Forget what you think you know about China
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We ask an American living in China about what China is really like. Welcome to The Bridge, enlightening conversations on world cultures, life, and everything in between. Hey, everyone. This is Jason Smith, host of The Bridge podcast from sunny California. If you like the show, don't forget to subscribe. We love The Bridge. Hey, everyone. I'm Jason Smith. I'm originally from sunny California, now living in beautiful Beijing. Today's guest is

is host of Life in China with Patrick at Blockchain in China. He regularly makes content about his life and adventures in China. He's also made it a habit to get actively involved in more X-Spaces than anyone I've ever seen.

to try to have a rational conversation about what life is really like in China. Welcome to The Bridge to China, Patrick. Thank you very much. I appreciate you having me on your show there. Looking forward to it. I'm really delighted to have you. We want to learn more about you before we get to your X-Spaces adventures and your adventures in China. Where are you originally from? I was born in San Antonio, raised in Amarillo, Texas. I spent most of my life there. And then from there went to

Texas Tech University, got a degree in communications with a minor in Russian. And I almost took Chinese instead of Russian. And I'm regretting that decision because Russian hasn't done me a whole lot well. It hasn't done me well here in China. But after that, I went into institutional investments. So I did capital markets and wholesaled into banks and for

brokerage firms and got their investment representatives to buy the product that I was representing. And I worked for companies like AIG, John Hancock, Merrill Lynch before. Wow, that's quite a resume. Have you been to Russia? I've never been to Russia. I was actually, when I graduated from college, I had planned on going to Russia for the summer, but...

But that's when they had the coup attempt, when they had the tanks actually pull up to the Russian White House. And I said, I'll probably just kind of stay here. So I ended up. Do you watch a lot of Russian spy movies and stuff? I learned how to say, give me microfilm. Give me microfilm. Because that's all the Russians say, right? Yeah.

Well, that sounds like every James Bond movie, every other James Bond movie, you know, you could go watch. So, yeah. At what point did you say, hey, you know what? I'm moving to China because that's a strange decision for, you know, most Americans to make. Well, I've always always had an interest in Asia, Japan, Korea, China. What got me on is kind of strange was do you remember Shogun back in I think it's back in the. Yeah. Yeah. I think somewhere in the 80s, maybe late 70s.

I'm kind of giving my age now, but I watched Shogun and I just I loved I love the culture. I love the outfits, the uniforms, the military uniforms. And so I always kind of had an interest in Japan. What made me go to China was so I do when I was in the investment business, I'll kind of back up a little bit, explain kind of how I got into China.

In 2008, I was working for AIG and as you know, that was when the financial crisis happened. And at the time, AIG probably had about 120,000 employees and they started trimming the fat and laid off probably 50 to 60,000 people. And within six months of this financial crisis, I was laid off. I lost my house. I lost my cars. I ended up going through a divorce. I had to move up to California.

Austin, Texas, north of Austin, Texas, and live on my brother's property, my older brother's property until I could kind of, you know, recover and reinvent myself. Um, it's

So I started doing voiceovers and which is something I've always been interested in the arts and theater arts and movies and that kind of thing and I started doing voiceovers and eventually built up enough royalties where I could start to travel a little bit and my first place to choose was China and so I came out to China back in 2018 on a three-week vacation and just fell in love with Chongqing and

and decided that I wanted to come back. So the quickest way to do that is to get a teaching, for me was getting a teaching certificate and come back and work for one of the local training schools.

So that's how I got here. That's kind of the Clip Notes version of it. So are you in Chongqing now? I'm in Chongqing now. It's a beautiful city. Wow. No, I was going to say, I see you're on your X space. I see your post on. I think you've got something for Chongqing because you post quite often these beautiful videos at night on the river. And so I'm thinking that it's drawing you to Chongqing. Is that what's happening? Well, I mean, I travel around. In the last...

two weeks. I've been from Beijing to Chengdu to Yunnan, several cities to Guangxi to Guizhou and back to Beijing. And I'm about to go to Fuzhou. I'm just all over China all the time. So yeah, Chongqing is absolutely beautiful. In terms of the big cities in China, I think Chongqing is probably the most spectacular, in my opinion. I would say Shenzhen, except Shenzhen, you know what the difference is, is that Chongqing has ancient temples and stuff.

But Shenzhen is just a new city that was built out of a village, you know, a fishing village. So it doesn't have ancient architecture. But what you get with Chongqing and some of the other big cities is a mixture of modernity and ancient architecture. I'm a big architecture fan and I like to see it all like mixed up together. And you get that in Chongqing. And it's also, you know, this 5D city. I don't think people can understand what we mean by that unless they've really been there, though. Yeah, it's until you've been here. I mean, it.

I see often when people post, yourself post videos on Chongqing that they think it's some kind of AI-generated video, and that's just definitely not the case because when you're...

We go to 9 Beanloo Road, which is just south of downtown, kind of the main area. And I was just there yesterday, and I just look at it, and I'm just dumbfounded at how massive it is. I mean, if you take like five New York cities, downtown New York, and you put it into one area, that's what you get. And then, of course, you've got all the lights that are, you know, the...

flashing off and on messages on the side of it. It's just an amazing experience. And it still hasn't gotten old after seven years of being here. It's just amazes me. And you also get the, the, all the boats on the river doing, you know, the tourist things. And then you also on top of that, get the drone shows at the same time. And then you just, you know, it's ramp. It's, it's already got a population of 30 million, but there's gotta be two or 3 million tourists there at any given time. So it's just amazing.

It's exciting. You know, it's just alive. It's just an amazing city. Let me know you the next time you come out. I'll have to take you out and show you some of the the back, you know, the back alleys that a lot of people don't know about. So Chongqing hand would be really helpful in terms of getting some extra really cool footage.

I wanted to ask you, though, I like to ask everyone this. You know, you're from the United States of America. We have a lot of perceptions about China that I'm not sure are that accurate. So what was your first week or two in China like? What did you, you know, what were your first impressions versus what you thought China was going to be like? I was here for three weeks, but I will say about three or four days into my trip, I remember sitting on that

same street I was just talking about, 9B Lou Road. I was at a Starbucks and I was actually starting to get really angry because I was even actually warned by a family member, you got to be very careful because they harvest your organs there. They may take your organs. And so it's just amazing how much Western media that you have to shed. But the first three or four days, I was really angry at what I had been told

as an American about China. And that's kind of really what started my journey and shedding, you know, I guess I would call it, you know, taking is that you take the blue pill to get out of the matrix or is it the red pill? I always use red pill out and blue pill to go into dreamland. I was it's been a seven year journey in taking that red pill because I would all these different subjects like Tiananmen Square, like Xinjiang, all these other places.

You know, I didn't know enough about and I didn't know really who to follow. I followed started following people like Daniel Dunbarill. And now I follow. Yeah, he lives there. Yeah, yeah. He lives in Chongqing. He just moved here not too long ago. But that was when it really I started to shed it. And then when I got

I returned five months later, six months later after my trip. And that's when I just started to shed more and more Western media, taking that red pill and getting out of what Western media had taught us. Yeah. I mean, in terms, not necessarily just in terms of media, but like what just what about China shocked you? What surprised you? Good and bad or both? Well, when I first arrived, I was

dumbfounded at the infrastructure i i just i didn't you know i i had never heard of chongqing before but when i started researching because i didn't want to be the guy that went to beijing because everybody goes to beijing everybody goes to shanghai so in my research i found chongqing and i did a little research on it but had i done more i think i would have realized how big this place was but i got here and the buildings the the uh the subway or the light rail system is just i mean i almost

took a picture of the map that they have in the subway of the Chongqing subway system and it's literally a spider web and I was looking at the locations between you know let's say Yanjia Ping and Daping and there's about a 10 minute walk 15 minute walk so the people that live around this particular area they can just go and jump on the subway and get to anywhere they want in the city

And they might have to take a taxi to wherever they're going. But the infrastructure is what really caught my attention. The other thing is the food. I mean, here in Chongqing, I was... I don't know if you know... Do you know iChongqing? They're a big news agency here in Chongqing. Yeah, I do. I was interviewing one of their reporters. And I said, what do you like about Chongqing? She made me laugh. She says, hot women, hot food, and hot weather. And the food...

is unbelievably high. It's good. It's addicting. But it's a love-hate relationship when it comes to eating hot pot. Because if you eat too much hot pot that next morning, you'll need to literally take off a couple of hours until it's kind of cleared out of you. Not to be too descriptive. But I still go back for more. I love the hot pot. So it's the infrastructure.

The food is great. And I would say the people, I mean, the people are just the most genuine, nice people. And they're very curious about foreigners. Here in Chongqing, we don't have as near as many foreigners as you guys do in our Beijing or Shanghai.

I get stared at all the time and, you know, people taking pictures and coming up to me asking me where I'm from. I get it quite often in the DD or the taxi asking me where I'm from. And we'll have a short conversation with my limited Chinese as to how my experience has been. But they always they always say, welcome to China. We hope you have a good stay.

And when they actually learn that I'm married to a Chinese woman and I have two children that actually have three, I have one that from a prior marriage in the United States. So they're excited to hear about that. So I've always, always felt welcomed here. Never felt, never felt threatened or anything like that. I've always had a great experience with people. You're listening to The Bridge.

I guess a lot of people in America, you know, when we get into these debates online about China, they'll say, well, if you have kids, obviously you're going to come back to America because you wouldn't want to raise them in a place like China because that's the kind of mentality that a lot of Americans who've never been to China have about China. How do you feel about your kids growing up in China and going to school here? I'm very outspoken about this, especially on X and Twitter, formerly known as Twitter. We are going to raise our children here in China.

And it's for several reasons. Number one, how safe this place is. You know, I mean, you can walk out, you know, not that I would let my kids walk out around two o'clock in the morning, but you can be walking down a dark alley two o'clock in the morning and feel completely safe. I mean, we were in, we were talking about Shenzhen. We were in Shenzhen walking around, trying to make our way from one look,

one tourist area to another, and we kind of found our ways, or found ourselves walking through this back alley, but not once did I ever sit there and look over my shoulder or look at somebody and worry about whether they're gonna pull a gun on me or pull a knife on me. It's very rare that kind of stuff happens.

There's a couple of other reasons why we're going to raise our children here is the woke culture. I'm pretty conservative. And as you know, with the prior administration, they were introducing some dangerous ideologies into the school system that I don't agree with.

And, you know, I just, yeah, President Trump is in office now and he's kind of going against that, trying to shut that down. But who's to say the next administration that comes in is not going to reignite that ideology and bring it back into the schools? I was in the United States this past summer visiting family and I was just out walking. And so I don't know if you know where Grants Pass is, but Grants Pass is

So you got Medford and then Grants Pass, which is a really small town out in the middle of nowhere. It's in the country in the mountains. Beautiful area. I think I sent you a picture of the river that we were fishing on. And I talked to an older guy who's a grandfather, and he had like four or five grandchildren that were in the public school system. But when you're talking about Grants Pass, Grants Pass is a very conservative Republican area. But within their school systems, they were...

"introducing the trans ideology." And are you a girl, are you a boy, that kind of stuff. So he pulled out his children from the public school system and put them into a private Christian school. And just hearing that, again, we've got President Trump in office, but who's to say that things couldn't change

with a new administration coming in. The other thing that at first I didn't appreciate it here in China, but now I can actually understand why they do it. And as you know, it's the amount of pressure that they put on kids to study and to be at the top of their game. And the reason why you have to be at the top of your game is you're competing against

a boatload of other children, boatload of other students to get that one spot. And I'll give you an example. My wife, she's an art teacher and she works at a government school. She says there was over 800 people that had interviewed for her position. Yeah, and that was 15 years ago. So now you've got all these, a lot more kids coming into the system, a lot more students graduating from high school and college that you got to compete against. So there's a tremendous amount of pressure on children to,

to make the best grades possible. It's tough on the kids, but I will tell you, I think it's better in the sense

because kids in the United States seem to get in a little more trouble. They have a little more free time than I think that they should have. And here it's a little more controlled. I think there needs to be an even balance. I think it is a little too much. Pull it down a little bit, give them some more time to play, do extracurricular activities outside of school.

But at the same time, you know, you got to keep kids busy and they have to, as you know, in this environment, they have to be at the top of the game in order to get to nail that job that they're going to be going after. So that's kind of it's the safety. The other thing, too, is China's cheap. I mean, it's

really inexpensive to live here. I mean, the cost of living, especially in Chongqing, even though it's a city of 33 million people, it is just, I mean, the healthcare, the food, the travel, the transportation, the clothing, everything is much less expensive. I would actually, if I moved back with my wife and two kids, I would actually have to go back into the investment business

and worked the 60, 70 hour weeks that I was working and traveling to be able to afford a private school for the kids, have a nice house, have two cars, that kind of thing. So life is just, it's much easier here. I have a very easy life living here in China. - Well, actually that brings me to another question. I'm gonna skip over some of the planned questions, come back around.

you made a video called American Dream in China. So, you know, you're talking about that, I think, right now. I wanted to ask you kind of two questions. The first one is, firstly, what did you mean by that video? What kind of life can one live in China? Let's say somebody comes here to teach and there's plenty of

teaching opportunities, probably not as many as before they changed the education process in training schools. But overall, you can still get a teaching certificate as long as you have a clean background, clean health, and all the other information that they require.

You can live, you know, I'll give you an example. So I teach at night, but during the day I do voiceovers. I've got clients all over the world that I, you know, do commercials for movies, all that kind of stuff. I do mostly animation stuff. So between teaching at night and doing the voiceovers that I might have, you know, a client in the U.S. or in Russia,

I'm working maybe on a busy week, full schedule, maybe 30 hours a week. Wow. So it's, you know, the rest of the time I can go out. I'm trying to amp up more videos on my YouTube channel and shorter videos on X. But I, you know, I feel kind of semi-retired and I have zero stress. The only stress that I have is cleaning up the mess that my kids make when they get home after I've cleaned the house all day, you know?

So, you know, I think one can have a safe life, affordable health care. I've had I've had to had two CT scans in the seven years that I've been here. And both times it cost me about sixty five dollars to have a CT scan. I can buy antibiotics as if as if.

azithromycin, the Z-Pak. I can go to the local pharmacy just right down the street from my house without a prescription

and buy a Z-Pack for $1.25. So, I mean, every aspect of someone's life, if they decided to come, you know, I'm a big proponent of, you know, if it's not working for you in the United States, sometimes you just have to make radical changes. And that's what I did. And when you decide to make radical changes and come to a place like this, I think most people, they won't regret it because like I said, it's inexpensive.

The work-life balance is much better here. You know, I bought these, these are new glasses that I bought and I've always wanted the tinted glasses,

But I got it for two reasons. One, I just like the way it looked, but also because I use the computer a lot to do recordings. But these glasses I bought high end, my right and left eye, it's like seven and a half and negative seven point two five. So it's really strong, which makes the edges of them thick. So I bought the really expensive ones that make the thinner edges and got the blue tint and the the the frames, which are real nice is for maybe like two hundred and twenty five dollars.

And in the United States, these glasses would probably cost $600 or $700. You might have some insurance that'll pay for it, but you're still going to be out of pocket, probably $300 or $400 for a pair like this. So, I mean, every aspect is just enjoyable here. The travel, I mean, you travel quite often. I mean, you can get on a high-speed train from Chongqing to Chengdu, take an hour and 15 minutes. You don't have to worry about seatbelts. You don't have to worry about turbulence.

I call it the peasant. So you've got three sections. You've got first class, business class, and I call it the peasant section. So you could be in the peasant section and still have a foot of knee room. Plus chargers. I'm almost six feet. Yeah, I was on the train yesterday and we were like, oh, there's no chargers. And she's like, it's under the seat. So, oh, I want an eight hour train ride from the south of China to north of China, 350 kilometers an hour. I was worried I was going to run out of power to play with my phone, but no.

You know, everything's fine. Yeah. Yeah. And you're being six foot. You still probably have a half a foot in front of your knee between you and the next chair. Yeah. It's it's an amazing experience. You can you know, the subway is cheap. I mean, I could talk for hours just on the things that you can purchase here. You know, the food you could feed a family, two families.

For maybe $45 and have everybody full. People have drinks and that kind of stuff. So, yeah, in the United States, if you're married, right, both of you have to work to be able to just make the bills unless you're, you know, in a really, really lucrative career. But I'm at the point where, like, you know, we're buying a bigger house so that my wife and her parents can all live in the same house.

And on my income, I'll be able to provide for everyone. I actually like that. I have a huge family growing up, three brothers, my parents, we all grew up in the house. I like the noise of a full house. So it's like, yeah, yeah, just invite your parents to live with us. We'll just get a bigger house and like, no problem. I'll pay for everything. And it's like really not inconvenience here because, you know, one income is really enough to provide.

That's why I think Chinese people save about 40% of their income and they still, the malls are full. It's because like your income, if you have a good job, it's good enough to take care of everyone. So I,

I want to ask you about the language barrier. You mentioned you learned Russian and now you wish you had learned Chinese and you've lived here since 2018, if I understood correctly. How is the Chinese coming? Is it difficult? I don't know if it's an older age thing, but I've...

I understand more than I can actually speak. And I think if I could, you know, if I did speak more that they would understand me when I'm not. What's weird is when I'm not with my wife, I tend to be more confident when I speak Chinese. So I can have not really in-depth come. You know, I can't have these like political conversations, but I can have, you know, how I feel about the country, what I think about the food, that kind of stuff. But I would say, you know, I'm probably as fluent as maybe a three or four year old. That's great.

Maybe not the same words. Like, can I watch a cartoon mom? But yeah. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. A little bit different, a little bit different conversations, but yeah, it's, uh, and I, I go through phases where I'll study, you know, I've got to, uh, YouTube and there's a couple of teachers that I've found that, uh,

I'll listen to two or three hours a day. And that's when it starts to improve. But then I'll get distracted with something, a new project, and then I won't do it for a week or two and I'll forget it. So what I need to do for me is be in a structured environment where I'm going to a college, a university, and taking a set number of classes and having requirements, tasks, that kind of stuff. I think your answer is the same as almost everyone. Yeah.

Most of the people I know who went to China for university are fluent and everyone else is in the same boat where it's just like this really slow, gradual process of learning Chinese kind of on the side while you have all your other projects going and whatnot. I want to ask you about what Chinese cultural habits have you embraced? Have you become a tea drinker? Do you carry your own hot water bottle wherever you go? What would you say? How have you? Oh, you do. How?

How have you changed as a consequence of living in China? You know, the little things like that. I do. I carry my water with me most of the time. I am actually starting to drink more warm water than I did. I always love ice water. And we actually not until about a year ago did we buy a small ice machine because it's kind of nice and refreshing in the summer. So I've kind of picked up that habit. I've picked up my wife's habit of just

trying to save as much as I possibly can. Like, okay, do I really need this item that I want to buy? And usually being able to, like, we, we need a new car. We, our cars, uh, like 12 or 13 years old, we're starting to have, it's having to go to the shop more often. And, um,

You know, we want to buy a new car. But my wife said, why don't we wait another year or two, try to get as much as we can out of this car? And I was kind of irritated at first, but I was like, you know what? That makes sense. It's still, you know, she drives it to work and that's about all she does. Most of the time if we're traveling, we're, you know, we're taking a DD to the train station and then,

or flying out somewhere so you know we don't use the car quite a bit so i've taken up the habit of uh because i used to be i mean i was as soon as money came in this hand and went out the other one and i was buying something so i've gotten a lot maybe that's an age thing too i've got a little bit older where

I think it's important to save as much as you can. That's an interesting one because, yeah, most Americans don't have a lot of savings. I think the statistics are roughly half of Americans have no savings and wouldn't be able to pay for an emergency item that came up, like a medical issue or whatever. Whereas in China, most people save almost half of their income, which

which I think is really fascinating. And I've also, like you, picked up the same habit. I save a lot more. And I'm not sure because, you know, I didn't get old in America. I moved here 12 years ago. So is it because I have a, my Chinese wife's culture is like rubbing off on me? Or is it because I just got older and more mature? I don't know. I guess I will never know. But how would you characterize modernity? Because clearly the U.S. does have a lot of, you know, modern things like the, what is that? The giant...

sphere in las vegas and stuff like that but how would you characterize modernity in china versus modernity in the united states uh what is china like in terms of like modern infrastructure uh robotics drones whatever they they have it all i mean i always always make jokes about uh in las vegas they have the the i call them the tesla titles

And that seems to be like people will bring that up in a conversation, like as if that's the gotcha to the technology that they have as opposed to the China. But you until you come here and travel around for a week or two weeks, no one you can't really completely understand.

comprehend the amount of technology that is available in this country. I mean, we'll start with the subways. The subways and the light rail system, they're clean. I mean, they're immaculate when you walk down in these, you know, they got the marble floors, they have the plexiglass partitions to make sure that nobody pushes you onto the train track.

They're immaculate inside. You've got the high-speed trains. They're working on a new high-speed train, and I believe it's supposed to break like 400 kilometers per hour. Tell me if I'm wrong. Yes, correct.

It's supposed to be able to travel at 450, but it's only going to travel at 400 for safety. Yeah. And look at the United States. They're still working on a high-speed train in California, which has been going on for, what, 12 years, 15 years? Oh, way more than that. I...

I graduated high school in the early 90s, and I had to write a report about the imminent development of California's high-speed rail. And I was like, oh, this is so exciting. What is it, like 35 years later? Yeah. No. No. I don't know if you remember the big dig in Boston. When I worked for John Hancock, we were always – I went up to Boston from Houston,

probably once every quarter, and we'd take a taxi. And I remember during that period when they were building it until they could actually build alternate routes, we were getting stuck in all the construction that was going on. And I think that took 12 or 13 years. But you've been in, you go to Shenzhen, you go to Beijing, you go to Shanghai, Chongqing, Chengdu,

And there's just literally probably thousands of miles of underground, you know, shops and pathways that you can walk from one place to another. You know, the robots. What's the name? I forget the name of the big robotics manufacturer here that's actually been... Yeah, Unitree. They've been showing, I mean, I'm actually following them on X and...

It's almost weekly they're showing a new update to the capability of the robot. The robot can dance, it can do wushu or kung fu, and it's all got these fluid movements that...

you just don't see in some of the robotics in the United States. I mean, you've got Boston Dynamics and they're doing a lot, but it's now, I believe, at least from what I've seen between Boston Dynamics and the Unitree and the other manufacturers here that they're just, they're light years ahead of America. And I've speculated and maybe, you know,

I think that we'll probably have robots within our homes within the next five years doing the simple, you know, tasks that need to be done in the house, probably cooking and that kind of thing. They're already using these robots.

uh, in, in Riceville. I, I was, um, interviewing a college student. She's getting, she's from, uh, Xinjiang and she spoke English. Well, she spoke English. She spoke Uyghur and she spoke Mandarin Chinese, but she was down here studying at the university to get her doctorate on rice farming. And I asked her, I said, you know what? Every time I've been out in the country, I've

I don't see that many. I mean, I see smaller children, but I don't see people that are in their 20s and 30s doing a lot of the farm work. And she says, well, that's because a lot of them are wanting to move into the big town, the big cities and pursue, you know, an alternative job. They don't want to do the farming thing, which happens in a lot of countries like in the United States. Kids don't want to be farming. They want to be, you know, maybe a doctor. They want to live in the big city. I said, so what are they doing to replace kids?

all these people that are leaving and she says we're they're bringing in robots and she showed me a video of this i mean it was probably maybe seven feet wide and it was a robot that was literally planting the uh all the rice and then they're using it for harvesting so um

I mean, China is, until you come here and see what they're doing, like their cars, you know, we're talking about technology here, but their EV cars. You look at the, my favorite car, the car that I really want to buy is the NIO, the six-seater NIO SUV. It is a sweet looking car. It's comfortable. It rides nice. It's quiet.

It's got great crash ratings. And the best thing about it is it has battery swapping capability. So, and they've got these swapping stations literally all over China. I forget how many thousands of these swapping stations that they have. Here, just in our area where I live, there's probably three or four swapping stations and they're not too far from here. So you literally take your car, your battery's low. You can charge it up if you want, if you've got a charger at the house and they'll install that.

but you can take it switch the battery out put a brand new one in in three minutes and be on your way so when you're out traveling you know in this long especially on a holiday like this or the chinese new year a lot of these charging stations may be full because you've got so many people trying to charge up well you just go in switch your battery out you're done you're back out on the road and the technology you can with neo you can

You can have, they have three different or four different options as far as the wattage. So you can kind of get the lower one that you would use around town. But if you're going on a trip, a long trip, and you want to get 1,400 kilometers out of one charge, you can upgrade it, swap, put that new battery in, and then you can go off and enjoy your vacation, come back, and then switch it for a little bit cheaper one when you come back into town. Oh, yeah.

You're listening to The Bridge. I just want to add one thing that I think is underappreciated. And I've been seeing it for years, but I only really came to appreciate it recently because I was in the South, you know, where you live kind of in that area. And there's a very mountainous area. It's like the Sierra Nevadas, but just like everywhere.

And instead of going over the mountain by driving, you know, like this, those Z tracks up the mountain and then back down the other side, you just blow a hole through the mountain. And like they're everywhere. All of the freeways, all of the big highways in China, you just fly through the mountain like you don't have to slow down at all. Basically, you're you're it's 120 kilometers an hour on the freeway in China, most of the places.

And then it just, you have to drop down to a hundred and you go through a tunnel, two lanes, three lanes, one way, and you just fly through the mountain. I mean, you save like an, I don't know, half an hour to an hour for every mountain. And they're like one after another, after another, after another. It's just amazing. Like how convenient that is. I was all, I also saw that in Shizong, also known as Tibet. The mountains there are just these huge sky piercing things.

And, you know, a village on one side of the mountain disconnected from the other side of the mountain. Imagine, you know, 100 years ago walking over that. It's a day or two trip. Now you just go through there in a car in like 20 minutes. It's absolutely astounding. Like, I just I wanted to add that in there. You know, you mentioned health care. I'll tell my story real quick first. I broke a disc in my back and I went through a month or two of therapy and all kinds of stuff. Steroid injections.

and Chinese traditional medicine, it would have cost me, I don't know, tens of thousands. That's a low ballpark. Tens of thousands at least to have the same kind of MRI and CT scans and steroid injections and daily therapy in the United States.

After the universal healthcare plan, which is national healthcare, paid back the money and everything, we paid a couple hundred bucks, maybe $200, $300 for a month of therapy, MRIs, all this stuff. Because you have this account that you're

employer pays money into and you get a lot of that money back to help pay for it so we didn't pay very much at all there's you know i'm not crippled with medical debt now and you know i'm perfectly mobile also so i wanted to ask you you mentioned a couple ct scans how would you compare uh health care in the united states versus health care in china in terms of affordability and also quality uh i would say affordability it's you know as we've been talking it's it's

very affordable. I mean, I saw on X the other day, you may have posted, it may have been somebody else that's here in China, that people are able to get a bypass for like, I think $7,000, $7,000 or $8,000 where in the US it might be a lot more than that. So very expensive.

So here's my the one complaint I would have about the medical here. And it's just as advanced as as the U.S. is, because you've had a lot of doctors here in China who have gone to the U.S. and have been have done residencies under, you know, radiologists, oncologists, whatever, wherever it is. And they come back and bring back that same training to use here in China.

My one complaint is the privacy. I don't like the privacy language.

lack of privacy. I should say it that way. I had, so I had a, uh, a colonoscopy and I was, I was having some bleeding and people walked in the room. No, there was, there was five other people laying on the gurneys waiting to have theirs done. And I was getting in line with them with, uh, so that's, I told my wife, I said, no, we're not going to do this. I said, I, I, I need to have my privacy. And, and the doctor that, um,

was there, he understood I was a foreigner and knew exactly what I was saying. And he asked all non-essential personnel to get out and they took the people that were in there. They didn't actually, they let the two or three people that were in front of me, they finished them and then they wouldn't let anybody else in behind me. So that's the only complaint I would have. But I understand it because when you walk into these waiting rooms,

Some of these hospitals, there's just hundreds of people waiting to get in line and talk with a doctor. I've had times where I've been in the doctor's office and people just open the door and start asking them questions.

And I've kind of snapped at them because I want my privacy. Not that they would understand what we're talking about, but I've learned to lock the door so no one can kind of bust in and interrupt us. But the technologies, you know, so we had Keanu, our youngest, he's four years old. There's a hospital, the Chongqing Hospital here in Chaiyuan is...

is it's almost as twice as big as a football stadium. It's just massive. When you walk in, there's six floor and there's this huge entryway and a big desk where the service people can help you locate or show you where you need to go. But

Having delivered him in the hospital, it was amazing. I mean, the hospital was immaculate, as they should be. And she had a C-section and didn't have any problems with that. But all the equipment they used, you know, my dad was a doctor, so you kind of

I've been to the hospital often with him when I was a little kid and you just identify, you know what certain equipment it is and they're using the same. They're using the Siemens, they're using the Phillips and there's a couple of other machines that they use and those were all dotted around the hospital.

And, you know, the medical tech is right on line, if not starting to exceed what they're doing in the United States. And it's affordable. Yeah, I have no complaints. I do see what you're talking about. Absolutely. When I'm in the office, people are coming and going and people are jumping in front of queues and stuff. Yeah, because it's a huge machine dealing with many, many people at the same time. On the flip side, there are those private companies.

hospitals if you have private insurance and people do have right because they have like a public private system similar to some uh like other systems where you can have private insurance you can go to private hospitals if you choose i actually have that insurance i choose not to use it i don't know why i just i used to go to the public hospital usually because it's easier to go to a

closer, there are more of them, they're bigger, it's faster. But if you want to sit down in the nice lobby where they have the fish tank and wait your turn and go to the private, you can if you have that insurance or you want to pay for that insurance.

what you know you're from texas you know i'm from california i don't know if you guys have in and out burger but that's what i miss and taco bell sometimes because they have taco bell in china but they don't beans in the taco bells in china so it's like a different kind of taco bell what do you miss most about the us what do i miss most about the us i would yeah you know you list a couple of restaurants that uh are not restaurants or fast food places i miss

I miss Chick-fil-A. I missed Smoothie King. I miss a good 24-ounce steak, 12-ounce steak with the baked potato, the salad with the blue cheese. I miss all that stuff. And that's not to say that you can't get it here, but going to a restaurant that doesn't have... They serve their steaks like this. I like...

my steak like this and again you can still purchase it here but it's hard to find a actual steakhouse that serves usda steak or australian prime rib or something like that you know i'm the united states is a it's a beautiful country i miss you know the mountain is the mountains here in china are beautiful and you'd have to go up to like you know xinjiang or tibet

or a couple hours northwest of Chengdu to really see some massive mountains. But in the United States where I grew up in Amarillo, I could just drive to New Mexico in four hours and be skiing or snowboarding, that kind of stuff. So I missed that, at least where I was located, I missed that convenience that I had in the United States. And I do miss driving sometimes.

I have a driver's license, but I do find, I use the subway quite often and the DD. Um, and I find that less of a headache than actually drive, but I do miss those times where you can get on a road, go on a road trip just by yourself and, uh,

enjoy some loud music, some old kiss music or poison music or something. For other people who are thinking, man, what's going on in the United States is hard. Maybe it's wages or the cost of housing seems to be a big one and inflation, whatever it is.

Would you recommend that they move to China? Why or why not? For who? What kind of person would survive here? You know, I would first tell somebody kind of like I did. I came here for three weeks and by the end of the trip, probably halfway through the trip, I realized that I was going to be coming back to China in one way or another. I would recommend that you travel here first because

Because there are things that you just don't see in a news article or you see on a YouTube channel that may or may not be something that you would like. So I would recommend coming here first. You know, I kind of tend to be on the extreme. I'm the explorer and not, you know, exploring and doing things outside of your normal life, outside of the box isn't for everybody. But I would say for most people, I would recommend at least

Traveling here first, and if you like it, come here for a year. Live here for a year or two years and see if it works out for you. Because the amount of the experience that you learn about how

different cultures can be, even though you've got Chinese in the United States, you have Japanese, you have Russians. But until you're actually immersed in this society, you really won't understand it. But you'll come back a better person. At least most of us would come back as a better person. There are some other individuals that would leave and have this bitter feeling towards China for a long time. And I could mention their name, but I won't.

But it changes you. It teaches you...

And I'm still a work in progress. We all are. So I'm not perfect by any means. And I still get impatient with certain things and certain behaviors here. But you learn to extend grace to people. You learn that just because they don't do it the way that you and I did in the United States, that people have different ways of surviving, of working, of interaction with families. There's just different ways that people deal with each other.

And you just, you learn to appreciate it and you learn, you know, I'm not here to change everybody. That's the way I was originally. I mean, I got irritated with, you know, the social etiquette, the social etiquette, there's things that need to be improved in that area. But I just realized I can't change 1.4 billion people, you know. What I can do is I can change myself and say, this is the way they behave. This is what they do.

and still love them for who they are. And I would encourage anybody living in China that wants to go to the US or the Western country and live is, they're gonna do things differently that you're not gonna like, and you're just gonna have to appreciate them and love them where they're at. You know what I mean? - Yeah, I'm actually thinking about what it would be like, because I know what you mean. In America, if you're in a line, you put like a meter in front of yourself or yard in America's case,

people still know you're in line. But in China, if you do that, they think you're not in lines. They'll cut in front of you. And that can be confusing. But I think it would be also equally confusing if you're a Chinese person who's used to hot water. You sit down at any restaurant in the United States, the first thing they do is put a giant iced water on your table in front of you. Be like, I don't want this thing. Why did you put this here? Yeah.

I want to ask you about your X-Spaces thing. So you go on X-Spaces, other people's X-Spaces, random X-Spaces, popular X-Spaces, and then ones that are addressing China in some tangential way, and then assert yourself into the conversation. Why do you do this? What happens? And why...

What are you trying to accomplish? - So it was maybe about, I mean, I just recently got on X, or formerly Twitter, maybe two and a half, three years ago. And then I stumbled across these X spaces. For those who don't know what X spaces are, they're kind of like this public,

conference call where you can, if you have an interest in geopolitics, maybe crypto or finance, then you can go into that particular space and you can listen to other people. They've got a host, usually a co-host, and then several other speakers talking about whatever subject that it is that they've titled it. So,

I found myself going into these geopolitical spaces that talked about the relationship between China and the U.S. And it's inevitable when China is brought up that

people will start talking about China who have actually never been here and they're just regurgitating what Western media has taught them. And I got very irritated with that because they would say, well, this is going on in Xinjiang. I want to know if that's not right. I find myself getting mad. And they would talk about, you know, how backwards this country is. And I'm like, you don't even have any clue how much, how far advanced that China is than the United States. So

I started going in there and I pushed the little request button to be a speaker. And I've found myself, you know, having not debates. What happens is these things turn into...

just a zombie troll moment where you say, you're not right about this particular subject in China because of this, this, and this. And then all of a sudden, I'm interrupted. I'm attacked. I've got a character assassination. I've had death threats, and I've had people threaten to beat the crap out of me in some of these X spaces. But I still go in there. I ended up getting in one space that's run by Jordan Daly. And

And he's got like 1.2 million followers. And I had a moment where there's a guy, his profile name is Hitler. So if that gives you an idea of where he's going to be coming from, he starts attacking me. He starts threatening me. And Jordan said to this guy, Hitler, he said, why don't we have a quick debate in here? And.

he dropped off, Hitler dropped off because he knew he was in the wrong. But from when I started speaking, I spoke for maybe a straight 12 minutes passionately about how different this country is and how most things that are said in Western media is not true. And I called it my Jerry, Jerry Maguire China speech.

And it touched him enough that he says, I want you to debate this other guy. So he put me we had a debate with this other guy. I brought in Carl Ja. I think I invited you, but I think you were on vacation and a couple of other people. And we had this debate. And what I've found. So to answer your question, why do I do it? Because it makes me angry when I see Americans just repeating.

Washington's narrative that China bad, China's the boogeyman, China's gonna take over, China's gonna do this. And it's just, it's so not the case. I mean, you look at the number of US military bases around the world, that's over 800. And you've got around maybe 350 to 400 that are very close to China itself. You've got the US military that sails in between China and Taiwan.

six to 12 times a year. They actually fly thousands of spy missions along the coast of China. And when's the last time you've seen this taking place in the United States? When's the last time we have seen

an armada of ships drive up the coast along the United States. We just don't see that. And, you know, the hypocrisy, the disinformation, this misinformation that's on these X-Faces motivated me to say, no, I've done, I've had enough.

I'm going to at least do my part to stop what these people are saying. So if I can change one person's thinking, I'm not asking them to completely change it and believe everything that I say, because I want them to challenge me and I want them to do their own research. But if I can get one person to say, you know, maybe, you know, the United States, the Western media has been lying to me about all this other stuff. Maybe they're lying to me.

about what's going on in China. And if I follow this guy, Patrick, if I follow this guy, Jason or Daniel Dunbrill or Arnott or who may, who it may be, if they can start to see that there are people that live here that know much more than the Western media ever will, that they'll start to change their perspective and change their opinion of China. And it's, you know, I'm, I'm one guy

And like I said, if I can change that one person that happens to know maybe President Trump or happens to know Bissette or happens to know Marco Rubio and can say, you know, I talked to this guy, but he said this. And it takes one person. And I think if myself, you, the Daniel Dunbar's of the world, if we're out there in a unified effort fighting against this, that we can maybe change the course

of where this relationship with China could possibly go. I mean, the last thing I want is war between the United States and China. It would be devastating economically and hundreds of millions of people would die. And that's why I do it. I want peace between the United States

in China, because it's there's no reason there's no reason that we should be enemies. The two of the most powerful countries in the world who can change, you know, bring that many more people out of poverty, who can put their minds together when it comes to medical technology, travel, whatever it is, put their minds together, put their their scientists together and

a China scientist together, we can come out with miraculous things. But, you know, United States wants to do, they want war, they want war. And it seems like they're prepping the American people for that at some point in the future. And that's what I'm trying to stop is I don't want war between my country, the United States and China. So kind of a scenic route to answer your question, but I'm very passionate about being on these spaces

And encouraging others who live here to get on these spaces and say, no, that's not correct. No, that's not right. You know, I completely agree with you. Actually, your motivation is very similar to mine. I feel like back home in the U.S., there is a I think it's an echo chamber. You know, you have all of these anti-Chinese communists.

content that comes out and you really don't have anyone who is able to correct them. So you have all these other people who want to be part of that conversation. So they repeat that same content. And then the United States ends up misunderstanding China altogether. And it's not in the U.S. interest. With respect to China, let's just forget China's interest for a moment and just focus on our country's interest, the interests of the United States and the American people.

It is not in the interest of the American people to misunderstand China, to have wrong opinions about China, and to demonize China for no reason when the United States benefits enormously from its relationship with China and can benefit more.

from its relationship with China if it had a better understanding of what China actually was about. And it is in the interest of the US and of the American people to deepen their understanding of China and the relationship that could potentially exist with China. So when I get called a troll or a CCP troll or whatever, the 50 cent thing, Wu Mao, all this stuff for saying, no, that's not what China is like.

but really the purpose is to help America. You know, like I get a lot of Chinese people are like, yeah, you told them about China. And to some extent I'm like, yes, I'm trying to, uh,

talk positively about china for the benefit of the u.s so that people in the united states can have a better relationship with china uh number one stop listening to uh western media that's the best thing that you can do for yourself is is not listen to that anymore because the majority of what comes out of western media is is all incorrect um

If you're not going to travel to China, but you're interested in knowing the truth about China, what they need to do is follow people like you, like, you know, Daniel Dunbarill. I don't know if I'm saying this. Arnoid Bertrand. Yeah.

I mean, there is the more people that you follow that actually live here, you'll actually, you know, you'll learn about the truth. So I would do that. And there's a lot of these guys are I've got YouTube channels like yourself and then make a trip out here. I mean, you know, what do you have to lose?

right what do you have to lose i mean you know let's say i don't have the money well you know i i would say take a loan out on your 401k or your retirement account and come out here for two weeks three weeks i would say at least minimum two weeks because you'll get to experience a lot more three weeks if possible

and see the sites, travel to as many different places as you can. Even if you're just staying in a city like Chongqing, you'll experience what the Chinese culture is like. If you're worried about the whole getting the travel visa,

go to Hainan. Hainan's got, they allow 30 days in a Hainan. You can just bring your passport. You get to experience the Chinese culture. You get to experience the Chinese beach culture, the surfing culture, the food down there. I would recommend doing that. And you'll find out very quickly that China is nothing like the West says. And that's what I would do. If you can ultimately come out here, travel for three weeks and

if you really felt led for some reason live out here for another for a year or two i find a lot of foreigners like myself like you and others who came out here just oh i'm just going to live here for a year or two see what it's like experience something different and what happens is you just fall in love with the place i mean you you fall in love with the cost of living you fall in love with the food you might fall in love with a chinese person that you want to marry and have children and

and live a wonderful life here. It's safe.

It's inexpensive to travel and the government takes care of the people. And that's, you know, you asked me earlier about living the American dream. You know, people think that that's only relatable or usable in the United States. It's not. You can, you know, everybody wants a house. Everybody wants a car. Everybody wants their kids to go to college and get a better education. Everybody wants to feed their family. Everybody wants to, you know, live in a safe place.

And China offers that. I'm an American living in China, living the dream that everyone wants to live, whether it's in China or the United States or some other country. So, yeah.

I would just encourage them, you know, try to do as much research as possible and then take all those preconceived stereotypes that you have about this country and just set them down for a minute. There you go. Thank you so much for your time, Patrick. My pleasure. My pleasure. I appreciate you having me. And hopefully everything goes smoothly with the technology and the little issues that we had earlier. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.