9 Comments
User's avatar
Saysar's avatar

Amazing work brother.

Expand full comment
Una Wang's avatar

Wow, thank you for writing such a nice piece. As a Beijinger, I'm touched. It made me homesick. This is exactly the kind of conversation needed to happen if we are to progress as a whole. Mutual understanding, respect, and conversation are the keys. I'm crossing my fingers for that day.

Expand full comment
pourteaux's avatar

Thank you for the thoughtful comment and glad to hear it resonated with you! Hope that interpersonal connection can be the basis for something more

Expand full comment
Una Wang's avatar

open to chat n exchange ideas :)

Expand full comment
rui's avatar

Really enjoyed this! I totally relate to everything that you said, I'm currently posting this from a VPN on a small village in the South of China where no one speaks English and my WeChat Pay doesn't work, but still people are friendly and we somehow manage to communicate!

Expand full comment
pourteaux's avatar

Haha sounds like we had very similar experiences!

Expand full comment
joh55nn's avatar

Well said and agreed

Expand full comment
dbj's avatar

Enjoyed it, and feel similarly. Hopefully commonsense humanity eventually wins out over the global big dick competition.

Expand full comment
Chinese History Expert's avatar

I don't really see how even friendships can be maintained very easily anymore. If you made a friend in China, how would you be able to keep in contact with them? VPNs are almost always getting banned, the international internet and all its social media is blocked and inaccessible, travel is curtailed. Like you said, it's nearly impossible to travel in China now because you can't even do things like pay for food without downloading complex apps in foreign languages and connecting it to a Chinese bank account that you don't even have. Extremely discouraging situation.

Expand full comment