Life and Travel in China

Uber Taxi has clearly taken jobs away from traditional taxis in China. As I observe, in Shenzhen, catching a taxi on the street is no problem - regardless of whether it is evening or weekend. I remember the times when you had to walk in the city center for up to 20-30 minutes to find a free taxi driver. In Shanghai, we had to look for a chauffeur for over an hour, and finally we accidentally got in front of a hotel - only because another customer (a hotel guest) canceled the ride. Now many of our friends use the Uber application and they usually pay 30-50% less for the ride compared to a regular taxi.

Today we were picked up by a hired Chinese driver in Hunan Province. As standard, there is a tag with a portrait of leader Mao under the mirror (it's quite typical in Hunan, I think I wrote about it back in 2005). After some time, he turned on some disco Chinese music. There would be nothing strange about it, if it weren't for the DVD video clip that was displayed on his monitor. A group of white people in summer clothes, some holiday fun, a DJ on stage, I thought maybe something from Russia?! After a while, the RMF Maxx logo appears at the bottom of the screen ;-). It turned out that the video came from an event in Poland. I just don't know what connection it had with Chinese music? Either someone edited it this way, and in the Middle Kingdom this is very likely, or the music was separated from the film. As you can see, we have more and more in common.

I need to verify another stereotype about China. The average Pole thinks that in China people live on a bowl of rice, buy crappy toys, and consumer electronics are at the level of Africa. Well, electronics in China is very advanced now. In every subway you can see hundreds of people using the latest Apple and Samsung phones. There are also many Chinese brands that are very advanced, such as XiaoMi, which is desirable in Poland, and Vivo phones, which are very popular in the Middle Kingdom, also work quite well. My wife now uses XiaoMi Redmi 3, which we bought for about PLN 500. It saddens me to see how quickly this phone works. At similar prices in Poland we have some Nokia and Samsung models, which in my opinion are half as slow and have frequent 'lags', for example when watching movies or opening more demanding websites. I would also like to point out that the average Chinese person doesn't even use a tablet. A good phone is sufficient for work, entertainment and browsing. Of course, the most popular application that is open on every phone in China is WeChat (free online calls, video calls, money transfer, payments, friend search and Facebook-like functions). It may be hard to believe, but even Chinese farmers use phones with 4G Internet. Some even run online stores offering their vegetables. Incredible technological progress. Maybe not Japan yet, but almost there ;-).

I recently noticed while sitting in the front seat of a new VW taxi in Shenzhen that the driver was very busy on his cell phone. At every intersection and every longer wait at the traffic lights, he checked his smartphone. As it turned out, he was very busy checking the situation on the stock exchange. In which country do taxi drivers play on the stock exchange? How does he even have time for this? As you can see, certain applications allow you to invest money while performing a completely different profession. Of course, until he causes an accident while monitoring the status of his investments.

Poland woke up after 12 years... they remembered that there is China! They visited President Xi Jinping, and now he is visiting Poland. I have the impression that at the moment cooperation will take place on Chinese terms. The Middle Kingdom can choose and choose its partners. They have been cooperating perfectly with the Germans and French for a decade. I wonder who wanted Poland not to aspire to be a Chinese partner in Europe? I won't make direct accusations, but I have my own idea. Germany is certainly not interested in direct import/export from and to China. They certainly do not support the development of a railway line from China to Poland (although it is much more expensive than sea transport). The development of Polish ports is certainly not beneficial either. All this has been slowed down for years. Now action is simply overdue. A lot depends on the Chinese authorities, and the best we can do is initiate cooperation, because we know that in the eyes of the average Chinese, we are not a strong country in Europe. Unfortunately, we have been working for this ourselves since 1989.