I had a Pizza Hut Pizza in Xian and it was very different from their US versions. It was pretty good, just different and different enough that it might as well have been something new.
Travelling in China
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Cheetah
Deity
And remember that the app will likely vacuum as much information from your phone as it can. So don't have any personal info on it...
Maybe you've been away for too long? Online shopping is a huge thing in China now. On sites like Taobao and JD I bought everything from imported beer to external hard drives, and had it delivered within a few days to my door by a migrant worker on an electric scooter.
Salad dressing on pizza? 
Bamspeedy
CheeseBob
I was wondering what happened to fruit at Pizza Hut I had heard about 10 years ago. They had to get rid of the salad bar as even 'one trip to the salad bar' did not stop the Chinese from finding ways to stretch the value of their money.
https://kotaku.com/how-chinese-ingenuity-destroyed-salad-bars-at-pizza-hut-834835079
Online shopping in the US is such a craze that we don't build any more (enclosed) malls, stores are closing down. China is still building more, even when online shopping takes a bite out of it. Though perhaps that was just the area we were in, I didn't travel all over the country.
Perhaps my wife commenting on the fact that "Back home all the stores are closing but here in China shopping is so popular and they are building more malls" had more to do with the growing economy than whether or not online shopping exists.
https://kotaku.com/how-chinese-ingenuity-destroyed-salad-bars-at-pizza-hut-834835079
Online shopping in the US is such a craze that we don't build any more (enclosed) malls, stores are closing down. China is still building more, even when online shopping takes a bite out of it. Though perhaps that was just the area we were in, I didn't travel all over the country.
Perhaps my wife commenting on the fact that "Back home all the stores are closing but here in China shopping is so popular and they are building more malls" had more to do with the growing economy than whether or not online shopping exists.
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I think you're right. The US has so many brick and mortar stores that Amazon etc replace them, but in China, new developments are built with a shopping mall alongside the online shopping infrastructure.
Fun fact: New South China Mall in the southern manufacturing city of Dongguan (previously also infamous for its sex industry) is the world's largest shopping mall. But it's been pretty much vacant since its opening in 2005, even before online shopping became a big thing. The developers have probably still made a profit on the rising property prices, though.
FriendlyFire
Codex WMDicanious
I was wondering what happened to fruit at Pizza Hut I had heard about 10 years ago. They had to get rid of the salad bar as even 'one trip to the salad bar' did not stop the Chinese from finding ways to stretch the value of their money.
https://kotaku.com/how-chinese-ingenuity-destroyed-salad-bars-at-pizza-hut-834835079
.
In Japan all you can eat have 1 simple rule. anything you dont eat and has to be thrown away is charged as an additional cost to you the customer
That way people only took what they could finish, cuts down on the food wastage and helps keeps prices reasonable.
Chinese do love to good food value, Pizza hut should probably have raised the price as any leader lose item will be taken advantage of by savvy eaters.
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Vacant buildings are pretty common all over China. Speculation is rampant too.
Bamspeedy
CheeseBob
That mall is quite well known. It wasn't vacant because Chinese don't love to shop, it was a failure of market research to build an upscale mall in a city of poor migrants.
Addresses are confusing and long. Here in the US I just write the village within the state. There it's the village, within the town, within the city, within the province. Filling out the addresses 5 times can be quite time consuming......
Traveling with kids, China Eastern will pull you out and move you to the front of the line if you have a kid under 5. Well, they did in Chicago and Shanghai on my way there, but on the way back in Guangzhou and Shanghai they didn't pay any attention to that. Still, even with queue jumping it was not enough to prevent missing a flight with a layover of less than 2 hours for a family of 5 when going through customs, the connecting flight was on the opposite side of airport and China Eastern doesn't hand out the arrival/departure cards on the airplane for you to fill out ahead of time like other airlines did 10 years ago (unless I had asked?).
It's already been noted about not drinking the water, the water in tea is fine because it's been boiled. In modern restaurants it's not really necessary, but it's customary for the customers at restaurants to rinse their dishes with tea before eating, so most still do it.
https://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowTopic-g294217-i1496-k3071026-Utensil_washing-Hong_Kong.html
Like one of the comments noted, if unsure, just watch what others are doing.
Summer Palace: Beijing. Favored Concubine's residence
Pingyao City Wall
Also from Pingyao:
You can't buy guns in China except these:
I was talking to one of our Chinese interpreters tonight and she told me that she was buying a house this week and she told me the process. First, by house, she means she is buying a 90 sq meter (810 sq ft) flat in a tower. Here is the process:
- The flat she wants is one of 500 going up in 4 thirty-four story towers that won't be finished for about a year.
- She was judged financially qualified for the purchase and put 100,000 rmb into escrow. (about USD $16,000)
- ~1200 other people were also qualified; so there is a pool of 1200 people wanting to buy those 500 flats.
- On Thursday morning all 1200 names will be put into a drum and 500 names pulled out in a government supervised drawing
- At 4:30 that afternoon a website will open and those 500 people will each be able to log in and choose the flat they want. First come first served. The selection ends at 4:40. If you don't get one you want you don't have to buy.
- Anyone who either doesn't get into the competition or doesn't buy one, gets their deposit back.
She told me that it was inexpensive. The Chinese housing market is very speculative. In this situation, the building is still under construction and is pretty centrally located. After these four towers there will be more built in the same area. I'm thinking that the price is low because they are a year out from being finished. Her current flat in a dense low rise neighborhood (7 story buildings) 4 k closer to downtown has a 25% higher value. I hope to get a link to the drawing on Thursday so I can watch it.
Keep in mind that this is in Changsha and not Beijing or Shanghai.
The government fears that speculation will/has produced a housing bubble and it is taking measures to keep that from happening/bursting. A collapse of prices would mean financial ruin for many speculators.
Zkribbler
Deity
Don't forget that China has only about 200 surnames. Lots & lots & lots of people have the same exact name.
810sqft with 2 bedrooms and a study. Be interesting to see the floorplan. Those have to be some small rooms, so they have to save space somehow.
