05/01/30 - FAQ Answered!

[I’m thinking of writing one big essay on an aspect of Chinese culture or history every month too, maybe one of the subtler things that I don’t anticipate anyone ever asking about. Or just something I have a lot of personal interest in, that I’m excited to talk about. If you want to, take a moment of your time and go answer this poll and let me know which topic I should do first!]

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Whenever I watch videos from China public spaces (streets, buildings, restaurants) look either fancy and modern or really ugly, drab and without a thought for aesthetics with no in-between. Other countries with a similar standard of living like Turkey and much of Eastern Europe have much better looking ordinary places. China looks like there's cracked concrete pavement everywhere.

Is my impression wrong? I never set foot in China. - By TonyZa

Your impression is not wrong, that describes China very well. There are a lot of factors acting simultaneously here. First, China is only really catching up to the rest of the world in tech level very recently. Colour TVs didn’t become common until the late 90s, early 2000s. Personal cellphones (the dumb versions) didn’t become common until the same period. In the late 80s, cars were still rare enough that nobody enforced the speed limit, because what’s the point when there are only 30 cars in this city, and they’re all driven by people too important and rich for you to fuck with?

I live in a house in America built in 1995, and this house has all kinds of outdated technology that came along with it, like wall-mounted radios, and a dial-up hookup. The problem is only worse in China. Houses built just 15 years ago are super outdated, painted unsafely, etc. And if it’s an apartment unit in a high rise (and it likely is, given how dense China is) and it was built in the 90s, it almost certainly doesn’t have an elevator. And who wants to climb eight flights of stairs for the rest of their life?

Plus, you might have heard statistics like, during the 90s, there was a skyscraper being built in Shenzhen every single day. With that amount of speed and next to no government oversight, there are a lot of buildings that are just structurally unsafe to begin with, built with materials that aren’t up to snuff. You see news sometimes of high rises just falling over and collapsing.

All of this combine to mean that, for the most part, you don’t hear about people buying a house from a previous owner in China. People are going to prefer to buy the latest development. That’s great for the government and real estate developers—it keeps the economy going. Everyone is happy. Plus, things built in the communist era tends to have no aesthetics whatsoever, it means that there’s a lot of popular support for demolishing buildings and building something new in its place.

So unlike American cities, you’ll almost never see a whole bunch of buildings in China that were built in the 50s. There are very few buildings you can see around that were built in the 80s, even. And anything built in the 90s are cheap slums nowadays.

Old buildings get pulled down, and something fitting modern day aesthetics (and, we pray, more safety standards), with more modern conveniences built in replaces it. And this happens the most in the richest and most advanced cities, like Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Beijing.

But in the meantime, there is still a ceaseless flock of people leaving rural villages to try to find a better way of life in the cities. So cities in China are still expanding at a mind-boggling rate. In America, I think there’s a very significant portion of people who genuinely prefer to live in the countryside. There’s nature, the land and housing is cheaper, there’s nothing wrong with a quiet small town life.

Speaking as someone from the Chinese countryside, there is no benefit to living in the Chinese countryside. The cheaper land means that is where factories are going to be built. There’s not much nature to begin with, because even small towns in China have 600,000 people in them. Whatever nature there is left is going to become very rapidly polluted. You have to drive 2 hours to get to a hospital, and 6 hours if you want to go to a good hospital that can handle major trauma. There’s technically a school. The only people teaching there are people who couldn’t make it in the big city, there are next no tutoring classes. You don’t get Uber, or Uber Eats, and anything bought online takes forever to arrive. And your internet is shit.

And it wasn’t that long ago, in the late 80s and early 90s, that you really could be an average person from an average family and still ride the explosive growth of China into a nice house in the middle of the most expensive parts of China. And that mindset hasn’t really went away even when the economic reality has changed. Nowadays, people still believe that even if you’re from the poorest rural shitholes of China, so long as you work really hard, you can at least buy a nice house in the local town. And then your children can work really hard and buy a house in the state capital. And then their children can work really hard and buy a house in the suburbs of a first line city. And eventually, a couple of generations later, you can be one of the elites of China.

So despite Chinese population growth slowing down a lot in the last couple of years, urban population is still growing just as strong as ever. And to accomodate all that new population flocking in, simply revamping the city isn’t going to be enough. So, in the suburbs, there are still massive developments of identical apartment buildings going up as fast and as cheaply as possible. The idea, of course, is that this is just to tide people over for now. In 15 years, we’ll get around to pulling these down and putting something better in its place too.

There aren’t a whole hell of a lot of videos filmed in true rural China. Perhaps I’ll take a few photos next time I go back to my hometown. But there are vast swathes of China where people live in mud huts with no electricity or running water still.

This is the insane wealth gap I talked about previously—there are parts of China where it’s postmodern skyscrapers and 5G internet and shiny, clean streets that look way better than most American cities. There are parts of China that’s hastily built identical suburban developments that stretch on as far as the eye can see. There are parts of China that still look the way it did in the medieval ages.

Compared with e.g. the front page of Reddit, there are very few humour-focused posts, i.e. ones that have reached the front page simply because they're funny. Is humour less of a focus in Chinese society, am I missing it when it is present, or is there some other reason for this? - By Emma

I think an aspect of it is definitely that Chinese humour doesn’t necessarily translate well. For example, the thread on the worst beating that people got as kids definitely reached the front page because people thought the stories were funny. The kid getting beat on his birthday because his mother remembered how bad childbirth was, it seems like my readers thought it was horrifying. But honestly, when I read it at first, I did kind of laugh.

Chinese humour definitely seems to lean on the sarcastic, bitter, depressing side. Sort of like Russian humour. Sometimes, I tell funny stories about China to my friends, the sort of thing that makes me laugh every time just get me stares of horror. Like, my grandma’s favourite story about my dad is that once, when my dad was a little over two years old, my great-grandma didn’t want to babysit him that day, so my grandma had to go work the field with my dad in tow. She can’t mind him while working, so she just left him in the shade of some trees nearby and told him not to wander and get into trouble.

Apparently, my dad had found some kind of wild beans growing there. And this was in the middle of the 70s, deep in the Mao famines. He was super hungry, and ended up eating a shitton of those beans. And they were the sort that swelled when they met water.

He was discovered 4 hours later by a neighbour in horrible pain with a distended stomach, and my grandma rushed him to the local clinic. They diagnosed it as an intestinal obstruction right away, and they were like, “Look, you’re gonna have to go to a real hospital for this. We’re just a normal clinic with a small pharmacy. We can’t do surgery here, and he needs surgery.”

And my grandma is like, “Dude, the nearest hospital is over 100 kilometres away, and the only mode of transportation I own is feet. And also there aren’t any roads, and I don’t know how to get there.”

And the doctor was like, “But if you don’t go, he’ll die.”

And my grandma is like, “But if he’s going to die, then can’t you at least try to save him? Worst case scenario, he still just ends up dead, right?”

So, the doctor actually ended up agreeing to operate on my dad in his clinic office, a laughably non-sterile environment. And the greatest part of this is—there was no anaesthesiologist and no anaesthetics. They literally had to strap my dad, a two year old, down and get three people to hold him still, while the doctor cut into him while he was conscious.

And that was how my grandma found out that my dad had been learning bad words from their neighbours. Because she had to sit outside that door and listen to him scream, “YOU MOTHERFUCKERS! WHAT THE FUCK! STOP! I WANT MY MOMMY!!”

And I am just like, “Wow, you know, I thought underwater shark surgery was badass. But holy shit, imagine operating on a kicking and screaming two year old, when the only drugs available to you is iodine and bandaids.”

They ended up pulling out an entire lunchbox-full of beans out of him, by the way. He totally did get infected, too, and had to go in for more entirely conscious procedures where they had to cut out necrotic tissue and put on more iodine and bandaids and hope for the best.

Anyway, this story absolutely kills people with laughter when my Grandma tells it.

The other, probably much bigger aspect is that Chinese humour is next to impossible to translate, so most of the time, I don’t even try. Like, I once discovered a thread where people were making poems by taking lines from different Chinese poems and jamming them together. And it was both amazing and hilarious, but I can’t even begin to even explain the joke. Not to mention how jokes stop being funny once you dissect and explain them.

A huge part of Chinese humour is also pun-based, which are also super hard to translate. And sometimes, when I see a post where I’m like, “Okay, but I’m gonna need to write, like, an eight thousand word essay to explain this pun.” I just skip over it.

There are also pop-culture based jokes that are entirely about Chinese shows and movies and songs, which I don’t even get because I don’t consume Chinese media that often. So I don’t tend to cover a lot of fandom stuff for shows that simply don’t exist in the west. The same way I limit what entertainment news I cover to stuff that a western audience would still understand, like, “This celebrity wore something scandalous!” or “This celebrity was caught embezzling!” Not just “Someone you don’t know is dating someone else you don’t know!”

Similarly, a lot of memes in China concern and reference TV shows that Chinese people grew up with, or Chinese fairytales.

If people want, I could try to translate these anyways and just accept that most people are just gonna end up confused by it. But previously, if the explanation to make a joke understandable to my readers is going to be longer than the rest of the day’s blog combined, I just end up skipping it.

Whenever women in the substack talk about their optimal weight, it's always very slim to the extent of sounding unhealthy. What's going on with that? - By Emma

I am not denying at all that China has fucked up beauty standards. The expression that often gets used by people is that the Chinese ideal of beauty is “fair-skinned, child-like, and thin”. And although there’s the very beginnings of something like the body positivity movement, or at least some kind of awareness about anorexia, that’s still a very, very minority voice. For the most part, Chinese society is entirely open and shameless about fat-shaming and the worship of slimness to the extreme. So this is definitely all very unhealthy and insane.

But also, there is a small part of this where Asians do tend to have a smaller frame, genuinely. For most of my adult life, I had a BMI of 17, which is theoretically pretty underweight. But I personally don’t think I look underweight. I don’t look like pictures of anorexics with visible bones. Chinese people have said themselves that for the most part, Asian models who are the same height, the same weight, and the same BMI as western models don’t look as bony as they do.

And keep in mind, I didn’t really even attempt to maintain my BMI. That’s just where I naturally ended up when I ate exactly as much as I wanted to and no more. When I go out with American friends, nobody has ever commented that I eat particularly small portions. Everyone agrees that I’m not anorexic, I snack on chips ahoy and cheetos all the time. I’m sure with the least bit of effort at actually dieting at all, I could’ve dropped another 10 pounds and not looked too anorexic.

My question is, in short: incompetence or malice? - By CinnabarTactician

I chatted with someone (whose family is from Hong Kong, but they grew up in SEA) recently about some of the things I learnt from this Substack. In particular about some policies like limited school admissions. I expressed the view that these were dumb, short-sighted policies, and that the Chinese government is shooting itself in the foot. Their opinion was: no, they're not dumb, they know exactly what they're doing. They don't care that it stunts economic growth and screws up the country, it's all about social control. E.g. limited school admissions keep the populace uneducated and poor, so they're less likely to rebel. I'd love to hear your perspective on this as it relates to the government and their policy choices in general. - by CinnacarTactician

I actually know a couple of people who are retired CCP politicians, at least one of whom is high enough up the chain that they attend National People’s Assemblies. Sort of the American version of a congressman or senator. My family came to be friends with the retired Minister of Tourism, who actually negotiated most of China’s visa deals with the rest of the world and actively participated in the opening up of China. Through them, I’ve been able to talk to a lot of Chinese politicians in a private, friendly context where they don’t really have to worry about cameras. And I think the honest answer is, neither.

I think that it’s very tempting for people to blame the ills of the world on incompetence or malice, because that gives them a measure of emotional comfort. The problem is just one group of exceptionally evil, or exceptionally stupid people in charge. If we got rid of them, everything would be fine. I think reality is that the CCP are composed of entirely normal, ordinary people who are doing the best they can, genuinely, but are forced to constantly choose between two terrible choices because of the limiting circumstances they find themselves in.

China’s economy is simply too dependent upon the manufacturing industry right now. It is still a vital cornerstone of China’s societal structure, relevant in the world, and source of investment and money. You can’t pull it out overnight, at least not without collapsing the rest of the house. But at the same time, China is developing too fast. Just two decades ago, college graduates were rare, something your whole extended family can be proud of. Just about every person who was able to graduate from college did something impressive with their degree. Now, it’s hard to walk on the street and find someone who hadn’t went to uni.

And people who’ve invested all those years of their life in schooling, who’d spent all that money on tutoring, who’d become educated enough to learn about what the rest of the world is like and dream about it—those people aren’t going to be willing to work in a sweatshop. Those people’s parents aren’t going to let them go work in a sweatshop. They’d both rather the kid just laze around at home—it doesn’t cost that much money to keep one extra mouth fed when you’ve already got a fully-paid off house.

So, like I said, the limited graduation rate is a genuine effort to keep the Chinese economy stable by ensuring a continual supply of people who will work sweatshop jobs.

The CCP aren’t stupid. They know this is not a long-term sustainable solution. But in order for China to stop being the sweatshop of the world and transition to a consumer economy, somebody else has to shoulder that burden of providing endless cheap labour and being a dumping ground for pollution. That’s why they’ve been so aggressively investing in Africa. In order for China to be in the same economic state as America, Africa has to become for China what China is for America. But you’re not going to get Africa into a stable enough state for massive manufacturing investments overnight.

So, the CCP thinks to themselves, “Yeah, it’s not a great idea, but it’s just a temporary measure. It’s just to keep the economy stable, until we can afford to offload these jobs to Africa. It only has to work for a decade or two.” They know limited graduation rates is damaging to the economy—they can see the effects of it a lot clearer than westerners can. They’re just betting that they can win the race against the clock. And CCP politicians are almost universally incredibly stressed out about all the tightropes they have to walk, but they are genuinely, sincerely trying to make China a better nation.

From an outsider’s point of view, I still think that there are drastic societal side-effects that they’re probably not noticing. That this is going to be damaging to China in a myriad of ways that nobody really saw coming, but is obvious in retrospect, just like the one-child policy. But I’m not sure about calling them outright incompetent. Like, I don’t think I’m stupid. But if I was put in charge of China, I don’t think I could think of a better solution to this problem than what the CCP is already doing.

What’s the alternative? Barrel full speed ahead with a totally educated populace, have sweatshop jobs shrink ten times every year, cause massive shockwaves to the entire global supply chain, hope that no other country thinks you’re doing this on purpose as some kind of economic warfare and put sanctions against you, lose 30% of your total economy, have what skilled labour that’s available get absolutely swamped with applicants, have unemployment rates shoot through the roof, and hope that China can survive the resulting economic collapse intact enough that it can crawl into the next phase of development?

Automation isn’t even the answer, because any manufacturing process that can be efficiently automated is already being performed in Germany and Japan, or even America itself! All the manufacturing that goes to China is the manufacturing that no one else wants to do.

Modern Chinese attitudes towards communism? - by Keller Scholl

It might be more interesting to talk about modern Chinese attitudes about capitalism, because most Chinese people’s attitude towards communism is, “Isn’t it the default anyways? Communism is what we already have, and it’s not going to change anytime soon.” Yes, Chinese people seem to sincerely believe that China has always been, is still, and always will be a communist state. I know, I don’t understand it either.

Modern Chinese attitudes towards communism is very schizophrenic in this regard. Whenever bad news in America ever reaches China—the latest school shooting, police brutality, etc, etc—In the top comments is always someone being like, “See, this is what happens when your society is built on capitalism. We don’t have to worry about this shit because we’re communist.” But if you ask them how on earth China is communist, they can’t really say except that, well, it’s the Chinese Communist Party, isn’t it? It’s right there in the name!

There’s no real education on what communism even really is. Marxism classes in China basically only teaches about the evils of capitalism, and modern Chinese history in how much we should hate western capitalists, without any clear explanation as to how modern day China isn’t the exact same thing.

Whenever a celebrity or politician in China gets into a scandal because they were caught sleeping with a prostitute, the internet always ends up having a debate about whether or not prostitution should be legalised. And every time these debates come up, someone is in the comments being like, “You can’t legalise prostitution. If you do, people will be forced to prostitute themselves. It’ll quickly become exploitative. Prostitution objectifies women and is bad for feminism.”

One day, I want to respond underneath, “Yeah, I mean, in my opinion, we should ban work, period. If work is legal, people will be forced to work, and it very quickly becomes exploitative. Work objectifies people and is bad for human rights. Maybe we should nationalise all businesses so the government can actually enforce a 2-hour work day and distribute resources equally and do away with this business owner concept.” and see what kind of responses I get.

I mean, the CCP propaganda department can’t possibly ban my account for being pro-Marxism, right?

What's different about urban / rural stereotypes compared to America/Europe? - by Keller Scholl

There’s not as much of an urban/rural divide in China, culturally speaking. Rural people don’t really have much to be proud of, as a part of their identity. Everyone from a rural village understands that they didn’t choose to be there, they’re stuck there because they’re poor, and while it’s too late for them, they’re going to dedicate their life to making sure that their children can realise the Chinese Dream and go to the big city. There are often bad stereotypes of people in rural areas, the same way that poor people everywhere have negative stereotypes associated with them.

If you buy things from them, they’ll try to cheat you. They literally buy women as sex slaves. They’re the most obsessed about having boys. They’re uneducated. They shove their children into the big city without actually being financially prepared to support them through it, and then those children become robbers, drug dealers, and prostitutes.

But it’s not really as bad as the racial divide in America or anything. It’s not like it’s written on your face whether you’re from rural areas. It’s just that when everyone relies on the help of their family to be successful in life, if you don’t have family that can offer any help, you’re not going to get very far in your career or find a wife.

But for the most part, China is much more concerned about different stereotypes for different cities, than about the difference between cities and rural areas. Maybe one day, I’ll write about the stereotypes associated with each Chinese state. That would be fun.

Americans I can call Gen X / Millenial / Boomer / what have you. What are the Chinese equivalents, and what are the stereotypes? - by Keller Scholl

In China, stereotypes are divided by decade. I don’t know anything about stereotypes associated with 1940s or anything before that, because those people just weren’t really around anymore (or at least not lucid anymore) by the time I got old enough to pay attention to this sort of thing.

For people born in the 50s, the stereotype associated is that they’re the true believers of communism, the main force in making it happen, the strongest, most fanatical defenders of the CCP. They are the people who grew up hearing stories of how the CCP protected China from the Japanese, how they chased out the foreign occupiers, how they’re going to carry China into a bright new future. They grew up poor, but they grew up hopeful. And for the most part, they still answer the CCP’s call the strongest. The American equivalent stereotype might be the sincerely and devoutly Christian doddering grandmother who means well, but seems a bit out of touch.

For people born in the 60s, they’re the bitterest generation of China. In their most rebellious teenage years, they lived through the Mao famines. They’re the most likely to be absolute ruthless assholes, the type of people to try to screw you over for a couple of extra cents. Because that was an important survival strategy for their generation. They’re also the most likely to have the most resentment towards the CCP, and to be the loudest about it. The American equivalent stereotype might be the angry middle-aged alcoholic who talks a lot about fluorides in the water and CIA listening devices in his couch.

For people born in the 70s, by the time they’re past early childhood, they’ve managed to get into the beginnings of a real Chinese economy in the 80s, with actual public education. They’re the generation known for being cunning, clever, and scheming. Most entrepreneurs and businessmen are from this generation. Some would say that this generation had it the easiest—social mobility was the simplest during those initial days of opportunity. A lot of very ordinary people got to shoot to the top of society by being lucky enough to be the first batch of college graduates, or to open the first factories. And despite not actually paying social security, they are the only generation to really enjoy the full benefits of it. As a result, they tend to be the out-of-touch boomers of China, who lecture young people today for not trying hard enough, and still think that if you put on a suit, you can just walk into any job you want.

For people born in the 80s, they didn’t get fucked over as hard as the 60s generation, but they definitely still got fucked. They were born too late to take advantage of starting a business when there was zero competition in the market, born too late for university degrees to be worth their weight in gold. They can only be the exploited employees of people born in the 70s, before labour laws were even thought out. The Chinese government had stopped even pretending to be communist—they had to pay for their college, they weren’t given a house for free by the government, what little money they made went right back in the pockets of the bank. They were only allowed one children, they were subject to forced sterilisations. The demands on what you have to do to qualify as a good parent got stricter and stricter. They didn’t get any investment from their parents, but they had to invest an unprecedented amount into their children. And now they’re getting old just in time for social security to go bankrupt, despite paying into it their entire life. They’re the depressed Generation X quietly killing themselves with alcoholism.

For people born in the 90s, they got to grow up in a brave new world. The internet became a common household thing, and it connected you to communities all around the country. They got to surf the internet before the Great Firewall even went up. They got to learn about the whole world without leaving their bedrooms. They’re the most liberal and open generation of China. As single children, they got to enjoy the resources of four old people and two parents by themselves. More of them went to college than any other generation. They’re the starry-eyed hippie kid who thinks they’ve got the solution to the world’s problems, and the solution is looooove, man.

For people born in the 00s, they’ve taken a strange step backwards. The Great Firewall came up. Western media became censored out of Chinese TVs and cinemas. There is more of a refocusing on nationalistic propaganda in school. And they grew up to have the best years of their life fucked completely over by three continual years of covid lockdowns and a collapsing economy as a result. They’re the people to have their entire childhoods sacrificed to endless tutoring and exorbitant schooling fees, just to have their degrees mean absolutely nothing on the job market. They’re confused and angry—every generation was supposed to get better than the last. Why did they get fucked over so hard? And their lives are too filled with propaganda for them to even know what to look for on the western internet to challenge their beliefs, even if they were aware to begin with how to get past the Great Firewall. They’re the first generation to genuinely have no idea why the numbers 8 and 9 are censored on the Chinese internet. They were blinded by their government, but they still feel the unfairness of their lives. Deep down in their instincts, they still don’t think this is normal. They’re the deeply frustrated millennials of China, who get told by all of society how easy they have it, and yet they don’t feel like life is easy at all. Life is so, so fucking hard, and they don’t even know how to go about explaining why they’re depressed when they have smart phones and boba tea and cheetos and endless free entertainment online.

Differences in views / cultural norms around death? - by Keller Scholl

People’s views around death are going to vary a lot by region and background. I don’t know enough people from all around China to really give an authoritative analysis on people’s views of death, especially since death is a super rude subject of conversation in China. A lot of superstitions of China revolve around avoiding things that are symbolic of funerals and stuff. As a result, even with close friends, it’s very hard to talk to them about subjects like, “Hey, how do you want your funeral to go?”

But this doesn’t necessarily mean that Chinese people fear death more, or anything like that. Not anymore than Americans fear making money, even though asking about people’s income is considered rude as fuck. Chinese people are pretty open about signing Do Not Resuscitate orders and calling for euthanasia to be legalised, for example.

But there is a certain sanctity to dead people that I don’t see as much in western culture. For example, there is much more of a social significance to maintaining your ancestral graves. In my region of China, only the patriarch of the family and the primogenitor had the honour to go and sweep the graves, make offerings, and kneel before the ancestors. As a girl, I’ve never even seen my family’s plot of graves in my life, cause I don’t have that privilege. And my family honestly isn’t even that sexist. It is a much bigger deal not to speak ill of the dead. People are far angrier about grave robbing or anyone damaging a headstone, than they are about their children being abducted into sexual slavery. Any incident of anyone fucking with a graveyard can be guaranteed to be at the top of the local police station’s to-do list.

Chinese people are also far more afraid of ghosts as a culture? Like, it’s kind of amazing to me the first time I found out that such a thing as a ghost tour existed in America. That there would be historical locations where a lot of people died in a lot of misery or got murdered by a super evil serial killer, which is definitely haunted. And then normal people would be like, “Oh yeah, sounds like a great spot for a vacation!” The average Chinese people who no religious beliefs and who isn’t even that superstitious still wouldn’t go, because what if? What if you got haunted by a ghost?

American horror movies and stories are gory, because I feel like people wouldn’t be particularly scared unless a ghost showed that it was capable of doing harm. Also, a lot of American horror movies are about serial killers who are entirely human. But Chinese horror movies sometimes just involve a ghost….existing. Like, maybe a lady had a miscarriage on the elevator of your office building, and now there’s a tiny little baby ghost just in there. Not particularly doing anything. But it’s still got minor effects on people’s health if they hang around it enough, might give people a cold. Might dampen people’s mood. Like second-hand smoke. That is still, for some reason, super scary to most Chinese people.

I’ve once seen videos of a Halloween parade, underneath which were a ton of very popular comments like, “Oh my god, I would never go. If there was a real ghost mixed up in there, you wouldn’t even be able to tell!”

To this day, it is a real job as a haunted house tester. Where you get paid to go live in a house which may or may not be haunted, so you can report back whether or not you saw any ghosts. If the house passes the check, it can sell for more money, because it’s guaranteed ghost free.

Sure, incredibly wealthy urban areas, subsistence farmer peasants. Are there suburbs? What are they like? How have they (and perceptions of them) changed over the past four decades?

I think I’ve covered a lot of the aspects of suburbs in my answers to previous questions. But I’ll clarify again that suburbs are basically just the jumping stone to eventually getting to live in a wealthy urban area. They’re culturally not that different from just being a smaller city that happens to be right next to a much larger, wealthier city. It’s only the largest of metropolises in China, like Shanghai or Shenzhen, were each suburb of the city might develop its own unique identity and stereotypes, like the boroughs of New York have.

I don’t think the perception of suburbs have changed that much since the 80s. They’re just full of people who weren’t quiiiite good enough to actually be Shanghaiese, but at least they’re better than the people who can’t even afford a house close to Shanghai and have to settle for living in a poor, deprived second line city, like Suzhou. And people in Suzhou are just people who aren’t quiiite good enough to live in the suburbs of Shanghai, but at least they don’t have to settle for living in a poor, deprived third or fourth line city like Wang Ting Town. And people in Wang Ting Town are just people who aren’t quiiiite good enough to live in a major city like Suzhou, but at least they don’t have to settle for living in a poor deprived village like Mei Village. And it goes on.

Is China basically a cashless society now? Is there any push back against that at all? - by Alice

It totally is—the last time that I went to China, I didn’t have a single cent of cash money on me for the entirety of the 3 months and it was literally never an issue. And I live in the backwaters of backwaters, a super remote rural village. Even beggars on the side of the street have a QR code around their neck that you can scan to give them change. It’s fucking bizarre.

There’s not any push back against it at all from what I see. It’s something that Chinese people is incredibly proud of. And it is, in fact, super convenient. And as for privacy…I mean, that’s not really something you expect as a Chinese person anyways.

And yeah, it is super inconvenient for tourists, because you can’t use the wechat app to pay for stuff unless you bind it to a Chinese bank account. Western banks don’t offer this functionality. And if you’re just visiting China for 2 weeks, you’re not gonna open a bank account there and actually put money in it, and set up all the face scanning security in order to use wechat to pay.

But most major stores and businesses are still fully capable of taking a card or cash. It pretty much only locks you out of making transactions with super, duper tiny ma and pa businesses or buying things at farmers’ markets. I don’t think it should impact your ability to enjoy China thaaaat much.

For the FAQ: how much of traditional medicine has a spiritual component? I see a lot about the energies of the body and stuff like that in an English Google search. Or would things like that even fall under the category of spirituality at all?

Basically not at all. Chinese medicine does have a theory of the body revolving around Yin energy and Yang energy and qi flow and all that, but they treat it as though it’s a hard science. They don’t promote it as a “spiritual” thing at all. They try to portray themselves as the same thing as western medicine, but instead of complicated chemical formulas, it’s complicated herbal formulas. Any strictly spiritual aspects of Chinese medicine, like writing a rune on your body and burning incense in a certain direction of your room for three days, has disappeared from Chinese medicine, as a part of the CCP’s efforts to end superstitions in China.

It’s still more or less all complete bullshit, but Chinese medicine doctors today write about their field of study and their prescriptions as though they’re legitimate scientists. Like, “Dandelions are known to have coagulating properties. Take 50g dandelion blossoms and 20g of strawberry leafs and steep in water for 30 minutes and rinse wound with water for best effects..” I made this up, because I don’t actually know shit about Chinese medicine, but that’s the tone with which I see Chinese doctors talk about their trade.

Do you think some/any of the posts you’ve translated are propaganda, or is it all genuine sentiment?

There definitely is a shitton of propaganda on the Chinese internet, but it’s very rarely in the form of an opinion piece. Mostly, Chinese propaganda looks like a lot of reporting about all the crimes that go on in other countries, with no mention of any successful social programs. With an especially heavy focus on crimes where Chinese people (or more broadly Asians) were victims.

I think the people who write a post talking about how, “I recent went to Thailand and holy shit it’s scary as fuck” or, “Man, Japanese food sucks!” are people who are genuine when they wrote it, but it was the propaganda engine which nudged the algorithm to make sure it got seen by as many people as possible. Whereas, you’re not banned for writing posts about how, like, if you break your leg in Japan, they fix it first and ask for payment later. But you might find that it’s a lot harder to get the algorithm to take notice and get views.

Basically, there is a substantial number of people in China who do genuinely think that it’s better than other countries, and propaganda ensures those people get the most attention. Rather than actually paying people to write something they don’t believe in.