theseadroid

japan mostly uses paypay, just saying

Now that prices are up and salaries are somehow up, but (income) tax rates stay the same. Does that mean the government are taxing more for all of us?

I would like to address several of your posts together, using my own experiences.

As a fellow Chinese who lived in Europe for a couple years and lived in several cities across Canada, each a couple years (so not 2 week travels):

1. It forced me to abandon my old friends and make new friends. Is this a good thing? not necessarily. An easy thing? absolutely not. A good thing? I think so. First of all, distance kills friendships. And I'm forced to make new friends when I feel lonely. When I have new friends, I learn about their cultures, about their hobbies. I spent 20+ years in China and never got drawn into bodybuilding, now I do it everyday because my new foreigner friends introduced me to it and it becomes an integrated part of my life and source of happyness. I still keep in touch with a few close close friends remotely, who lives all over the world now.

2. It forced me to do things I normally won't do/step out of my comfort zone. This is related to your comment:

Which when I thought about it is super ridiculous, why can't I enjoy these things if I was going by myself??? Or put in another way, why can't we see our local city and people in our local community with the same freshness, open-ness and kindness as we'd if we were tourists or backpackers traveling in a distant land?

You certain can, but it's difficult. Human brain is designed to find patterns. We get used to things fast. There's no incentive for us to step out of our comfort zone in familiar environments. Once we know about a shortcut, we'll always take it. It's the not knowing of the shortcuts that forced me to be out of my comfort zone a lot (and back to 1, I wont force myself to make new friends if I dont have to). Things like, I public speak a lot more than before, I try actively making friends, and again I workout daily now.

3. By doing all 1 and 2, I gained new perspectives about myself. About what really makes me happy. If I didn't live abroad, I'll probably anchor my happiness a bit more on the traditional Chinese values such as having a big place in the tier 1 cities in China and having kid(s), and make sure the kid(s) excel in all the stuff, just like my high school classmates are doing right now. Now instead I saw so many different ways of living one's life. So many different ways of finding happyness, I incorpated those into how I define my happiness. I do things that truly make me happy rather than things my peers are doing. On the flip side, I dont give fucks to many things anymore, because I saw ppl who dont give fucks to those and they are fine. I wont know those people in my old city with my old circle, or at least not as many.

4. It satisfied my curiousity. You can know a lot about the world by means other than traveling and experiencing in person. But can you be sure the experience is the same? Different or not, I was curious to know.

5. Lastly, if I can change history about myself, I'd travel sooner in my life. This is probably related to 3. People say traveling broaden's one's perspectives. Concretely I think what that means is it makes you better at problem solving. With more perspectives, you either gain new approaches to solving problems, or some problems become too trivia you give little amount of fucks than you previously would, or some problems become irrelevant to you. One example I think is I'm not as easily influenced by commericals, marketing, or news as much. And many of those are intentionally stress inducing. When I see things that are utterly important in one culture are not important elsewhere, it helped me stop accepting messages that tell me what's important.

I dont have a foreigner partner btw lol.

relevant readings from other sources:

What We Know So Far about How COVID Affects the Nervous System

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-we-know-so-f...

How COVID-19 can damage the brain

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02599-5

U.K. study: Severe COVID-19 cases may age brain by 10 years

https://www.sfgate.com/news/editorspicks/article/U-K-study-S...

Thanks. I'll try give more info on the parent comment then. First 7% of the Chinese population is like 100 million people... Considering most of them cluster in tier 1 cities (beijing, shanghai, shenzhen)[1], I'd say there's density for certain things to happen if they want.

and I wont call food safety issues local drama. Now that people noticed the air quality is improving[2], food safety is probably the no.1 issue Chinese people care. Especially milk products for babies. Many chinese emigrated for food safety as one of the important reason and most chinese buy foreign milk for their babies. Shoot me email if you'd like to talk more :)

1. China's wealth distribution is really not great. We got tier1 cities like developped countries. then there's tier2, tier3, then east rural areas, and west rural areas.

2. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-pollutuion-beijing/...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/beijing-ai...

whenever I see misinformation my blood boils. I thought moving out of China would help my anger management. But alas here we are. I have been wondering instead of wasting time telling HN or any community what China is like, maybe there's something I can do to help China become a better place where I wanna live in future, no matter how small I can contribute. Many westerners (government bodies excluded) are good intended, but the solution they got mostly will only get things worse.

and to back you up:

A strike was intended to open a new arena of resistance, but organizers said only 8,943 union members participated in a city-wide poll, falling short of the 60,000 threshold to go ahead, even as 95% of the votes were in favor. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hongkong-protests/hong-ko...

HK protestors have failed to organize any long term strike for a while now. If the majority of HKers strike, that will deal a real blow to the government.

Teling the truth and getting downvoted. I'm Chinese too. Wanna connect (email in my profile)?

Thanks. I dont fear Chinese government actually and I think it is bad. It's just we have a lot difference on where it is the worst part and how to make it better and by how much time. Truth to be told there are so many solutions proposed by smart ppl but I dont see many that wont hurt regular Chinese ppl more than what the current regime is doing :(

maybe. I've lived in Europe for a bit and it's a bit better but not to the point I feel safe everywhere during the night in cities(but at least I dont live in fear of getting hit by cars that much). And other than China I've mentioned I feel safe during night in Japan, Taiwan, or Singapore. Again I'm not sourcing any data here because it's just my personal experience of whether I'd feel safe in cities during night.

Please dont break my sentence half way. Western media has been doing that and they wonder why the Chinese ppl are not receptive of their messages or ideas. I feel it's too impolite so I will not follow up on the rest. Sorry.

Here's one of the most important things I can think of that's pushing me back to China more and more each day:

I live in one of the major NA cities and I dont feel safe walking outside after dark (after 8pm).

I have a friend got robbed on knifepoint around 11pm this past March. The case hasn't been closed. Numerous friends' homes got broke in and stuff stolen and cases are all cold.

And I was almost hit by a left turning car on a quite street. The car sped away without checking if i'm ok.

Yes I miss getting my privacy striped away by all the CCTV cameras and feeling safe. I miss all the speed cameras and red light cameras. All the cameras that the existence of them having the deterrent effect for thieft and robberies and traffic violations.

I'm aware of the quote: Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. Because I've been telling that to my friends before I left China and live in NA. But now I think Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs more often than that. (https://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html#:~:text=Maslow'...)

Culturally I'm just used to a higher level of safety I guess. Japan, Singapore, Taiwan other than PRC are like that too. So it's more of an Asian thing.

And that heirarchy actually explain a lot why Chinese seems to be not on the same frequency with westerners on human right issues. Because I guess Chinese are still at a lower level of that hierarchy right now.

not a party member btw. Am Chinese. I will follow up here on any questions you(qbaqbaqba or anyone else) have though. and if you are interested here's my thought on the whole topic in one piece: https://medium.com/@theseadroid/the-china-problem-ce0c1a0e57...

You've got a tiny percent of the population with the ability to proxy out of China.

do you have data to back your claim up?

You cannot easily share the information you find with non-VPN friends.

We talk in person, during lunch or on dinner tables, in office. When we talk politics online we invent new words to avoid auto detection. The recent hot topic is this: https://www.reddit.com/r/China_irl/comments/hp8z29/%E7%8E%8B...

basically some guy got detained because he whistleblowed something food safety related. We talk politics, in ways you normally wont imagine. But not the politics you expect.

Xinjiang concentration camps. That's an interesting topic because most Chinese dont care when you shove it into their throats in one way or another. If you used Weibo, I wonder do you have Chinese friends? Have you asked their opinion about those camps?

The increasing censorship within China leaves less and less opportunity for the greater Chinese population to learn about the capabilities of other countries. Most of my friends back in China, especially devs, use VPN daily. Many Chinese learn English via English media or TV shows. check this out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_English-s...

The CCP news tells me how terrible the USA is, yet, these elements in my life are excellent beyond what is created by my own country. just not true. I was really shocked about the homeless situation in NA which was never really reported back in China.

and also from u/bpodgursky >the Chinese students with the education and wealth to study abroad are already among the top 5% in China. Not the case for most graduate students. Especially the ones received scholarships (such as me).

Please check your sources guys. Try learn a bit Mandarin if you could or at least talk to Chinese ppl living around you. China is sick yes. But imagine diagnosing the illness of a patient without looking or talking to them but only via a malicious translator.

until you realize the antibody wont last more than a couple months. https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/studies-report-ra...

sure, lets race to the bottom with the bad guys.

not long term striking. most protesters are students.

I thought it was relevant because my initial reply was to someone saying

They are too scared of weapons and (justified, defensive) violence to make Chinese occupation unviable.

To that end I felt striking is probably a better option to try before more violent forms of fighting get involved. Maybe nonviolent protest is not a good idea, but it's probably not a worse idea than violent ones.

That is not something I'd advise anyone to bet their lives on.

Say without international community support, is there any winning strategy you can think of?

I personally think once the confrontation becomes more heated, at least a dozen western countries would allow HKers to immigrate to their countries, which doesn't require too much resources to do? One example is last year Sweden has already started granting China's Uighurs refugee status.

And a single city with guns would be able to topple Rome with modern weaponry?

To be clear, neither I or you are certain what the majority of HKers want to trade for democracy. Realistically if they want democracy so bad, what else they can do other than the protesting they are doing? Long term striking seems to be something they can do TODAY, RIGHT NOW. Equiped with weapons or not, one of the bet they have to make is that the international community would not sit idlely while many HKers get killed.

The non violence movement in India against Imperial Britain? You can argue the particularity of every historical event but to me striking is one of the immediately reachable weapon against CCP that is not employed. With the same logic we can say protesting is not effective against CCP yet ppl still do it?

Non violent actions such as strikes brought us many human rights improvements such as 40 hour week and safety and health regulations. Many societies reformed after their citizens striked extensively. I'm curious why there's no sweeping strikes in Hong Kong yet?

Brendan Carr's tweet referred to a nypost article[1] which referred to a 60 minutes Australia tweet[2] claiming Dr. Ai Fen is missing. I've read news from other sources that eventually linked to [2] but no other supporting facts. Is there any substantial evidence anywhere that Ai Fen is actually missing? Or is there no reporter on the ground who can confirm if that's the case?

Let's look at her weibo: https://www.weibo.com/u/2662574464?is_all=1

The cryptic message on March 29th was accompanied with a picture of Wuhan, and the message itself described the geographic features of this city. Any Mandarin speaker won't find it that cryptic.

On April 10th she posted a picture of her and a retired teacher coming to Wuhan for volunteering.

So.. is it so easy to report fake news about China because people love to hate China and most official Chinese statements/sources are in Mandarin so not many English speakers can verify?

1. https://nypost.com/2020/04/01/whistleblowing-coronavirus-doc...

2. https://twitter.com/60Mins/status/1244211674439016449

I disagree that China has not learned from the last one:

https://www.theguardian.com/global/commentisfree/2020/jan/23...

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0771-1

I would appreciate if you provide data/source.

There are also millions of Taiwanese that either live or work in the PRC

Taiwan has a population around 23.78 million. So you are saying at least 1 in 20 live or work in the PRC...

For China many Chinese emigrants are returning home with the virus with them. as they don't trust their local healthcare systems.

One example: https://www.fiercepharma.com/pharma/biogen-parts-way-employe...

To add to that. mainland China banned citizens from traveling to Taiwan as individual tourists 2019 July because of other reasons. So yes Taiwan did not have huge flows of mainland Chinese.

https://time.com/5639832/china-bans-travel-taiwan-tourists/

So do we do this next time any new illness spread? what if it happened to a poor country? Is this going to be coded as an international law? If so why is the law retrospective? Considering your 1) lack of sanitary standards is more prevalent in poorer countries is the law discriminatory?

Say I speak a foreign language with very important message to an audience that doesn't understand this language at all. Nobody in the audience understood the message after I spoke. Does what I said matter? I would consider the communication has failed completely.

edit: But I guess WSJ wasn't speaking to Chinese. Anyway I can only see the misunderstanding deepens and deepens between U.S. and China. Language is one of the contributing factor. Western media is not incentivized to report truth but stories with most clicks. And it's hard for regular westerners to verify those stories without understanding Mandarin or talk to Chinese.

The same wiki source in Chinese language though gives a completely different picture and with much more information and sources on how the terms is used in the last hundred year in Chinese language.

https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E4%B8%9C%E4%BA%9A%E7%97%85%E5...

1903年前后，以梁启超为代表的中国知识分子，扩展西方的“中国病夫论”的内涵。梁启超在《新民说》第一次用“病夫”来形容所有的中国人，说：“夫中国一东方病夫也，其麻木不仁久矣。”《新民说》一发表，用“病夫”来形容中国精神落后、麻木不仁，也成为舆论界的时髦。1903年，陈天华写作《警世钟》，就说：“外洋人不骂（中国人）为东方病夫，就骂为野蛮贱种。”[5]

1905年，小说《孽海花》出版，其作者曾朴即公开署名“东亚病夫”；此书风行一时，是当时顶尖的畅销书，“东亚病夫”一词也迅速流传开来。事实上，曾朴本人使用“东亚病夫”来自况很大程度上是因为他本人的身体不好。此后，中国人自己将“东亚病夫”与国民体质问题纠缠到一起，换句话说，这是一种中国人自己扣自己的帽子。在中国人的心目中，“东亚病夫”从来就是外国人对中华儿女的蔑称。许多中国人对“东亚病夫”一词的理解是清末中国人吸鸦片导致身体瘦弱，所以遭外国人轻视，也近似于人们所说的“鸦片烟鬼”[2][5][6]；现代也有中国人也将严重二手烟害、空气污染及黑心食品视为东亚病夫再现[7]。

In the end it doesn't matter which entity did the speaker of this term intend to refer to. The recipients have their own judgement due to the culture they raised from.