From the rust and the dirt I saw nearby the wheels, and the many wires arriving to it from the other side, it should be stationary. Did only saw a couple of them parked and not on the roads
Basically yes. It's THE app. Now it looks like it also integrates meituan (≈ Groupon) and JD (≈amazon)
And it looks like if your social score goes over 500 points, you can activate buy now pay later like klarna
Chat, social media feed (both in TikTok style and also in Twitter/Instagram mashup style), it has everything. It takes 7gb of space on my phone and I only have like 3 chats. I'm guessing for heavy users it takes over the full storage of the phone
I tried to say 没有，没有 (I don't have it) to the counter but the lady insisted like "oh give me your phone I'll install it for you, it's so easy"
On a second thought I just have noped the fuck out in the beginning instead of my hunger dictate my auctions and thinking "well I did 90% of the process, let's just give them the rest of the precious data..."
And most restaurant chains are like this anyway, the alternative is going to small shops where the menu is handwritten and without pictures (incomprehensible and impossible to translate for me) and/or they have dubious cooking practices
Bonus pic of a salmonella-flavored hamburger from a place that accepted cash:
Maybe I should try to eat like a local but my bowels don't agree with that...
The app:
It just has thumbnails of food shown at 200*150 pixels, how it can be 200 mb???
Those mentally ill persons exists from long time.
They set the forests on fire to gloat over the headlines
Or some of them to feel heroic being one of the first responders
It's a police bus with anti riot windows and about 20 cameras all around the roof
This stuff is infuriating on multiple levels
TL;DR:
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.
Maybe something relative to forced labor for fast fashion?
The people who pays for this kind of stickers should have someone else reviewing them... maybe in their mind the message is clear, but it isn't
We should stop calling them colonists or settlers
They're neither, we should use proper terminology for that
That's very basic, it was a magazine sold in stands or something mailed only to subscribers/fanclubs?
Very small number of pages too
Need to wait 5 years for getting half the loot, then probably give up almost another half in taxes and fees when converting that in fiat
Saw also in the numbers got in the election
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...