I think China changes so fast that these fun personal touchstones come and go so quickly. I remember when I was first there you couldn't walk very far without hearing 'fapiao! fapiao!' from people selling them, so there must have been a fair bit of gaming cash-based payments, either for tax or company expenses purposes. Nowadays in Shenzhen I don't see that.
I used to adhere pretty strictly to the rules. Like I'd go register at the PSB as I moved around, all that stuff. At the time I figured, well, it's China, maybe they have some centralized place they're recording all this and they'll approve my next visa faster. But I've met other foreigners who just do not care about any of that, never register, and they get much better visa offers than I do. It's just a huge chaotic machine really.
You can talk to one official who'll tell you it's literally impossible to do X, where X is some thing that massively impacts your life there. Go to a different office or speak to a different person and oh yeah, you want to do X, no problem, and it's done in five minutes.
That drives some people crazy but I recommend anyone to experience China at least once in their lifetime. It's a very perspective-changing place.
It got to the point that I registered with the PSB twice a year: first before I would renew my Z visa, and once after I renewed it (so twice in one month basically). Because my registration permit would become invalid when I went on international trips, but it didn't really matter until I went to renew my visa, and then my permit would become invalid again with the new visa, so that's what I had to do.
Different PSBs in Beijing had different policies though, Haidian was looser than Chaoyang (or at least the ones I had in each, both Haidian and Chaoyang are huge and probably have multiple ones).
Before I lived in China for 9 years, I spent two years in Switzerland. You do not want to mess with the contrôle des habitants, Swiss police/officials are not very understanding. I delayed my exit from Switzerland for one week (to attend a conference) and it became a huge deal even if Americans are firmly on visa waver. Mostly the opposite of China.
I used to adhere pretty strictly to the rules. Like I'd go register at the PSB as I moved around, all that stuff. At the time I figured, well, it's China, maybe they have some centralized place they're recording all this and they'll approve my next visa faster. But I've met other foreigners who just do not care about any of that, never register, and they get much better visa offers than I do. It's just a huge chaotic machine really.
You can talk to one official who'll tell you it's literally impossible to do X, where X is some thing that massively impacts your life there. Go to a different office or speak to a different person and oh yeah, you want to do X, no problem, and it's done in five minutes.
That drives some people crazy but I recommend anyone to experience China at least once in their lifetime. It's a very perspective-changing place.