I get it, and I don't care if it's an option, just don't take the menu away from me.

Please drink a verification can.

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.

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.

I don't care about bandwidth but it's clearly worse technology. Pointing to a physical target and exchanging physical tokens is straight up better technology. This is functional regression.

I like how Japan solved the cash overhead with automatic cash change machines everywhere - this is the right solution for payment processing and updating menus is easy.

If you want to eat foreign food in China you to have to go somewhere run by foreigners that will take the trouble to source ingredients are are extremely uncommon in China.

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.

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.

Dunno if it's necessarily worse tech... I don't really care if it's physical tokens which get exchanged or virtual ones... Point is, it has to work and cover a wide array of use-cases. Has to work in edge-cases, for both residents and tourists, has to work when there's surprise maintenance at the bank, when there's an internet outage... We gotta easily pay $1000 for a hotel for 10 days and the rental car, or 73ct at the local flea market. I might need to pay for a bus ticket or gasoline in the middle if some forest where there isn't any 5G coverage...

I think exchanging physical tokens is just absurdly good at that. I'm just not sure if it can't be done any other way? I mean we obviously don't have that hypothetical tech in the real world, because banks want to control the process and they always come up with some central way of doing it, with them in the middle. That's kinda their business model. And the alternative concept is some convoluted approach which needs an internet connection and a decent amount of resources to do the transactions...

There's some better approaches at digital cash like GNU Taler I think that one is pretty much like cash. And we only need one of the transaction parties to be online (to prevent double-spending of the virtual tokens).

Edit: And we need some default. Makes it way more comfortable to live in a country that just demands people to offer a payment method and I can go anywhere and just pay with that. In contrast to install 25 different apps, open 20 bank accounts to cover all possible cases, and the parking meter at the tourist place randomly asks me to install the 26th app.

Oh no. A country that surveillance is too much forces you to use a app? No no no no you poor thing!

It's the main example of feature creep. I wanted to joke that at least it can't be used as a calculator or dictionary but no, I tried before posting, it can be used as a calculator by typing 计算器 or as an English dictionary by typing any English word in search. Then somehow it has a mirror of the iOS appstore, an Aptoide clone that wants to install a "super safe, believe us" tencent app store APK "because downloading APK from the browser is not safe", a Wikipedia clone, and so on.

Come on, give root permissions to this "shizuku" apk, it's "verified safe" 😉

Real shizuku is an apk 100 times smaller

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.

No it just means that everything is rounded now and you're paying more for everything. Small, yes but you're still paying more now. That's what they want. They want you spending more and inflating the economy passively. The move also makes it so that spending the exact amount is only available digitally/with a card payment.

I just used alipay instead. IDK if it's just the same thing under a different name.

I have seen a restaurant have a qr code that just links to a pdf

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.

The thing is - you can have convenience without sacrificing all that.

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.

Holy shit, I'll just stay home.

It is exceedingly difficult to track cash. It would require the cash's serial number scanned at every transaction, which doesn't happen.

Man, I remember when Zuck wanted to put a banking feature on facebook, but that was a bridge too far for Americans at the time. Probably got the idea from a trip to China or something.

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.

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.

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.

ya that kind of size is pretty much the average size of apps installed from the app store nowadays.

the paying more part is already covered by inflation

Travel eims are very cheap in China. I've never even seen one offering so little data. But I'm amazed you even made it into the country without setting up Alipay/Wechat money. Cash is famously basically useless in China...

The bigger issue I have at the major fast food chains that although you can order and pay using your Alipay/Wechat, receiving the discount coupons requires a local food number. For pizza hut this means you're literally paying twice as much as a local for a durian pizza.

can you be sure that who ever you paid your cash to wont deposit it on the bank? can you be sure the cash you got wasn't freshly withdrawn at a bank by someone else?

sure it is unlikely, but if you need to rely on cash being untrackable, you can't rely on it at all

Can the people tracking the cash positively know the money didn't get passed around a couple times before getting rescanned? The value of the tracking data drops rapidly as the uncertainty increases. That's why they're pushing for digital payment systems so much.

👍🏻

Can’t pay with credit card??? Only weixin pay

You put your credit card into wechat/alipay and you can use weixin pay.

You can get a local number for like 1USD/month for receiving sms.

and allow for frequent updates.

Great! Surge/dynamic pricing for eating out :[.

Ironically, .ml is banned in China, while this instance is not

I thought it was widely known that if you travel to China you must have WeeChat. They use it for everything from payment, chatting and government surveillance.

I am sorry you had to install that malware.

I installed and setup in order to fill the immigration slip, but didn't think that it was essential for daily life