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(Thread IKs: fart simpson)
 
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Telluric Whistler
Sep 14, 2008


BULBASAUR posted:

So is Shanghai and Shenzen on lockdown? Some stuff on social making the rounds

Shanghai is back to temperature checks at the door of shops and enforcement of mask rules - before this you'd see like 60/40 masks for people walking on the street. Transit is still going, and recommendations to WFH.

Went out walking yesterday and saw one apartment complex where they'd put up construction barriers and had Tyvek suited folks handing out groceries - but still saw people going in and out. I live a bit south of the area where the cases started, but outside that and a handful of stores that had tamper-proof police tape on the doors.

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Telluric Whistler
Sep 14, 2008


gradenko_2000 posted:

besides what Mirello said about the holes in their vaccination coverage, what we're seeing is the thing we've been predicting for a while now where if the hospitals are jammed up with way more patients than they can ever handle, mortality goes WAY up because now you're getting a lot of people dying from an abject lack of healthcare, as opposed to all the people that the virus just manages to kill even when they get all the medical attention that can be reasonably offered

The Hospital Authority (HK government hospitals basically) are just horrifically lovely and underfunded and lack the capacity to deal with poo poo in the best of times. In good times you'll have wards with 12 beds about 3 feet apart.

Retirement care homes are even worse.

It's miraculously somehow better than American healthcare but also just was never going to be able to deal with a real COVID outbreak.

Intense distrust of the government and fear that you'll be sent to Penny Bay or one of the camps in NT combined with there being no requirement to report home tests means that a lot of people just get sick, tough it out, and probably infect a few more people.

I'm not looking forward to tightening restriction in Shanghai (which feel inevitable at this point) but it's got a lot of the same issues as HK in terms of density and infrastructure bottlenecks.

Telluric Whistler
Sep 14, 2008


JAY ZERO SUM GAME posted:

is shenzhen still a literal walled off SEZ or whatever, or is it just another place now

It's just a city. There's the ditch/river that makes up the HK border and some literal walls on the edge of housing estates or neighborhoods near the border, but that's all to the south

Telluric Whistler
Sep 14, 2008


Kill All Cops posted:

Oh yeah, and the district councilors who would've been able to convince the government to vaccinate the elderly and communicate with care homes about the need for vaccinations? Well, we imprisoned them.

Watching the HK government basically unravel since 2019 has been funny if it weren't for the global pandemic running around that would be best managed by a strong government.

It was darkly funny when they decided they were going to up the seating limits in restaurants and released a matrix that nobody seemed to understand rather than just a blanket "4/6 people at a table" order. Just felt like they were trying so hard to look like they were doing something.

Telluric Whistler
Sep 14, 2008


ughhhh posted:

I see you have never met an older HKer or Taiwanese person before. This is regularly what i would hear about mainlanders. Its also why that cult dance troupe Shen Yun so happily uses headlines for their shows such as "5000 years of history, preserved!" "See china before communism!" etc.

Yes, the wise China Watchers often speak in hushed tones about queueing for the train: "You see the Cultural Revolution produced a survivor mentality, that's why they are so boorish"

They then ignore any queue in China as it cannot be real.

Telluric Whistler
Sep 14, 2008


Generic Monk posted:

iirc, his argument was that unless you live in a country where you're going to get bugs and grit in with the rice, the main thing you're doing when you're washing the rice is washing away the little bit of powdered starch that's attached to the rice as a result of the refining process. washing that away gets you a smoother, more consistent texture which is great, but sometimes you might want something that's a bit sticker, heavier, or more heterogenous. i tried it after watching the video and it's not bad!

Yeah you can make a reasonable glutinous rice substitute if you just toss unwashed rice in the rice cooker. To me its a great accompaniment to curry or some particularly saucy Chinese dishes because you are basically making a flavor sponge. It's awful for any dish where rice is a feature or a solo side or you want it to break up into grains.

Also good if you're making a congee because you can get it to be very thick if that's your jam.

Sometimes gloopy is good.

Telluric Whistler
Sep 14, 2008


R. Guyovich posted:

the situation in shanghai is pretty serious. daily case counts are enormous but over 95 percent of it is coming from shanghai and jilin. the rest of the country only has 550 cases total.

Yup. I would post more about it but tbh there's not much to say beyond "Case counts go up, still locked inside".

Shanghai hosed up real bad by trying to do hyperlocal lockdowns and spot testing rather than just trying to button up early like Shenzhen did. They then double hosed up by giving almost no notice on lockdown leaving a ton of people without minimal food (I sort of guessed it was coming and stocked up but still have cooked up all my fresh food by this point).

Deliveries are still available around town, which I have no idea if that's going to just put a long long tail on the shutdown. However groceries are still a bit lean.

Been playin a lot of Elden Ring at least.

Telluric Whistler
Sep 14, 2008



They didn't get the tests back by 7PM but they did do everyone. Pretty neat, but it really helps when everyone is in nicely organized little 小區 or big rear end complexes. Abolish detached housing.

Maximo Roboto posted:

Rando memery about Shanghai declaring independence, unrelated (?) to the Shanghai National Party astroturf fringe dorks, for once

https://twitter.com/big_ear_cat/status/1509870271255166989

https://twitter.com/shadowglenelf/status/1510645148782247944

https://twitter.com/lude_media/status/1509122147934879746

Jokes aside, Shanghai is relatively pretty lib, like Hong Kong. Wondering if any other coastal mega-cities have a similar "too good for the rest of the country" attitude to their identity. Shenzhen doesn't afaik

Having just moved from HK to Shanghai, they're both super lib and precious.

I'll agree that Carrie and Co have been pretty loving random because the ruling political class of HK are just drooling idiots that make US Congress critters look empowered. They need to satisfy Beijing and the financial class of HK and those groups are basically sitting in direct opposition on COVID policy. This has led to HK trying to have it both ways on COVID policy and running screaming in both directions whenever cases go up or down. Thankfully the politics are gonna go great with libs already comparing 90s CEs to Vaclav Havel and the presumptive follow-up to them as loving Putin lol.

Shanghai is just mega lib because its always been the most "cosmopolitan" (e.g, Western) city and so you end up with the London / NYC type culture folks swarming around and being who they are. Has just gotten worse since I last lived here in 2014. Doesn't help that being being in the Shanghai leadership position is seen as a strong stepping stone to standing committee or at the very least a powerful factional position in the party.

indigi posted:

do those factions not really like Xi or is it more they want to make sure the successor isn’t some fuckhead

There's always a lot of political wrangling leading up the the turnover of the standing committee, and a lot of times the influence players are previous standing committee members trying to secure their specific projects / ideology - so expect stuff about Hu Jintao to start cropping up again and maybe they'll dust off Jiang Zemin.

If we remember back to Ye Olde 2012 there was a lot of push-pull between the Xi faction and the one that ostensibly backed Bo Xilai. I still think Bo Xilai may have done a better job addressing some health and social spending infrastructure that continues to be a pain point in China, but Xi obviously has built the physical infrastructure and "China-for-China" supply chains that bolster the country's position as both an international political-economic player and help the bottom line. Read the corruption scandal of Bo Xilai and Xi's crackdowns as you will from that, the truth is that the standing committee members make sure their networks get to eat.

Xi is very popular, but definitely has detractors in the party because he's played favorites to build his projects. China is not free from politics.

Mirello posted:

Yeah. You can basically transcribe any new Yorker stereotypes (especially Manhattan) to Shanghai and they work perfectly.

Chinese people are getting very fed up with the rules. It's not just about foreign travel, tbh, very few people experienced or cared about that. But movement within the country is heavily restricted, which is very bad for morale. Many many Chinese people live far away from their families for their jobs, and can only go home once or twice a year for holidays. For the last 3 spring festivals (by far biggest holiday) there have been "stay in place" orders. People are starting to think "what's the point of covid 0 if I can't even see my family" also everyone in China is aware that overseas, life is back to normal and people are going on vacations. Ofc the huge number of casualties from the wests stupid policies are not publicized.

If covid 0 lasts to the next spring festival, I will be totally shocked.

Maybe we just speak to different people but I don't get as much of this impression. I too would be surprised if the government doesn't do some degree of course correction, but I don't think there's a huge impetus towards "open er up" policies. Maybe Shanghai's government was trying to push that by doing their big data microtargeting testing and lockdowns prior to this big lockdown, but it's pretty clear when compared to Shenzhen they hosed up and folks are more pissed at them having to pull an HK-style bait-and-switch with the requisite runs on groceries and so on.

Most people in my community are more pissed that they weren't given an opportunity to prepare and the government has only provided one piddly bag of bok choy and cabbage, and I feel the same way, give me a goddam carrot lol

Now today with the cases going up again there's been no direction on what next besides "You're locked down until we can get our poo poo together".

Telluric Whistler
Sep 14, 2008


Kill All Cops posted:

Some places in Shanghai have been lockdown for like 2 weeks now I think, I took a look on the shanghai subreddit and most people estimated they had like 4-5 days worth of food remaining. Some people got government handouts, like 2 bags of veg and some spam. Seems most are reliant on their communities bulk ordering and there are some scam delivery services floating around but idk how prevalent that is. HK got thru the fifth wave pretty fast and without lockdown, all things considered. Hopefully there is an end in sight for the guys in Shanghai too.

Yeah, one of my colleagues in Changning has been locked down for awhile, but at the same time has had some better luck with getting food in.

I'm in the city center and we didn't lock down until April 1 (first day of Puxi lockdown) but we've gotten just a single bag of mostly bok choy and cucumbers, everything else we've had to get through group orders. Since I'm in a small community we weren't hitting the minimum for group orders until yesterday when we started placing orders with the community next door.

Telluric Whistler
Sep 14, 2008


Flavahbeast posted:

I can believe the number is way higher than 4k but its weird that they would go to such extreme measures right now if the virus was secretly endemic in the country

Don't you get it? COVID was rampaging through China secretly and now all of the work they did to prevent COVID rampaging through is falling apart.

Telluric Whistler
Sep 14, 2008


BrutalistMcDonalds posted:

the need to always have this evil rasputin figure is a trope in western media but wang huning seems like a pretty boring dude. he'll wear a cornflower blue tie to spice it up on tuesdays.

i saved this one picture of him which appeared in one story because it makes him look like a vampire. i vant to suck your blooood :drac:



He's the perfect thing for American politicos to get obsessed with because he's a loving debate club nerd.

Telluric Whistler
Sep 14, 2008


indigi posted:

I’m sure he’s exaggerating as small business owners do but I’m pretty sure he’s complaining that his parents who are under lockdown in a different city can’t get food deliveries

Different districts of Shanghai, but effectively a different city with the lockdowns yeah. I guess I'm surprised he can't help them place orders online, but I guess if we're taking him at face value he's fully broke.

Obviously it really depends on your community, but we had a guy who was broke and out of food and we all just paid for his group buys of rice and other staples. Maybe this guy has a more lovely community - I've heard some nightmare stories about communities being lovely to each other.

If his parents and grandmother are elderly / retired, though, I'm a little confused. My understanding is that elderly are being provided with meals and even given at-the-door testing so they don't have to make the short walks to the testing sites.

Hard to say, though. It seems like the biggest fuckup in this lockdown is really that there's no consistent support and policy and you can see wildly different provision of food packages from the government or community support depending on your district and compound / community.

I saw an old lady melting down at the social workers today (but my Shanghainese is zero so no idea what she was on about), so I'm sure there are real meltdowns but like any country the people screaming the loudest at social workers / healthcare workers are usually both not 100% honest and also pretty lovely.

Telluric Whistler
Sep 14, 2008


exmarx posted:

new zealand would've had ~32 deaths over the september–september period with that fatality rate. you can't really extrapolate from 'let it rip' countries because a different cohort of people is more likely to be exposed, hospitals can treat patients properly because they aren't being overwhelmed, etc.

Additionally, I think China counts asymptomatic cases. I just really know the US and HK way of handling things in 2021 and both really only offered tests for symptomatic people.

Of course during a lockdown like now that matters because even asymptomatic people have to be quarantined, which obviously feels bad.

Telluric Whistler
Sep 14, 2008


stephenthinkpad posted:

Has anybody ever met a white guy learn and speak Cantonese? I have never seen one IRL. I have met an Indian teen who spoke Cantonese because he grew up in HK. He wore a Sikh turban now that I think about it.

I hope Stanford scam some funding from NED.

Me and also some weirdo British expats and a few locally born foreigners in HK.

It's not very useful except when I drink with my Canto speaking coworkers.

It now just randomly infects my Mandarin with Canto slang / pronunciations


Telluric Whistler
Sep 14, 2008


Antonymous posted:

I like in china when I speak poo poo mandarin and people go 'it's ok its my second language too' b/c theyre from shanghai or chengdu or w/e.

Then you speak to a Beijinger and it's like Mandarin spoken with a mouthful of peanut butter and they're like "This is the proper way to speak!"

Telluric Whistler
Sep 14, 2008


mawarannahr posted:

email is for old people. I read that this is what Korean teens were saying in 2007 and it’s true.

It's weird how much olds like TikTok in China. My community quarantine chat group had a mirror image conversation of a bunch of millennials shouting at their mom about fake news on social media, but it was TikTok instead of Facebook.

AnimeIsTrash posted:

Lol at a bbc moron complaining about state run media.

Editorial independence! No government interference in our reporting, but we did have to hire a bunch of Tory Oxbridge fail sons to balance our coverage lest we be threatened with defunding

Telluric Whistler
Sep 14, 2008


30.5 Days posted:

lmao having thoroughly exhausted the idea that the CCP is brutally suppressing the people of china, liberals are once again taking aim at the very concept of popular government

Brains completely broken by the idea of real adults having to make tough, unpopular choices. No pain, no gain for governance

Telluric Whistler
Sep 14, 2008



Lol the cock ups over the last few months are almost entirely down to Shanghai already being allowed it's own special government structure, so I'm sure a completely independent Shanghai that doesn't have the PLA to sort out their logistics issues or other provinces shipping in healthcare workers and volunteers is going to do just great.

Thankfully incompetent and independent Shanghai would not last long because the seas are going to rise and swallow the city.

Telluric Whistler
Sep 14, 2008


genericnick posted:

Seems kind of weird to give a definitive number without a time period. It's not like covid goes away once you get the first million deaths in.

1,000,000 is the universally agreed on number where it gets too large to comprehend and now you need to shut the gently caress up because it's both abstract and also just statistics, and anyone who does die is a anti-vaxx chud who was also probably extremely fat and not responsible.

Telluric Whistler
Sep 14, 2008


If in theory China relaxes COVID zero but doesn't go full Open Biden, they'll still get poo poo on. Hong Kong and Singapore have tried to ride the middle rail of COVID policies and people STILL complain that they are far too strict.

The only acceptable option is pretending COVID doesn't exist or that the people who get COVID are morally suspect

Telluric Whistler
Sep 14, 2008



The Wuhan lab theory is now that China is absorbing the souls of those who die of COVID and resurrecting them in a secret underground lab so they can be put to work in factories / in death camps / posting wumao stuff (choose one)

Telluric Whistler
Sep 14, 2008



Inspiring

Telluric Whistler
Sep 14, 2008


CareyB posted:

did you read the bit where he says how he clearly didn’t need that level of care?

people in “the west” changed their lives and behaviour immeasurably to help prevent the spread of Covid, I’m not sure if we need the government to start rounding up the citizenry and forcing us to live in camps or enclosures in the name of care.

I feel the mental risks associated with that are greater than just isolating like a responsible adult. but that’s just me, I don’t want to forced to live sleep and poo poo around a bunch of compete strangers when we’re all Ill.

It would be super cool if people isolated themselves when they got COVID or respected social distancing guidelines. That would be a cool world to live in.

Except that never happened

Telluric Whistler
Sep 14, 2008


R. Guyovich posted:

china went from 30,000 cases per day at the peak of the shanghai outbreak to...let's see here...34 today

The thing is, ultimately the "You can't contain COVID forever people!" are probably right but right in the same way that you will never get the piss smell out of the apartment when your roommate keeps pissing on the floor like a poorly trained dog.

Telluric Whistler
Sep 14, 2008


Antonymous posted:

what is the impact on literacy. 馬 became 马 so now I can read? it's just a different font.

Traditional characters are a form of labor theft

Telluric Whistler
Sep 14, 2008


發Q

Telluric Whistler
Sep 14, 2008


DiscountDildos posted:

The HK stuff and the way US media covered and politicians talked about it was a mindfuck when I found out that actually the HK cops hadn't killed anybody, despite all the noise about the BRUTAL, INHUMANE CRACKDOWN. I remember one day there was a post at the top of reddit of some graffiti in HK that said (in English, of course): "who can we call when the cops are the killers?"

So I'm like "alright, how many have they killed? A couple hundred?" Cops killing civilians is so normalized here that I just assumed surely the HK police were doing it too. Nope! Not only were they not killing people but nobody, including on the protest side, was even claiming that they were. The graffiti picture was just dumbass propaganda for idiot westerners (me).



To add two cents on the photo and the bolded part of the quote:

I think there was one person shot by the police, don't think he died. It was a pretty typical police shooting like you'd see in the US where the cop says "Good shoot I was going to imminently die" even though the video doesn't tell that story. There was also at least one person who lost their eye, which is why LiPig and other protest mascots had eye patches for a minute there.

Police were generally using the full playbook of non lethal force, though. Water cannons, beanbag / rubber bullets in more violent confrontations, and pretty much guaranteed tear gas at any demonstration of >100 folks (including hitting journalists, though oftentimes the journos were posted up on flyways / elevated pavement above the crowds).

However, protestors - at least within the groups I was around - did circulate stories about police murdering people. A young girl went missing during the protests and I believe was found in the harbor, and people pointed to the police doing this (with a lot of insinuations of sexual assault). Someone fell off a parking garage after police chased them into it. Then there were the unsubstantiated, pure rumor about bodies mysteriously dropping off buildings and dismembered corpses and blacked out train cars taking protestors to secret prison sites. I believe some or all of these circulated through Reddit, as well, because there were a ton of HK Reddit commenters who were less than reliable.

Having been in HK through the protests and actually engaging in them at various points (kind of became disillusioned when the "President Trump save us!" and anti-Chinese parts of the protest ramped up), it was definitely a scary situation and probably for many protestors the first time they'd seen the police deployed like this - 2014 saw police and tear gas and such but it wasn't at militarized / riot gear filled. I think this amplified a lot of people's perception of the violence and probably led to the amplified message of "cops are murderers" and stuff (HK protests also did some cribbing of slogans from early BLM / Ferguson protests). There was also some cargo culting of Tiananmen stuff - like the Liberty/Democracy goddess sculpture that was dragged around Tamar park and eventually up Lion Rock.

That all said, even in the midst of it, it was really hard to figure out what was real and what was fake. Everyone talked about an underground organized resistance complete with like protestor hospitals so the police couldn't snatch you out of the wards, and there were visible protest medics and supply lines bringing stuff to the early occupation sites. The myths got amplified on Reddit and are what lives on, and I bet if you asked the average redditor or still gungho HK protestor they'd have different views on the amount of deaths vs what was actually recorded.

Definitely see the same stuff in Ukraine now, where there's verifiably XYZ things happening / deaths recorded, but then there's a bunch of stuff that seems sketchy and isn't verified but quickly gets solidified into the history of the event (Snake Island)

Telluric Whistler
Sep 14, 2008


Antonymous posted:

Crazy rich asians assumed asians means Chinese and that Singapore is an ethnically Chinese, not malay or indian, city

I didn't watch that one cause I knew it would drive me insane but the cast seems to be white people and chinese people only. like a hollywood movie would do I guess

There is one or two Indians in the movie. They are guards / servants of the rich boyfriend's family house.

I think Ken Jeong and Henry Golding the only non-Chinese member of the main cast.

It's a pretty unremarkable film and still has some of the "white gaze" mentioned about Dead Pigs / The Farewell, where a story about old money thinking the commoner girlfriend isn't good enough to join the family is framed around filial piety or something.

Also Nick is a mamas boy himbo and she should have dumped him for that alone.

Telluric Whistler
Sep 14, 2008


Antonymous posted:

Joy Luck Club still holds supremacy

I recently reread this and can say the is false. Still a lot of the same issues as EEAAO or The Farewell but more "gently caress you mom" Gen X vibes than "I had a bad relationship with my mom and it's because generational trauma" Millennial vibes.

Telluric Whistler
Sep 14, 2008


Stringent posted:

when did the english monarchy become a symbol of democracy, did i miss a meeting or something?

England made Hong Kong prosperous by giving them FIRE industries, and being rich is very democratic. Why England nobly placed many banks in Hong Kong remains a mystery, but it was probably because Liz loved them like all subjects. Why are people mad about colonialism?

Telluric Whistler
Sep 14, 2008


fart simpson posted:

they say they’re spending about $3.50 on each test, and they batch 10 people per test in the normal case. so it’s cheap enough that places like shenzhen can afford to do it pretty much indefinitely

Yep it's incredibly cheap when done in this manner and, for the western lib skeptical about the long term viability - it CREATES JOBS, GOOD JOBS.

Telluric Whistler
Sep 14, 2008



HOODAT!? HOOKIEN!? WEDAT!! WEKIEN!!

Telluric Whistler
Sep 14, 2008


With the current 0+3 I think they also will let you bugger off before the quarantine period is ended. They don't even keep you in the hotel during the 3 day period, you can go out and poo poo.

When I did Return2HK from the mainland there was a 0 hotel + 14 self monitored and I left on day 7 for the UK with no problem.

Telluric Whistler
Sep 14, 2008


Some Guy TT posted:

will they be giving me covid tests the whole time im there because since i got hosed by the airline now i need to get my green code again and that bullshit on its own was like half the cost of the flight

https://www.coronavirus.gov.hk/eng/inbound-travel.html

You shouldn't need PCRs for green code entry now, just RAT and vaccination record. PCR tests are done by the government for free at testing centers, just have to sign up via the web and show a text message or screenshot of the booking number. Ideally you need an HK number but that can be arranged when you arrive.

To your other question, I think you can stay in any hotel or home stay now. If your final destination is the mainland, I'd check if you even need to stay for the 0+3 "self monitored quarantine" - typically they only required travelers to stay for the mandatory quarantine before.

indigi posted:

why are they blowing them up

Some of those are development projects that didn't get completed or were abandoned or whatever. Developers running off (often to Taiwan lol) with money was a thing during the 00s and 10s, and usually that leads to a prolonged legal dispute and by the time it's over the buildings aren't structurally sound because it's all been exposed to the elements - or may just be poo poo build quality from the beginning.

Also the previous joke about building and blowing up construction over and over, China doing keynesianism --- western neolibs RAGE


Renault was doing a bunch of production for their new car model in Russia, I wonder if they're gonna collapse further?




Antonymous posted:

I saw a page that said 北大 did a study this year and found they needed to overhaul the biodiversity and so now they are going to do just that, the end goal of the project is 2050 and no country has ever attempted this kind of ecological management before so they're literally writing the book on it as they go, and obviously want it to succeed.

The western article makes it sound like a potemkin forest rather than an ongoing effort that will take generations

Sounds like China is not believing in science!

Telluric Whistler
Sep 14, 2008


Forceholy posted:

https://twitter.com/LiYuan6/status/1580479752715976704?s=19

Apparently, this is making the rounds on Social Media. I doubt the CCP is gonna risk getting bodied, only to be told by western media, "See? We told you Zero COVID doesn't work."

drat its crazy you can click on this link and see a man burn hisself to death in open air where his body is incinerated to a point that his bones are ashes basically. its very risky for the helicopter flying democracy lover because nobody else will discuss this pro democracy suicide. so glad we have resistance against COVNAZIS.

https://twitter.com/songpinganq/status/1580523978384642051?s=20&t=oO0fxR_6_lKck5H0BuBYVw

crazy, drat

Telluric Whistler has issued a correction as of 19:07 on Oct 13, 2022

Telluric Whistler
Sep 14, 2008


Some Guy TT posted:

so anyway im in quarantine now and im wondering if theres any way to get a chinese sim card and phone number while im stuck here ill probably need a whole new phone too while im at it since i cant open this one and replace the card

also will having a chinese phone number get rid of that stupid get a friend to invite you requirement for wechat thats never worked any time ive tried to get someone to help me with it im not sure how or whether any of this will work when all i have is a visa and not a residence card the police held me at the airport for like an hour because i didnt have a contact person and im still mad my school didnt mention anything about my needing one of those

Presumably you're in China quarantine. Unless you picked up a prepaid or dual number SIM in HK, you might have to wait until you're out and visit any of the major telcos to buy a new SIM. This is because they usually require an ID/passport to get your SIM. You can also pick up a cheap burner at these places, and although there's cheaper options it'll mean going to another shop.

Another option would be contacting the school to see if they can courier you a SIM+burner in quarantine. Most hotels allow delivery, but whether the school can arrange the SIM is another question.

With a Chinese number you can sign up for WeChat but you'll eventually need to add ID verification and stuff.

Once you have the set up, I hope you have a working US credit card so you can set up an Alipay tourist pass and load it with some RMB. Almost everything gets done cashless these days. The tourist pass is good for 30 days which would be enough for you to get your residence permit (if you're on a work visa?) and then you can set up a local bank account and link it to WeChat/Alipay.

Make sure you're getting monthly pay slips with the tax paid listed on them, or that the HR keeps those records in an easy to access place. If you ever want to convert RMB to foreign currency, you'll need those records because they basically need to do the matching of your take-home pay against the currency conversion.

Telluric Whistler
Sep 14, 2008


fart simpson posted:

i dont think you need to keep paper records for this. you can just go to the tax office and request a copy of their records, it takes like 10 minutes and it's free

Yeah, my impressions may be due to a weird tax situation with my company and the Shanghai lockdowns around that time.

Telluric Whistler
Sep 14, 2008


PhilippAchtel posted:

Yeah, there's definitely a racial undertone which the press will never explore because PMJT wears hip socks and has women in his cabinet!

It's incredibly insulting because if a Western leader came up to Xi and starts poking his chest and talking about provocation it'd be declared "Based" or whatever. Xi is pretty much following the western professional behaviors guidebook - even down to his request (don't leak our private discussions) - but still getting talked down to.

Telluric Whistler
Sep 14, 2008


The funniest part of the coverage of the protests in China (including the bank one a few months back) is how many western folks look at it and just knee jerk "All of those people are dead and disappeared to reeducation camps now." People are just absolutely insane re: China these days

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Telluric Whistler
Sep 14, 2008


Best Friends posted:

it’s a brutal, totalitarian society that also is too weak and soft to accept that they should let millions die to maintain our (their) supply chain.

Seriously you can show them the videos from western journalists of the Shanghai protest and the very minimal clashes or arrests and it's like it doesn't register. There is some nefarious secret police that will disappear all of them in a way that nobody will ever notice. All said with the certainty of a gang stalking victim or crisis actor truther.

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