Great article. I am actually considering a visit to China with my dad at some point. He is a massive Sinophile. I think I would lean to going more western and more rural though. I loved the idea that the CCP are powerless against smart phone slop.
Great article. I had exactly the same thought as you on the train across rural China - so much agricultural work that looked backbreaking. I was also struck by just how many biomes China has that are relatively densely packed. I thought Macau was a total dump, like what I imagine North Korea to be plus some big casinos.
The thing that stood out to me about the police state was when a bus I was on going through the countryside in Yunnan was pulled over and everyone except us was brought out and briefly interrogated by the police. Unsure if there was genuinely a manhunt on (in which case fair enough) or if this was routine police harassment in this part of the country.
I was worried I'd give that impression. It was actually a lot of fun, but it's not so interesting to write about walking through a lovely park and having coffee.
The observation about Guangzhou's homogeneity despite its age cuts to something deeper. When infrastructure modernizes this fast, it creates temporal compression where the physical enviroment loses memory faster than cultural institutions adapt. I visited a tier-1 city years back and felt that dissonance between gleaming metros and cash-only street vendors. Alternative modernity seems less about parallel developement and more about selective acceleration of certain systems while others intentionally lag.
Great article. I am actually considering a visit to China with my dad at some point. He is a massive Sinophile. I think I would lean to going more western and more rural though. I loved the idea that the CCP are powerless against smart phone slop.
Yeah you should definitely go. I'd love to visit a more rural area (bet they still have smartphone slop though)
If only we had a supreme leader who would liberate us by turning off the internet
Great article. I had exactly the same thought as you on the train across rural China - so much agricultural work that looked backbreaking. I was also struck by just how many biomes China has that are relatively densely packed. I thought Macau was a total dump, like what I imagine North Korea to be plus some big casinos.
The thing that stood out to me about the police state was when a bus I was on going through the countryside in Yunnan was pulled over and everyone except us was brought out and briefly interrogated by the police. Unsure if there was genuinely a manhunt on (in which case fair enough) or if this was routine police harassment in this part of the country.
Yeah the villages really did look premodern (aside from the buildings), with very small plots of land right next to the houses.
Sounds strangely depressing
I was worried I'd give that impression. It was actually a lot of fun, but it's not so interesting to write about walking through a lovely park and having coffee.
I went in 2012 and couldn't wait to leave after two weeks.
You do start to crave a McDonalds
The observation about Guangzhou's homogeneity despite its age cuts to something deeper. When infrastructure modernizes this fast, it creates temporal compression where the physical enviroment loses memory faster than cultural institutions adapt. I visited a tier-1 city years back and felt that dissonance between gleaming metros and cash-only street vendors. Alternative modernity seems less about parallel developement and more about selective acceleration of certain systems while others intentionally lag.