Xiamen was the first mainland Chinese city visited by Raymond Hou (Raymond) and his wife Yuzu (Song Zhiyou), from late August to early September 2018. The three-day, two-night trip was documented on the couple’s newly launched WeChat public account, “柚智夫妻” (see 柚智夫妻 WeChat Public Account (2018–2020)). At the time, the account focused on preparing to work in mainland China, so the trip was both tourism and a scouting visit before Raymond moved there for work. It fell between Beijing Eve: 柚智夫妻 Public Account and ‘365-Day Countdown’ (2018–2020) and the following year’s The Beijing Period (2019–2020).
Background to the Trip
One of the trip’s main purposes was to arrange basic infrastructure for living in mainland China long term: opening a mainland bank account. Raymond explained in his diary that he wanted to use WeChat Pay, needed an account linked to Alipay, and expected it to be useful once he began working there. Yuzu recorded her overall first impression of traveling in mainland China: “It feels so convenient, and so inconvenient.” It was convenient to go everywhere with just a phone, but inconvenient that she could not use familiar services such as Facebook, LINE, and Google to contact family.
Two Things: Getting Lost and Opening an Account
Two difficult episodes recur in the public-account posts about Xiamen.
The first was getting lost on the night they arrived. They had booked an Airbnb near Jiangtou Garden. The host had arranged for a driver to stop and come out to meet them, but the taxi driver dropped them at the wrong place. Their mobile phone numbers would not become active until the next day; they had no internet, and it was raining. They asked several passersby for directions without success. Finally, a young mother with a child lent them her phone, called the host, helped arrange a car, explained the correct address to the driver, and exchanged WeChat contacts with them. Raymond remembered this brief encounter as the warmest moment of the trip.
The second was opening a bank account. Opening an account with a Taiwan Compatriot Permit proved harder than expected. Raymond visited six banks in succession—China Construction Bank, two Agricultural Bank branches, HSBC, China Merchants Bank, and Xiamen International Bank. At the last one, a manager asked many questions before agreeing to process the application. In his weekly review, Raymond directly warned Taiwanese people with the same status: “It is very difficult and especially troublesome, so please think carefully.”1 During the process, important documents stored in Google Drive required a VPN to access, which nearly interfered with the application.
Observations of a “Cashless Society”
Xiamen was Raymond’s first close-up experience of mainland China’s mobile-payment ecosystem. He observed that subway rides, ordering food, claw machines, and even supermarket self-checkout could all be handled by scanning a code on a phone. Transactions automatically recorded dates, locations, and items: “There’s basically no need to download an expense-tracking app.” As someone who already disliked using cash, he was impressed by the convenience. He also compiled a list of eight essential apps for life in mainland China—WeChat, Amap, Baidu, Alipay, DiDi, Dianping, Meituan, and a VPN—turning his travel notes into a practical list readers could take away. This matched the public account’s then-current positioning as “content for sharing, rather than education.”
Significance
In Raymond’s narrative, Xiamen is not defined by its attractions (they did not make it to popular Gulangyu Island), but by two lessons about travel. The first is institutional: people crossing borders encounter practical friction around banking, internet access, and documents, and must prepare for it and tolerate it. The second is human: on a rainy night when they felt helpless, an unknown mother offered help. He summed up the experience with gratitude for strangers’ kindness: “Even if we meet only once, I hope everyone who crosses my path can continue to be happy.”2 This scouting trip also paved the way for his later cross-border work and Remote Work path, and informed his observations about Super Individual.
Sources
Footnotes
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Hou Zhixun, “347 Days to Go: The Xiamen Trip and the Underlying Logic of the Public Account?” WeChat public-account post, 2018-09-02. View original ↩
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Hou Zhixun, “343 Days to Go: Our Three-Day Travel Diary in Xiamen,” WeChat public-account post, 2018-09-06. View original ↩