idlewords... this won't have any liberal bias at all.
What would be the more conservative take here?
A Walk in Hong Kong
111–120 of 398 posts
Re: A Walk in Hong Kong
#112"All that prelude is to say, coming in to the Hong Kong protests from a less developed country like the United States is disorienting." This sentence got me hooked. It must be so alien to the average American that there are more developed countries/cities out there.
I wouldn't put Honk Kong in that list though as much as I like the people and the city. I've been a few times and the infrastructure looks like it's falling apart. Electricity wires are hanging haphazardly, alleyways are dirty, and most facades of buildings are straight out of the third-world. The contrast between high-end boutiques interspaced with tiny mom-and-pop shops selling second hand stuff is a little surreal.
Re: A Walk in Hong Kong
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
Growing up in the suburbs of California, I never really understood just how central the concept of face was in Asian society until visiting China and seeing it for myself. Over time I’ve come to realize that many of these social concepts exists in some form or another across all cultures, likely implicit in some part to the human condition, but it still surprises me to this day just how entrenched it still is in cert…
Face is important because it came from a family oriented culture. If you were made to look bad, you'd feel even worse when the rest of your family finds out (Grandparents, relatives would talk negatively about this aka gossip). This morphed into businesses that build on relationships, the Chinese term for that is 'guanxi'. For China, they would 'lose face' if Hong Kong became independent (or Xinjiang or Tibet for tha…
If by "lose face" you mean display of weakness, then you probably right. The government don't actually care about face here, they only care about outcome.
In mainland, people sees the government as the ruler. They are not there to serve you, they are there to manage you. They never make mistake, and you must follow their lead.
The government needs Hongkong, and hey need Hongkong under control, just like the rest of China. If they failed, their public image of power will be damaged.
However, if they can turn Hongkong into "the rest of China" alike, then that's a success showcase of power for them.
Re: A Walk in Hong Kong
#114This piece is quite accurate - it really makes you feel like you're in Hong Kong during the protests. References aside, as a US citizen in Hong Kong there are some things that I respect immensely and some things that really get on my nerves about HK. I greatly respect the people and the cause. It reminds me of that one poem - > Do not go gentle into that good night. > Rage, rage against the dying of the light. The pe…
This is a silly analysis because the conflict is fundamental. China wants to integrate Hong Kong. The protestors want independence. Neither side really wants an indefinite half-hearted autonomy, although the protestors are pushing to preserve it for as long as possible. Your very reaction shows where your sympathies lie, which is very laudable, but are you willing to engage in 'conflict resolution' over your own core…
The protesters are not calling for independence. They have five specific demands, which boil down to "uphold the law as written", including the right (guaranteed in the Basic Law) to elect their government.
Re: A Walk in Hong Kong
#115I am in Verona (Italy) at this time, and I'm in a hotel where some tourists from Shanghai happen to be as well. I'm alone, so I hang out in the lobby a lot. I just engaged in some small talk with some of those tourists, and the discussion somehow shifted to the Hong Kong protests. Basically what they sad is that western culture in Hong Kong clashes with the chinese culture. They don't seem to say that the chinese way…
If anyone else is open to the other point of view, I could use some help. I'm struggling a lot at the moment with how little relevance seems to be given to how significant HK was in defining China's modern identity.
How many people actually know how HK came into being? That the supposedly democratic state of Britain who had already violently colonised India, used Indian land and serfs to grow 1000s of tons of Opium to keep Chinese people addicted and thus in sustainable trade. Queen Victoria ignored a letter from China exhorting her to stop. When Britain didn't stop, China took it into their own hands, destroying all the imported Opium they could find. Britain took this as destroying their "property" and thus went to war with them, easily winning and requiring the handing over of the port of Hong Kong so the trade would not be impeded again.
I know that was over 150 years ago now, but surely that has to be taken into account? If you don't think that's relevant to today's innocent HK'ers, then at least we have to realise that the handing over of HK was a defining factor in the ultimate end of the Qing dynasty, the closing of over 2000 years of China's political tradition and precipitating the radical changes that thrust China onto the world stage as we see it today.
I support the rights of all people to self determination. But HK is not Taiwan, it didn't naturally come to its anti-CCP ideology through an organic, internal and independent process. In fact, somewhat ironically, it came to it precisely because of an unaccountable, authoritarian regime, with no other agenda but self interest.
Re: A Walk in Hong Kong
#116> The MTR is the one technology the Hong Kong protests could not do without, an autonomous fiefdom that the police mostly stay out of. It is neutral territory This is a godsend. During Paris protest earlier this year the gov would just shut down public transports for about 5~10 km around and block main accesses so people couldn’t massively join the protests. At least the mainland gov. didn’t get to touch that I guess…
If you close public transport 5~10km around the protests, there wouldn't be much public transport operating in Paris. Rather there were a handful of closed subway stations, around where the protests were (like Etoile was closed, but not the closest stations). I understand the idea, a stampede in subway corridors would have caused casualties.
Re: A Walk in Hong Kong
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
American living in Switzerland, and while I'd definitely agree that it's more developed than the US (on the continuum of development in my mind from also spending a lot of time in places most would consider "developing"), I'm just not sure there's a clear difference between some of those countries named and the US. Many European countries seem around where the US is; some are more developed, while others are probably…
Here on HN, how developed a country is is directly proportional to the quality of train service in that country. Other considerations are too marginal to matter.
Public transport / trains is just one of the most obvious aspects. Of course there are others (public schools, public universities, quality of streets, public healthcare, general safety, food quality, nature, many many more ...). Often they are very much correlated, though.
Do I understand you right that you claim that while train service is bad in USA, there are other things / aspects which are better developed in USA, which are at least as much important? Can you give some examples?
Re: A Walk in Hong Kong
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're referencing old ideas of public and private life that made sense at a time. Those ideas did not form in a time with ubiquitous surveillance. The ideas may have made sense before in their historical context, but that doesn't mean they make sense today. How about instead you ask yourself why those ideas grew out of that older historical context and whether the same reasoning would apply today? Why not re-read th…
This is not an old idea. This is common sense: how can you expect privacy in a public place? Taking pictures of someone specifically may be different because that may be harassment. But in general ending up in pictures and films of others because you were in a public space fits in the standard concept of what a public space is.
Imagine you are taking a walk in the forest. The forest is a public place (where I live anyway!) – anyone can walk anywhere they want. Eventually, later in the day, you might need to take a leak, so you do what everyone normally does – go behind a tree.
Do you in this situation expect to be photographed and have high-resolution pictures of your genitals posted to Instagram? Don't you think this, if it were a regular occurrence, would interfere with people's age-old custom of enjoying a quiet walk in the public forest?
Re: A Walk in Hong Kong
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a silly analysis because the conflict is fundamental. China wants to integrate Hong Kong. The protestors want independence. Neither side really wants an indefinite half-hearted autonomy, although the protestors are pushing to preserve it for as long as possible. Your very reaction shows where your sympathies lie, which is very laudable, but are you willing to engage in 'conflict resolution' over your own core…
The protesters are not calling for independence. They have five specific demands, which boil down to "uphold the law as written", including the right (guaranteed in the Basic Law) to elect their government.
And the five demands are not treated equally among the people:
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1384380751713433...
Some of the core protesters (I don't have any objective figure) consider them a take it or leave it deal though.
Re: A Walk in Hong Kong
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a silly analysis because the conflict is fundamental. China wants to integrate Hong Kong. The protestors want independence. Neither side really wants an indefinite half-hearted autonomy, although the protestors are pushing to preserve it for as long as possible. Your very reaction shows where your sympathies lie, which is very laudable, but are you willing to engage in 'conflict resolution' over your own core…
The protesters are not calling for independence. They have five specific demands, which boil down to "uphold the law as written", including the right (guaranteed in the Basic Law) to elect their government.
Right, because they are smart about what sells, both to the international community and to China. But let's not kid ourselves that wants === demands