141–150 of 398 posts
This 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…
What exactly is Asian culture?
I 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…
The idea that democracy and freedom are somehow foreign to Chinese people and can't work in their culture is a myth peddled by the CCP to serve their own interests. Democracy and freedom are flourishing in Taiwan. They are flourishing in South Korea (who aren't Chinese but whose traditions are no more democratic than China's). They're doing OK in Japan. "The Chinese point of view" is an ambiguous term that the CCP us…
I think most Chinese people understand this, as well as a sizable fraction of literate/intelligent people in the west. Unfortunately many westerns, like you, just like to turn their brain off and believe whatever their TV tells them to believe.
I chuckled more then I should as an east-european myself. If it's hot I do sweat a LOT.
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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…
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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.
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I didn't read the whole article because it is excessively wordy, but it romanticizes the protesters and the summary at the end is incomplete. If you have the courage, please look further; this is more nuanced than your mischaracterization of me.
Read it slower.
I understand that he wanted to bring the story to a conclusion, and that he wasn't there for long, but why should he leave it to a fill-in-the-gaps exercise when it comes to the police?
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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 U…
I'm the GP commenter, so not the person you replied to, but some random areas where I think the US certainly exceeds some/many European countries include air quality and quality of specialty healthcare (not health insurance or financial coverage). EDIT: To provide a random anecdote, if you've ever known someone who needed an ambulance in the south of Spain you'll know what I mean. ;) The public healthcare services do…
Choosing (small) areas and some samples doesn't make a lot of sense, though. Comparing a small city with a county hospital to some rural area and saying "see, there are areas here were medical services are much closer" is obvious and somewhat useless. You'll want to compare the average or median accessibility, not tiny sub-samples.
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Let’s replace China with X so there is no xenophobic rebuttals. X is an authoritarian regime that has no rule of law, president has self declared perpetual status in the office, piracy is rampant, no respect for privacy of others, there is an app called ourchat that is effectively owned by the government and is increasing becoming a necessity, no media let alone any kind of investigative journalism especially against…
Norway is a petro-economy. That doesn't really work as a role model for countries that don't have vast easily-exploited natural resources. Lucky for Norway that they've transitioned out of petroleum before the climate disaster comes due.
I 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…
//Basically what they sad is that western culture in Hong Kong clashes with the Chinese culture. This is exactly a regurgitation of the propaganda by CCP. They blamed western influence, education and cultural whitewashing of HK Chinese as the reason for the current protests and their citizens believe it sincerely. They conveniently overlook the crux of the protest, which is to ask for universal suffrage. Even for a w…
Interesting to contrast this with popular demonstrations in US or France. No windows broken? Burnt city infrastructure? No beaten up police? All so quiet.
I'm from China, I'm actually shocked to see people in the US or France do that all the time. Usually, it seems private properties are destroyed during the process. But why? If it is the government people protest, but why do people break shop windows and burn someone's car all the time... It seems to be a lesser kind of terrorism for me: they don't like a country, they hurt properties instead of people.