Ask Lemmy

Very rich culture, and the government.

Proper tea.

Complicated. Big.

A collection of a wide range of geography, languages, and peoples. Held together by a mix of national pride, iron fist, and a solid record of on the whole very good for most people improvements in life quality in living memory.

Big. Brazen. Splashy. But with an inability to face problems, and a resignation to the world as is. An almost fatalistic attitude paired with naïve or blind optimism on its dexter side.

A place filled with potential, as well as already existing food, culture, history. But hard to find much of it as modernity does a speed run towards uniformity and mass production, while historical sites are rebuilt as poured concrete facsimiles.

Uyghur people in concentration camps while tourists invade their homes

Their authoritarian form of government which is definitely making me not want to ever visit China.

I am sure China is otherwise a wonderful country, I don't have a negative opinion of Taiwan at all, but the PRC needs their Gorbachev to come to power and liberate them.

Massive cities with LED buildings, beautiful mountains with paved hiking trails all the way to the top and gondolas to get down, Long queues that are still orderly and move quickly, families eating large meals outside, friendly and very curious people.

I've spent a lot of time there. Compared to the west the cost of living is super cheap especially for all the options and amenities you get. Even in the hippest part of Chongqing I could rent an apartment 2x the size of my house for half the mortgage. If the US is headed towards a permanent authoritarian regime I would trade life here for over there. At least their dictator appreciates science and education.

Thiefs, low quality, dictatorship, murders, will probably try to fuck up my life in the future.

I'm into Taoism, so I think of Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu and Chinese philosophy. I love their sense of humor, and humility. I often daydream of a different life, being raised a monk in the Himalayas. A place I like to imagine when mediating

A ruthlessly effective technocracy that has achieved very impressive outcomes for their citizens¹ while also being a cultural / societal system I never want to live in. For some reason super obsessed with outside appearances.

1:

From 1995 to 2025:

• GDP/c: 603 to 13973
• Literacy rates: 77% to 96%
• University graduates per year: 900K to 10M
• Life expectancy: 33 to 77
• Railway km: 54616 to 160000 (50000 high speed)
• Urbanization rate: 29% to 67%

etc.

Very interesting history and culture, plastered over with bland authoritarian turbo-capitalism that disguises itself as communism.

Tofu Dreg.

Order. Conformity. Mystery. Impenetrable language. Impossible writing. Eating anything that moves. Mindless nationalism. People who don't talk or even care about politics. Depressed single young people obsessed with shopping. Security cameras. Police. Airport-sized train stations. Electric scooters. Electric cars. Utopian-dystopian sci-fi.

Yes, I have been there multiple times.

PS: to be clear, I was very, very impressed by those trains and especially by the electrification of city transport. In Shenzhen the air is now cleaner than any big city in the West and with all the greenery and silence it really does have a utopian feel. The progress there is genuine, it's amazing, it deserves lots and lots of credit.

Eh, it's a country. I do dig American Chinese food, I know it's not the same.

Chinese slave-workers helped build the American West, their contribution and sacrifice is rarely recognized.

winnie the pooh