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Mind you, the abstract question of "Who's better at fighting a war" is a bit meaningless anyways. It's probably better to ask "Can they fight the kind of wars they want to fight and achieve the political goals they want to achieve?" and if you want to know that you first need to know what kind of wars they want to fight and who they expect to fight against and what they hope to achieve, all of which are somewhat tricky questions to ask of the Chinese government. I've a vague understanding that China has invested in and is probably pretty good at area denial and keeping the US Navy from, say, bombing Beijing and landing Marines in Shanghai, but they don't necessarily have a lot of force projection capabilities beyond who they border and probably couldn't pull off, say, invading Iraq for whatever reason right now, nor have they any chance of invading the US if for whatever insane reason they thought that was a good idea. But they can probably swing a big enough stick to intimidate, say, Vietnam right now while glaring at the US and forcing them to think really carefully about how far the US wants to risk carrier groups for the sake of Vietnam. That's what it really comes down to, I think, the Chinese military isn't really intended to actually fight a war, just to create pressure to lean on neighbors so they can get what they want. For those purposes being big and scary and reasonably modernized and having long-range anti-ship missiles to keep the USN at bay is all you need to bully regional Asian powers. India would probably present an interesting challenge as being large enough to potentially stand up against China one on one without relying on American support, but the front lines would be over some of the most miserable fighting terrain in the world and I can't think either China or India would be super eager to find out how they'd fare in a real war. This is all leaving aside cyberwarfare mind you, which I don't think anyone really knows about right now without multiple levels of security clearance, and even then there's a lot of guesswork about how effective it'd be, what can be accomplished, and who's better and more capable at doing what, etc. I'd have to think that China would be very interested in investing in cyberwarfare to try and shut down the technologically-reliant US military, but it's anyone's guess how good they are at it and how much of an effect they'd have if it came down to a real shooting war, or indeed how you even quantify cyberwarfare capabilities - it's not like carrier groups you can point at to say "Oh yeah, we have five carriers to your two, boo, go home." Edit: In short, China can't do the sort of things the US military can do, but that's because the US acts as the world police and China has no interest in that role. You're not going to see Chinese battlefleets lurking in the English channel talking about what a nice place you got here and how it'd be a shame if something happened to it any time soon. Tomn fucked around with this message at 19:44 on Jun 7, 2021 |
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Jun 7, 2021 19:34
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Gaius Marius posted:[7.9.8] All the wealth of Egypt and Cyrene, which I won without a fight, are now yours, Coele Syria, Palestine and Mesopotamia are your possession, Babylonia and Bactria and Elam belong to you, you own the wealth of Lydia, the treasures of Persia, the riches of India, and the outer ocean. You are satraps, you are generals, you are captains. As for me, what do I have left from all these labors? Merely this purple cloak and a diadem." I wonder what his footsoldiers made of that one.
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Jun 8, 2021 19:30
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Fojar38 posted:Why would anyone who doesn't have family there visit the PRC instead of Taiwan They were a big fan of Water Margin and really, really wanted to see Liangshan Marsh?
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Jun 10, 2021 20:40
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Grand Fromage posted:It's not that people aren't kind and friendly, it's that the expectations of what "service" entails are so different. In China the server comes when you sit down to take your order, brings the food, and otherwise fucks off unless you shout for them. In the US that's considered rude and people (for some loving reason I cannot comprehend) want the server to fake smile and come over every 45 seconds interrupting your meal to "check in" and poo poo. At a restaurant that's Chinese staffed and catering to a mostly Chinese audience, they aren't going to do that poo poo and then they get negative reviews for bad service. I grew up in international schools in the Sinosphere and when I visited the West Coast as an adult the main thing that struck me was how everybody wanted to have a dang conversation even if you're just grabbing something at a convenience store. Chinese service is a lot more "Wham bam thank you mam, next" for the most part. Unless you're an older person asking if the server came from Fujian or Taiwan or Hunan or whatever and then comparing family histories for a few minutes.
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Dec 7, 2021 12:55
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BrigadierSensible posted:Not to start the whole "tipping" derail. But I have found what you describe to be an American phenomenon. To be honest, the places I went to weren't even performatively polite I thought - it was more that even at checkout in a store people tried to make jokes or comment on your purchases or otherwise had something like a normal, albeit short conversation which was super rare in China. The exception was restaurants where servers always made sure to come by and "check that everything was all right" while you had your mouth full, THAT was excessive. Go away, I'm eating, it's fine, I'll say something if I need something. I've been told the US has its own regional differences though - apparently New England tends more towards silent service as well?
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Dec 8, 2021 16:58
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Seth Pecksniff posted:uh, doesn't sound like that one child policy is working out too well!! Ah, yes, the real problem with the 4-2-1 system was that we were missing a 3. Just what the 1 needed!
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Dec 11, 2021 22:40
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So I was catching up on old posts in the "Ask/Tell Milhist" thread, and came across someone who'd gotten their hands on an Taiwanese "History of the Sino-Japanese War" (1st edition 1971) and posted some excerpts. Here's a few bits whose tone might sound familiar:Jobbo_Fett posted:With the outbreak of full-scale war in 1937, our country adopted the strategy of attrition which employed guerilla operations to supplement regular operations as an important means to tie down and wear out the enemy and control the occupied area so as to prevent it from being exploited by the enemy and the puppet regime. Accordingly guerilla warfare manuals were published and guerilla cadres trained. Elements of regular force and local militia were dispatched to conduct guerilla operations. Officials in the battlefield were directed to lead the local forces against the enemy and in self-defense and not to leave their stations at will. Guided by this correct policy, the various war areas were able to control the vast areas behind the enemy lines, lead the people, and tie down and wear out the enemy so to achieve glorious combat results. Had the Chinese Communists not taken advantage of this opportunity to swallow local forces and attack guerilla forces, the effectiveness of our guerilla warfare would have been much greater and victory expedited. An account of guerilla operations in the various war areas during the first phase of the War of Resistance is stated as follows Jobbo_Fett posted:In the spring of 1938, our Government reorganized 5,000 Chinese Communist remnants in Kiangsi, Fukien and the border area of Hupei and Anhwei into the New 4th Corps which commanded 4 columns. Subordinated to the 3rd War Area, it was stationed in Tung-ling, Fan-chang, Nan-ling and Ching Hsien in southern Anhwei. IT was directed to conduct guerilla operations in Kiangsu and Anhwei south of the Yangtze River. In order to facilitate its operations, the Government designated the area between Tung-ling and Fan-chang for it to garrison. Yet it made use of the slogan of "national united front against Japan" by deceiving youts, expanding its organizations, threatening the able-bodied males and developing rebellious forces. It scored no achievement insofar as operations against the Japanese were concerned. There's other bits like that throughout the excerpts, lengthy digs about how the Communists were useless, weak, and actively counter-productive to the war effort, or constant attempts to spin the war as being less than the omnishambles it was for the KMT (though in fairness it's China in the '30s, everything is an omnishambles, that's what happens when you have a decades long period of division and on-and-off civil war.) It's a fun reminder that while the Chinese Communist Party's messaging is blunt, heavy-handed and difficult to believe, this is less an artifact of it being the Chinese Communist Party and more it being just Chinese. Chinese historiography straight through the entire imperial period has always tended strongly towards a "The good people were so so so so good, and the bad people were so so so so bad" approach to rhetoric, and when government propagandists need to turn a phrase that's the playbook they're reaching for.
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Dec 21, 2021 00:14
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Grand Fromage posted:This is accurate, though it was smart strategy rather than being worthless. Let the Japanese and Nationalists bleed each other white while we hide and preserve our strength, then sweep in and take over after. There's a quote I don't have but once Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, Mao was just like oh lol Japan's hosed, the Americans are going to obliterate them, so time to hide and we'll be in a great position to take over after the war. Which worked exactly as planned. Oh, sure. I just feel that describing this as "deceiving youths, expanding its organizations, threatening the able-bodied males and developing rebellious forces" for instance is a particularly Chinese way to put it. Especially the bit about deceiving youths, that feels like a curiously popular phrase.
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Dec 21, 2021 00:46
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Grand Fromage posted:Developing rebellious forces sounds like modern Party rhetoric too. Sort of an aside, I'm not really the best person to talk about this, but from my own limited Chinese pop culture understanding one thing I always thought interesting was that I got the impression that "rebels" is a word that has some very different connotations in Chinese than it does in English. Especially with Americans "rebels" might give some idea of plucky underdogs, possible freedom fighters, etc., and in general people who are specifically devoted to overthrowing their government but in Chinese "rebels" always feels tinged with hints of moral depravity, like the act of rebellion is in and of itself a great sin, and it can refer to anyone that is in any way not quite obeying the will of the central government whether that means banditry, refusal to pay taxes, unwillingness (or possibly inability) to levy troops or labor forces, or actual outright attempts to establish an opposing dynasty.
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Dec 21, 2021 01:09
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Don Gato posted:this isn't really that true though. Even in Confucian thought, there's a right to rebel against an unjust government because it is acting directly in contrast to the will of heaven. Like a stock character for a drama is the man who is fighting against the cruel and corrupt magistrate/ruler, which isn't that far off from how Americans would see rebels. Hell, one of Communist China's most prominent animated movies is about Sun Wukong loving poo poo up in heaven and becoming quintuple immortal despite how literally everyone in power says he's going against the will of heaven and the Jade Emperor sends all his armies to stop Sun Wukong. I think you should read more Chinese fiction and not rely on third hand anecdotes, even with the communist party clamping down on pop culture it is still varied, admittedly less so than before. Well, yes, I HAVE read Chinese fiction - including Outlaws of the Marsh, in which "rebel," "bandit" and "criminal" are practically synonymous terms, and Romance of the Three Kingdoms where accusing people of rebellion in tones of condemnation isn't exactly uncommon, especially when dealing with the Yellow Turbans. Even in Journey to the West, Sun Wukong's behavior is framed as an act of rebellion and loudly condemned and while hilarious is ultimately suppressed by the Buddha and imprisoned for hundreds of years and his later behavior after release is further tempered with that headband of his keeping him on the straight and narrow under pain of pain. And while admittedly it's schlocky pop culture, xianxia stories are interesting to me because there's often an undertone of rebellion against heaven and the powers that be (wonder what the censors make of that), but anyone who rebels against the main character and their affiliates are usually treated as utter scum with wholly selfish motives undeserving of mercy (again, part of this is schlocky pop culture writing being very black and white about who's good and who's bad but still). It's true that heroic characters exist who oppose the powers that be in drama, but the sense I get is that "rebel" is a label they need to overcome with their virtue, as opposed to in American fiction where "rebel" does half the carrying work of conveying that virtue in and of itself, if that makes sense. I.E. "He's such a good guy it's OK for him to rebel," vs "Well if he's a rebel he's probably a good guy already." That being said... Paper Lion posted:it ties back to the confucian underpinnings of society. the group is good, and the group thinks this way, so this is the way to think, and if you dont conform you are a rebel that is thinking bad thoughts because the group, which is good, does not think them which therefore makes those thoughts inherently bad, and if you think bad thoughts then it must mean you are bad by default for having thought them at all. its a series of logical leaps that results in the tall poppy being cut. Despite what I feel about the connotations of the word "rebel," I don't think it's safe to treat Chinese culture as a group of unthinking robots acting in accordance with the hive mind. Despite whatever cultural connotations it may have, bandits HAVE raided, people HAVE tried to evade taxes (Confucius himself having a famous anecdote about a woman whose children were eaten by tigers because she willingly moved to a place free from government tax), peasant rebellions (or noble rebellions for that matter) HAVE risen and occasionally new dynasties WERE founded from such. The central government may have tried to promote loyalty and obedience to the nation as a whole and since most of the educated class joined the government that's how the language got shaped, but family and local loyalties were always strong and always there and even if they didn't say so openly weren't always acting in lock-step with central policy, and in any event how the peasantry viewed the world was always going to be different from how a government bureaucrat viewed the world. Though even then, my father has a fun traditional joke about scholars - scholars in office would generally be Confucian, spouting Confucian values and virtues, but scholars out of office would generally be Daoist, spouting Daoist values and worldviews, with the one switching readily to the other as their situation changed.
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Dec 21, 2021 11:43
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Grand Fromage posted:Imagine you believe every antisemitic thing you've ever heard and think the Protocols of the Elders of Zion is real, but you don't have an underlying anti-Jewish sentiment and actually think it's all cool and good. Jews control all the money and secretly rule the world? Wow, they're smart, we should learn from that. It's a pretty common attitude throughout East Asia, isn't it? I know Japan brought into it to some degree.
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Jan 4, 2022 21:39
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So there's a pretty cool game on Steam called "Amazing Cultivation Simulator" which is basically Rimworld: Xianxia edition. They recently announced they were creating a sequel, and in their first dev log, translated to English, they set out some of the principles behind their design decisions:quote:We think that the theme of cultivation has some elements rooted deep in the soil of Our Chinese culture, which is the reason why this theme let us enter and let us like: This isn't quite the first time I've seen this sort of argument about the difference between Chinese and Western culture, though in the past it's a bit more grounded - "Western culture traditionally emphasizes the importance of bloodline in nobility, unlike Chinese meritocratic culture based on imperial examinations." Is this something getting taught in classrooms or something?
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Jan 6, 2022 19:19
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Phoenix claws are fantastic and I will not hear any badmouthing of them.  Also not really sure what your problem with bean curd is. It can be kinda bland, I guess - were you objecting to the lack of flavor? It's generally better I think when you soak it in something to absorb flavor, like hot pot soup or sauces or something.
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Jan 22, 2022 01:50
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mkvltra posted:I don't think I could ever do a century egg... it's an entire baby chicken just sliding down your gullet? Just... no thanks. Huh? I think you're thinking of balut, not century eggs. Century eggs are just preserved eggs.
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Jan 24, 2022 18:21
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Mongolian BBQ is pretty good and common in Taiwan. Yes, I know it has nothing to do with Mongolia and was basically a marketing gimmick. Fleta Mcgurn posted:I think part of the attitude against eating horse is that horses are such useful domesticated animals that in different times it just didn't make economic sense. Conjecture on my part there, though. I think I've heard similar reasons for why beef was shunned by a lot of Indian religions and was part of why beef wasn't super popular in China? That and the fact that China doesn't have a lot of good grazing land for large scale cattle ranches anyways.
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Jan 25, 2022 10:10
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McGavin posted:Tigers are so hard to draw that Canada didn't even bother. This is what we got for Year of the Pig though: What on earth is happening to that anatomy It's like the artist can't decide which way anything should be facing
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Feb 3, 2022 21:17
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BrigadierSensible posted:Forgive the stupid question: Zhu Bajie, which translates out to something like "Pig of the Eight Prohibitions." The other is Sha Wujing, which comes out to "Sand Aware of Purity." In both cases the first character is just "pig" and "sand," and the last two characters are some Buddhist principle or other (since they were given those names by Guanying when they agreed to become disciples of Tangzang.) So yeah, "Pigsy" and "Sandy" honestly aren't far off. (Incidentally calling someone "Zhu Bajie" is still a common way for someone to be accused of laziness, gluttony, etc.) Edit: It should be no surprise that Pigsy breaks almost every one of the Eight Prohibitions along Journey to the West. CMYK BLYAT! posted:i mean, it's consistent if the pig is facing away from the frame, head turned right, with its left hand holding the rake behind its back Ahh, the left foot was what threw me off - it looked like a right foot facing forward at first to me. Tomn fucked around with this message at 06:01 on Feb 4, 2022 |
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Feb 4, 2022 05:57
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Tupperwarez posted:I honestly forget what Wujing does, if anything. Probably just sighs and curses his fate to be bound to these lunatics. Wujing's thing is basically being the reliable, steady one who does his job, keeps on keeping on, and never freaks out or throws a hissy fit like the other two prima donnas. A fair number of times the other two will suggest "Whelp, that's it, pack it in, we're done" after Tangzang gets his rear end kidnapped AGAIN and Wujing is usually the one going "No, no, this is important guys, we gotta keep trying." He's also usually the one guarding the luggage while the other two are off swanning around being big old heroes/idiots, and being a water demon he tends to show up a lot when the monster of the week is water-based, but the story structure being what it is this usually means "Tries to lure the demon to the surface so Wukong can beat the crap out of him only for it to fail when the demon freaks out about how strong Wukong is and proceeds to never leave the water again" or else "fights the demon to a standstill but can't do anything else until Wukong figures out some cunning plan." I don't recall off the top of my head a scenario in which Wujing ever goes and solves (or for that matter causes) the problem through his own strength, he's pretty much always a supporting character. So yeah, not that surprising that it's easy to forget that he exists. I like him, though, he's kind of the pillar of the group in his own soft-spoken way.
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Feb 4, 2022 13:09
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Megillah Gorilla posted:China won gold. Canada was disqualified. I'm having some trouble tracking down exactly what happened, but apparently the Canadian DQ referred to another incident where the Canadian collided with someone from the Hungarian team. Meanwhile for this specific incident, again, I'm having trouble finding any collaborating sources but I did run into this on Reddit: quote:②It was indeed the No. 43 Chinese player Fan Kexin who hit the mark, and the mark bounced to the No. 50 player Alyson Charles in front. Fan was then brought down by Alyson who fell. Edit: The reddit source links to some Chinese video site that I think wants me to scan a QR code and download their app, and that's a nope from me. Tomn fucked around with this message at 18:50 on Feb 7, 2022 |
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Feb 7, 2022 18:47
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Horatius Bonar posted:I mean it's not like anywhere in Asia needs to import street dogs. Plenty kicking around. Gregarious is not the word I'd use for them, usually they just roam around doing important dog business but I remember having to walk by a pack that had claimed the only road home to my place out in the countryside as their territory. They'd circle around me and alone at night it was not fun. Just had to make an angry face at them and walk sideways around their side of the street. They're more like wolves, just look like Shiba/golden retriever/terrier mixes. They'd be cute if they didn't want to eat you. Back in the '60s or so my father worked as a bike delivery boy in rural Taiwan and he kinda hated the dogs. Every village had its own pack (not necessarily street dogs, could have been owned), who would chase and harry him until he left the village bounds, rinse and repeat when he got to the next village.
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Feb 8, 2022 19:50
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Vesi posted:not knowing exactly where the line goes makes it easier for the censors, if the rules are too well-defined people will end up toeing the line and making some third degree puns and expressions to get around them While true, I feel like it's also a fantastic excuse for the censors to explain why, exactly, they're goofing off at work or why exactly they haven't taken down this thing that their boss just noticed.
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Feb 12, 2022 07:30
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Woolie Wool posted:Even if he could, Xi would sooner stick his dick into a hive of murder hornets than rule the US anyway. C-SPAM are all Vichy for a regime the Chinese government themselves would never want. I'm imagining someone going into a meeting of the CCP top leadership and informing them that the US just surrendered to them and it is now a part of China for them to try and organize and pacify and maintain control. Just a whole straight day of screaming, arguing, yelling and crying.
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Feb 21, 2022 02:48
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Booty Pageant posted:nin jiom pei pa koa Oh lord, I remember that from childhood illnesses. Does it actually have any real medicinal effect beyond being a sweet placebo?
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Feb 21, 2022 09:29
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Baronjutter posted:I always thought I hated duck because I'd only have it in chinese restaurants. The bone, the overall extreme level of grease, just not very pleasant. Then I found my local thai place had a duck fried rice dish and now I love duck. Simply not having bone shards improved the experience massively. Thread has inspired me to go out and get duck for dinner tonight, and I look forward to the delicious, delicious grease.
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Feb 22, 2022 19:51
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my homie dhall posted:HK gave up on “Zero Covid” after omicron hit, wondering how long it will take for mainland to do th same. poo poo’s not great here, our lowest percentage vaccinated group is the elderly because of 中醫, it was like 30 percent last I checked for people > 60 I was able to convince my brain-wormed, "I would have voted for Trump if I was American" mother to get vaccinated by pointing out that supplies of Western vaccines in Hong Kong were use it or lose it and if she waited too long her only option would have been been Sinovac. Went from months of "I dunno, these vaccines are new and untested and possibly dangerous, I've seen a lot of stuff on FB about it" to vaccinated within a week.
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Mar 10, 2022 13:32
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Zarin posted:This got me thinking about what WOULD it look like if all that poo poo wasn't staged. Like, if anyone - Senator, House Rep, even more local stuff - just set up a booth at the State Fair or a flea market or some poo poo unannounced and just had a sign that said "Talk to me about whatever's on your mind". There's a corner in Hyde Park down in London called Speaker's Corner where anyone with a mind to do so can hop on their soap box and rant about whatever insane crap that came into their minds. According to some of the older folks I met down there used to be that politicians would sometimes head down there to say their piece, if they were willing to brave the many and regular hecklers. Apparently that doesn't happen much nowadays, though, and the place is now mostly filled with loonies of one stripe or another, American evangelists next to furiously arguing communists next to wacko conspiracy theorists. Usually not bad as a form of entertainment if you're into that sort of thing. Not quite the same thing since the focus is more on the guy making the speech than listening to people, but with how active the hecklers are any politician willing to go down there must have had great confidence in their ability to handle a crowd and give satisfactory responses to hecklers.
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Apr 8, 2022 07:24
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Mr. Nice! posted:This is my favorite Un. Everything about this photo is kinda perfect: The childlike glee on Kim's face watching "Haha tube go brrr," the dead-eyed resigned stare on the worker's face, and just how well-fed one is compared to the other.
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Apr 8, 2022 23:17
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Grand Fromage posted:My memory is it's a lube factory. Though nothing says you can't use butterscotch as lube I guess. The URL for the image link says "Kim Jong Un Lubricant Factory" so your memory is on point!
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Apr 8, 2022 23:42
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McGavin posted:Apparently CCTV displayed a map showing which countries would receive Russian territory after its collapse: This is an older map and it displays "Which country would you be closest to in Russia at any particular point," apparently. The fact that it's in English should probably have been a hint that CCTV wasn't displaying it for domestic consumption.
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May 1, 2022 19:59
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It isn't violence against women, but when I was in Shanghai I do remember seeing a bunch of guys throwing a guy out of a club in the middle of the night once, taking him out right in the middle of the street and beating the poo poo out of him there for like fifteen minutes or something before walking off back into the club. Five minutes or so later the police showed up in a single car to pick up the staggering dude and then drove off again, never entered the club or took statements or anything. Always wondered what the story was there and maybe I'm just sheltered but that's the first time I'd ever seen anything like that. It was pretty late at night without much traffic but still, this was a main street and all.
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Jun 12, 2022 12:03
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Smeef posted:I don’t think it’s just foreigners leaving HK, though. I’m not sure how easy it is to emigrate with a HK passport or BNO, but in hindsight all the articles downplaying that emigration seems suspicious to me. Plus I’m regularly surprised by Chinese acquaintances who somehow have 1+ non-PRC passports through bizarre means. On the BNO, not that easy but comparatively not that hard either. You do need to pony up a NHS surcharge to cover use of the NHS while you're in the UK (£3,120 for a single adult staying for five years) and you do need to show ability to support yourself for six months, while the process of actually filling out the forms is teeth-grindingly bureaucratic. However, having helped fill in a US immigration application as well the BNO visa application process is lightyears more streamlined and simplified and the response rate is far, far faster - if applying on the BNO visa the main thing slowing you down is the logistics of pulling up roots and settling down in the UK, not the visa application itself. The big caveat is the NHS surcharge and the need to demonstrate ability to support - if you can afford that it's a relatively streamlined immigration process, but that's kind of a load-bearing if. (Granted comparing all this to US immigration procedures isn't exactly setting the bar high but still)
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Jun 20, 2022 05:32
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Devils Affricate posted:This would have been a disaster of epic proportions if it had been full of people at the time. I guess coronavirus actually ended up saving some lives. I mean, it looks like the reason why it was out on the open ocean getting towed and thus being in a position to capsize in the first place was because the owners had to sell it after it consistently lost money due to coronavirus restrictions, otherwise it would still be sitting nice and safe in its protected harbor sooooo call it even for coronavirus?
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Jun 21, 2022 03:08
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It COULD be insurance fraud, but to be honest just looking at the drat thing it doesn't look at all designed for open waters. I'd hate to be on board that thing in anything like a seaway at all, let alone real bad weather. That's not to say it's NOT insurance fraud, but if it was I don't think they really needed to do anything more nefarious than "order it to go to sea in anything but a predicted weeks-long flat calm."
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Jun 21, 2022 04:33
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BIG FLUFFY DOG posted:if you a person on the internet can immediately see what a bad idea this was then the multitude of people with industry-specific experience could also see it and chose to ignore it for ~~ reasons~~ Well, I AM someone with industry-specific experience as it happens, albeit not usually on vessels of that size. That being said, I note that while it doesn't look like a good boat in bad weather, apparently one of the barges that made up the Floating Kingdom WAS successfully transferred from Hong Kong to Manila in the past, so it CAN be successfully towed overseas - but I imagine the big caveat is "in good weather." So again, it could have been deliberate insurance fraud by setting out at a time when the weather was known to be unstable, or it could have just been bad luck, bad planning, or desperation that led to the boat heading out at a time when the seas are choppy. Unfortunately weather prediction is still a bit of an inexact science at times and depending on how much money the ship was burning through in maintenance and harbor fees in Hong Kong they might not have been able to wait for a better weather window and decided to gamble.
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Jun 22, 2022 19:13
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Tnuctip posted:I don’t know if it’s been posted here before, but I would adore someone’s opinion on the chung Kao series of scifi books and if that corresponded well to a Chinese run future from someone that’s actually spent time there. It’s been a very, VERY long time since I read the first book in the series and the details escape me but I remember being very unimpressed, though I no longer remember why exactly. Vaguely recall a sense of “The gently caress you think China actually IS?” but again, no details remain.
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Jul 2, 2022 06:46
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Re: Chinese cultural exports, gaming seems a bit of a mixed bag - on one hand you get some pretty different and interesting indie titles (Chaos Galaxy, Sands of Salazar, and Amazing Cultivation Simulator for instance), but on the other hand you also get a ton of cheap shovelware (especially porn) titles as well as fancier games whose store page seems to think that “showcasing the 5000 years of rich Chinese culture” is more or less the only unique selling point they need. Also, even the good Chinese games tend to lean more heavily on grinding and blatant “make number bigger” style gameplay than comparable Western games, though in fairness that’s generally true of Japanese games as well, though not I think to the extent that China takes it.
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Jul 12, 2022 11:13
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Vegetable posted:Isn’t Chinese Chess from China? They might be thinking of Chinese Checkers, which was German and had nothing to do with China beyond an American marketer going "Hey, what could make this sound more exotic?"
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Aug 13, 2022 16:28
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Ups_rail posted:I dont go into cspam. Because America = bad, therefore anyone opposing America = anti-imperialist hero, basically. Same reason why they insist that China is Communist despite it really not being that, or how in some cases "Trump is actually a secret socialist and any day now you'll see him swing to the left after having rode to power on a populist wave and outflanked the liberals!"
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Sep 11, 2022 14:18
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On the other hand, the Chinese going big on nuclear reactors only to have it gently caress up spectacularly due to shoddy construction would be the last thing nuclear power needed for its PR image, no matter how many times you say "It's because the Chinese contractors were corrupt and incompetent!"
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Sep 12, 2022 19:29
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| # ¿ May 14, 2024 10:38 |
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Xakura posted:Isn't that just a motorway toll booth? I've been through a bunch in France that would look identical if the traffic got backed up. Isn't the issue less the fact that there's a lot of cars and more that they all funnel down into a tiny narrow bottleneck near the top of the picture?
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Sep 19, 2022 17:09
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