this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2026

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Mildly Infuriating

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156

You must have an internet connected smartphone to eat (europe.pub)

submitted 11 hours ago by Pruning9165@feddit.org to c/mildlyinfuriating@lemmy.world

60 comments fedilink hide all child comments

This stuff is infuriating on multiple levels

TL;DR:

Restaurant only accepts orders made from the app
Restaurant "mini" app is 200 mb and I had a sim card with 500mb/day
When you finally get to pay, they must "verify you're a human" with an otp code sent to your phone number
For saving money they don't send the otp code via SMS but via WhatsApp, which is blocked in the country
Restaurant doesn't accept cash
Restaurant doesn't accept credit cards
Restaurant only accepts payments from a local app that requires id verification with passport scanning
Taxis need to be called with an app
In order to use the taxi app you need to register with the phone number and scan the passport and so on

Full story:

I went to china, first thing I went out for a walk and after a couple hours of walking I wanted to eat, so I went to KFC as I was intrigued by an ad showing a shrimp burger and a nori seaweed flavored fried chicken. (Yes, they looked tasty in the pictures, although by typing this, it doesn't look like it's actually tasty. Probably the "shrimp" burger is just surimi made with the cheapest shit gathered from the oceans and then just slushed in a patty. No, I could not try them, for the reason written below)

I went inside and I saw no self ordering kiosk. Oh no, I have to do social interaction with my poor Chinese proficiency. I go to the cashier and... there's only a order pickup point. I ask and they say need to order from their app, just scan the qr code.

Now, luckily I ordered a travel esim with 500mb/day, as the store didn't have public WiFi

I scan the qr code and it doesn't work. It's a proprietary version of qr code developed by tencent, need to use WeChat to scan.

I already had WeChat installed, I scanned it. It needed to download a KFC "mini app" and I agreed. 200 FUCKING MEGABYTES??? What does it contains, 4k movies of fried chicken????

After burning the whole data plan on that "mini" app I do the order and before paying: WAIT, YOU MUST LOGIN!

WTF? I thought the point of using WeChat is that I was already logged in a platform? Ok, let's login. WAIT! HOW DO WE KNOW THAT YOU'RE NOT A BOT? Please verify your phone number!

WTF??? I just need my weird seafood flavored chicken, why do you need my phone number??

At that point I was already 20 minutes in, and due to the fallacy of sunk cost I agreed to let them "verify" my phone number. Which for some reason they sent via WhatsApp instead of texting it. Luckily the travel esims are somehow exonerated from the gfw so I could receive it.

Ok, identity "verified", now need to pay. Oh, can't pay in cash??? Can't pay with credit card??? Only weixin pay. I try to check, needs passport verification.

At this point I just flip the table and I give up, I want to go back to my hotel room.

I'm tired boss, I don't want to walk another 2 hours, let's take a taxi. Last time I went to China it was pre-covid. In order to take a taxi you just needed to go on the side of the road, wait 30 seconds and a taxi would stop. Now there are no taxis at all??? I call my friend and he says it's normal, everyone orders a Didi now from the phone. I see it's another 200 mb app and I even don't try it, as I'm 100% sure it will ask phone verification and pay with weixin pay.

I give up and just start to walk...

Luckily I see taxi dropping someone on the side of the road so I run there to ask get me home. When we arrive he directly shows me a laminated card for paying with weixin. I give him a 20 yuan bill for the 14 yuan ride. He probably tells me that he doesn't have change. I don't understand. It's ok buddy, keep the change.

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[–] KuroiKaze@lemmy.world 1 points 37 minutes ago

Yeah I have a way to get my weixin pay funded so I can Didi everywhere and I have an international roaming plan. Without weixin China is extremely troublesome, and other parts of Asia are similar.

[–] Meron35@lemmy.world 6 points 1 hour ago

Chinese, and to a lesser extent Asian Big Tech is what American Big Tech dreams and aspires to.

Everything is intimately linked to the super app platforms WeChat/Alipay (China) or LINE/Kakao Talk (Japan and Korea). Nearly everything online is designed primarily with WeChat/Alipay plugins/mini apps as the primary entry point and it is not uncommon both many services/pages to simply not exist outside of these super app ecosystems.

The apps are super invasive with privacy and require identity documents and banking details to even function. To some extent, it has resulted in convenience for the locals, though tbh this is mostly just replicating the convenience of western infrastructure like payment systems.

Where it gets messy is dealing with foreigners. China is particular has an incredibly messy system of regulations, mostly to curb money laundering and capital controls, that interact in very unforeseen ways.

Foreigners must link their identity documents and a payment method. Many vendors (either due to laziness or laws) cannot deal with foreigners at all. Additionally, due to capital controls, foreign payment methods cannot transfer or receive money. Many smaller vendors only accept payment via personal transfers, so you can easily end up being unable to pay, or split bills with locals. The inability to receive money also means you can't receive refunds.

It gets way worse when interacting with HK/Macau, which operate their own, distinct parallel WeChat/Alipay systems. So, not only do you need to set up and maintain separate accounts for these, doing so may still be of limited use due to capital controls. A common trip around the Pearl Delta region covering Shenzhen, HK, and Macau unironically requires planning out a convoluted chart of which specific systems and accounts you need to use.

[–] drmoose@lemmy.world 2 points 1 hour ago

This is spreading to the rest of the world too. I just came back from Singapore and encountered this exact scenario several times. I just get up and leave- can't be bothered would rather eat a mini mart sandwich then.

[–] Rolive@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 2 hours ago

Please drink a verification can.

[–] Aedis@lemmy.world 22 points 7 hours ago

you have been banned from lemmy.ml

[–] ieGod@lemmy.zip 6 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) (2 children)

I spent three weeks in China this year, had a blast. It's true you need an app for nearly everything, and while it's too late for this advice, I'd recommend before you go:

download/install alipay (skip wechat, it's less prevalent)
add and set up your CC from your home country before you arrive in china
have a VPN ready to go, setup before you leave (mullvad worked perfectly for me)
get a physical SIM in China, and get one with high data caps; they're cheap, you might as well
be sure to have a translator app installed and ready to go, with downloaded chinese (simplified) packs that don't require internet connection

Once you've got the physical sim, you'll have fewer issues with phone verification (obviously). The eSIMs I found (I also had one) were based out of hong-kong, and there are regional weirdness/connectivity issues with it. It worked, kind of, but was less reliable than the real deal. Good luck, god speed.

For wechat verification, I had to have a third-party (i.e. one of my chinese friends) perform a verification for me before all options unlocked. If you don't know anyone there, this is obviously challenging.

[–] False@lemmy.world 2 points 6 hours ago

Phones are starting to drop physical sims in the US. I was surprised to find out that my pixel 10 doesn't have one.

[–] Pruning9165@feddit.org 1 points 5 hours ago

My experience with esims is fantastic. I loaded 5 of them on my phone (bought cheap plans with low data tiers) and switch them accordingly. High speed, no censorship at all, decent lag to western sites, I'm not detected as a VPN user.

Arrived in the airport, toggled, worked.

Physical SIM... Didn't try this year but even 6 years ago it was extremely problematic to get one as a foreigner, no store would accept my form of identification, I was offline for three days until I caved in and finally paid 200 yuan extra for a preactivated one (on someone else's id , I guess) on the grey market. And then there's the problem that even if the plans are cheap (I'm seeing $1/month for 5gb), it's rendered useless by the gfw. What's the point of having 200 Mbits of 5g bandwidth if any website that you can think of (including hexbear and .ml surprisingly, I wouldn't expect that they would block tankies), is banned? Better using a HK esim at 30mbits in 4g but with the full internet unlocked...

VPNs it's a cat and mouse game that I don't want to play anymore. You never know if the website isn't loading because the VPN has been blocked, or the website blocked the VPN, or it's a temporary connection issue, or today the server is overloaded...

[–] Almacca@aussie.zone 22 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

I ask and they say need to order from their app, just scan the qr code

Yeah, that's the point I would have turned around and walked out.

[–] Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe 6 points 7 hours ago (8 children)

I hate regular sit down restaurants today that do that.

I've walked out if they don't have a printed menu. Why the fuck would I want to order from my phone?

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[–] Strider@lemmy.world 27 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

'I went to China'... Ahh see, there's the root issue.

[–] electric_nan@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Are you for real?

[–] Strider@lemmy.world 1 points 32 minutes ago* (last edited 32 minutes ago)

If you are asking if I think that is the root of the issue of OPs complaint then yes, absolutely.

You do not go to China and complain about wechat which is the known established and monitored system you have to use. Everything that comes after is just a consequence of that (for a lot of things). People who do not see this have no knowledge of China.

[–] Pruning9165@feddit.org 40 points 11 hours ago (4 children)

The app:

It just has thumbnails of food shown at 200*150 pixels, how it can be 200 mb???

[–] northernlights@lemmy.today 11 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago) (1 children)

Well for starters it's probably an embedded browser made to look like an app so there you go, 100mb for that. The google / apple libraries, 20mb, telemetry, 50mb... Then don't forget the image cache on the device that they will never clear.

[–] Kannushi_Link@lemmy.world 2 points 5 hours ago

Keep (image) cache forever sounds OK if you can clear it manually in some way. The worse offender will be the one w/o cache (or broken implemention), so you keep using the mobile data when you flip through the menu for the same dishes images 😱

[–] despoticruin@lemmy.zip 44 points 11 hours ago

You have to put the telemetry and spyware somewhere, and do you expect them to just not package every single NPM library into the app as statically linked libraries? We don't do logic or consumer protections around here, now scan your passport and proceed to the booth for your butthole size verification so we know exactly how big of a fist we can get in there.

[–] bus_factor@lemmy.world 18 points 10 hours ago

Probably bundled a whole chromium like every other app.

[–] pelespirit@sh.itjust.works 8 points 10 hours ago

That chicken at the bottom, they knew.

[–] hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 40 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago) (2 children)

Welcome to the future, where everything is a stupid 200MB phone app which doesn't even work properly. At least here in Germany you can still eat without any. But you definitely have to download some fat BurgerKing app with lots of 4k fire animations to get an 1€ coupon. Of course it'll also ask for all kinds of stuff.

[–] drmoose@lemmy.world 3 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

I don't care about bandwidth but it's clearly worse technology. Pointing to a physical target and exchanging physical tokens is straight up better technology. This is functional regression.

I like how Japan solved the cash overhead with automatic cash change machines everywhere - this is the right solution for payment processing and updating menus is easy.

[–] hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 1 points 20 minutes ago* (last edited 13 minutes ago)

Dunno if it's necessarily worse tech... I don't really care if it's physical tokens which get exchanged or virtual ones... Point is, it has to work and cover a wide array of use-cases. Has to work in edge-cases, for both residents and tourists, has to work when there's surprise maintenance at the bank, when there's an internet outage... We gotta easily pay $1000 for a hotel for 10 days and the rental car, or 73ct at the local flea market. I might need to pay for a bus ticket or gasoline in the middle if some forest where there isn't any 5G coverage...

I think exchanging physical tokens is just absurdly good at that. I'm just not sure if it can't be done any other way? I mean we obviously don't have that hypothetical tech in the real world, because banks want to control the process and they always come up with some central way of doing it, with them in the middle. That's kinda their business model. And the alternative concept is some convoluted approach which needs an internet connection and a decent amount of resources to do the transactions...

There's some better approaches at digital cash like GNU Taler I think that one is pretty much like cash. And we only need one of the transaction parties to be online (to prevent double-spending of the virtual tokens).

Edit: And we need some default. Makes it way more comfortable to live in a country that just demands people to offer a payment method and I can go anywhere and just pay with that. In contrast to install 25 different apps, open 20 bank accounts to cover all possible cases, and the parking meter at the tourist place randomly asks me to install the 26th app.

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[–] Umay@lemmy.ml 24 points 11 hours ago (4 children)

Not accepting cash should be illegal. What am I talking about they don't even accept card.

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[–] nialv7@lemmy.world 8 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago) (1 children)

if you lived in china long term you wouldn't have these problems because you would have already given up all your personal data and privacy to the state. but hey, you'd get some convenience out of it, so not so bad, right?

[–] northernlights@lemmy.today 6 points 8 hours ago

Actually it gives no convenience, only incovenience. When I lived there for 2 years about 20 years ago and everything was cash and you could at any moment just hail a taxi, a minibus, one these bycicle guys, tell where you want to go, give cash, it was very convenient.

[–] vogi@piefed.social 8 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago)

I feel like the most horrific thing about it all is that the government can just deactivate your account at any moment. Happened to a friend when they were visiting, maybe some connections on the phone they did not like it. They didn't tell them and it happened automatically after connecting with two locals.

[–] Godort@lemmy.ca 11 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

WeChat is like Facebook and Venmo combined into one app. I understand that it pretty much replaced cash entirely in China.

[–] Pruning9165@feddit.org 15 points 10 hours ago (2 children)

Basically yes. It's THE app. Now it looks like it also integrates meituan (≈ Groupon) and JD (≈amazon)

And it looks like if your social score goes over 500 points, you can activate buy now pay later like klarna

Chat, social media feed (both in TikTok style and also in Twitter/Instagram mashup style), it has everything. It takes 7gb of space on my phone and I only have like 3 chats. I'm guessing for heavy users it takes over the full storage of the phone

[–] late_pessimistic@slrpnk.net 9 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

This app must have been designed by devil to torture digital minimalists and UNIX philosophy people in the afterlife

[–] WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world 5 points 9 hours ago

WeChat is not a whole lot different to a browser/os at that point. It's basically THE government mandated iOS, which contains THE government mandated app store. A way of forcing everyone to use their walled garden surveillance system even if they have a computer not under the control of the regime, like the entire Chinese diaspora and any foreigner dumb enough to install it.

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[–] Endymion_Mallorn@kbin.melroy.org 11 points 11 hours ago (6 children)

That's life in a horrific authoritarian state.

We need to stop that from happening in the USA. Bring back the penny.

[–] tal@lemmy.today 5 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

Bring back the penny.

The penny going away is not cash going away.

Trying to even find some estimate of inflation going back that far is a pain, but it looks like the smallest federally-issued denomination was the half-cent coin, in 1793.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half_cent

https://www.in2013dollars.com/

Based on the above, a half-cent would be 17¢ today. The dime today is worth less than the half cent.

I'd be more-concerned about whether new bills of sufficiently-large denominations are available to make using cash practical, not coins of very small denomination.

The issue with the penny is that the handling costs are significant. Like, getting rid of it means that businesses don't need to pay the costs of processing it. (It is not, I might add, the issue that Trump gave as justification for ending minting it, which is that it costs more to manufacture than the face value of the coin.)

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[–] betterdeadthanreddit@lemmy.world 7 points 10 hours ago

This is a reason I'll never go to China unless it's with thousands of others who also don't want to be there and professional logisticians taking care of the food problem.

[–] Archimedes@sh.itjust.works 8 points 10 hours ago

Sounds like a failed restaurant to me.

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