Illustration by Mike Padilla

BEIJING - You need to travel to China. Skip the traditional Euro tours of the sights and clubs. Skip Mexico.

Don't believe me? Here's why: If you think you know anything about China, and you've never traveled there, you're probably wrong.

I began my trip through China and Southeast Asia one week ago.

I touched down in Beijing with the judgments I had formed by reading books, following the news and watching movies.

Upon arrival I realized I had been no better than the foreigners who think American high school students are as rowdy and unruly as the movies depict us.

I expected to see the effects of communism.

Even though China had opened up its markets, I expected to see the kind of poverty I saw in Peru last year.

But as I drove into the center of Beijing, all those expectations were squashed. I saw none of this.

Instead, massive construction on new office buildings and shopping malls overwhelmed me.

Keren Raz Columnist

When I reached the center of the city, I got lost in the sea of Chinese people shopping, in the middle of the rain, in the fancy name-brand stores.

I didn't quite realize I was in China.

Never mind the language barrier (my favorite Chinglish translation thus far: "United Ballers"); I had my friend there with me to translate everything.

Never mind that I was surrounded by Asians; to me it felt like Chinatown.

Beijing, as far as my first impressions were concerned, was simply a more polluted, shopping-crazed American city.

I spent my Friday night in this foggy state of mind at a club with a bunch of foreigners, and the next day I hit the mall for lunch.

Then later that afternoon I took a trip to the Forbidden City, the palace buildings that housed the emperors from 1406 until the last one in 1912.

That's when it hit me: I wasn't in the states anymore.

What brought the culture shock home was a rather horrifying observation that you would never witness at a major historical site in a large American city.

Smack in the middle of the Forbidden City, where emperors used to walk, a little boy popped a squat and pooped.

I was the only person who stopped and stared, incredulously.

No one batted an eye because they were familiar with the Chinese fashion.

Instead of diapers, kids wear pants with a big hole in the bottom, so they can relieve themselves whenever and wherever without soiling their pants.

Honestly, it's hard to tell China is Communist, because you're surrounded by the marks of capitalism.

The Chinese government is doing a great job of getting Beijing to appear to the tourists and businesses as if it were any other city.

You can't find a homeless person on the street.

Office buildings dominate the skyline, and the malls have a sinister shine that draw you into them as a diversion from life outside of them.

One day after it hit me that I really was in China, the month-long shopping festival arrived in Beijing.

The malls pulled out all the stops. Skinny models walked runways in the courtyards.

Singers entertained people in front of department stores.

Young girls with bright orange shirts and vines wrapped around their head showed off the latest in camera technology.

While I relished the idea of participating in this shopper's paradise, the intensity of it alarmed me.

Capitalism in China is only a recent development. And so much of the business moving into China is from foreign countries.

So where do people get the money to buy Burberry bags, Nine West shoes and Guess jeans?

I knew about the black market for fake name brands in China, but I didn't expect to see Chinese youth spending money for the real label.

According to my friend who has studied in China for the past year, Chinese people get the money from their paychecks, which, while small, are used almost exclusively to buy the expensive name brand clothes.

She said they call it the "freedom to buy" - their only freedom, and they take advantage of it.

Naturally, this lifestyle has its critics.

A taxi driver told me the other day that the Chinese youth today have no soul.

All they care about is "money, money, money," he shouted to me in the back while shaking his fist in the air.

"No soul. Just money."

But it's hard to be too critical of the lifestyle when, for many Chinese, it gives them opportunities they never had before, when it opens up the walls that used to keep them closed in from the outside world.

It's hard for foreigners to see the restrictions the Chinese face, but if you look closely, you will.

Pay attention to the cameras surrounding Tiananmen Square.

Or hang around for the morning, and maybe you'll witness a police officer force someone taking pictures at Tiananmen to destroy his film.

Try to view someone's blog, and access will be denied. It's frightening to see that kind of censorship, which is why most foreigners don't see it in the same way the Chinese do.

The same taxi driver who criticized his fellow Chinese then asked me to stay in China and work: "More Americans should come to China. For foreigners, no problems. For Chinese, many problems."

Globalization and capitalism have opened the cities of China up to the world.

Look at the tags on the clothes you're wearing. I bet they say, "Made in China."

Our future is intricately tied to what happens in the next few years in China, how it deals with poverty, with the new surge of capitalism, with communism.

Unfortunately, with the low numbers of Americans on the streets of Beijing, it seems as if we aren't even trying to learn more about the culture and correct the erroneous judgments we form on the other side of the ocean.

Keren Raz, a former Daily Wildcat news editor, will be writing on her travels in Asia throughout the summer. She is an English senior and can be reached at letters@wildcat.arizona.edu.