From The Ground Up - A Look At China's Infrastructure (含中文字幕)

a few weeks ago I did a livestream with some other China youtubers we got an interesting topic today China's awesome structure and among other things we got talking about China's infrastructure hearing just how passionate other people were about this topic gave me the idea to make a whole video devoted to China's awesome infrastructure [Music] so after that video I decided to do my own research now read a load of articles and watch those videos and they all kept telling me the same thing about China it's got the world's longest and the world's biggest and the world's first and that's amazing don't get me wrong but I'm a simple girl and these facts and figures and vanity projects don't really interest me that much what I care about is the way that infrastructure affects the lives of ordinary people [Music] if you want to talk about the effect that infrastructure investment has on the lives of ordinary people then there's only one logical place to start here in Beijing underground [Music] across China 35 cities have Metro systems with over 200 lines and news and many more being built and these aren't just being built for show you just have to pop into any metro rush-hour to realize how much they are actually used in fact in Beijing almost four billion passengers use the Metro every year with so many passengers passing through you'd expect that the stations would be a little bit ropey but actually they're very big and modern and spacious and very clean as well you can't say that for every station in the world in fact a lot of the time they're quite dark and dingy and a little bit scary but here no matter what time I get the Metro I feel really safe and amazingly even though Beijing has the busiest and longest metro station in the world the macro fares only 8un so unlike these massive infrastructure projects this is will not benefit everybody above ground however it's a completely different story the traffic is absolutely mental here in Beijing and with so many cars and bikes and things on the road they do get worn out quite quickly when I'm riding my scooter although the bike lanes are amazing there are a lot of potholes so it does make for quite a bumpy ride so it's a good job that people are able to ride the subway here as it has an added benefit of easing congestion and helping the environment the buses are also electric here which is a great step in the right direction having taken the odd road trip in China from city to save I've got no complaints but let's face it if you're gonna travel in China you really want to be taking the train even since I've been here loads of new high-speed railway lines are popped up and a whopping two thirds of the world high-speed rail is here in China the high-speed trains are sleek modern fast and comfortable and definitely the most relaxing way to travel around China but if you've seen my previous train video then you'll also know that there are sleeper trains here they're not quite as fast but they're definitely charming and if you've got the extra time then this is a great way to experience the country you probably heard me say this before and I'm sure you'll hear me say this again but I'm not quite as impressed with the flights here in China the tickets are actually quite expensive especially when you compare them to the prices in Europe it feels like the fights are often delayed and the airports are the most organized but seeing as China is leading the way in train travel why can't I do the same for the air industry I'm hoping in the next few years this will really turn around in infrastructure projects such as the Beijing dashing Airport will hopefully make this better I'm aware that being able to travel in the first place makes the incredibly privileged so let's get back to talking about some ordinary everyday things one thing to notice here in China is the use of mobile payments and generally being able to use your phone for just about everything so naturally the phone networks are really modern too amazingly it only cost me a hundred UN to keep my phone tapped up but just were cheaper than it was for me back home and considering the amount I use Instagram and YouTube and how slow my home Wi-Fi is since Bonnie choose the cable I get through a large area obviously the downside to using the internet here in China is technically you can't access a lot of phone websites but I managed to get around this by using a VPN soberness the mind if you come into China you'll need a VPN to access these site click on the link below to see which one I use and also to get three months free less interesting than the Internet is utility it's like electricity and water and so on but as boring as they might be what is exciting is just cheap they are in fact I topped up a thousand UN back in January and it's still going strong even though I share my meter with a neighbor that stings talking about water though I don't know what is going on with the drains here but I notice this in Nanjing and it's even worse here in Beijing my drains absolutely stink I heard about this is because the dream hypes don't have a you band but don't know how true that is please tell me if I'm right or wrong and please tell me I'm not the only one that drains absolutely stinkier also if you have any remedies please let me know I want to stop the smell it's really awful [Music] something I often get asked about by people coming to live in China is what's the health care like well in a nutshell you get what you pay for some hospitals are good and some hospitals are bad you can get some quite cheap public hospitals and the doctors are perfectly knowledgable I'm very friendly but the facilities aren't necessarily the best they're quite old the conditions are a bit cramped and they're not necessarily the cleanest but you can also get some amazing international hospitals where the facilities are top-notch but obviously the price reflects this [Music] so I've had quite a lot of experience with hospitals recently because back in September I had quite a bad accident where I tore my ACL and all my meniscus and I had to have surgery here I decided not to go back to the UK and rather to stay in China and get the surgery done yeah for lots of different reasons obviously I was quite nervous as this is actually the first time I've ever had surgery and I'm having it in a completely different country where I don't really speak the language so it was quite scary for me but luckily the hospital that I went to I went to the international side and the room was amazing that was in the facility was - were really great and it made me feel a lot more at ease so obviously I went to the international side which made it more expensive luckily I have health insurance which my company provides so if you are coming to work in China to make sure you get a contract which provides free healthcare because otherwise it could end up costing you an absolute fortune I can't stress this enough if you're ever traveling or ever go into a new country get health insurance because you just never know what's going to happen [Music] another thing to consider if you're moving to China is housing now generally the cost of living is a lot lower here compared to Western countries but depending on what city you're moving to housing can be really pricey here in Beijing and in Shanghai then apollo's of pretty expensive even compared to housing back in the UK [Music] as China becomes more and Lorde's developed people are moving from the rural areas to the big urban centers allow my colleagues that from all over China but not many of them actually from Beijing as the population swells and sighs some of these cities can't physically get any bigger which has led to the construction of rand-new city [Music] for social and economic reasons it can be hard to get people to move into these seas right away hence all these crazy ghosts eight videos you see on YouTube but I'll be interesting to look at a map of China in a few years and see whether any of these new cities will be marked in bold for a foreigner like me new cities popping up is kind of a crazy concept but really it's not that far-fetched [Music] I hope the search engine a while back and I was blown away by just how modern developed and Nia was and that's because it is new it's got a population of just over ten million but in the 1970s it wasn't even a city it was a collection of small fishing villages and towns with a population of 30,000 and now it's been developed into the sea that you see today [Music] when I led to mine Jiang I lived in the suburbs I only lived that for a year but I saw all these buildings getting built around me apartment blocks malls bars restaurants and it was just crazy how fast they were getting built when I lived in the UK I lived in the same city for five years whenever I went home to visit my parents I would take the same main road back home and every time I went home that was always roadworks on it five years I lived in that city but as quickly as things get built here they also get changed so don't get too attached to that restaurant or shop that you live because a month later it might be something completely different there's been times I've gone to my favorite noodle restaurant only to find out that it won forever I've never been to a country where things have changed so fast obviously we've covered a lot of ground here and if you stick around to this point then you are a true fan and if you're a true fan then you'll know what I'm obsessed with here in China is parks and green spaces now a lot of these new buildings that are being built are obviously high-rise buildings which means that people don't really have gardens but because they're saving space on the ground they always make sure that there's green spaces in the compounds for everybody to enjoy so you'll find old ladies dancing kids playing and old managers chilling in these beautiful green areas I love traditional Chinese parks but even in cities like Shenzhen which is your new city the city planners make sure that there's loads of green spaces for people to enjoy [Music] anyway now that we're feeling all warm and fuzzy because we've been talking about parks I think this is a good time to end the video I hope you enjoyed it if you did give me a big thumbs up leave me a comment and let me know why I got right and never to bleat what I got wrong if you don't already subscribe to this channel then make sure you hit that subscribe button and the Bell notification to stay up to date with my latest content I'll see you next time [Music]

Channel: Nico

Views: 199,698

Rating: 4.8554006 out of 5

Keywords: China, chinas infrastructure, chinas infrastructure projects, China's awesome infrastructure, nico china infrastructure, Nico china YouTuber, architecture in China, buildings in China, daily life in China, life in China, living in China, trains in China, subway in china, high speed rail china, Beijing subway, beijing infrastructure, high speed rail, china infrastructure, china infrastructure documentary, china infrastructure development, infrastructure development in china

Id: SP0tfIfh-5g

Length: 13min 43sec (823 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 01 2020