We left all of our luggage in a random taxi and walked away.
Not a registered locker, not a hotel reception. A taxi. The driver spoke no English, we spoke no Chinese. Through a translation app, we agreed on a pick-up time at the same spot, several hours later. He nodded, drove off with everything we owned, and we went to look at some rocks.
He showed up perfectly on time.
This would be unfathomable in most places I’ve lived or travelled. In Rome, where I’m based, leaving a bag unattended for thirty seconds invites divine retribution. Here it was arranged in under a minute, with a stranger, via an app, and nobody raised an eyebrow.
China operates on a level of ambient trust that is difficult to explain until you experience it. Part of it is genuine social cohesion, a collectivist culture where screwing over a stranger carries real reputational cost. Part of it is the surveillance apparatus: cameras everywhere, social credit murmuring in the background, the knowledge that deviation is observed. Probably both, and the proportions depend on who you ask. Either way, the functional result is remarkable. Things work. People show up. Agreements hold.