I've been seeing a huge amount of anti-Chinese sentiment online, from obvious places like reddit, to even misinformed friends on social media falling victim to viral posts filled with misinformation.
What are we to make of this? Is this the slow march to war, by portraying them as pure evil, à la the fake story of Iraqi soldiers killing Kuwaiti babies to help get the public on board with our military response? It seems disadvantageous for the US and their allies to fight China, as we are incredibly reliant upon them economically and don't stand to gain much from the conflict.
Are these the irrational decisions of a dying empire? Or is there something else at play?
How easy is it for me to come visit as a white dude from a five eyes country? I've always wanted to take a train vacation, but it's so goddamn cumbersome and expensive here. I just wanna spend a week or two zipping around on trains and eating some good food—introducing my kids to a cool new culture would be icing on the cake.
I'll say it's not too hard, and having the phone app Wechat makes life very easy. Add money to Wechat, then you can book hotels and trains on the app (and buy literally anything with it). You may need to collect real life train tickets however, as you have a foreign passport. Collect these tickets at the train station, there's english everywhere as well so you can get around. The translations are a bit off sometimes, so it may take some guesswork. Feel free to ask the officials standing around the place, they usually are happy to help.
If you can't get Wechat, or can't add money to it, you can buy tickets online or in person at the train stations. I'll say that Wechat is useful if you're the more spontaneous, YOLO type of traveller. Otherwise, you can plan it out without Wechat.
Things get expensive if you're getting first class train tickets lol, then again it costed around 2000 chinese yen to get from Guangzhou to Xian (1308 km flight distance). Not too bad? Standard tickets are not bad at all, and there are so many trains, all the time. Some trains are sleeper types (which I adore), which also have economy and first class beds.
I've seen plenty of foreign backpackers on the trains in China, even in the most obscure small cities. So yeah, definitely not difficult for foreign people (inc. five eyes) to travel in China. People might look at you a bit more than you are comfortable with in the smaller towns, simply because they don't see many foreigners. Hope you don't get easily weirded out! Otherwise, stick to the mainstream and big cities.
Hotels aren't too expensive, and hostels are a thing there. Since you have kids I recommend hotels instead, and go with the chain ones (like 七天 or 如家). The prices vary with location in the city ofc, so the more "hot" ones are relatively expensive. I'll say a standard price for a twin bed room is 250 yen? Could be cheaper, could be easily more.
For good food, defintely zip around in the Guangdong province (and the aforementioned Guangzhou). If you like spicy food, go to Sichuan (beware of earthquakes though). If you like sweet foods, go to Hangzhou and Shanghai. And for weird and sour flavours, go to Guizhou.
There's so much to see in China, I'm not sure what to recommend haha. If you like mountains, there are plenty of beautiful ones in China, and they are usually very accessible to all people. E.g. Zhangjiajie or Huangshan.
I really wanted to go to Xinjiang via Gansu this year, I've seen some nice pics/vids of really beautiful train journeys along those areas. But then Covid happened, so I'm stuck at home.
Hope that helps? Feel free to ask more