Imagine Walmart built a city.

With apartments, restaurants, and then brought all of their employees there.

That’s what the manufacturer of footwear for China’s middle classic, which is larger than the entire US population by almost 2x, Yearcon did.

Today I left that city (Qing Tian) and took a 45 minute “Uber” (DiDi) that cost $17 dollars to the bullet train.*

It’s hard to describe the magnitude of the railway stations.

The closest point of reference I have is an international airport.

Mad wild.

To add to the insanity, some local wealthy business people banded together to make their own massive train station in a location that was more convenient than the government built one.

Yet with all that innovation there was no Wi-Fi on the train, or at the train station.

This presented a real challenge when it coincided with my phone plan being randomly terminated and a cryptic scam like message from China mobile saying I owed more money on the plan I had purchased just the day before.

Thankfully when I arrived at the train station to meet up with a family friend, message typed out courtesy of google translate asking if I could use someone’s phone to make a call, I was spotted almost immediately after leaving the security check point.

Finally a perk to being the only white person in sight.