Again I'm reminded of the tweet where a Chinese reporter compared a terror attack in China to someone shooting up a subway train in Dallas. All the usual smuglords came out in force to tell the reporter that "Dallas doesn't have a subway, you CEE CEE PEE shill
" not realizing what an absolute self own that is.Dallas does have light rail and a bus system (both managed by Dallas Area Rapid Transit)
tbf the reason you've never heard of it is for the same reason you were taught next to nothing about geography, history, and other cultures. If you don't know anything about anything then it's so easy to convince you that we're the good guys and all the wars are just and necessary
You're right that Americans are under-educated in those areas. However, China has something like a hundred "big cities" (let's say roughly Philadelphia-sized). Only a real geography buff would be able to identify all of them! If Americans knew just ten of them, that would be great.
If you don't know most of the different provinces of China and India, then you don't know anything about the world
https://i.imgur.com/BBPRvQL.png
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I'm kind of a geography buff and i still can't even name ten. Same for India. And i'm not American but our education also severely neglected to teach us basically anything about the world outside of Europe and the US. The most we learned about the rest of the world was countries and their capitals. And history was even worse. It went Ancient Egypt > Greeks > Romans > Charlemagne > Holy Roman Empire > French revolution > Napoleon > Bismarck/German unification > World War > Weimar Germany > World War again > German reunification.
I’ve got six, what other cities should I know about?
Shanghai, Beijing, Ürümqi, Chongqing, Hong Kong, Taishan
OK, here's a couple more that are famous and great for touristic reasons of history /culture /good food /great landscape /etc
Xi'an (one of the ancient capitals of China, starting point of the traditional and new Silk Road), Guilin (every single time they show China in cartoon, with giant mountains and winding rivers, they're basically showing here), Shenzhen (the new hyper modern high tech city), Guangzhou (old English name was Canton, as in Cantonese food), Suzhou and Hangzhou (historically famed for being chill and beautiful, lakes and canals etc), Hainandao (Chinese version of Hawaii), Nanjing (another ancient capital of China, lots of culture), Harbin (lots of Russian architecture here, and a FANTASTIC and huge ice sculpture show every year)
There are these videos in yt of people just randomly driving in various cities or countryside and chongqing is jaw dropping.
There are also videos of people randomly driving across rural America and the conditions people live under are eye-opening. Crumbling roads, crumbling houses, crumbling businesses, and everything's miles away with a sole Dollar General as the town's grocer.
You merely adopted the dark. I was born in it, molded by it. I didn't see the light until I was already a man, by then it was nothing to me but blinding!
I'm from the middle of nowhere, Amerika. It's so much worse than many people know.
If you don't mind, would you mind describing it? I've heard about the meth problem and the crumbling roads, but never a direct firsthand account of what it is like to live in rural America.
tldr it sucks but I mean the nature's cool
The area I lived in is so backwoods it doesn't have a true name, it borders a town and a village (yes, a village). They're both about 20 minute drives in opposite directions.
All along the highway from nowhere to somewhere, you'll find abandoned gas stations and grocery stores overtaken by local foliage and critters of the dark. Cows every now and then with barbed wire fences cordoning off hundreds and hundreds of acres of land, usually owned by some disgustingly rich drunk old guy no one's seen in years.
In each town, everyone knows everyone. It was hard to stay anonymous even countywide -- many, many times my last name indicated to others that they knew my family. Due to living in a borderland, I was given an option of two different high schools I could attend, in either direction. They're both horrific, though I will say the one I attended had cool teachers. My graduating class had ~20 students in it, that being the entire senior class of my high school.
It is a very different feeling to living in a city. I did not have neighbors less than a mile away. 90% of the roads I drove were not paved. I spent my childhood in extreme isolation. I used the internet to escape it, the very, very slow internet. It took me a month to download World of Warcraft, and I played the shit out of it, 500 ping or otherwise (I considered 200 was stable!!).
We had DSL until maybe 2013. I grew up with a box computer, box TV, VHSs, all that old shit. Regular blackouts. School closed regularly because winter was utterly deadly -- who is going to plow a dirt road? Summer was just as deadly for different reasons.
We had a different relationship with guns. Gunshots were something you heard regularly, wherever you were, because folk were out hunting. It was normal. I remember, even, one time a classmate in 3rd grade brought (with his father) a deer he killed on the back of a pickup, and when he arrived he was holding his hunting rifle. This alarmed absolutely no one, including myself.
We had prayer circles at school every Sunday. We'd gather around the flag and pray for the soldiers and shit. Pledge of allegiance every day, of course.
Area was 99% white, and SOMEHOW the fuckers managed to get the black folk situated in the only part of that shithole that could be reasonably called a "ghetto". How the fuck.
I miss being able to fuck off into the woods and know that I was alone with nature. Nobody could mess with me because there was nobody. Nobody but the trees, squirrels, spiders and deer.
Every other person has at least tried meth. I haven't, but I've had the opportunity on multiple occasions. I've seen what that shit does to houses when people mix incorrectly. I'm good, I'll stick with green. Cannabis can't annihilate you quite so dramatically.
There were homeless folk. Everybody knew them, but no one wanted to help them. I hate to say that I can't really blame them as plenty of these folk would have murdered you for drug money. The others just woulda robbed you.
Kind of a rambling mess and I apologize. I hope I painted something of a picture. If you have any specific questions I'd be delighted to share details of the bittersweet misery of rural life further.
edit: addendum. These places were legally sundown towns in my mother's lifetime.
https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/sundown-towns/
...sounds grim and surreal. Pretty sure I've read post-apocalyptic fiction with similar backgrounds :|
I completely forgot the kicker. I was taught creationism in my science classes. 😄
Tell my suburban friends that and they say shit like "I didn't even know that still happened", like creationism as "science" died in the 50s or 60s. Nah.
Also taught that black folk were condemned to an eternity of slavery because Ham, ostensibly dark-skinned, witnessed his father Noah naked, while all the other races looked away.
I would not recommend to any black folk to visit the rural midwest. They'll tell you how not-racist they are right before they fucking lynch you. The cops will be there, assisting the lynchers. Klan flyers left on doorsteps (my family got one). NAACP put out a travel advisory for Missouri, the only entire state they've ever done that for. I don't blame them at all.
It still blows my mind that while these places aren't "officially" sundown towns, they still are for all practical purposes.
Thank you for sharing and i hope you live in better conditions now.
Thank you. I live in a relatively small city in a different state now.
Incredibly, there's shit to do! People to meet! I prefer it so much more. The quickest way to kill misanthropy, for me, has been to meet people. The kindness of utter strangers baffles me sometimes -- I'm not used to it.
Only problem is, the gunshots I hear every other day aren't so innocuous. I live in the hood, the ghetto, whatever you wanna call it, but it's my community now, you know? Care about these folk. Roads are all paved but still barely drivable. Least I can walk down the street to get my groceries if I want (and not have to drive 45 minutes to the nearest Walmart...)
the gunshots I hear every other day
Don't think I've ever heard live gunshots in my city. Even in the 90's, when the country was a bleeping warzone. Only ever heard some in the countryside, from far away (hunters or plinkers). And you are saying it's a regular occurrence?
Moved into my new place last month. Heard shots three times. One time it was just brap brap brap. Another time sounded like two. Heard a fucking shootout maybe two weeks ago, maybe 8 or 9.
Some folk mistake fireworks for gunshots, and I guess it's possible that I was just hearing kids playing with M80s or something. But I know folk who've been shot, know folk whose family have been murdered in drive-bys, and I'm familiar with the sound of gunfire. You won't even hear about it on the news.
Sounds a lot like rural Australia, though we have fewer gunshots. People usually go hunting with bows here, because hunting rifles are somewhat hard to get.
That all sounds really rough, sorry to hear you have to deal with all that. My grandparents were victims of a similar system of casino type stuff, over here the pubs have "pokies" (slot machines) and often that is literally the only "entertainment" in rural areas, so people spend all their time just gambling away all their money and drinking. As far as I can tell, things aren't "as bad" now, but still pretty awful in a lot of places (meth is often a substitute for gambling and alcohol) And I know what you mean about the ruins, they're just everywhere, but people don't want them touched because they are "their property" so nothing useful is done with them.
My unsolicited advice? Get out. ASAP.
Rural Amerika will not be where revolution emerges. I tried to convince myself that there was some sort of organizing worth doing, that having to drive an hour each way every day to work was bearable, that I could radicalize enough people for my presence there to matter. It never would have.
Do not apologize for leaving that misery in your dust, do not look back. These places are spiderwebs that will keep trying to pull you back in every time you escape.
I spent the majority of my life thus far in the extreme isolation and cultural hell you are describing. I'm sorry you're there now. The past few years have been the happiest, most actualizing of my life. Part of growing up for me, maybe, but know that I owe so much of it to having people to interact with.
If you meet someone insufferable, do not worry. They are but one of many. You will meet better people.
I relate to the hospital bit. There is a hospital 25 minutes from that area, however it has (I am not exaggerating) appeared on multiple blog posts like "top 10 worst hospitals in America". I once spent 14 hours there as a kid just to get dx'd with bronchitis in about 10 minutes. My dad kept leaving the room to go fetch someone every few hours. He'd always come back alone, angrier than the last time.
I just moved here in january, i still have my house in california. I just got some hunting land in the south to build a vacation home on essentially. Basically treating it like building a private resort in a 3rd world country lol.
My town in california wasnt much better. The hospital i worked at just went bankrupt so theres no hospital there within 30+ miles either. But theres at least better food and access to major cities in one days drive.
But, you see, it has oppression particles in the air. Checkmate, tankie.
I recommend visiting one of the major cities. Doesn't have to be Shanghai or Beijing as it gets a bit bougie. Chengdu also has some really awesome city planning and high concept architecture!
not to mention chengdu is THE gay capital of china from what i've read online
Consider that American cities aren't places for people to live. Their primary purpose is to make real estate companies money. American roads don't exist to be used, they're so car dealership owners exert undue political influence.
Chinese cities are built for people to live in
Case in point: Guiyang Night Walk, The Capital Of The Poorest Province In China: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QsZVk8Am_E
TBF, it is the capital of the province, the most well developed part of it. Part of the problem with unequal development in China has been that the cities have been heavily developed like this, while the countryside has lagged behind. Thankfully, that seems to be changing now and the CPC's current goal seems to be to reduce unequal development as much as possible, so we might start to see small towns looking this well developed in about 10-20 years.
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That bookstore at the beginning got me almost to tears ngl, not only it's the best damn looking bookstore i ever seen but i bet it isn't filled to the brim with anticommunist rot unlike every single one in Poland.
Also, how are the book prices in China? In Poland they literally went 50-100% up over last year, and they weren't cheap to begin with.
New York and Los Angeles would barely count as tier 3 China cities.
It's very unofficial, and mostly coming from a few publications within the PRC that each use their own criteria for ranking: wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_city_tier_system
I think the bottom picture on the right is concept art from Mirror's Edge: Catalyst. One of my favorite games ever.
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The two on the left are Houston, but that's downtown Houston in the 70s.
That picture of the highway is Katy Freeway near Houston, I don't know if the other pictures are also Houston
We never left the twentieth century because it was too profitable to some ghouls.
