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There is a classic Soviet movie based on just that - a guy who flies from Moscow to at Petersburg after getting drunk on new years eve (or the opposite,don't remember) and ends up in a commie block just like the one he lives in, same street name, same flat number , same building ,his keys even opened the same flat number only that it wasn't his flat. It was a residence of a pretty young lady and they end up married

Boys, I have to admit; I really miss the old ADV bike ride chats. It was a brilliant way to end my working week. I'd grab a cup of tea, get my couch comfy and wile away a Sat arvo listening to you zoom through China. Matt's hair was the highlight of it all. He rocked that style big time. Sigh. An era is over. Well and truly.

The grey buildings match up nicely with the grey air.

"Soulless". The most accurate description of everything Chinese.

As someone that has traveled much of the US, the suburbs do tend to look alike across the country but the cities vary tremendously. The differences between SF, LA, Las Vegas, Austin, Chicago, Detroit, New Orleans, Miami, Philadelphia, NYC, Boston is tremendous. Chinas big cities all look the same architecture except with various levels of rich high rise central area but that’s it.

I lived in Shanghai for eight years, returning to the states in July 2021. When I first moved there the three story apartments were still all over. First floor shared kitchen, then living space on the second and third stories. When I was looking for my second apartment I came across several which had redone the third story in a western style apartment. They had a lot of charm and character. But most were being demolished in favor of new high rises.

I once took a 20 hour train ride from ZhuZhou over Wuhan to Shanghai with my back then girlfriend. That was in 2005, before the high speed rail boom. I remember staring out of the window and wondering because we drove past villages and they all would have their own window color. In one village all the windows were green, in the next they all were yellow, then blue and even red. I wondered ever since why that is and what living in a house with such windows is like.

In Germany you can go to a City on the North Sea Coast and and a City in the South...and you wouldnt think they are part of the same Country. In Italy it is even more extreme Citys in the North and the South look like they are not even on the same Planet.

When I came back from China, people would ask me what it was like. My answer: grey. Mao wiped away their identity and now they are lost, soulless. There are some stunning places: Dali, Xian, Guilin... the towns of minorities (I saw the Dong town in the video) and those places are utterly charming, but as you say, most is just faceless grey concrete.

I think the only architectural difference in some Chinese cities are the buildings from the colonial-era. For example Macau, which was a Portuguese colony and has Portuguese buildings or Qingdao, which was a German colony and has German buildings.

I talked to many Chinese people when I visited China in 1997 and I asked them about all those old buildings I saw being torn down and replaced by monotonous blocks, and they invariably reacted the same: it was all old, worthless junk to them.

I'd really like to see you two play GeoGuessr China, how well can you find your location without accents to identify?

The same style of building you see all over Iran too. All the same concrete skeletal shell filled up, it's everywhere. In fact, in that footage where you guys drove down the streets, change the streetsigns to Farsi and the people to Iranian, and the footage could have been taken on the streets of a random Iranian city or town. It's how I remember cities like Shiraz and Tehran.

There was a case recently where a kidnapped child that has grown up was reunited with his parents by the authorities based on his recollection of his hometown; wonder how that could happen with every place being the same. I got the impression that the whole report was a sincere grassroot effort and not propaganda.

The same applies to today's Britain by and large. I live in a town in Surrey that is rapidly becoming yet another what I call 'anywheresville' with huge over-dense characterless blocks of flats (with no private parking provision) creating soul-less canyonised streets. It is being repeated in other towns up and down the country - hence my description of 'anywheresville'. The only difference to the China you are describing is that at least these monstrosities don't have bare concrete!

Woke up on my birthday to a new episode of ADV China... It doesn't get better than that. 😁 Yeah, I used to have idyllic visions of China growing up that I got mostly from watching dozens of Kung Fu movies. 🤣 I always wanted to travel to China and train at Shaolin temple and see the beautiful countryside, etc., so it was a bit heartbreaking to eventually learn the truth.

You two guys are so awesome, such respect for you both. You do a great service informing people like myself who have never been to China and even if I think I know something about it, it pales in comparison to what you know and understand from first hand experience i trust. Thanks!

I’ve been watching you guys for years and your back and forth is impeccable. It makes the videos a pleasure to watch 👌🏼

C-Milk you’re into botany and nature? Would be cool if someday you did a video going over the different ecologies and geographies of China, especially types of trees and woods from different regions, or different herbs and animals, historically to present day. I know you guys always say there’s no nature or wild animals in China so most of us just imagine a post-apocalyptic wasteland, but maybe there’s remnants of the historical past you can educate us on

In the early to mid-2000's I was in an SE start-up tasked with setting up data acquisition and sales verticals. I contacted and was eventually contacted by entities interested in helping establish frameworks and data drill down targets. Lemme tell ya, these entities were interested in some of the most subtle and convoluted data aggregations one can imagine. The interests ranged from habits to biases to emotional hot and cold buttons. Psychologists were a solid inquiry avenue...uh, the depth of invasive microscopes on individual's interior goings on. Freaked me out...

Oh, the blue glass! A sure sign of east asian real estate investors. I drove up to new Vancouver a few years ago.(from old Vancouver on the Columbia river) The first thing I noticed was how much it looks like a generic modern southern-oriental city; just a sea of fairly utilitarian high rises all with the same pale blue glass. Most of the character that the city had when I was there in the 80s had been wiped out.

keep up the documentation u guys r real heros

This would make a great podcast episode on 99 Percent Invisible. They love talking about architectural design and how the mind of the people shape it.

You might be interested in checking out how Chinese built apartment buildings in Tbilisi, Georgia a few years ago and now they're already falling apart.

I recall in my trip around China, when visiting Xi'an in October, it was quite beautiful, but the guide stated sadly that in a few days the central coal heating plants would be turned on and everything would be dreadful and sooty. Many cities were not pretty, and Beijing stank...

Speaking of Data brokers, here is a tale of how Instagram is listening to you when the app is closed. My wife is Turkish, and one day we happened to be talking about the old style Turkish toilets that are basically a ceramic pan in the floor you squat over and do your thing. One day later, I open Instagram and what ad appears before me? But one for a Turkish Toilet (the old style). Now that is about non-coincidental as you can get. Instagram and other apps are listening to you when they are closed. Unreal.

The map artist is brilliant! My favorite bit is subway station in the middle of a field.

Judging by the background video, China also has a lot of Dingbat-style buildings, just like in Latin America and other 3rd-world countries, where most of the rural buildings are made of brick, glass, and plaster. DiaoLou is the "European-style" design that doesn't really shout "European". It's what you would find in countries south of China, like Vietnam, Malaysia, or Indonesia, countries with architecture from their colonial days. But in China, it's like you can't tell where you're at anymore because the architectural environment is all the same. It's like you go to the Midwestern US, and you can't differentiate whether you're in Kansas or South Dakota because the towns and rural landscapes are all too similar.

I was researching overseas Chinese remittance flows back to the greater Canton area, mostly late-19th C and there are a couple reasons beyond grandeur or vanity to build diaolou. The first is that the area was pretty lawless, outside the main city and town gates, so a 3-4 story building was more easily defended. The second is that it's basically a swamp, and gastric illness, malaria etc were considered to come from vapors, or the noxious effluvium of the swampy areas. The third is that the higher you go, in a hot and humid climate, the more breeze you get, which makes life a bit more bearable, and if you have to stay in the main residence rather than go up to the hills. The rest of the piece, on exposed concrete, toilet tiles, and blue glass is just aesthetic barbarism. Paint is functionally useless on any structure south of about Wuhan - it's bad paint badly applied, usually, but it looks like crap after about 5 years.

Your take on Chinese architecture is true. It is mostly all concrete 'blah'. I found a few exceptions. Buildings not yet obliterated in Lhasa are different. Then there were classic Western style enclaves like the German sector of Qingdao, because of the Tsingtao beer interests. One of the most bizarre architectural anomalies I saw is on the island of Gulang Yu. The piano island where even bicycles are banned. Look it up. I also witnessed the destruction of a classic village with rambling curving narrow streets, with a concrete grid containing soulless concrete homes with tiles on the front. 300 year old homes with curled roof tiles, original village gates, with overhead monks rooms - all being demolished asap.

It is staggering how many ancient pyramids are covered up in China. Great video gents!

You guys are such a cute couple. Thank goodness you both got kicked out of China so you can continue your bromance.

Thank you for your interesting content. I learned a lot.

Interesting topic!

Some nice nature footage in this one. Also, I noticed some interesting architecture in Vietnam, concrete buildings. I wonder if there is some relation to this Kaiping place

You guys were in China when we went through the boring 1990s. I could go to a shopping plaza in any city in the US. The wife wanted a sandwich shop. I said look two shops to the right of the anchor grocery store. I was right. Then she said, Ice Cream. That would be two doors to the left of the grocery. Correct again. We would travel hundreds of miles in a day and the city would have the same apartment buildings as the city we were in yesterday. We quit the RV lifestyle because we realized how boring and uniform the country was. Even state RV camps had the same showers and campground layout. Bare concrete? Do a search of "st vincent hospital" Pick a city, or not. They all are bare concrete.

About time!!! miss the the content on wheels :D

Just what I was needing today

Ty guys for this informative vid..

I worked in Hangzhou. Buildings were constantly getting torn down and high rises built, but West Lake is absolutely beautiful.

Great channel. I've been following you for years!

I do envy your travels in China... It's your language skills that made it possible ...

Sounds like Los Angeles. If someone plopped me down in Los Angeles, I would have no idea where in the city I was. Every part of LA looks exactly the same.

I can totally agree. I lived and traveled china in 2004/05 and 2007/08 -- all looks the same except some landmarks. I was lucky to be in Tianjin and Harbin and see some special architecture mostly old and foreign.

Nice one, good to see you again

I read that Chinese fond are A LOT more expensive to create, the the file sizes are much bigger, because of so many unique characters. This would explain why so many sign look so similar, there are just way less fonts available.

That would be a horrible existence... I never want to go there! Thanks for your great videos. ;)

Vancouver is gradually being bulldozed and all the character homes are disappearing and being replaced with bland concrete and glass buildings with zillions of concrete platforms that supposedly are patios that no one uses because for most of the year Vancouver's weather is too awful, but it permits a mark-up of 10% or so on the price of the condo unit, depending on how high up the structure it is. The world is all becoming the same... build as cheaply as possible and sell for as much as possible so that all you end up with are cookie-cutter, bland-looking structures, which is why so many cities in Canada have become literally unaffordable and impossible to live in with a regular salary.

I'm from vietnam, and if you replace all the Chinese sign into Vietnamese one, you wouldn't be able to tell if the footage is from vietnam or China

The BEST episode in a LONG time !!! Fantastic content, here.

Those power poles are totally maxed out on wire capacity

“Northsouthy”? 😂

One can't tell one fast food row from any other fast food row in any place in US either: they all look the same anywhere.

I think the blue glass was a response to laser induced sound gathering listening espionage

I think most of the inspiration may have come from Romania. They were good comrades during the Ceausescu era - brothers in bleakness.

I have noticed slight differences in buildings through the videos you have taken in the north of China and south. Up in Inner Mongolia and 东北, I see a lot more of inspiration from the Soviet khruskevka (the buildings are shorter and longer and have those cantilever balconies that have the windows on them. In southern China like in 广东 and the likes, I notice a lot more buildings that are taller and have that pool tile aesthetic that you talk about. They also seems to be more buildings being built with tight spaces in between rather than right next to each other. I know in eastern China, there’s is a concept of a building called a Danwei (但为）which is more conceptual to the Soviet apartment buildings, but has a lot more Chinese characteristics than those found in 东北.

Finally got to view this episode. Very interesting, and informative. I guess lack of competition turns into lack of imagination and variety.

I lived in China for 4 years and the thing that disappointed me most was how similar every city was. Shanghai was an exception, but I visited Xi'an, Nanjing, and Zhengzhou and asked myself if they were worth the lengthy train rides and flights when most of the landscape was tall, recently build apartment blocks, super wide streets with tons of traffic, and shopping malls that had no distinguishing characteristics.

These buildings are the same all over Asia. Same thing in India, Thailand, Bali, etc. -- brick, concrete, and tile boxes; echoey and tasteless. It's sad, especially when they replace quaint traditional buildings. I think it's more about the mentality in developing countries than specific to Chinese communism. Air conditioning and running water may be new and exciting for these building owners, whereas traditional materials and architecture are new and exciting for us tourists from the West.

If you freeze frame at 0:00 Winston looks mega blazed and Matt is trolling The Game

thank you for the insights

I noticed that when I go to Google Maps, there are no street views except for very specific places in China. It is as if the Government just doesn't want you to see their own cities.

My brother and I (Dutch) lived in Beijing for a year (13-14) and had a wonderful time and made many friends. We lived in a hutong in Xiyuan (by choice). Stunningly beautiful and absolutely disgusting at the same time; you guys know what I'm talking about. We lived there with some of our friends.. we'd go skateboarding with them at Zhongguancun every day and eat street food in our hutong at night. So many memories and only a handful of photos.. Sadly, shortly after we left, we heard that the government made a big move to destroying the hutongs and replacing them with standardized homogeneous buildings.. leaving hundreds of people in my hutong alone homeless.. most of them had to return to live with their families in who-knows-where, which was not what they wanted. So, afaik, hutongs in Beijing are also being lost or at least removed from the inner parts of the city. They are illegal and people there don't pay taxes etc., but it's still a beautiful aspect of Chinese life being pushed out and removed. I don't know how accurate my info is though, it's old info and only hearsay, but still.

Its so sad they lost all their Unique Culture. I always wanted to see all of that when I was young and learning it was all lost was just so sad. How they let one man convince them to destroy everything that made their Civilization Unique is beyond me.

Thank you very much for your show. I miss riding motorcycles. I'd be curious as to which bikes you most loved?

Those buildings give me a sense of a government that wants to distance it's self from the beauty of its own culture. I'm a Westerner so I would have expected to see more red and gold. I would have expected to see sweeping shapes. Ornate designs in Hanzi. The reality is very different from what I imagined.

Lingering effects of communism. We have the same in Hungary. The saddest part it that the communism was overthrown more than 30 years ago in Hungary :'D

You should come and see Box Hill in Melbourne, Australia. Hugely Chinese area. The council has been corrupted by the influence of rich Chinese property developers (brown paper bags of money). The central area is horrendous - soulless ugly glass towers everywhere

This is very sad what's been done to China. But it reminds me of an episode of The IT Crowd (British sitcom) where smoking was banned except for a small area outside the back of the building where they worked. Whenever they would meet in that spot the exterior was all grey and depressed looking, and they would be dressed in Russian-style winter clothing, speaking in Russian accents. They would describe it as "it's so...Soviet". It was a commentary but also very hilarious.

Keep up the good work guys!

I've spent a lot of time in China. Your videos are very helpful for me to understand both what I saw and why it's like that. Great work.

very interesting

Very interesting thanks. My take also...when I was there. I loved their old architecture.

It's funny i lived in gaoming/foshan for a year and your right, everytime I watch one of your videos I'm always looking to see if i recognize something because it looks so similar.

As a fan of architecture, I really love the houses by American, John Lautner. Check his stuff out if interested.

Another ADV banger

There seems to be some thing in Asia where they build a modular style home with no side decoration, assuming another modular will be slotted in either side. But it never happens so they look pretty silly

Thanks Guys!!

Yes, I don't know the font name, but i still occasionally see in cheap electronic manuals today. But it was almost like a Courier / Terminal Font. Again, soul crushing by the blandness of it.

I'm sure you could instantly jazz up the place with a subway wonderman and a gaggle of shamate.

Didn't know those had a name. Saw 'em all over when I trekked across southern china in 2019.

Yeah the image of China in my head and from what I had seen on TV was so different then when I was actually there for 3 weeks. I was going like where are the rice fields? The beautiful nature? the traditional houses etc? Yeah I saw some of it in Bejing, Shanghai and such but not much. Then we went to Pingyao and stayed there in the old city center for 2 days and I was like this is how I pictured it cute house, little shops etc. Along with the boat trip on the Li river where we went to visit an old village and finally saw the rice fields.

In North America, it's parks and municipal facilities, and road stops. All built the same, and all very standardized park benches, parking lots, washrooms, etc that are the identical.

Its interesting in that Mao took the uprooting of old culture far further than the Soviets ever did. Sure, Soviet cities had their soulless Khrushchev and Brezhnev (Stalin era ones are actually quite nice) era apartment blocks, but the pre-revolutionary parts of cities were left more or less intact and survive to this day. On a side note, about the being taken from one part of the country to another and not realizing it, there is a great old Soviet comedy, The Irony of Fate (Ирония судьбы) based on that premise. Its tradition in former USSR countries to watch the movie on New Years and it can be easily found with English subtitles on KZfaq.

What was the top speed on your old Churchill Customs' bikes? Nice!

Most countries are like that, if you've seen Dallas you've seen Los Angeles, Portland, or almost any American city.

Interesting discussion guys. Socialism and communism are all about suppressing differences or novelty. The reason is that everyone and everything are required to be materially equal. This extreme version of equality results in drabness and apathy.

The architecture of China is, as Winston has often said in past videos, "soul-less".

Thanks!

Oh I love the blue glass!😃

One thing this video really made me think of is how generally bad the art of construction patterns has been in the modern, industrialized era across the world. Not always of course, but generally the model I see almost everywhere is the mass production of buildings for rapid profit gain, with not usually a lot of thought about its legacy; how people will use it or if they will enjoy it. China represents mass production to the extreme so you see it more, and of course in poor countries when the paint chips and is never replaced, you see how truly soulless the design actually is. Now you don’t notice this as much in the US or western cities because there is usually a historical city center, and you can see the phases of different types of development. However now, in the last few decades, the sprawl that forms around US cities quite often take the ctrl-c, ctrl-v model of giant apartment complexes with 15 boxes that all look the same and isn’t a place to do anything other than park your car and sleep. And even the trend of sterile modern skyscrapers doesn’t do anything to inspire the human spirit the way buildings like the Vatican or the Louvre do. I hope the world learns how to reprioritize originality, individuality, novelty, and human centered design again. Because as is, I doubt the people 200 years from now will be as impressed with what we’re building, as we are with what people built 200 years before us

Did you guys communicate with radios while on your bikes? Seems like it'd be hard to keep coordinated otherwise.

I felt so disappointed while traveling across china. Coming to another town just didn't feel like coming to another town. My brain was looking for new exciting things to see but failed to find them.

You should drive your motorcycles around Monaco. 😆

At around 14:03 in this video, I can see a bird. Earlier videos said "China had no birds"...

What's with the "nail house" on the middle of the ring road (belt road around the city) on the typical chinese city map ? That was hilarious, is it a rebel owner embattled with the city against demolition of his house or is it humor to show the road will have nails that flatten tires ?

I am so curious of where your motobike rear view mirrors are

It's sad to know how much history is permanently lost under chinese communism. I've been in Denmark for a while now, and here they preserve everything. It's super common to go anywhere and you'd see 200 year old houses still used today. In fact it's very rare to see new houses in old parts of towns and villages. And within small space you can see variety, like from back in time when different influences came from different sides. Ofc, Denmark seems to be a bit of a bright example in this, but in lots of Europe it's similar situation. Germany for example also has tons of old architecture saved and every city or town keeps it's old charm.

Copying others ideas and ways is the fastest way to succeed. China shows it at all levels and angles. ‘Soul crushing” is the best description when you see cities and towns losing identity and culture. It is all about chasing economic progress.