I Went to China Before I Ever Went to China

I went to China before I ever stepped foot in China. Through blogs, YouTube videos, Instagram and TikTok, I had already begun learning about the country: how people lived, what businesses were building and which ideas were attracting attention. But there is a question hidden inside that sentence. Was I getting to know China, or getting to know the version of China that appeared on my screen?

I think both things can be true. Online exploration gave me a starting point and made me more curious. It also gave me impressions that needed testing. A video can open a door to an unfamiliar place while leaving most of the room out of view. The responsibility of the viewer is to remember that the frame has edges.

Travel still matters to me. Being in an unfamiliar environment, talking to people and noticing the ordinary details of their day offers something a screen cannot. Online, we are always seeing a version of a place that somebody has chosen to show us. Arriving in person gives us the chance to question that picture, fill in what was missing and discover things we did not know to look for.

Travel can help us notice those edges, but a plane ticket does not automatically make us perceptive. We can visit a country and spend the whole trip confirming what we expected to find. Equally, someone learning from home can ask careful questions, compare accounts and develop a thoughtful understanding. What matters is how willing we are to let new information complicate the picture.

There is also a limit to the idea that the world is already in everyone’s pocket. ITU’s Facts and Figures 2025 estimated that 6 billion people used the internet while 2.2 billion remained offline. Its estimates put internet use at 94% in high-income countries and 23% in low-income countries. These are measures of use, not proof of equal access to reliable connections or useful learning. Curiosity matters, but it cannot pay for data or provide electricity.

For those of us who do have access, that makes the opportunity worth thinking about more seriously. What did we understand this week that we did not understand last week? It is possible to spend hours looking at the world without allowing any of it to change our view of it.

Following an interest beyond the screen

An entrepreneur can start learning how businesses operate in a market they hope to enter. A student can listen to people working in an industry they are curious about. Neither needs to know exactly where that interest will lead. Sometimes the value is simply discovering that there are more ways to live and work than the ones we have grown up seeing.

I find it useful to think of a question as a way of directing attention. If you are curious about a business, ask who buys from it, how it reaches them and what problem it solves. A short clip may show the finished product beautifully while telling you little about any of those things. Following the question beyond the clip is where the learning begins.

Then look for an account that makes your first impression less comfortable. A visitor, a local entrepreneur and a worker may describe the same place differently because they experience different parts of it. Whose voice have you heard most often? Whose experience would be hardest to find in the material you have been watching? Those are useful questions when a place starts to feel familiar before we have understood very much about it.

Arriving with questions

For me, exploring a country means trying to understand how people think, how they solve problems and what their experiences might teach me. The landmarks and photographs are part of a visit, but the questions often stay with me longer. What makes a business work here? What do people take for granted that would feel unfamiliar at home? Which of my assumptions needs revisiting?

The same discipline matters when we want to bring an idea home. Imagine watching a successful delivery business abroad and deciding to copy it. Before copying the app, we would need to understand the roads, addresses, payment habits and costs that make its service possible. Which parts of the idea could work in our own community, and which depend on conditions we do not share? Admiration becomes useful when it leads us to investigate how something works.

I still believe we can begin exploring long before we travel. But I would make the invitation more demanding than “watch more content”. Choose a question, seek out different perspectives and write down what remains unclear. If the opportunity to visit comes, take those questions with you and let the experience change them. That is the kind of preparation I value: arriving interested enough to notice, and uncertain enough to learn.