During the cold war, the anticommunist ideological framework could transform any data about existing communist societies into hostile evidence.
Parenti quote
edit: ok I thought there was a bot that replies the parenti quote when someone says parenti quote but I guess not
"See bro, that's the problem with China; they're too concerned with rush, rush, rush to the destination when every wise man knows it's all about the journey. That's why we designed our transit system around massive traffic congestion resulting in multi-hour commutes. Just think about how much time for reflection and "being in the moment" you lose without your ritual stop-and-go traffic twice a day. No, really, think about it. You have ample opportunity..."Somehow brought to you by the same brain processes that brought you Falling Down
Part 2:
: "What's that, you think the slow train rides are interesting like the Amtrak surfliner? Well, we need to defund Amtrak because uhhh....You just HAVE to drive, okay?"
In China they don't have the luxury of having a 6 hour amtrak delay because passenger rail is sharing track with cargo which has precedence.
I feel bad for them. If they only could have a taste of this freedom.
I've done one of those long Chinese train rides and they were deeply unpleasant
Maybe don't participate in a vast train-wide conspiracy to gaslight a sweet old french detective.
I did one but in one of the sleeper cabins and it was pretty nice. Nowhere near as nice as the new high speed trains they have now but not bad at all.
the sleepers are fine; if you get one of the church pew regular seats (or worse, have to stand or sit in the aisle) it's another story
Yeah took an overnight from Shanghai->Chengdu and just slept, it was fine, but high speed on the return.
ehhh I have positive memories of my whole extended family riding a sleeper train, but I was a child and also have positive memories from that period of playing in a large pile of dirty sand.
I saw in video that in some really rural and mountainous areas they kept the slow train service so villagers can transport their livestock to the city markets, so the whole narrative this article gives doesn't even make sense.
In Soviet China, they force their population to take fast train rides on modern high speed rail
Upon reading the title, my initial reaction was "What sort of an abortion would long for slow trains?"
The body of the article has fuckall to do with the headline, it's basically a travel writing. It's just a guy travelling on a train.
