You got it pretty much spot on. I've always had this issue with China. I can't think of a worse place to 'see the world', really. After leaving my years in Korea and Vietnam, coming here was almost a culture shock in how little actual culture was left here. I found so much beautiful Chinese culture... in other countries. Celebrations, festivals, architecture faithfully restored or maintained. Same in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Nepal I've visited too and it feels far more genuine.
Here... nada. People would tell me 'no you have to go outside of Shanghai to see the culture'. So I did and saw basically how you describe it. 'Ancient towns' which are barely 15 year old pseudo-villages selling tourist garbage. Local villages which, upon further inspection, have glorified Xi Jinping propaganda pictures on the wall of their own homes, with stories of his statue being taken by buddhist monks to be cleaned at the temple because he is too precious for them to clean it themselves - but they are still buddhist! Just not as much as they are CCP loyalists. This is all before they unveil a table full of silverware to be sold as souvenirs. This wasn't even a tourist spot lol. Just a regular village with flies swarming around a pig's carcass on the front gate.
I did notice on this trip, whenever we were going through any point of interest, the landscape had been stripped bare, mountains carved into in order to make space for a new elevated highway/tunnel/tourist spot. Sad really.
The post after my next one will be about Kangding, perhaps you know it. But man, that is the headquarters of tackiness. Tacky lights, tacky shops. GREAT food, but man oh man... tacky.
Exactly. It’s very sad. It wasn’t like this when I was growing up 20 years ago, all I remember is markets, street food etc. My best memories were having street BBQ stewers on summer nights, nowsdays most of those food stands either disappeared or turning into more expensive shiny “concept” restaurants.
Right now I’m in Bangkok, that’s the reason I like about BKK, although more and more trendy hipster modern stuff coming, there’re still huge group of ppl to support local street vendors, while in China nowadays you barely see those family run business that exists for dacades or even longer. It’s probably very normal in cities, but somehow so much worse in China (maybe because people there are so easy to adapt to things/changes? not sure)
I visited Xinjiang 15 years ago and it was more genuine, I feel so sad about it.
I cannot wait to leave, that's for sure! But like I said in the other comment - easier said than done X(
good luck!