governance capacity is a direct expression of a regime’s governing capacity, reflecting the maturity of its ability to manage society, and relating to public satisfaction with the government.
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Looking across the world, social governance capacity has no linear relationship with the political nature of the regime (whether democratic or authoritarian). High levels of social governance are found not only in democratic countries of Europe and the United States, but also in South Korea, Taiwan (before democratization), and Singapore—authoritarian regimes. In many impoverished developing countries, democratic and authoritarian regimes coexist. Judged purely by efficiency and results, democracy does not significantly add points to social governance, and may even become a constraining factor.
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Evaluating China’s social governance is not easy. On one hand, in terms of economic and technological development, infrastructure construction, education and healthcare services, there are indeed many things worth acknowledging. The degree of organization and modernization of social life is high, and public security and the orderliness of public spaces exceed that of all developing countries and some developed countries.
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On the other hand, its social control has no authorization from public opinion nor any supervision over it, and no independent judiciary to regulate it. It brutally tramples on human rights, does not permit the development of citizen self-organization, and its foremost task for social organizations is to cooperate with regime rule and stability maintenance. Meanwhile, its services are extremely unbalanced and unfair, and corruption is severe. China’s social governance emphasizes “management” rather than “service,” values appearance over substance, and is based on concerns over the rise or fall of the regime rather than the wellbeing of the people. Overall, it displays a social-Darwinist tendency of achieving goals by any means necessary.
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In any case, taking into account a weighted assessment of governance efficiency and hard indicators, the social governance level of China under CCP rule can be considered above average in the world. It is certainly not in the condition of a “failed state” with ruined lands, social disorder, and miserable livelihoods. As a tool for maintaining its rule, social governance naturally contains specific techniques of social control; the art of ruling the people is part of social governance. Modern information technology has become a powerful assistant in social governance and a magical instrument for managing the populace.
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The assistance provided by information technology is the key reason the CCP can act in wanton retrogressive ways without fearing large-scale effective resistance. The revolutionary development of science and technology and the arrival of the information age have profoundly changed the relationship between individuals, between the strong and the weak, and between rulers and the ruled. In the era of information technology, ubiquitous big data and surveillance systems have overturned people’s circumstances and their relative relationships with others. The strong and those in power, through information technology, can record and monitor every action and word of the weak and the governed, and can use weapons and machines closely related to information technology to control, restrain, and suppress them. Information technology enables a very small number of people to easily and effectively manage the vast majority, with extraordinarily efficient capabilities in resource allocation for suppression. The crowd-control weapons of the military and police have become high-tech, and crowd-control command systems are likewise information-based, enabling fast, precise, quiet, and calibrated strikes, leaving resisters with no ability to fight back and no room to maneuver—achieving suppression at minimal cost and maximally weakening or completely erasing the impact of resistance.
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The old era of “raising the standard of revolt by chopping wood for weapons” to “incite the world to rise” is no longer possible. The integration of information-based surveillance systems, communication systems, and transportation systems can strangle such efforts in the cradle, giving no opportunity for resisters to organize. From ancient times to today, the strategies available to the weak in the face of the strong, and to the oppressed in the face of their oppressors—such as fleeing, hiding, networking, sabotage, raids, assassination, and guerrilla warfare—have all lost feasibility under a regime of big-data totalitarianism. The ruled no longer have any significant deterrent or bargaining power against the ruling class as they did before the information age. Even if subjected to the most brutal persecution, there is no risk of large-scale backlash. Though these seem like technical matters, in a certain sense they are decisive for the survival of authoritarianism.
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Thus, “popular support” becomes increasingly unimportant. For the CCP, the evolution of totalitarianism means it no longer needs to worry much about dissatisfaction among the broad masses of ordinary people. The CCP, having mastered the right to use information technology, is like a fortress covered by anti-nuclear material, no longer needing to worry about external threats, focusing instead on preventing internal collapse. What the CCP cares more about is whether the existing vested-interest groups within the system are dissatisfied, and what their demands are.
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What truly enables the CCP regime to sustain itself over the long term is precisely the determined defense of this regime and this party by the CCP’s vested-interest group. From the founding of the Party until now, the CCP has accumulated tens of millions of vested-interest individuals. Including their closely connected relatives, friends, and associates, this vested-interest group numbers 200–300 million people, distributed roughly in a pyramid structure according to the scale of power, status, and wealth. This group, accounting for about one-fifth of China’s population, are the relatively advantaged under CCP rule. They occupy the vast majority of important social resources and privileged social positions, with overwhelming discursive power and influence.
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It is true that this group is composed of members whose interests are not entirely consistent and even show clear conflicts, and internal political struggles and other contradictions are intense. However, they generally support CCP rule (or are themselves part of the ruling class), and they are the foundation for the CCP regime’s survival and long-term continuation. (Of course, this does not mean that there are no vested-interest individuals who oppose the system, but they are a minority. More precisely, vested-interest individuals who oppose CCP totalitarianism are generally silent and compliant with the status quo, having neither carried out nor been able to carry out any substantive resistance.)
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The CCP’s vested-interest class mostly survives and benefits directly or indirectly from the CCP regime and the system it has established. Their personal interests and family interests are aligned with the overall interests of the CCP regime; they are bound to it by identity, background, status, and position, and they coexist and prosper with the current system, while their interests are inconsistent with, and even contrary to, those of the nation, the people, and the broader population. “Vested interests” do not refer only to economic benefits, but also to tangible and intangible advantages in power, status, social relations, and discursive power, especially the advantage of winning in interest competition (or non-interest competition) against other members of society. Although vested-interest individuals are often dissatisfied with those at higher levels in the hierarchy, they are even more unwilling to lose their relative superiority over the vast numbers of people outside the vested-interest circle. Even when they are discontent, they tend to seek personal gains through individual effort or abnormal means, rather than joining the oppressed to overthrow the system and achieve equality for all.
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As for the political faith and ideals that are supposed to guide and constrain the thoughts and actions of CCP members, they have long since vanished in the hearts of the overwhelming majority of Party members today. “Faith” and “ideal” are merely a curtain to cover shame; the pursuit of interests is the real orientation of the CCP and its members. Those ideals once defended by countless martyrs who shed blood and sacrifice—anyone who genuinely adheres to them today is regarded as a fool. Neither discipline nor law can restrain them—what use can ideals and beliefs have? Of course, this does not exclude the possibility that during commemorations, the heirs of the red regime feel their blood boil and their pride swell, while simultaneously thinking quietly about how to indulge in luxury. They have their own logic that they believe to be internally consistent. The more corrupt and degenerate they become, the less willing the CCP will be to abandon propaganda about political faith and ideals—not to encourage self-reform, but to lengthen and widen the inadequate curtain of shame.
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It is worth noting that the large-scale moral collapse among CCP members did not emerge only after Deng Xiaoping took power and implemented a capitalist system; it already existed during Mao Zedong’s era. As early as the Yan’an period—when the CCP had barely secured its dominance—there was already “three levels of clothing and five grades of food” (though the Yan’an period was relatively restrained, mainly in order to win domestic public support and to gain favor from foreign countries, especially the United States). Compared with Deng’s era, when corruption was represented openly by money, in Mao’s era, it was practiced through the distribution of privileges via power itself—seemingly hidden, but in fact even more naked and cruel.
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The distribution of the CCP’s vested-interest class is highly structured, resembling the hierarchical order of China’s traditional feudal society. It both relies on and is constrained by the state’s apparatus of violent force and the system itself, and therefore possesses strong internal stability. Up to the highest levels, the vested-interest class has an unwritten mechanism of upward mobility, providing opportunities for further advancement. Although such opportunities are neither equal nor fair, they are not entirely unattainable, and talent is a very important factor in consideration.
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Of course, there are also channels for ordinary people outside the vested-interest class to enter it and ascend further, such as the national university entrance examinations and the civil service examinations. These absorb elite individuals not yet incorporated into the system, thereby weakening potential social forces of resistance. This is yet another imitation of existing institutional designs from ancient China. Such systems and institutions are extremely important for preventing the decline of the regime and for maintaining the vitality of the regime and the vested-interest class. They are a major reason why China’s autocracy remains perfected and long-lasting. At the same time, the CCP regime strictly forbids attempts to compete for power and profit through actions that challenge the system or threaten the survival of the regime, ruthlessly suppressing such behavior. The vested-interest class also understands very clearly that if they wish to preserve their interests, pass them on to their descendants, and benefit their relatives and associates, they must defend this dictatorial and autocratic regime, and must safeguard this Party whose very essence from head to toe is defined by “interest.”
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Speaking of the vested-interest class, one must mention a special group: students and youth. Since modern times, students and youth, because of their relatively rich knowledge, their pure and unblemished souls, their urgent desire for change, and their courage to sweep away the old order, have consistently been the vanguard of progress and transformation in all countries. From the late Qing to the Republican era, every major reform and movement for national strengthening in China involved the enthusiastic participation of student youth. From the CCP’s embryonic beginnings to its ultimate seizure of power, student youth played a decisive role. From the May Fourth Movement, the May Thirtieth Movement, the December Ninth Movement, to the “anti-hunger, anti-persecution, anti-civil war” movements, student movements were always a crucial component of the CCP’s revolutionary efforts, playing an important role in striking against the warlords and the Kuomintang regime.
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However, once the CCP seized power, it exercised strict prevention and suppression over student movements. It not only conducted a large-scale fragmentation and weakening of the humanities and social sciences in higher education, but also established a university management system based on Party branches and ideological-political education, whose degree of control far exceeded the KMT’s infiltration of campuses through military police or secret agencies. Horizontally speaking, it was also far more severe than most authoritarian regimes’ control over universities, comparable only to the most rigid Stalinist-style regimes such as North Korea. Only two periods were exceptions. The first was during the early Cultural Revolution, when students were mobilized to “make revolution” due to Mao’s political needs, and the bureaucratic system temporarily lost its ability to control campuses. Yet at that time, opposition to the CCP remained the ultimate political taboo—revolutionary mobilization always presupposed loyalty to the CCP and Mao personally. The second exception was the 1980s, the first and almost the only decade of genuine openness under CCP rule. During that period, student youth once again became the vanguard of social transformation, playing a leading role in the 1989 movement. Those roughly ten years were also the period when Chinese universities most resembled universities, and students most resembled true students.
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After June Fourth, the CCP restored its harsh control system over universities. Student youth and university faculty were placed under strict monitoring and discipline, political activity on campuses disappeared, and academic freedom was strangled. Compared to the Mao era, university control after June Fourth became more professionalized and resilient. There were no longer violent and storm-like political movements and mass criticism; instead, beneath a surface of quietness and calm existed coercion and sedation. Not only did organized action become impossible, even critical speech or exposure could easily lead to being summoned for interrogation, creating a chilling effect that forced faculty and students into self-censorship and avoidance of critical politics. Universities carried out comprehensive indoctrination, instilling values of loyalty to the Party and the government, replacing the ideals of liberty and democracy with the banner of “patriotism.”
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What was even more effective was that the CCP regime encouraged faculty and students to embrace utilitarianism, to abandon concern for the nation and society, and instead “make a fortune in silence” by pursuing personal gain—even implying that they could do so by any means necessary. This guiding atmosphere within universities was consistent with the social ethos the CCP promoted in the 1990s and thereafter: inducement through profit, moral corrosion, spiritual anesthesia, turning students into supporters and fellow travelers of the CCP.
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Under Xi Jinping, the high-pressure control over universities has intensified. Universities have become a key component of the stability-maintenance apparatus, placing heavy chains around the group of young students who possess the greatest potential for transformation. While blocking the pathway of social movements and revolution, the CCP has at the same time bestowed generous treatment upon student youth, especially those from key institutions, and absorbed many excellent individuals among them into the system, ensuring that they become stable vested-interest beneficiaries under this regime. Thus, the “unstable factor” that most frustrates autocrats and conservatives around the world has been conquered by the CCP through a combination of coercion and inducement.
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Everyone has an instinct to seek benefit and avoid harm; in the face of profit and punishment, how important is morality? The vast majority of those with the real capacity to transform China within the vested-interest class have, in reality, chosen to accept the CCP’s authoritarian rule, maintaining loyalty to the system. The CCP, in both policy orientation and practice, increasingly leans toward safeguarding the “power” and “interests” of the vested-interest class, holding firmly onto its core base to maintain political stability. This makes it equally unrealistic to expect that the “fortress will be breached from within.”
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Therefore, even if the CCP has numerous problems, some of which are extremely severe, with acute social contradictions, and even if the regressive policies of Xi Jinping and other hardliners are excessive, as long as the above conditions remain unchanged, the CCP regime will continue to possess vigorous vitality. Not to mention the fall of the CCP—even the outbreak of intense and open social turmoil is impossible.

(This article was written by Wang Qingmin(王庆民), a Chinese writer based in Europe and a researcher in international politics. The original was written in Chinese in 2021.)

Hi everyone,

My girlfriend and I are living in Shanghai and interested in exploring the local alternative lifestyle / kink community/ BDSM. Since we're new to the scene and don't know anyone yet, we'd love to get connected with local social munches or community organizers.

If you're involved in the community or can point us in the right direction, please send us a DM!

Thanks!

Hi everyone,

I live in Guangzhou, China. Yes, China! And I love cats.

The residential community I live in is called Poly Yunxi, Guangzhou. When I first moved here, I noticed there were several stray cats living in the garden downstairs. I don't remember exactly when I started feeding them, but eventually, it became part of my daily routine. I feed them every night after work.

Over time, I've also helped some of the cats find new homes and arranged for some of them to be neutered. It's not easy to do all this when you have a full-time job, but I try my best. I've also met two other neighbours who feed the stray cats in our community.

I usually put out food at night and clean up the area the next morning before going to work. I try to be responsible and not leave a mess behind.

Unfortunately, things have taken a turn for the worse lately.

If we put the food out too early, someone destroys it. For example, if I leave food out around 7:30 pm, I might find it scattered in the soil or the bowls emptied onto the ground. We've had to wait until after 9 pm to feed the cats to reduce the chances of this happening.

I eventually set up a portable camera to find out what was going on. I discovered that three kids were repeatedly destroying the food we left for the cats. I also noticed a woman moving our food bowls into the grass whenever I left food out in the morning.

One of my neighbours recently encountered one of these kids while feeding the cats. The kid was chasing a cat, and when my neighbour told him to stop, he refused. Instead, he said something along the lines of, "If you love cats so much, why don't you take all the stray cats home and keep them there? Then I wouldn't be able to hurt them."

He ran away after my neighbour threatened to call the police.

Honestly, this whole situation has been getting me down.

I know Guangzhou has a huge stray cat population, and I can't possibly rescue or adopt every cat I come across. Sometimes, when I'm driving, I even see cats that have been killed on the road. It's heartbreaking to see how difficult life can be for these animals.

I'm not trying to force anyone to love cats. I understand that not everyone likes them, and I know there can be concerns about feeding stray animals in a residential community. I'm willing to be responsible, keep the area clean, and work with my neighbours to find a reasonable solution.

But deliberately destroying their food and chasing or kicking them is another matter**.**

I am hoping to get some advices stop these kids from destroying the food and potentially hurting the cats?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you thank you

China leads in engineering, chemistry, enabling & strategic tech, and the US leads in clinical medicine. Any surprises here? And is the UK punching above or below its weight?