No.321
>>155Unironically don't know.
The better question is why does he have two cups?
Some say it's like the tradition of owning 鼎 vessels, though modestly socialist, because unlike lords of the past who were supposed to have seven ding-vessels, he only has two.
No.324
>>321>pic 1[RELEASES THE HOUNDS IN CHINESE]
Also yes. Multiple cups is mysterious but also tbh, I can respect it. Sometimes you want two cups of tea and don't want to get up and go back to the kettle between them.
No.818
>two cups of teaMy first guess was that for practical reasons you want two cups so that while drinking the first, you leave the lid on the second one for keeping the tea warm. Which might just be preferrable to having someone re-fill your cup (and obviously Xi won't pour his own tea from a pot).
But then I did a quick internet search and there are quite a few results.
https://asia.nikkei.com/Editor-s-Picks/China-up-close/Analysis-Xi-Jinping-s-two-cups-signal-there-s-plenty-of-hot-tea-lefthttps://www.archyde.com/there-is-a-rare-scene-in-the-two-sessions-of-the-chinese-communist-party-xi-jinping-has-two-tea-cups-at-the-table-cppcc-national-committee-two-tea-cups-male-waiter/I have no idea about the quality of those sources, they are just the first two results. All of that sounds weird and foreign to me.
No.829
>>818I always thought it was just a twitter in-joke to fixate on this.
Never expected that journalists would actually cover this.
No.831
Haven't read the whole thing yet but so far a pretty interesting article on the cooperation of Chiang Kai-Shek with gangs/secret societies to benefit from the opium trade. Written in a a slightly opinionated rather than the usual dry academic stuff and lots of details that sound almost unbelievable, i.e. Chiang appointing one of the opium trading gangster big shots as head of the Shanghai Opium Suppression Bureau etc.
>>716Lmao
No.852
>>831It's interesting how as a consequence of WW2 and the KMT's failure in the civil war influenced the image the west has of Chiang. (As in, he's fawned over as some noble guy who was ought to win but the ebil commies stomped him through magic or some shit like that.)
As a general he was moderately competent but as a politician he was unbelievably corrupt and inefficient. Though one has to wonder how much of this can be chalked up to the fact that the KMT never really had proper control of all the mainland (as highlighted by the existence of CPC areas and warlord armies) so he was just trying to make the best of a bad situation.
Once he retreated to Taiwan he could rule without having to compromise with a billion fucking warlords and political actors, so his regime got a lot less messy and coupled with the Japanese infrastructure and the American money and political legitimacy he could build a developed nation.
But for the west he will forever remain as "our guy who got curbstomped unjustly" so all the nuance of the 1911-1949 period will be lost on the majority of people.
Hoi4 and its consequences have been a disaster for Western popular history.
Though on the "Opium gang leader becoming chief anti-opium guy" thing we have a saying that "A robber makes the best gendarme".
No.877 KONTRA
>>873Lel. I can also imagine Qu Yuan being hailed as a figure of Chu separatism, to free the Chu nation from Qin's tyranny etc. Very likely some internet schizo already did so.
>>831The unbelievable for me was to realize that both RoC and Ming had roots in those taoist-buddhist-zoroastrian-manichean secret societies, and how heavy a role these societies have played throughout history. I have since then put on my tinfoil hat to shield off Sogdian mind control rays.
>>716An interesting trivia I learnt from pic related is that, initially for the translation for republic, Chinese chose 民主 while Japanese chose 共和. But later Japanese also loaned the Chinese one. So there's a period where in Japanese the two words compete with each other, before Japanese finally settled 民主 as the translation for democracy, which eventually influenced Chinese.
No.1083
Started reading the Zhuangzi to procrastinate writing my Jia Pingwa paper. Well, at least it's not entirely irrelevant to the topic.
>>877>RoC and Ming had roots in those taoist-buddhist-zoroastrian-manichean secret societiesYa got some sources? Tbh I feel like I should stop looking into cranky stuff like this but just can't help it, the truth must be exposed
>>987Idk it sounds like a pretty reasonable thing to me
No.1157
>>1083I probably find it funny because well, I read about Shang turtle farming now.
But I never read about other forms of husbandry in Shang-China, so there's this vacuum of concepts that's filled in entirely by the turtles.
No.1202 KONTRA
>>1083Sun Yat-sen was a member of Tiandihui, while Hongwu emperor emerged from the Red Turbans. Both are White Lotus-adjacent. Dunno what's the definitive reference on this, but it's been dubbed "Chinese Millenarianism", which is fairly interesting.
>>1193Just my two cents:
>水中的树摇晃着/我们相互爱恋的样子Rather than a compound sentence, the latter line specifies what's been shaken. The tree here is a metaphor for their shadows. So here's a poetic inversion that $metaphor_for_shadow shakes $object_that_forms_shadow.
>我坐在树上/怀着一棵树的梦想//你从树干的另一头飞来/时刻想把我挤进水里Breaks after the second line.
>水里/有野禽的羽毛/天堂的倒影/以及我们不可挽留的生命Last three lines are parallel.
No.1205
>>1202Honestly didn’t even think the last three lines would make a parallel structure.
Guess I gotta re-work the Hungarian version then!
But at least I won’t look completely retarded in front of the people who will see it.
Thanks!
No.1294
>>1287Original line is
秦有餘力而制其敝，追亡逐北，伏尸百萬，流血漂鹵。
Apparently having “shields float down a river of blood” is a chengyu and I am happy I took time to read this.
No.1418 KONTRA
Doing modern Chinese exercises for a class and Classical has literally rotted my brain to the point where I'm looking up random shit like 故事 even though I remembered that this is how I have to write story in modern, but for some reason my brain kept separating it into two different concepts and translating it as "old affair" or "old event".
No.1427
https://www.palladiummag.com/2023/03/17/madame-maos-nietzschean-revolution/Another good article by Dylan Levi-King. About Jiang Qing's theory of art during the cultural revolution and the influence of Nietzsche on Chinese revolutionaries.
No.1473
>>1472So will they spam us with messages written with their stupid-ass scribbles that no one but them actually understand? Or will they spam us with messages that were machine translated from their stupid-ass scribbles that no one is able to actually understand?
No.1478
>>1472Allow
>>1473NOT allow
No.1485 KONTRA
>>1473Both, but then there are the ones that can speak English and use incredibly weird insults. Can't remember any specific ones, but I've interacted with the Chinese Wargame Red Dragon community and they are so, so strange. They're very insular and going to great lengths to fuck over people they dislike. For whatever reason the Chinese Ernst doesn't seem to present himself the same way.
That's it for my experience with Chinese people. Can't seem to run into them anywhere else, excluding tourist groups.
No.1487
>>1485>use incredibly weird insultsI remember some streamer/vtuber pissed off the Chinese by mentioning Taiwan or something, so they raided her, and one of them send her a superchat (basically a paid message/donation) that said something like "shame on you". It's supposed to be some sort of insult in Chinese, but when translated to English, it's just doesn't have an edge anymore.
No.1495
Asking the other China-studying Ernst:
If you are at the library, could you check if you guys have this three volume Shiji Translation in German? ("Aus den Aufzeichnungen des Chronisten")
(And if your library has it could you photograph me the chapter that's Shang Yang's biography? 商君列傳 in the original.)
Sorry if I'm asking much because I don't think I can do anything to compensate you for it, but curiosity is killing me and it's not on libgen.
No.1595
>>1594>Is it a slang for a cigarette?I'd think so, 抽 as short form of 抽烟 (smoke) + 根 is also used as the classifier word for cigarettes, though grammatically it doesn't fully make sense to me either
>>1496Btw the madmen at the library actually ordered it, so I can scan it for you whenever it arrives. Dog bless the German taxpayer I guess.
No.2199 KONTRA
>>1595Yeah. To smoke a big one. Used when one needs to take time to let things sink in, I think.
>>1594My feelings are, that they are rather context-sensitive, and commonly don't make much sense when one contemplates alone.
No.2682
In the today thread I mentioned a website with a bunch of Asia-related materials.
Most of it is in Hungarian but it does have an English selection of works. Don't know how much of it is on Archive.org or Libgen so I'm gonna link it here anyway:
https://terebess.hu/english/tao.html>>2199>Used when one needs to take time to let things sink in, I think.That's honestly fascinating.
No.2704 KONTRA
>>1594Another thing that I think might be worth making a post on: if you find these memes having low resolution and sometimes a green-ish colour, it is intentional.
In earlier versions of android there's a bug that makes jpeg conversion grid-ish blurry and green-shifted. Every time someone saves the pic on his phone the effect strengthens. This was likened to the 包浆 of antiques, the oxide layer formed on artifact's surface that is highly valued by collectors. So your meme being lo-fi is a proof that it's an heirloom passed down from generations of veteran memers. The bug was long fixed but people still tend to simulate the effect.
>>1356https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bet%C5%B1 No.2714
>>2704That part about patina with the bug feels like the kind of stuff that I would call bullshit on if I wasn't hearing it from someone who is Chinese.
No.2771 KONTRA
>>2714Now I know how to say it in English. Even the colour resembles that of patina.
Said bug was fixed here:
https://github.com/google/skia/commit/c7d01d3e1d3621907c27b283fb7f8b6e177c629dAn instance of people testing the bug:
https://tieba.baidu.com/p/4365871582 No.2858 KONTRA
>>2857It made me think of that cringe Wanderer zwischen den Welten novel I had in a seminar on WW1 literature fiction. Sometimes you read really bad literature in seminars.
Anyway, got some tips on 1990s onwards urban fiction? Only English or German, though.
No.2872
>>2858I never tire to advocate for Jia Pingwa's "Ruined City", though it's set more in late 80s-early 90s.
Also really enjoyed Shuang Xuetao's recently translated novella collection "Rouge Street", though I guess it's set more in the post-industrial outskirts of a city. Still really good stuff, historical events play a role, but it's really more about strange characters. Like his style too, very elliptic, veering into surrealism/magic realism. One of the novellas has recently been adapted into a pretty good slow cinema style mini-series under the English title "Why Try to Change Me Now"
though they botched it a bit by changing the ending, the novella is more ambiguousSince we're going mostly chronologically in the seminar I'll probably be able to recommend more in two months or so.
No.2873 KONTRA
Tragicomical article by Paul R. Goldin on pseudotranslations of the Daodejing/Laozi:
https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9780824873998-010/html?lang=en>>2857I didn't read Rickshaw-boy but I like Lao She's short stories. At least the few examples I've read in translation.
No.2915
>>2873Hmm, his simple writing style might be more suited to short stories, haven't read any of those. Maybe Rickshaw Boy would've been fine as a short story too but it really shows that it was a serialized novel - it's very repetitive. I also read his Cat Country and it suffers from similar issues though it's more interesting as at least it's proto-scifi, even if not very imaginative at that.
No.3535
>>3516>張雨制>玉竹詑(?)韻Had to look up dictionary for the second one.
No.3546
>>3535Thanks! Any idea what it's supposed to mean if anything?
No.3574
Apparently the Journal of the German Oriental Society is available freely. Well up until 2019 anyway:
https://menadoc.bibliothek.uni-halle.de/dmg/periodical/structure/74260 No.3576 KONTRA
>>3546>張雨制"Made by Zhang Yu"
>玉竹The type of bamboo used.
>詑韻I can't really tell whether it's 沱韻 (wailing tunes) or 詑韻 (contented tunes).
No.3579
>>3574>Deutschen Morgenländische GesellschaftKinda nuts they're still called that in 2019
>>3576Thanks, now I feel kinda stupid I couldn't figure it out myself :D
No.3580
>>3579I think we should demand they change their name, just to proof that they are not racist. If they don't change the name, it is clear that they are racists!
It's not as bad as the Thomas N-Word roofing company in Mayence (using the city's proper French name that has been around since the days of Charlemagne, not the disgusting nazi-German name, since I am not a fascist!), but still pretty bad.
No.3582 KONTRA
>>3579It feels a bit archaic, sure. But I don't feel like there's been quite the push outside the Anglosphere to change stuff like this.
Of course her nobody uses the equivalent term of Morgenland ("Napkelet") but for example we still call ourselves "Orientalists" here, even though in the UK and the US it's pretty much used as an insult because of/since Said's book. (The only person who I've ever heard complain about this here is my friend who studies in the UK.)
No.4808
>>4784>>4785>>4786>>4787Very cool, thanks for sharing!
No.4866
>>4814I'm curious as to how this belief- that a soul would detach from the body and be lost unless trapped with jade- played out among commoners. Were the beliefs held only by those wealthy enough to afford jade? Or were the poor simply resigned to their fate- no money so your soul will suffer. To what extent are these ideas simply ego-boosting musings of the idle class, while labors and such move through their life giving only lip service to the ideas we now read about?
I mean this not only as it relates to ancient China, but Egypt, and to a certain extent Europe's royalty who claim divine right to rule. The claim of power flowing from gods through select families holds little sway now, but is it recorded anywhere that contemporary men who built pyramids actually believed it? Or is it that all we have to go by are the writings left by men who had enough money to carve their ideas in stone and parchment?
Nice pics, btw.
No.4906 KONTRA
>>4866>Or were the poor simply resigned to their fate- no money so your soul will suffer. I bet it's the second. We have the same today, but the (imagined) suffering is not in the afterlife, but in the here and now. People imagine they are actually, in the moment, suffering without a BMW and Louis Vuitton bags. While those who have it imagine they are not suffering because they have it.
I think we are not better, but worse.
No.7026
>>4906>BMW>Louis Vuitton bagPeople are suffering because they can only afford crappy food. If you are bankrupt in Germany, you get to keep 1400€ a month. Subtract 1000€ for rent. How is anyone going to live of that on the Germany? Hardly possible.
No.7071
>>7026Huh, I have less than 400 a month after subtracting rent. And I'm working for it part-time. What am I doing wrong?
No.7075
>>7071>Huh, I have less than 400 a month after subtracting rentYou are allowed to save a small amount for emergencies. In bankruptcy, that's not legal, you have to either spent it or deliver it. What do you do when your washing machine breaks? Can't afford to buy new or get it fixed. So from then on, you have to go to the laundromat. Which costs you five euros, each time. But you have to get there. In my town, there is no laundromat. I would have to travel to either Nuremberg or Stuttgart. Which would cost me 20€ either way. No, Deutschland Ticket not allowed. You need a good credit rating to buy that.
Every small thing will fuck you over and lead to you being homeless for the rest of your life.
No.7078
>>7075> In bankruptcy, that's not legal, you have to either spent it or deliver it.That's not 100% correct. There is a maximum amount you are allowed to have saved up. iirc it was around 1,2k
at least back when i had to create a "bankruptcy account" The bank or anyone else is not allowed to touch any coins on your account, if you do not exceed this amount.
No.7748
>>7746Political rap is never not funny to me
Thanks for reminding me to check what Xiangyu is up to, and indeed he dropped an absolute banger a while ago:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZhPOcWgM7E No.7767
Okay I remembered this song which is so fucking funny:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ei6fRQoov60Or there's one titled "Father Xi visited our family":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tKPveMsGKs No.8040 KONTRA
>>8039Forgot I have my epic proxy on.
Based icloud privacy protection.
No.8677 KONTRA
>>8666I'm convinced that your pic is just one of these picrels, but a bit more difficult to make out.
p.s. I'm so sorry you had to see this.
No.8739
>>8666Have you mastered the tones?
No.8747
>>8743why not just use your hand to indicate tone? like every other foreigner. or do you actually need to be able to speak the language properly for some reason?
No.8750 KONTRA
>>8747>why not just use your hand to indicate tone?Sounds exceptionally stupid and lazy. I hope that the people I talk to will walk away with the impression that I'm a full fledged human being, not some barbarian imbecile foreigner.
No.8840
1.png (127.57 KB, 322x232)
2.png (124.48 KB, 322x232)
3.png (139.62 KB, 322x232)
4.png (125.84 KB, 322x232)
Is it true and/or American propaganda?
No.8841
5.png (95.86 KB, 322x232)
6.png (110.42 KB, 324x241)
7.png (89.24 KB, 324x241)
8.png (102.82 KB, 333x254)
It's SOOOOOO OVER
No.8850 KONTRA
>>8841>>8840Yes, they are real. China will collapse in 3 minutes and 41 seconds.
Thousand-year American Empire incoming.
Afaik both Serpentza and Laowhy got burned out/failed at business ventures in China, so they have an axe to grind by pretending to be experts about China, plus it's a nice grift, selling the China-nightmare to the people who are unironically scared of communism and yellow people in 2023.
Neither of them are particularly bright or have any sort of "insight" or "access to background information".
No.8856
>>8850>Neither of them are particularly bright or have any sort of "insight" or "access to background information".Here is a good video by Serpentza, featuring a good deal of insider knowledge:
https://youtu.be/gZEPTCQUEI0?si=vBfdz2tLbzs6YkBrThe necessities of Youtube clickbait production aside, Serpentza is a good example of a true believer who becomes an ardent apostate. I recommend anyone who is interested to watch his videos on how he's so happy about being in China since it means he escaped the horrors of South Africa.
No.8860
>>8856Reasonable. In China, most places h
I think all white people should be driven out of south Africa. They stole it from black people and once all the white people have left or have been killed, zulus will be as rich as Afrikaners.
Of you think anything else, you are a Nazi, a racist and a fascist.
No.8867
>>8861noice. finally someone posting visual proofs of shape shifting lizard people.
you see how his lizard-skin-t-shirt gradually goes to normal skin below his beard? No.9159
>>8850So far I've only watched two videos: about fields of stones and about Xinjiang:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZhgYT6ipZUThey seem legit (not counting le scary sound effects).
On the other hand, maybe Chinese approach to Islam is lesser evil compared to Western/Russian approach. Or Israeli approach.
Ofc any talks about space race and microchips and so on are unverifiable unless you have a ton of domain specific knowledge.
>>8856They say, "distance from love to hate is one step"
No.9320
I just found out that yozenkin is a copy of brother.168 but he is still kinda mysterical?
No.9422
I jumped into this with high hopes but save for the chapter that made me think I should read it, it was hopelessly boring.
It’s basically a collection of speeches and dialogues of important statesmen from the mythical Yao and Shun down to the early Zhou-era.
Of course this means that from a standpoint of textual criticism, the “older” a chapter is said to be, the more likely it is to be a Han-era forgery.
Really, the only chapter in it that’s good is 洪範 or, “The Great Plan”, which is chapter 32.
It’s very fun to read because you can see how the Confucians and the Legalists just cherrypicked doctrines from it.
I started reading a Brill volume on it and the introduction said that for the western sinologist, the book lives in contempt and that “those that read it, do not look forward to engaging with it again” and I can see why. The earlier chapters are interesting, but possibly inauthentic, the latter chapters are possibly authentic but utterly boring as they focus on the Duke of Zhou’s righteous advice to bring home the point about the doctrine of the mandate of heaven.
Of course because it’s not a Warring States text it’s also full of obscure characters/hapax and shit so even if you know Classical Chinese, reading it in the original will require a lot of dictionary use.
It was just not a good time really, but chapter 32 is still a recommended reading for anyone interested in Chinese thought.
https://ctext.org/shang-shu/great-plan No.9424 KONTRA
>>9422Pretty good, gonna commit to memorizing at least the initial bit about the 5 elements.
The Superior Person learns about Chinese mythology during work hoursIt's always funny to look at a text and recognize doodles. Intoxicating, even.
No.11078 KONTRA
>>3582Tbh I always think "oriental studies" sounds cool. Makes me think of great European philology tradition, geography expeditions and such. But obviously that's also the very problematic part of it.
I also know a guy who's in UK complains about the name change. He has suggested the name "Non-Orientalists' Faculty of Oriental Studies".
>>8806>Didn't feel very authentic thoughYou are being generous here. That temple is simply hideous, and out of place in that neighbourhood.
>>9424Better penmanship than mine!
No.11991 KONTRA
Emperor of Manchukuo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5d2ypQo3tATwo Emperors Meet On Japanese Soil
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyiNL-2XUpQWorld Faces Crisis As Japan And China Clash In Far East (1930-1939)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AccRhQFNbbUChina-Jap War - Japanese Troops In Action (1930-1939)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htsFNsYXWqE No.11994
Red Sweep China (1948)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffegKUQcaLsEuropeans Flee China (1948)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0NwcUSCnlUCHINA: Chinese Communists resume offensive across Yangtse (1949)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69bx7IM7XwUCHINA: Chinese Civil War: Civilians evacuate Nanking (1949)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIWA-be5McQUSA: Red Chinese delegation at United Nations (1950)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1looj2hPq4ASelected Originals - Mao In Moscow (1950)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFLz2juVbY8Chiang Rattles The Sabre (1957)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_dRlkpzyXMChina - Mao Grooms Successor Aka Red Chinese Elections (1959)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnUBhTjQrSoFormosa Rallies In Support Of Tibet Rebels (1959)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkyGEPJu9GgChiang Shows Armed Might (1960)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwB0hfIS2rgChina Stages Lumumba Rally (1961)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaAvZKTWknsWatched these videos last night and I think they form a nice bouquet. I'd probably say the ones that are the most interesting were the video about the CPC elections, Chiang watching a military parade (which was actually Wang Jingwei inspecting troops, but the commentary says it's Chiang) and the one video with Japanese voicover simply because I just felt like it was interesting to hear how different it sounds compared to the usual Japanese I hear even if I don't speak any Japanese.
It's also interesting how into the 30s they still called the Japanese emperor "the Mikado".
Most of them are 1-4 minute long newsreels. Riveting stuff honestly.
No.12764
>>12762Good joke, actually.
g. Dentist
No.12938 KONTRA
>>12937>vertical formatWhoever made that video needs to go to an Uighur camp right now
No.12939 KONTRA
>>12938>hurr durr why is content not made for my ancient consumer technology and its aspect ratio anymore???Are you retarded or just an annoying boomer?
No.12963
https://annas-blog.org/duxiu-exclusive.htmlNo need for me to upload to libgen anymore. Someone managed to retrieve the whole database.
>The collection is 7,543,702 files. This is more than Library Genesis non-fiction (about 5.3 million). Total file size is about 359TB (326TiB) in its current form.>>12827What is Xi-ism/Xi Jinping Thought anyway, apart from inane apparatchik talk.
No.12982 KONTRA
>>12939I heard the new iPhone comes with an option to hold it sideways
No.12985 KONTRA
>>12982And yet people mostly use their phone vertically 🤯🤯🤯
No.12994 KONTRA
>>12982EU forced them to do it. It's not an actual feature.
Steve Jobs invented vertical screens for a reason.
No.14400 KONTRA
>>13750Eggsplain the teletubies looking bird painting on the second pic plz
No.14661
>>14616I laughed a good 5 minutes to this joke
>>14621Normalize square wear to communicate functionary status
No.15017
>>15016> Mandarin speaking only, but my travel companion is a good translatorDon't Taiwanese speak Mandarin?
No.15018
>>15017I'm not Taiwanese, if that's what's implied. Yes though, Taiwanese speak Mandarin. Some speak the local language too, but it's more so rural, or the older generations. Mandarin works pretty much everywhere.
I feel like a monkey on display here. A few days ago (back on Taiwan), there was a bus going by, and some guy got up to so obviously finger point me out to everyone. Lots of stares and attention, while outside Taipei. Not all good attention though, but mostly good natured.
I also got told to die by a homeless mainlander on Kinmen, because supposedly I am an American (I am not), and my companion is Taiwanese - so also doesn't deserve to exist.
These islands are bizare, in that there is a lot of abandoned buildings around, and it generally feels like there is a mix of developed infrastructure, with a population that doesn't need it. I think it's in part due to there no longer being the army presence it once had, and the Chinese tourism being depressed lately. It's unique.
No.17124 KONTRA
>>17120Honestly you are not making it easy on yourself by talking about a topic like that.
Then again I always took the easy route and talked about Chinese topics instead to save myself the trouble of pronouncing transcribed names + the Chinese teachers always liked that more.
No.17147
Great article on drug use in China:
https://thebaffler.com/salvos/sinopharmacology-levi-kingFirst time I read about Liu Zhaohua, a drug lord who [even if jokingly] justified his meth operation as a parallel to the opium forced upon China
I somewhat envy the author's experience in the 2000s. Speaking from personal experience of the few times I went to the less mainstream techno clubs here, drug use seems indeed to be very rare. But then again I haven't actively looked for it. I have only been offered poppers bought off Taobao by some exchange students and chewed on betel nuts in Yunnan.
No.19321
>>19316I have to admit, i actually kinda like that style.
Lots of it is from this guy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Dees No.19323
Chiner won't be able to get out of it's middle income trap and doesn't lure in skilled labor from all around the world as the US of A do.
So their ghost cities will never fill up and freshly married couples end up with 10 appartments for their single child.
Fun fact: while we often claim that Chiners high environmental polution is due to us letting them make our goods, by far the highest part of it is due to cement production. About 14% vs. global average of 5% and I don't see them shipping apartments to us.
would be a good business tho.
Freedom and liberty, biatches!
No.19326
>>19323> 10 apartments for their newly born childNo one will ever live there, but I bet they will keep them in the books until after the tofu buildings collapse.
No.19327 KONTRA
>>19323Ghost towns are a bad meme because most of the time they are just yet unrealised infrastructure projects in the making some youtube schmuck makes a video on and then retards repost them, without following up on the fate of the place and how you later have a million people actually living there and it being some tier 3 city.
The goal of these infrastructure projects is to decrease pressure on exisiting urban centres from the rural population who seeks to move to the cities. (Still literally hundreds of millions of people.)
Also China doesn’t need foreign human capital the way the US does. Even if China does work on scooping up foreign experts to head research departments and such, even if they are just there to increase the general quality of RnD the Chinese have such an enormous number of people doing anything that the US is probably only ahead in GDP because of legacy finance. Or at least you can’t tell me that currently a Chinese factory and a Chinese worker is only 25% as productive as the US is if we look at the GDP to Population ratio.
If you want to pinpoint an actual big social issue in China, instead of housing overproduction look at how migrant workers live as essentially second class citizens due to the way the bureaucracy is structured.
No.19328 KONTRA
>>19297I think we actually discussed this in class once and the lecturer told us that China is currently in its “Star trek phase”. Utopias, exploration, humans living better thanks to technology, solarpunk, the final frontier etc.
They have a positive outlook on AI making their lives easier in the long run instead of taking our jobs/exterminating humans etc.
I’m honestly a bit jelous because it’d be nice to just genuinely feel positive about the future I think.
Probably said this before but during class one of the example sentences was “China’s economy keeps getting better and better year by year. What about Hungary’s?” and we all looked at the teacher and then lowered our heads in despair. (Even though we were averaging a 3-4% GDP growth afaik so it’s not like it’s fucking over for this country (it is) but we have internalised a pessimistic narrative about the future and it’s a paradigm that’s hard to let go.)
Whenever I see a newly renovated public space or building, my first thought is that “Okay, but what about the upkeep? How long will it take for it to fall into disrepair? What’s the point?” and that’s not good.
No.19330 KONTRA
>>19327>>19328What flavor was that kool-aid you drank?
No.19332
>>19323>by far the highest part of it is due to cement production. About 14% vs. global average of 5%To be fair, they had a lot of railways and highways and buildings to built, but the returns of such infrastructure investments have diminished to western levels, without the rate showing down. Put bluntly, they misallocate capital to prop up GDP.
No.19348
>>19328So it's true what they say?
You Hungarians suck major Xi dick because you believe you are some far away descendants of the Han-Chinese? Like unironically Han the Hun in Hungarian?
Do you think this will make your own borked Orbanomics great again, for example not having to pay Western prices for low quality groceries while getting Eastern wages as pay?
Did you try not behaving like spit-slurfing serfs before all that too for once?
No.19349
>>19323>by far the highest part of it is due to cement productionIt is known. Your point being? Are you suggesting instead of building infrastructure China should just switch to a primitivist society?
>>19328>Okay, but what about the upkeep?Upkeep in might become quite a challenge in a couple years for China as well I assume.
No.19350
>>19348The Hungarian as such is an opportunist. He is equipped with a farmer's low cunning and makes use of whatever situation arises. He abhors rules and established processes. He abstains from communicating along established channels of reporting. He seeks creative excuses. He tries to outplay one authority against the other, and thus, he hates when the authorities communicate. He is vengeful and seeks petty revenge for real and perceived slights.
This national character should be sufficient to explain the ambivalent position Hungary takes between Beijing, Brussels and Moscow, playing the three against each other and trying to profit from it.
It is also why Hungary is so very useful to China, which very much does have long term strategic planning.
No.19351 KONTRA
>>19350Is this from some 1850s Habsburg civil servant handbook?
No.19352 KONTRA
>>19332Btw the diminishing returns on infrastructure investment in Mainland China is why the Belt and Road Initiative is important domestically for China. It’s a mess of contracts and financing but ultimately it allows China to export a huge amount of its construction capacity without having to reduce it which would cause unemployment.
No.19362
>>19352When will the Budapest-Belgrade railway see return on invest?
Doesn't matter much to China, they don't pay for it.>>19351Those k&k-beurocrats must have made interesting experiences in Hódmezővásárhelykutasipuszta and I guess they would not have been as mild as I have been.
No.19363 KONTRA
>>19362Considering that the last time I heard about the project it was about to completely collapse, probably never.
No.19367
>>19363https://magyarnemzet.hu/belfold/2024/04/bejelentettek-mikor-keszul-el-a-budapest-belgrad-gyorsvasutIs the last I know. It still won't be worse than German infrastructure projects (BER, Stuttgart 21), but you are right, it will never see return on invest. Still profitable for China.