An Indian’s Observation In Mainland China

一个印度人眼中的中国大陆

Before visiting China, my impression about China was – it is a large country, it is very advanced when it comes to infrastructure and technology, and it is a hard working country.

在来中国之前，我对中国的印象是—这是一个很大的国家，基础设施发达，科技先进，人们勤奋。

After visiting China, my impression about China just got multiplied by a factor of 10.

来中国之后，我对中国的印象要在这个基础上再好上十倍。

I visited Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang Province, and it is also the city where Asian Games are going to be conducted in 2022.

我去了杭州，这是浙江省的省会城市，也是2022年亚运会的举办城市。

I was advised to get my hotel name (where I would be staying in Hangzhou) and it’s address written in Mandarin Chinese, because the probability of the cab drivers speaking/reading English is almost zero.

有人建议我（在杭州期间）要把我入住的酒店名字和地址用中文写下来，因为这里的出租车司机基本不会说英文，也看不懂英文。

I landed in Hangzhou airport, came out of the airport and flagged a tax to pick me up. I pronounced my hotel name and the driver didn’t respond. Then, I showed him the paper where my hotel name and address was written in Mandarin Chinese. The next sequence of events were interesting.

我在杭州机场落地，出了机场招了一部出租车。我把酒店的名字读给司机听，但司机没有反应。我只能向司机出示用中文书写的酒店名字和地址的纸条。接下来发生的事非常有趣儿。

The cab driver had about seven smartphones – all are at least 5″ in screen size, and all of them were neatly attached to the windscreen. His car dashboard was like a cockpit with too many gadgets. He picked up one of the phone, simply read (spoke) the address, the tax app recognised the address in split seconds in the first try itself, and without any buffer the app displayed a detailed route map from airport to the hotel. There was zero lag in the app, and zero glitch in technology. Entire process was blazing fast.

出租车司机有大概7部智能手机—每一部的屏幕都至少有5英寸那么大，所有的手机都被整齐地固定在挡风玻璃上。车上的仪表盘看起来就像各种设备齐全的驾驶舱一样。他拿起一部手机，简单地看（报）了一下地址，出租车应用程序立刻就识别出这个地址，没有任何迟疑，然后显示了从机场到酒店的详细路线图。这款应用程序在使用时没有出现任何滞后，也没有出现任何技术故障。整个反应过程非常迅速。

In India, we have pretty much two major on-demand tax service companies – OLA, and UBER. In China, there are at least a dozen of them. Some of them are – Didi Dache, UBER, Kuaidadi, Yongche, Yaoyao Zhaoche, Dahuangfen, eHi and more. “Didi” in Chinese stands for “tax”. The “map” service provider in the tax app was powered by the country’s largest search engine – Baidu – famously referred as the Google of China.

在印度，我们几乎就只有两家提供叫车服务的出租车公司—欧乐和优步。在中国，则至少有10多家这样的公司，其中一些是—滴滴打车、优步、快打的、用车、摇摇招车、大黄蜂、一嗨等等。“滴滴”在中国就意味着“出租车”。出租车应用程序里的“地图”服务是由中国最大的搜索引擎百度提供的，百度就是中国的谷歌。

The tax market in China is so competitive that UBER finally had to merge with the top player – Didi Dache. In some of the tax hailing apps, users (us) have to offer a tip (via app) to the tax drivers to pick them up. Demand and supply relationship is healthy in China.

中国的出租车市场竞争非常激烈，优步最后只能和最大的竞争者滴滴打车合并。在一些叫车应用中，用户（我们）必须向司机支付小费（通过应用程序）才能招来的士。供需关系在这里还算平衡健康。

During my 42 km long drive from airport to hotel, I could notice at least 500 “MASSIVE” under construction buildings. Imagine Gurgaon city buildings or Bangalore’s ITPL that’s spanning for 20 kms long. It looked like the entire suburb was going to develop into a densely populated area. Since I don’t speak Mandarin, I couldn’t ask the driver what are these buildings for.

在我从机场到酒店的42公里车程中，我看到了最少500栋正在建造的高楼大厦。你可以脑补一下古尔冈市的高楼或者绵延20公里的班加罗尔国际科技园的样子。看起来整个市郊都在向人口高密度地区发展靠拢。不过我不会说汉语，所以没办法向司机了解这些建筑物的用途。

Also, I could hardly see anything written anywhere in English. Only large buildings (perhaps, companies) had their building names written in English.

另外，我在这儿也很少能看到用英语标记的东西。只有大型建筑物（也有可能是公司）有英文标识的大楼名称。

For a traveller, without knowing basic spoken words of Mandarin Chinese, exploring China is very tough. The local map app displays everything in Chinese. So, the only way to traverse China is to keep looking out for a local who speaks English.

对游客来说，如果连任何一点最基础的中文口语都不会，想要在中国游玩并非易事。当地地图应用程序内的所有内容都是用中文显示的。所以，在中国一定要注意寻找能说英文的当地人。

China is no less to India when it comes to traffic jam. When it comes to cleanliness of the place in general, I found Hangzhou to be a decently clean city.

谈到交通，中国的拥堵程度跟印度不相上下。说到城市的总体干净程度，我认为杭州绝对是一个干净整洁的城市。

I stayed at Han Yue Hotel in Hangzhou. The hotel rooms were neat and great. As expected, breakfast buffet had only Chinese food items.

我在杭州期间入住在翰悦酒店。酒店房间整洁舒适。但不出所料，早餐自助只供应中餐食物。

The next day, I went out to explore the city (more on this in later article), and when I came back to my hotel room, I noticed something weird. As soon as I opened the door, there were 4-5 business cards on the floor. I curiously picked them up, because I could see few English letters there. Finally, all cards had details of local call girls and their contact details. The average daily room rate in Han Yue Hotel was Rs 5,000, I was surprised to see that even a mid-segment hotel like this allows someone to slide in call girl cards in all of their rooms.

第二天，我出门到处逛逛（后文还会介绍很多这方面的内容），当我回到酒店房间时，我发现有点不对劲。我一打开房门，就发现地上有4-5张名片。因为看到上面有一些英文字母，我好奇地捡起来，却发现名片上是当地一些姑娘们的信息和联系方式。翰悦酒店的房费平均在5000卢比一晚，但这种中等酒店还能让人溜进来往所有客房派发应召女郎的名片，我觉得很震惊。