This is not your father’s China – Part 1
Quick Reads.
Quick Reads are meant to be thoughts I want to share that you can read in a moment or two. Here goes.
Why would I do this?
Today, we received the 30th different credit card that we’ve had over the past couple of years. Why would I want to do that?
Oftentimes when you don’t know the answer to a question, the answer is, “It’s the money, stupid .” Note: I’m not calling you stupid.
Can you keep track of this?
People often ask me, “How can you keep track of 30 different credit cards?” I would answer that question like this.
I’m going to guess that you know and have visited at least 30 different locations in your hometown. I’m talking about the gas station, the library, the post office, and McDonald’s. You do know at least 30 locations in your hometown, right?
Because you are familiar with those 30 locations and you decide to go to the post office, does knowing where the other 29 locations are located make it more difficult to find the post office? I think not. That’s how it is with credit cards and me. I don’t use each one every day. Some I haven’t used in nearly a year, and those cards will be discontinued after one year. So, why have 30 credit cards? Remember, it’s the money.
I don’t need no more money.
Other people might say they “don’t need” the money they could earn from credit card arbitrage. Remember, the first year I did this, I earned $92,000. The folks who say they don’t need the money are the same folks who drive an extra two miles out of the way to save a nickel per gallon on their gasoline. I can’t explain it. I can only comment on it.
Paze? What’s Paze?
One more thing. Chase just began a promotion with Paze. Never heard of Paze? Me neither until now.
Using my Chase Freedom Unlimited card, I can buy $1,000 in popular-brand gift cards and earn 11,500 Chase points. Then I can redeem those 11,500 points for about $345 in Hyatt savings. I spent a thousand bucks on stuff I would have bought anyway and got $345 back. It’s the money (and the game), neighbor.
In closing, I have more than 16,000 emails in my inbox.
This is not your father’s China – Part 1
This is what I think.
I’m going to go out on a limb and say that I think most Americans have a rather negative view of China. That is notwithstanding the fact that those folks have purchased and might have hundreds of items in their homes made in China.
I’ll also go out on a limb and say that most people who have never been to China have a more negative view of the country than those who have. I’m going to tell you about my experiences. If you’ve been to China, you can tell me if my views line up with yours; if you haven’t been to China, you can tell me if my views are quite a bit different from what your imagination has given you about China.
Not my first rodeo.
This would be my fourth trip to China, three of which were in mainland China, and Carol’s third trip.
Back in 2000, Carol and I took a guided group tour to China. We have only taken two of these types of tours ever, this one in China and another to Russia. I prefer touring on my own. However, the tour to Beijing, Xian, Guilin, and Shanghai more than 25 years ago was a wonderful trip. We made friends with folks who we visited several times once we were back in the U.S.
Advance planning is required to visit China.
Quite a bit of advance planning was needed for our visit. My advanced planning focused on three things. First, visas, then airfare and hotels.
Transit-without-Visa
Last year I went to mainland China by myself. I used their newly created transit-without-Visa program. This was a free program and allowed me to stay in China for 240 hours; you may think of it as 10 days. All I had to do was arrive in China from country number one, then transit through China as country number two, and leave China from country number three. Simple, and it worked very well.
Going for the gold.
For this trip to China, I was going to try to get a 10-year, unlimited-visits visa. This was a little more complicated. It also cost $140 per person.
We applied for a visitor visa. We didn’t know if that visa would be for 10 years or less. They don’t tell you in advance. Also, we were required to wait until 90 days before our trip began to make our visa application. That made this idea a bit dicey.
I’m using a lot of AI nowadays.
I used ChatGPT to get advice on how to conquer this challenge. Much of what ChatGPT gave me was invaluable, but some points were downright wrong.
This was like taking the SAT.
First, I would have to complete a roughly 10-page visa application for each of us. Since I am the travel planner, Carol doesn’t do anything with this part of the planning except sign a document if needed.
The 10-page application had 8-10 questions on each page, sometimes more. Some of the questions were really obscure. I had no idea which activities my mother participated in during her junior year of high school! She graduated in 1945, for gosh sakes.
Mickey Mouse?
I muddled through the application, and when I didn’t know the answer, I simply wrote something down. I thought about inserting “Mickey Mouse” as one of the answers to these really weird questions, but I refrained. I wasn’t sure what kind of sense of humor the person reading my application might have.
When I was finished, I submitted the applications online. Then I waited. Finally, after about 10 days, when I checked, it seemed the application had been approved so I could proceed to the next step. They never notified me about any of this. I only found that out by checking our approval status pretty much every day.
Good stuff takes time and effort.
The next step was to take my passport up to the China visa center in Los Angeles. China has five of these visa locations in the United States. Those locations are Washington, D.C., New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.
I live about an hour and a half, maybe two hours, from the Southern California visa center in heavy traffic. If you don’t live near one of these locations, you’re probably going to have to hire somebody at an extra expense to process your application.
C’mon man! Really?
I asked ChatGPT for the address of the China Visa Center in Los Angeles, and it gave it to me. On one Tuesday morning, I battled early-morning traffic, found a great parking spot right next to the high-rise building I was told was the visa center. Then I discovered that the entire 20-story building was 100% vacant. The actual China Visa Center was 5 miles away from where ChatGPT told me it was. I was shocked, saddened, and bent a little bit out of shape to learn this.
I finally found the right building. I was going to have to leave my passport at the visa center for an unknown amount of time. That was a problem. I travel out of the country at least once a month and sometimes more. I can’t afford to be without my passport for very long. I had a trip to South Africa all reserved, with a departure time about 14 days after I dropped off my passport with the Chinese folks. If they didn’t return my passport within 14 days, I wouldn’t be going to South Africa.
It’s always something ain’t it?
When I showed up to drop off my passport, I didn’t have a particular barcode they were looking for. I got as far as the metal detector. They weren’t going to let me in! I thought I could BS my way through, but apparently they have met people like me before.
Fortunately, there was a travel agent on the same floor as the visa center. They had experience with this barcode problem. I made contact with a lady there, slipped her 20 bucks…and she got me the QR code I needed. That’s how life works in my world.
No! Not the DMV.
The visa center was EXACTLY like your local DMV! There were not very many people who looked like me. Once inside the visa center, I waited for two hours as one person after another was called up. When it was my turn, I handed over my passport. I also had copies of my visa application, my travel plans, and more that ChatGPT said I would need, but I didn’t.
Some five or six days later, they contacted me and said I could come and pick up our passports and visas. I still didn’t know if I’d gotten a 10-year visa. I arrived early and only had to wait about 45 minutes. I had made two trips to the visa center, and that involved about eight hours of heavy-duty rush-hour city driving.
I considered having the visa center mail back my passport when the visa was approved to save the trip. However, I knew that if I did that, I might encounter some unknown problem, and getting a new passport would be a real hassle. That kind of problem would also put my South African trip in jeopardy.
10 years! This was better than having a judge tell you, “ten years.”
Carol and I were both approved for the 10-year unlimited visit visa. We hope to go back at least one more time or two, so those long-term visitor visas will be valuable.
How do I pay for stuff?
For our airfare, I used frequent flyer points. When I use points and miles for airline reservations, I only make one-way reservations. There are usually no savings with points for a round-trip reservation. One-way tickets are much more flexible than round-trip tickets.
I spent 90,000 points from my Alaska Airlines’ frequent flyer account and $68 to get us from Los Angeles to Macau, China. We flew on Starlux Airlines. Yes! I redeemed Alaska frequent flyer miles to fly on Starlux!
We would connect in Taipei, Taiwan, to get to China. One-way tickets on this route are about $1,500 per passenger. I thought I got a good value using my points. As you read through our travel plan and journey, you might notice we didn’t spend all that much money for some high-quality travel.
The travel plan.
Our plan was to spend some time in three different Chinese cities. We would visit Macau, Changsha, and Shanghai. We would be staying overnight in China for 11 nights.
I would much rather spend a few days in three cities than 11 days in one city. Our plan was to do one adventure every day of the trip wherever we were.
Cheap. Really cheap!
Most things are incredibly cheap in China. I’m going to say that something that costs $100 in the United States might cost $30 or so in China. The cost of living is dramatically different.
Our hotel reservations included a Hyatt Regency in the Macau area, a Park Hyatt in Changsha, and a Grand Hyatt in Shanghai. I am a heavy-duty Hyatt user, which gives me Globalist frequent-stay status. With Hyatt, a Globalist can do no wrong.
Important!
I never want to buy cheap things cheap. I’m all about buying good things cheap.
The best value of the trip!
I was able to use guaranteed suite upgrade awards to get us hotel suites for all 11 nights of our stay. These hotels were as nice as any Hyatt I’ve stayed at anywhere in the world.
We will be getting free suite upgrades, breakfast for two, and a late check-out of 4 p.m. whenever we needed it for an average cash cost of about $125 a night. I paid cash because the cash rates were a better offer than redeeming Hyatt points for these hotels.
Those same basic hotel rooms in the United States would have cost 3-6 times as much. When you consider the suites we had, those rooms might have run upwards of $1,000 a night in the States.
Pre-planning done. Time to hit the road.
With our visitor visa confirmed, our airline tickets reserved, and our hotel reservations completed, off we went to mainland China. Carol says I enjoy planning the trip more than taking the trip. She’s right!
Our flight from Los Angeles (Tom Bradley International Terminal) to Taipei lasted 14 hours. Then we had a short flight from Taipei to Macau of just two hours.
I can’t be on a plane that long! Go to Denver then.
Some people tell me they can’t fly for very long. I understand. However, nobody has ever told me they can’t sit in their recliner all day!
If you can’t fly very long and you live in Cedar Rapids, about as far as you’re gonna go is Denver. I’ve been to Denver. I’d rather keep flying and get to China.
Taipei, Taiwan.
We landed in Taipei at 6 o’clock in the morning. Taipei (TPE) has a beautiful airport. Our flight from Taipei to Macau, China wasn’t leaving until 4 o’clock in the afternoon. After flying for 14 hours, I wasn’t really looking forward to a 10-hour layover, but that’s what we had.
We used the connecting time to hang out at a very nice Priority Pass airline lounge in TPE. In the lounge we could eat and sleep. From time to time I stepped outside to get my steps in. For every day of the trip, I walked more than four miles, even if some of those steps were in the hotel hallway.
Been to Hong Kong? That isn’t mainland China.
Did you know that Macao, Hong Kong, and Taipei are Special Administrative Regions (SARs), or self-governing entities? These locations are not part of mainland China. I guess you could call these locations a little bit more relaxed, sort of like what Puerto Rico is to the United States.
Didn’t know this, but it wasn’t a big problem.
When I booked the Hyatt Regency Hengqin, I thought I was booking a hotel in Macao. I didn’t realize the hotel was on the mainland China side of Macau. All of the fun stuff like the casinos was on the Macau SAR side of the border. This wasn’t a big deal, but it did add a bit of inconvenience to the trip, though the benefit was much better hotel pricing. Each day we crossed the border into Macao from mainland China and then that night back INTO mainland China. The border crossing, Hengqin Port, was like a big shopping mall.
DiDi to the rescue.
That meant we had to take a 10-minute DiDi ride to the border, cross, get a passport stamp, then take a 10-minute Didi/taxi ride to the casinos. This reminded me that cars in China are left-side-drive and cars in Macao are right-side-drive.
Cheap? How cheap? That’s really cheap!
You’ve probably ridden with rideshare drivers in the United States from companies like Uber and Lyft. In 2016, Uber sold its rideshare operations in China to DiDi.
DiDi rides are extraordinarily cheap. Our 10-minute ride each day costs about a dollar. Sometimes we would ride for an hour, and the bill would be five or six dollars. The cost of living in China is cheap. If a driver takes me for 10 minutes and I pay a dollar, how much do you think they make from that?
Very impressive.
The Hyatt Regency Zhuhai Gongbei where we stayed was simply outstanding. Since the beginning of 2024, I have stayed in Hyatt hotels for 394 nights. I guess I am qualified to make that statement about this hotel.
Want more? Ask for it.
I already had a guaranteed suite upgrade, but when I checked in, I asked if there was an even bigger and better suite. There was. Carol cringed at that question. She is old school. A Motel 6 works for her. I don’t roll that way.
I did have to pay an extra $30 a night to get this bigger suite. Die with Zero, baby. When I take the checkered flag of life, will I miss that one hundred bucks or have the satisfaction that money gave me?
How big was the suite? It was 3500 ft.². Most people do not live in an entire home that big. Carol and I could stretch out, and when I needed her, I would simply text her, and pretty soon she would find me. The last photo above was the Regency Club. This was open all day and complimentary for us to use, with food, drink, and a healthy cocktail hour.
我不会说英语
People in China do not speak English. Even in such upscale Hyatt hotels, almost all of the support people and desk clerks could not speak more than a few words of English. That was both comical and challenging. We found the one or two staff members who spoke English and latched onto them.
The Las Vegas of China.
The first of our three stops in China would be Macao. Macao is the Las Vegas of China. Many of the hotel brands you see in Las Vegas are also in Macau, but the resorts and casinos there are likely larger than those in Las Vegas!
This was in the top three activities of the entire trip.
A highlight of the entire trip, and certainly of Macau, was the “House of Dancing Waters” Vegas-style aquatics show. That show is located in the City of Dreams casino. This is a 90-minute performance that might remind you of a Cirque du Soleil-style show, but with a few differences. Tickets run from $100-$200, and it’s best to book early because they are likely to sell out.
I bought some of the best seats in the house. My thinking? How often are we going to go to the House of Dancing Water show? That put us in the second row. There are several water features in the show. We were told that people in the first couple of rows were likely to get wet, which made it seem like we were attending a Gallagher performance!
Yes, this all really did happen.
By the way, one Sunday morning I was waiting for a plane at Chicago’s O’Hare airport. A guy was sitting next to me in a wild Hawaiian (better described as “Aloha”) shirt. It was Gallagher, the comedian! We talked for just a bit. The same thing happened to me with the Oak Ridge Boys!! A kid came up asking for their autograph and asked me too.
A poncho? Really?
The Dancing Waters folks even provided plastic ponchos. Carol was super concerned about this, as you can see from the stylish poncho she wore throughout the entire performance. I must admit, I put my poncho on for about three minutes, then realized the water wasn’t gonna be a problem and took it off. If you get to go to this show, you can thank me later.
House of Dancing Waters.
The show was outstanding. The scenes and sets magnificent. Watching from the second row was a good choice. We had a good time.
The Venetian Macao.
We ate in some of the casino restaurants, which were delicious. We walked the casino floor of the Venetian. This is the largest casino room in the world!
Bucking the system.
If you’ve ever been to a Las Vegas casino or pretty much any casino, you know that photographs are not allowed. If you’ve ever been around me, you know that I use my phone to take photos. I will take a picture about every three minutes no matter where I am. If the FBI ever tracks me down and I need an alibi, I figure my photo trail will clear me.
When we were in the casino, I was frequently taking discreet photos. Yes, I was doing this in China. This completely freaked out Carol. That’s probably one of the reasons I like to take photos in casinos!
Well above well above average.
Breakfast at the Hyatt Regency was delightful. They must have had a dozen different food stations. I settled on dim sum and enjoyed made-to-order omelets along with several other delicacies. I think breakfast at the Hyatt cost $30-$40 per person, but we didn’t have to pay because of my Globalist status.
When I tell you our net cost for all of our hotels during this trip was $125, that does not include the value of breakfast for both of us. If I included free breakfast, that would bring our expenses down to $ 60 or $80 a night for some of the best hotels I’ve stayed at anywhere in the world.
Highly recommended.
I used GetYourGuide, an online travel booking agency, to get some ideas for things to do as a tourist. I’ve used them all over the world and highly recommend GetYourGuide.
They had a nice city tour of Macau. It included temple visits and views of the Macau skyline and an hour-long walk through the heart of the “old” Macau.
I hate what I think of as bad weather.
The weather was extremely hot and humid. My weather app told me the temperatures were about 15° above normal.
I do not like hot and humid weather. I’m not sure anyone should go outside if the temperature gets to be 62° or lower. We usually don’t in Southern California. I also don’t like the temperature being more than about 76°. I don’t want any humidity, rain, bugs, tornadoes, or hurricanes. Give me 62 to 76° with a slight breeze, and I’m with you. Otherwise, I’d rather stay home.
Timmy’s.
I was surprised to see Tim Hortons at the border crossing in Macau. They weren’t selling donuts but bagels.
Never done this.
One of the attractions was an interactive “body immersive” museum. This was one of the most unusual touring spots I have ever visited.
Online, the teamLab SuperNature Macau museum is described like this.
“teamLab fills the museum with ever-changing artworks reflective of their mission to create digital pieces that connect viewers with nature. The collective describes the space as a “body immersive” museum that will challenge the concept of “physical,” blurring the boundaries between the human body and art. As visitors walk through the space and experience the installations, teamLab hopes they will feel unified with the art.”
Like I say, I’ve never seen anything like this. I will also tell you that the photos I am sharing don’t come close to showing the experience. Not close at all!
We went into different “rooms,” and saw various light shows and dramatic, vibrant, modern electronic art. I can’t really describe it, but if you get to the area, I recommend it. The museum is located in the Venetian. The Venetian is huge, so put on your walking shoes to reach the museum.
The food court in the Venetian is on a different level of enjoyment. It’s almost all Asian eateries. I had one of the best meals of the trip here.
Lucky to see this.
On the walk to the art museum, we noticed that the hotel was hosting a new car show in the ballroom. We stopped in.
The show was free, somewhat small compared to the auto show in Los Angeles, so we stopped in. China has a dramatic presence of electric cars. More than half of the cars in China are electric. The auto show featured a few Tesla models (full disclosure: I own a Tesla Model X) and many models from Chinese brands, including BYD.
Build your dreams.
Did you know that “BYD” stands for “Build Your Dreams?” BYD is the number-one-selling electric car brand in the world. When we travel abroad, we see lots of BYDs, but you won’t see them in the U.S. Not allowed because of 100% tariffs and other regulations.
Best shopping malls ever?
Each of these beyond-imaginable, outsized casinos had dramatic shopping malls as well. Our travels would take us to several malls around China. These malls were nicer than anything I’ve ever seen and had a good amount of customers considering the state of shopping malls nowadays. What really surprised me was that well over half the stores were occupied by brands I had never heard of.
Time to leave Macao.
From Macao, we would take one of China’s high-speed trains to Changsha. I went to Changsha last year and was impressed by the Park Hyatt hotel. I wanted to show the place to Carol.
Changsha is a city of 10 million people, making it only the 19th-largest city in all of China. China’s population is about 1.4 billion. Compare that to the United States population of just over 300 million.
Part 2 coming to a location near you.
Part 2 of my review of China will cover our visits to both Changsha and Shanghai. I don’t think you wanna miss that.
I’m going to recommend that if you haven’t been to mainland China, you should go. China has changed a lot in the last 30 or 40 years. Their economy has been great. The investment in their infrastructure, buildings, and retail establishments is dramatic. The people are nice.
No, this is not your father’s China.