Behind the Scenes of “Watching Change”
One of the stories that I wrote is about an old woman who tries to pay for her groceries at the wet market in cash. In this story, I wanted to capture a small piece of China as it’s changing so fast. I love reading about China, but the incredible thing is that stories and details about daily life in China change drastically in just a few years.
When I first came to China in 2013, it was a completely different place than it is now in 2024. The switch from cash to online payment methods is just one of those tiny changes that has taken place. I want to write about these things as they happen, because it’s easy to miss the small changes, and I don’t want to forget about these little details in the much larger issues that are affecting the world.
These changes seem small, but I have also seen how they affect people drastically. For example, an American friend of mine recently got married in a city in Southern China. His family came to visit, but since they didn’t have the online payment method set up, they couldn’t really do much without my friend’s help. Online payment is used for everything from getting a taxi to paying for dinner to buying a bottle of water at a roadside stand to giving money to beggars (even beggars have little QR codes inside a metal bowl in case you don’t have cash). Online payments are everywhere, and if you can’t use online payments, you run into lots of problems in living your daily life.
In February, a friend of mine returned to China after several years. She had WeChat—the primary methods of online payment are WeChat and Alipay—but her account wasn’t properly verified, so it was blocked. She tried to create a new WeChat account with a new phone number, but since we tried to add her to groups too quickly, that account was also blocked. This friend’s journey to get a working WeChat and being able to use online payment is its own story, and she was eventually successful (I’m trying to convince her to write up her experiences so that she can also help people in a similar situation). However, for the weeks in between that time, her life was quite challenging since she was dependent on friends for nearly everything. She could get cash, but many restaurants couldn’t take cash since they didn’t have any change for her.
China is working on dealing with this problem, and it’s now possible to add foreign bank cards to these platforms, but the spending limit is relatively low, so it’s not possible to use them for very long. While I’m thankful that the security on these platforms is so strict to protect us from online harassment or scams, there are many challenges for people who can’t use online payments.
Most older people in China seem to be able to use online payments without any problems at this point, but in the story that I wrote, I tried to document a bit of the transition and the challenges that may come with that transition.
Personally, I didn’t notice many changes with this transition. I couldn’t even tell you exactly when people stopped using cash. For a while, I had a hard time getting the online payment to work on my WeChat account, but after a visit to the bank and to update my information, I was able to use it. At that time, we still weren’t using it for everything, but today pretty much everyone uses it for pretty much everything. For example, transferring money between friends is much easier at meals. One person can pay and then we can transfer our share of the money to that one person.
China is changing in many areas—this one small change in online payments is just one example of one of those changes. Being able to see and experience these changes is a joy and a blessing, and I’m glad I get to be in China during this time!