I can see why your girlfriend would hate it so much, she's coming from Canadian, one of the highest standards of living in the world. You can't expect to go to

I can see why your girlfriend would hate it so much, she's coming from Canadian, one of the highest standards of living in the world. You can't expect to go to China, and find that same level of comfort. It was a third world country 20 years ago! It's dirtier, it's poorer, and it's WAYY more crowded. It's polluted, and everyone speaks Chinese. I find it sad that she hated it though, sounds like deep down, she hates a part of herself as well. As for the VPN access, I also write software for a living, and it took me 5 minutes to get set up with a VPN. It was simply enough that my parents could figure it out as well. I get that the Play Store and Google don't work there, I was referring specifically to the fact that for most intents and purposes, a regular Chinese person could use the internet for most of its glory (porn, games, social, news, shopping). Hukou is unfortunate and controversial issue there. In some ways it makes sense though, you have a massive population and you want to moderate the effects of massive migration. In other ways it's cruel and unfair. I don't know what to do about that, but I don't know if the U.S. has proven a better method. The fact of the matter is that no government has been in the situation China is in right now. To me, that makes it hard to judge. Overall, I still find your argument that "it's an awful place to live" uncompelling.