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Leaving China

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Re: Leaving China

#541

Post by concordDance »

onethought wrote: post #410
ninjin wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This wasn't autocracy, this was logical health policy: Do you overwhelm hospitals, potentially causing them to fail, or do you limit personal freedom? That's the question that they had to answer. Except, the choice was nowhere as binary as you present and/or perceive it. If you look across the world you will see many different responses to the very same problem, but with different answers based on political, cultur…

I didn't say it was anything to do with being "Morally weak". And you didn't see a "many different responses" -- you saw 1: Lockdowns. The whole world did them. Where they didn't do them, hospitals got trashed and lots of people died. Lockdowns ended when vaccines began, China never got that option, because its population didn't take up any of the vaccines to a high enough percentage. Also, there was never enough mRN…

Sweden mostly avoided lockdowns.

Re: Leaving China

#542

Post by galangalalgol »

hayst4ck wrote: post #496
galangalalgol wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In many places in the US you cannot bring your children with you to vote. So many people rely on public schools as day care so that they can vote. In places that cancelled school on election day recently (people vote at schools often, and there were security concerns after recent shootings), the voter turnout was lower in segments of the population that statistically are less likely to have family/partner available t…

I think it is fair to restate that your argument is: "Because there are classes of people who cannot vote because children are restricted in voting areas, election day should not be a federal holiday." I am having a little trouble taking that in good faith. For one, the evidence presented is not of a holiday shared by everyone (friends who could watch kids, partners who also have jobs, etc). That's before asking if i…

That really wasn't my argument at all. In so far as I had one. The US system has so many more severe issues that a holiday seems minor and it is somewhat complex as an issue. Letting a parent bring in five children probably does create concerns as well.

Other than bankers and people who work for the government (like teachers) few people get government holidays in my experience. There is a surge of temporary daycare workers for those days so parents can still go to work. Poorer parents dread those days. Public school, especially post pandemic has turned into free childcare and little more due to teacher shortages.

Early voting seems like a good thing to continue to me.

Fixing the issues that make your vote irrelevant at the national level unless you live anywhere but a very short list of places would be much higher on my list than a holiday. The gerrymandering is painfully obvious on the voting maps.

Re: Leaving China

#543

Post by RedCondor »

imiric wrote: post #223
robomartin wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I think GP is delusional, but you're not seriously suggesting Latin American countries vilify the US for no reason, right? US interventions in Latin American affairs are well documented[1]. You can't just kick the can to Spain, when the US had a much more direct and recent involvement. It doesn't seem you learned much from your time there, as this history is discussed openly and known in detail, from school children…

It's fitting that you tried to cozy up to that American guy by 1) demonizing a fellow Latin American, a 2) regurgitating American lies you've heard about China and never scrutinized, and that your reward for it was being treated like a still-too-uppity subject.

Maybe one day you'll strike out on your own.

Re: Leaving China

#544

Post by alisonatwork »

physicles wrote: post #408

I've got some years in China. I speak Chinese, I'm eating a jianbing[1] as I write this. Didn't leave during the three years of zero covid. Reopening has changed everything about daily life in the best way. But I'm also looking for a way out. For the reasons outlined in the article, yes, and others. General sentiment toward foreigners has rebounded a bit since the early days of the pandemic, but it's pretty clear tha…

When I left China I spent a year or two traveling and then returned to work in Taiwan. If you already speak Chinese, it's a very soft landing. Imo the food isn't nearly as good as in China, and (depending where you were before) the weather in Taipei is much worse, but the general pace of life is way more relaxed. You don't need to go through security to get on the subway or show your ID to buy a train ticket. You hardly ever see cops pushing people around. The bureaucracy is just regular plain old bureaucracy instead of the latest creepy layer of techno-fascist privacy invasion. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop and then I realize it won't, because that sense of constantly fearing the next policy shift, or wondering when something you like is about to be arbitrarily taken away, that anxiety and pessimism really is something unique to authoritarian countries.

To be sure, Taiwan is going to face increasing pressure from China in the coming years, and there is some chance that it might escalate into a hot war. But the sense of existential dread is much less for me than it was in China. Despite their best efforts, the party is much more capable of ruining the lives of people inside China than outside of it. Aside from Berlin, I've never lived in the other cities on your list, so I can't really compare, but if you enjoy the lifestyle of a tier two city in China and would like somewhere similar with a much less oppressive government, Taipei is a pretty good option.

Re: Leaving China

#545

Post by ospider »

qikInNdOutReply wrote: post #470

Imagine if the ccp had dissolved itself, by becoming just the political framework, the shanghai clique, the traditionalists, becoming parties within the party and the legal system having a say in party inner affairs. Imagine all those who are trampled today by that caste system in china having a chance to shine. All those brilliance we will never see, cause it gets censored to dust by old bureaucrats could shine. 1 g…

Glimpse, that's all we can get for free. For the rest, we need to fight for it.

Re: Leaving China

#546

Post by markus_zhang »

ospider wrote: post #535
markus_zhang wrote: post #182

For me the biggest issue is that the bureaucracy has a lot of free hands in legislation. Each office can push out some regulation to go around the requirement for a proper legislation, which usually takes years. Also the mindset of deciding for the people instead of deciding by the people is pretty unpopular but people can't do much. The cultural inertia is strong. Whenever there is an issue, people automatically tur…

Fun fact: you have to get an ISBN to release a game in China.

Yeah, and there are a LOT regulation about the contents of the game. Curiously lootbox is perfectly OK.

Re: Leaving China

#547

Post by billychuck21st »

As a Chinese living outside China for the last 20 years, I was seriouly thinking about going back before the pandemic, but now that idea has gone for good, for reasons exactly like the article outlined.

Re: Leaving China

#548

Post by coldtea »

ninjin wrote: post #532
coldtea wrote: post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also difficult for societies with populations absorbed deep into their private sphere, with very little feeling for history, how developments 30, 50, or even 100 and 200 years still leave all kinds of traces and influences, materialized in attitudes, political affiliations, laws, and so on. History is not a "that was back in the day, doesn't matter anymore" affair.

Your response feels largely tangential to the point I was making: That the 90s feel closer in history than they really are (especially to those of us that “were there”). It also feels like a borderline attack, implying that I and others are somehow “absorbed deep into their private sphere, with very little feeling for history”. Pretty odd to make a statement like that in response to someone who you know next to nothi…

>Your response feels largely tangential to the point I was making: That the 90s feel closer in history than they really are (especially to those of us that “were there”).

Well, either the point you were making was even more tangential to what was in this thread - a general observation unrelated to what we were discussing, or (as I read it), aside from the literal point, there was a deeper implicit point pertinent to what was discussed.

In this case, I wrote something along the line of "as close as year X, Y was the case", so your response can be read as: "you might think this date is close and thus events from that era still matter, but we tend to overlook how close a period in living memory is, so they matter less than you think".

>Pretty odd to make a statement like that in response to someone who you know next to nothing about, no

It wasn't writing about you, it even explicitly writes "it's difficult for societies with populations (...)". I was writing about a cultural difference.

Certain cultures got it lucky and didn't have much history of the sort to concern with, and so don't have much of a historical perspective (and how history affects the present). It's easier to have that perspective when you have had huge events like wars, dictatorships, and so on in your local livable history, than when you just read about those in the media (if many even do much of that).

Re: Leaving China

#549

Post by ninjin »

coldtea wrote: post #548
ninjin wrote: post #532

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your response feels largely tangential to the point I was making: That the 90s feel closer in history than they really are (especially to those of us that “were there”). It also feels like a borderline attack, implying that I and others are somehow “absorbed deep into their private sphere, with very little feeling for history”. Pretty odd to make a statement like that in response to someone who you know next to nothi…

> Your response feels largely tangential to the point I was making: That the 90s feel closer in history than they really are (especially to those of us that “were there”). Well, either the point you were making was even more tangential to what was in this thread - a general observation unrelated to what we were discussing, or (as I read it), aside from the literal point, there was a deeper implicit point pertinent to…

> …your response can be read as…

You are entitled to your subjective interpretation. But my own reflection was that I perceived 1996 to be closer to the present than 1969 would have been in 1996. Thus I wanted to state a bias that I had discovered in myself, along with a trick to make it more obvious to perceive it.

> It wasn't writing about you, it even explicitly writes "it's difficult for societies with populations (...)". I was writing about a cultural difference.

Your initial response (which is what I responded to) was phrased differently in terms of the first few words. I do not have access to it, but I think my interpretation was more reasonable before you (arguably) improved it.

Regardless, this is greatly diverging from my minute initial observation. Thus I will “leave it here” and look forward to seeing you in another discussion in the future.

Re: Leaving China

#550

Post by MandieD »

TomK32 wrote: post #474
galangalalgol wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Berlin as an option stands out both geographically and in cost of living. What makes it attractive despite that?

Culturally it has a lot of offer, vibrant scenes for any art or music taste and museums stuffed artifacts stolen from all around the globe[0] that might almost rival the British Museum. Also many musicians and artists have called it their temporary home, from Josephine Baker to David Bowie and his flat mate Iggy Pop[1]. Call it a litmus-test for how open a society is, even if you prefer complaining about the noise an…

Just spent a weekend there: I heard more English spoken in public than German, and even found myself having to backtrack and switch to English (my first language) after instinctively starting conversations in German (my second language). It didn't quite feel like I was still in Germany; only the street signs and some business names brought me back.

A few of the people I met at the tech events I visited have lived in Germany long enough to get citizenship, but haven't applied because they aren't sure they could pass the language exams, and would have to take a lot of effort to get enough practice speaking - they work in English all day, and speak English to all of their friends.

Berlin is a different world from even the larger cities in southern Germany, like Munich or Nuremberg - reachable by high speed train in 3-5 hours.

For Americans, think NYC (Berlin) vs. Dallas (Munich).

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