[another_story]

Ahh yes, China, with its brutal Darwinian rush hour on the metro. The experience of needing to shove aside a 70 year old women with her grocery trolley who doesn't understand you need to wait until people get off before you get on.

That affordable downtown housing which is on par with costs in Manhattan, where you'll hear someone renovating until 9pm every night and smell the sewage gas wafting from bathroom drains because what's a u-trap and inadequate underlying infrastructure.

Agreement between citizens that if they can cheat the laowai, or any mark really, or cut someone's line then they will.

Try living there for a bit. It's nice enough if you don't mind seeing the sun a few weeks a year through the smog.

China is actually fun to live in, but it's not a good place to live if you value your health, physical or mental. At least not the cities.

[winrid]

The bathroom drain thing is so true. I documented that in a bunch of cities all the way from Xinjiang to Beijing. I don't get why they don't install u-traps. There were a couple of my hotels that had them, but most did not. This includes someone's home I stayed in.

When I asked a local about it they got very angry, like I was insulting them. The need to save face in China is real. But I get it, "who is this American who thinks they can tell us how to do things?"

I didn't find the smog to be bad everywhere, though. Beijing was pretty bad in the morning/early afternoon. But from what I remember Chengdu was nice smog/weather wise.

[alwayslikethis]

They sell fake pregnancy pillows in China to put in your belly to get people to give you a seat on the metro. Of course that doesn't really work as soon as people knew about it.