Ah, yeah usually they do unfortunately take such a stance to marx. Yup, I saw this class and knew I had to take it. no regrets.

aww… for sociology class? I know they cover marx often.

Also my professor is so cool first day he was like this class takes an anti colonial stance(and implicitly was like if you disagree then drop) and that he talks about how our uni was founded on stolen land and such.

yes, for overseas diaspora

LOL yes it would probably be a lot better experience with some chinese knowledge. Also if you can somehow meet a chinese person and have them show you around(maybe try a language exchange idk), that would be cool too.

Hmm… another comrade might be able to answer this better.

For the mountain that my grandparents have a home near chongqing, we took a 40 minute train ride and then rented a car and drove for like an hour and a half. It wouldn’t be a place that you would really go without like knowing someone who lives there tho…

Another option is like Zhangjiajie, the avatar mountains but they’re super busy i hear. For green space there is a ton throughout the city, but if you really want like a hike/nature destination i wouldn’t know enough to answer.

Hm… the malls were more empty than you’d expect, except at like the super big places. I think the places locals would actually frequent and super big attractions still had a lot of people. I just remember this one mall in nanchang was mostly empty… And i’ve heard multiple people say the economy isn’t as great in non-political situations. It’s likely that the average citizen can feel that the economy isn’t as growing as fast as before, but I don’t ever hear “China Collapse,” no one would say that china would collapse I feel.

right? it’s mind blowing to me how cheap everything is in comparison. The most expensive part about my trip was my plane ticket… hopefully it goes down to precovid prices.

Personally, I feel american in that I’ve absorbed a lot of parts of the culture, which I think there are parts that I prefer to chinese culture as i’ve kinda alluded to above, but I hold more national pride for China, personally. I cheer for China in the olympics, and personally am a lot more interested in Chinese history. I’m still not sure what I fully consider myself, maybe still chinese-american?

For most ABCs I feel that they either have a very negative perception of china, or a positive perception of china with a negative perception of china. The people who were with me on the camp pretty unilaterally would be against the chinese government(no democracy, etc…) but they could just feel that the environment was just better I think.

Hmm… For example the rock climbing place I went to was a bit cheaper than the rock climbing place I usually go to(and a lot smaller) in absolute terms, but relatively it would be much more expensive. I couldn’t tell you about the skiing, baking, or art studio though. My guesses is that they’d be pretty expensive for regular people. In addition, my cousin said that most locals don’t frequent the super big chongqing mall that i showed, but rather just go to smaller local shops as while it’s not unaffordable, it’s just much more cost effective to buy things elsewhere.

LOL. If possible my dream is get a job for an american company in China. The living environment is just better there. Sounds like a cool experience but it’s like after living in China and experiencing the light, how do you go back…

No, I tried buying mao’s little red book but I couldn’t really find it. That being said I didn’t really look for it. My chinese is not good enough to read theory in it, so just reading translations for now. I did see multiple copies of Xi’s book though.

Yes, i’ve talked in the “Zoro in china” thread on the second thought discord.

i just clicked cancel so now i gotta retype my comment 😭

it’s in chinese and it basically shows clips of foreigners vlogging and showing their reaction. i think there was a… russian? i don’t know what language the vlogger was saying(there were chinese subtitles tho), and it just went through a couple comments too. essentially detailing like comments about safety, infrastructure, rail, etc…

Hmm I don’t think i actually asked about GLF. Cultural rev he acknowledged it was a mistake probably overall, but it wasn’t like a completely bad thing but yeah that living in a time where if you said something wrong it would be very scary. Tiananmen didn’t use the term color revolution cuz we were talking in chinese but basically described it as such and like we can talk about it but the problem with talking about online is if you’re like wrong then it becomes baseless speculation and that’s not really okay. problem of national security and like being against dissident voices isn’t something unique to china either really. hong kong/taiwan were like why would they want to even have independence they’re in the grand scheme of things rather small islands and doing well under the current administration ig. i don’t remember exactly what he said but something about those lines.

so pretty much mostly in line with what i expected.

Yes probably. I asked if they were part of the communist party and they said they were part of the youth one.

i’m not sure what you mean by the “so… i’m on such a camp” could you clarify? do you mean that you are on a similar chinese government funded camp?

oopsies if i am misreading or reading too much into it but just a bit confused

i really liked this article. i’m pretty sure i’ve read it before but it was a good reminder.

something’s that stuck out to me was that he understood the material conditions of china really well. he mentioned how he doubts china would have survived june 4th without reform and opening up. he understood that capital wasn’t an inherently evil thing, contrary to moralism, and that it was something to be used to improve the lives of the chinese people.

another thing is it’s interesting to see “left” as what we refer to as ultras and “right” as well capitalist in general. it does make sense to see those things from their perspective having a socialist government though.

good read!