As they say, every time you go back to China, you have to relearn everything. In less than two years, my experience using Alipay (no-cash society) has flipped, and this time it was a TOTAL NIGHTMARE. Multiple problems: 1. "Just walk up and scan the QR code" is not so simple. Now places have QR codes all over the counter! Which one? It’s a trap. Over and over again, we scanned the large-sized, prominently displayed code, which was spam! The real code was small and tucked away. This happened just now at M-Stand coffee, and the foreigner next to us did the same intuitive but wrong thing. 2. Popups. The next problem is the biggest, which is the barrage of spam popups. The worst was at Luckin, where there were literally TWENTY click-through barriers to ordering an Americano. The girl was frantically clicking through on my phone, she knew each spam screen from muscle memory and anticipated them, often clicking before they arrived, but as fast as she was, the other customers were annoyed. I told the wife, and she confirmed the same thing had happened to her earlier: literally 20 clicks, and only a local would know the answers to all those trick questions. 3. Translation. Just use the Alipay translate feature, you say? No, this has got to be the WORST translation software in existence. Claude is essentially flawless; even DeepSeek would be fine, but this is actually translating as the opposite of the meaning many times, which, as you can imagine, spins up serious confusion and wrong orders. For example, it translated "matcha latte no caffeine" (wtf?) and options like "with jelly or yes jelly” (no!). 4. Optionality. This is insane and adds to the above burdens. In the example of Luckin, the girl who works there could not even find the Orange Americano! She menu-dived three times, getting frustrated and coming up for air, before she dived into the right one. Then, of course, came corn syrup, iced, size, etc. Well, combined with misleading translation and constant spam, you are now spending up to 20 minutes ordering a coffee (this was the actual time it took in Starbucks when I did it myself). 5. When is the order ready? You would think this digital system would have that advantage, but again, it is totally unclear. It is written in some small print among dozens of other numbers and is different for each restaurant you go! We never knew when it was ready to pick up. The effect of all this is that every single time you get a drink, or food, or do anything, it becomes an uninvited adventure, like solving a video game puzzle. It was vastly easier to just say "iced Americano, please" and let them do their job. This seems to be a big change, or am I just imagining it? Two years ago, it took some getting used to, but I do not remember hitting this brick wall. Is this like how Facebook became 100% spam, but the product cycle is just moving faster in China? On the positive side, ordering a taxi with Alipay (DiDi Taxi) remains great! Now, of course, we are tourists, true, and my Putonghua and comfort with simplified characters are very low, but typically when you set up systems like this, your own elder population cannot navigate them, like how elders in Korea cannot navigate the crappy banking apps and always get locked out of their own accounts. Speaking of which, of course I got locked out of my WeChat account, sigh, and none of the three recertification options are available to me in China. We went to a beer stall where the beer is paid for with Alipay but the cup is paid for with WeChat! This is just bad design!