This stuff is infuriating on multiple levels
TL;DR:
- Restaurant only accepts orders made from the app
- Restaurant “mini” app is 200 mb and I had a sim card with 500mb/day
- When you finally get to pay, they must “verify you’re a human” with an otp code sent to your phone number
- For saving money they don’t send the otp code via SMS but via WhatsApp, which is blocked in the country
- Restaurant doesn’t accept cash
- Restaurant doesn’t accept credit cards
- Restaurant only accepts payments from a local app that requires id verification with passport scanning
- Taxis need to be called with an app
- In order to use the taxi app you need to register with the phone number and scan the passport and so on
Full story:
I went to china, first thing I went out for a walk and after a couple hours of walking I wanted to eat, so I went to KFC as I was intrigued by an ad showing a shrimp burger and a nori seaweed flavored fried chicken. (Yes, they looked tasty in the pictures, although by typing this, it doesn’t look like it’s actually tasty. Probably the “shrimp” burger is just surimi made with the cheapest shit gathered from the oceans and then just slushed in a patty. No, I could not try them, for the reason written below)
I went inside and I saw no self ordering kiosk. Oh no, I have to do social interaction with my poor Chinese proficiency. I go to the cashier and… there’s only a order pickup point. I ask and they say need to order from their app, just scan the qr code.
Now, luckily I ordered a travel esim with 500mb/day, as the store didn’t have public WiFi
I scan the qr code and it doesn’t work. It’s a proprietary version of qr code developed by tencent, need to use WeChat to scan.
I already had WeChat installed, I scanned it. It needed to download a KFC “mini app” and I agreed. 200 FUCKING MEGABYTES??? What does it contains, 4k movies of fried chicken???
After burning the whole data plan on that “mini” app I do the order and before paying: WAIT, YOU MUST LOGIN!
WTF? I thought the point of using WeChat is that I was already logged in a platform? Ok, let’s login. WAIT! HOW DO WE KNOW THAT YOU’RE NOT A BOT? Please verify your phone number!
WTF??? I just need my weird seafood flavored chicken, why do you need my phone number??
At that point I was already 20 minutes in, and due to the fallacy of sunk cost I agreed to let them “verify” my phone number. Which for some reason they sent via WhatsApp instead of texting it. Luckily the travel esims are somehow exonerated from the gfw so I could receive it.
Ok, identity “verified”, now need to pay. Oh, can’t pay in cash??? Can’t pay with credit card??? Only weixin pay. I try to check, needs passport verification.
At this point I just flip the table and I give up, I want to go back to my hotel room.
I’m tired boss, I don’t want to walk another 2 hours, let’s take a taxi. Last time I went to China it was pre-covid. In order to take a taxi you just needed to go on the side of the road, wait 30 seconds and a taxi would stop. Now there are no taxis at all??? I call my friend and he says it’s normal, everyone orders a Didi now from the phone. I see it’s another 200 mb app and I even don’t try it, as I’m 100% sure it will ask phone verification and pay with weixin pay.
I give up and just start to walk…
Luckily I see taxi dropping someone on the side of the road so I run there to ask get me home. When we arrive he directly shows me a laminated card for paying with weixin. I give him a 20 yuan bill for the 14 yuan ride. He probably tells me that he doesn’t have change. I don’t understand. It’s ok buddy, keep the change.
To be honest I went cashless during covid. I like my debit card more than I like carrying cash, it’s convenient to me. I would hate to have to lose the option though because when I go to buy a dutch, a lighter or a kinder bueno I don’t want to pay the atm fee that some places will charge to get up to the 5$/minimum and I’d rather pay cash.
My local liquor store doesn’t charge me the fee and I’m happy about that but I’d rather have a 5$ bill on me to buy a lighter or chocolate than pay the extra atm fee that might be added on to cover the 5$/minimum at some stores. So I usually have a little cash on me.
Oh no. A country that surveillance is too much forces you to use a app? No no no no you poor thing!
Yeah I have a way to get my weixin pay funded so I can Didi everywhere and I have an international roaming plan. Without weixin China is extremely troublesome, and other parts of Asia are similar.
This is spreading to the rest of the world too. I just came back from Singapore and encountered this exact scenario several times. I just get up and leave- can’t be bothered would rather eat a mini mart sandwich then.
Chinese, and to a lesser extent Asian Big Tech is what American Big Tech dreams and aspires to.
Everything is intimately linked to the super app platforms WeChat/Alipay (China) or LINE/Kakao Talk (Japan and Korea). Nearly everything online is designed primarily with WeChat/Alipay plugins/mini apps as the primary entry point and it is not uncommon both many services/pages to simply not exist outside of these super app ecosystems.
The apps are super invasive with privacy and require identity documents and banking details to even function. To some extent, it has resulted in convenience for the locals, though tbh this is mostly just replicating the convenience of western infrastructure like payment systems.
Where it gets messy is dealing with foreigners. China is particular has an incredibly messy system of regulations, mostly to curb money laundering and capital controls, that interact in very unforeseen ways.
Foreigners must link their identity documents and a payment method. Many vendors (either due to laziness or laws) cannot deal with foreigners at all. Additionally, due to capital controls, foreign payment methods cannot transfer or receive money. Many smaller vendors only accept payment via personal transfers, so you can easily end up being unable to pay, or split bills with locals. The inability to receive money also means you can’t receive refunds.
It gets way worse when interacting with HK/Macau, which operate their own, distinct parallel WeChat/Alipay systems. So, not only do you need to set up and maintain separate accounts for these, doing so may still be of limited use due to capital controls. A common trip around the Pearl Delta region covering Shenzhen, HK, and Macau unironically requires planning out a convoluted chart of which specific systems and accounts you need to use.
Please drink a verification can.
If I had to make a guess, not handling cash is a way of helping tamp down on crime, and the benefit is probably relatively-larger in poorer countries. Like, it’s hard to rob a store if the guy at the counter has no access to the money that the customers have been dropping off.
'course, cash is good for privacy, and especially when compared to a smartphone app, but…
Cash here somehow is IMHO designed to be inconvenient. The largest denomination bill is 100 yuan, that’s $15 but people in Beijing take 8000 yuan as monthly salary. 6 years ago I saw people going to deposit cash in bank with huge swaths of cash. At computers stores you’ll see the automatic money counters like in a bank, as buying a laptop would require 80-100 bills…
I spent three weeks in China this year, had a blast. It’s true you need an app for nearly everything, and while it’s too late for this advice, I’d recommend before you go:
- download/install alipay (skip wechat, it’s less prevalent)
- add and set up your CC from your home country before you arrive in china
- have a VPN ready to go, setup before you leave (mullvad worked perfectly for me)
- get a physical SIM in China, and get one with high data caps; they’re cheap, you might as well
- be sure to have a translator app installed and ready to go, with downloaded chinese (simplified) packs that don’t require internet connection
Once you’ve got the physical sim, you’ll have fewer issues with phone verification (obviously). The eSIMs I found (I also had one) were based out of hong-kong, and there are regional weirdness/connectivity issues with it. It worked, kind of, but was less reliable than the real deal. Good luck, god speed.
For wechat verification, I had to have a third-party (i.e. one of my chinese friends) perform a verification for me before all options unlocked. If you don’t know anyone there, this is obviously challenging.
Holly shirt, I’ll just stay home.
My experience with esims is fantastic. I loaded 5 of them on my phone (bought cheap plans with low data tiers) and switch them accordingly. High speed, no censorship at all, decent lag to western sites, I’m not detected as a VPN user.
Arrived in the airport, toggled, worked.
Physical SIM… Didn’t try this year but even 6 years ago it was extremely problematic to get one as a foreigner, no store would accept my form of identification, I was offline for three days until I caved in and finally paid 200 yuan extra for a preactivated one (on someone else’s id , I guess) on the grey market. And then there’s the problem that even if the plans are cheap (I’m seeing $1/month for 5gb), it’s rendered useless by the gfw. What’s the point of having 200 Mbits of 5g bandwidth if any website that you can think of (including hexbear and .ml surprisingly, I wouldn’t expect that they would block tankies), is banned? Better using a HK esim at 30mbits in 4g but with the full internet unlocked…
VPNs it’s a cat and mouse game that I don’t want to play anymore. You never know if the website isn’t loading because the VPN has been blocked, or the website blocked the VPN, or it’s a temporary connection issue, or today the server is overloaded…
if you only want to use VPN while traveling, it’d be better to host it yourself, at least if any connection behaviour differs from when you are at home you know it’s most likely narrowed down to just between your device and your home.
Phones are starting to drop physical sims in the US. I was surprised to find out that my pixel 10 doesn’t have one.
you have been banned from lemmy.ml
Ironically, .ml is banned in China, while this instance is not
if you lived in china long term you wouldn’t have these problems because you would have already given up all your personal data and privacy to the state. but hey, you’d get some convenience out of it, so not so bad, right?
Actually it gives no convenience, only incovenience. When I lived there for 2 years about 20 years ago and everything was cash and you could at any moment just hail a taxi, a minibus, one these bycicle guys, tell where you want to go, give cash, it was very convenient.
I feel like the most horrific thing about it all is that the government can just deactivate your account at any moment. Happened to a friend when they were visiting, maybe some connections on the phone they did not like it. They didn’t tell them and it happened automatic after connecting with two locals.
I ask and they say need to order from their app, just scan the qr code
Yeah, that’s the point I would have turned around and walked out.
I hate regular sit down restaurants today that do that.
I’ve walked out if they don’t have a printed menu. Why the fuck would I want to order from my phone?
I live in Colombia, and digital menus via QR code have become pretty normal here. They save on printing costs and allow for frequent updates.
But there are still servers to take your order. Ordering through your phone while you’re actually in the restaurant is very rare.
and allow for frequent updates.
Great! Surge/dynamic pricing for eating out :[.
Just curious, why not?
I hate this shit too. I just prefer a physical menu rather than clicking through a couple links, and having to scroll and zoom in on items. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
for me it depends on the UI. Most order UI I’ve seen is just a big list, any further clicks is just for customization options that normally wouldn’t have fit in a menu and you have to ask someone to even know.
bonus points if you actually put additional details in your menu if you are going digital, at least you are providing something that was previously not provided.
Would a better design or implication change your mind? Many menus are printed on plastics these days, or paper that is thrown in the trash rather than recycled. An eco-friendly argument could be made in favor of the QR code. As in, if a new item or promotion is going on, a simple digital change would obviate reprinting sections of the menu, or even the entire thing.
Also, with the near ubiquity of square or other similar cash register systems these days, the amount of tracking involved might be similar to that of what a mobile menu system would be.
Where are you that they’re changing their menus often enough for that to matter? It use to be that the basic menu wouldn’t change for years and daily specials would be written on a chalk board and told by the wait staff.
Digital menus just seem like a way to do surge pricing.
Small <5 location “mini chains”, that have somewhat frequent promotions. One I know of locally is a Mexican restaurant that has drink menu’s that change often enough to try to keep people coming in. Could also be different lunch combos, etc. Obviously this is more of a thought experiment than a real world solution. If such a solution was attempted to be made a reality, it would offer the option to different sorts of promos, combos or specials (seasonal, holidays).
A few restaurants I’ve been to lately have UV printed plastic menus, that we can safely assume are tossed by staff when new prints come in.
Or maybe this is all garbage, and I’ve wasted a few minutes of my night bullshitting. Surge pricing would be a despicable thing, that might be the end result, or not. Who knows. I doubt any spot would take advantage of such a system, since a QR code to a collection of compressed scanned pages would be the path of least effort for the establishment.
Sometimes exploring something silly is fun to do.
So we’re using new tech to solve a problem that new tech created? Just print it on paper and stick it in a reusable plastic sleeve. If a restaurant insists I use my phone, I’m going to make the wait staff stair at it while it struggles to load the menu.
Maybe a menu projected onto the table? Or a digital display at the table? Those are probably worse from an environmental standpoint than laminated paper. There’s just no way to put a menu on my phone that isn’t less convenient to me. Tracking is of secondary concern to me in this context (though I do prefer cash) since cellular/WiFi/Bluetooth/cameras already know I’m in that restaurant. Otherwise, I just prefer the human interaction. I made the choice to leave my home/hotel to eat in a restaurant. I frequently also have questions or special requests that I can’t communicate through a website or app.
That’s fair. I appreciate your responses. Digital menus at the table would definitely be an interesting solution to somewhat frequent changes. A minority report style menu would be a novel experience, one that would draw business in for sure. Exploding a view of a sushi roll, seeing the individual ingredients, with descriptions that could include allergen, contamination, or even sensory warnings could be a pretty cool experience.
I am one of the antisocial peeps out there that enjoy the solitary experience; I suppose it is foreign to me that others would actually desire the interaction with others.
I get it, and I don’t care if it’s an option, just don’t take the menu away from me.
For one, they are probably harvesting the fuck out of your data…
I have seen a restaurant have a qr code that just links to a pdf
Wouldn’t be the restaurant harvesting. They likely only got the app out of convenience and sold to them as a cost savings; the actual ordering/menu company probably has all the customer data sharing agreements that the restaurant owner didn’t read or didn’t care enough to understand. Those companies are the ones who want your data, the restaurant doesn’t care.
‘I went to China’… Ahh see, there’s the root issue.
Are you for real?
If you are asking if I think that is the root of the issue of OPs complaint then yes, absolutely.
You do not go to China and complain about wechat which is the known established and monitored system you have to use. Everything that comes after is just a consequence of that (for a lot of things). People who do not see this have no knowledge of China.
I just used alipay instead. IDK if it’s just the same thing under a different name.
This is a reason I’ll never go to China unless it’s with thousands of others who also don’t want to be there and professional logisticians taking care of the food problem.
Reads like cautionary tale of high-modernism, seemed like a real pain, sorry you went through that. Hope you got a good meal afterwards!
