[seanmcdirmid]

As an American Gen X, I don’t think very exciting things happened in our youth. We were kind of rich, kind of broke, we had recessions but not upheaval, not hardship, not a society that was more similar to North Korea is today liberalizing at a rapid clip. I could be romanticizing it as an outsider, but I think Chinese Gen Xers have much better stories to tell than we do.

[the_af]

From someone neither from the US nor from China, you sure did your share of weird things too. So I think that yes, you are romanticizing it as an outsider.

Almost all of the stories we get told in the West are from the US perspective, so there's that: anything from China feels fresh in comparison.

[seanmcdirmid]

As an American, the US perspective is pretty dominate in the US. But still, I never went through a protest that ended in a massacre before, I never had to apply for travel permits to leave my town, nor did I need an exit permit to travel abroad. My first trip to China was in 1999 and things were pretty trippy even that late in their development.

The US...what sort of stories do you get told? Are they experiences that Gen X had in general, or just outliers that perhaps were glamorized by Hollywood? Let me tell you, we really didn't have much going on in general.

[the_af]

> But still, I never went through a protest that ended in a massacre before

Yet these happened in the US. Bizarre and secret government projects also happened. Executions also happened.

That you didn't witness them doesn't mean much. I'm sure most Gen X Chinese, as you call them, had pretty uneventful lives without any massacres either. I do think this is a case of laser-focusing on those who had more "interesting" lives, much like focusing on US antiwar activist who got shot or imprisoned during Vietnam war protests, or KKK activity: interesting, but surely not the norm.

> I never had to apply for travel permits to leave my town, nor did I need an exit permit to travel abroad.

Doesn't seem too exciting to me. It does reinforce the narrative that China = bad, US = good (though this is harder to believe in the Trump era). But it's not something particularly interesting to read about, plus every HN reader "knows" this is life in China, they are authoritarian, etc etc.

[seanmcdirmid]

> Yet these happened in the US. Bizarre and secret government projects also happened. Executions also happened.

Are you confusing GenX with Baby Boomers?

> I'm sure most Gen X Chinese, as you call them, had pretty uneventful lives without any massacres either.

Most? Maybe, I've never met one that hasn't though. So maybe the selection of people I meet is biased?

> It does reinforce the narrative that China = bad, US = good (though this is harder to believe in the Trump era).

Something that was true pre-1995 hardly says anything about China today. Stop reading into supposed western bias where there is none. You would never compare China to North Korea today, but 30 years ago there were some remaining resemblances that quickly dissipated as China hit 2000.

> plus every HN reader "knows" this is life in China, they are authoritarian, etc etc.

Again, you are just projecting some sort of insecurity with this statement.

[the_af]

> Are you confusing GenX with Baby Boomers?

Maybe it was Baby Boomers, indeed.

> Most? Maybe, I've never met one that hasn't though

I'm sure you acknowledge you're not an expert on general Chinese experience. You were an expat, surely while your first-hand experience was valuable it was also heavily limited to what a Westerner in China would see and be told?

> Something that was true pre-1995 hardly says anything about China today.

"Hardly says anything" is a bonkers statement. The recent past of any country definitely says something about its present. We agree China 30 years ago was different from China today, but what does it have to do with anything?

Do you disagree there's a strong anti-China bias on HN? (Whether justified or not).

> Again, you are just projecting some sort of insecurity with this statement.

Insecurity? I think it's an accurate assessment of groupthink about China here. I may have misinterpreted what you were trying to say though, in which case I apologize.