theseadroid's comments

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.