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This is my first post that’s not in Culture War or Friday megathreads because I’m honestly not sure that it fits into either thread. It touches on certain Culture War themes (China, industrial decay, and Chinese culture) but it’s much more personal. This is just going to be a personal story of the development, or lack thereof, of my hometown in AnShan, China. It’s probably not going to be well written, or even 100% factual, but it’s going to be true. I’m writing this partly to order my own thoughts on the slow death of my hometown, and partly to contrast with some of the current online sentiments regarding Chinese development. Also, I love to show off some of the interesting parts of North Eastern Chinese culture. A lot of this story may sound similar, especially if you have experience regarding Rust Belt decline but with all things Chinese, it’s got that Chinese twist.
I’m writing this right now in the middle of my visit to my hometown of AnShan, China, though I will finish it when I’m back in America. Located in LiaoNing province, AnShan is one of the southern cities of the North East region of China (Better known as Manchuria abroad, but don’t use that name in China or to Chinese people). At one time, AnShan was considered one of the cities of the Chinese Rust belt. As with many cities in the North Eastern provinces, the main industries in AnShan are steel making, mining, tourism, and farming. AnSteel (鞍钢), named after the city, was at one point (and maybe still is) an important pillar of industry to the whole region, and maybe even the whole of China. Every single one of my grandparents worked at and retired from AnSteel, and they are still receiving their pensions, well into their 80s. Once one of the Crown Jewels of industry in Manchuria, AnSteel has seen better days. Due to increased competition, global trends, and plain old corruption, AnSteel has seen a steady decline over the years. Even 10 years ago, during the housing boom, AnSteel was a functional and operational company, if not a thriving one. Concrete Communist blocks need steel rebar in order to not fall over, after all. But now, even housing has slowed down, sending a formerly floundering company into essentially a coma. As everyone knows, when the major industry in your city goes bust, things start to go wrong. Now downgraded to 4th tier city (from 3rd tier), AnShan is essentially in a death spiral. For more on the Chinese city tier system, take a look at the Wikipedia page.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_city_tier_system
Note that AnShan is still listed as 3rd tier on the page itself. In fact the picture used for AnShan is a pretty iconic part of the city, if you've ever been there.
Here is a picture of the AnSteel museum. It’d be like having a Ford museum in Detroit or an Apple museum in Cupertino. It was pretty fun to visit to be honest.
To say that the decay started with the recent failure of the Chinese housing market is inaccurate. As I’ve mentioned before, the city, and really the region as a whole, has been on a downturn. Historically, Manchuria has always been a resource rich and fertile region. It’s also one of the reasons that it was fought over so often. These resources carried the whole of the Manchuria region to great status after the devastation of WWII and the Chinese Civil War. Over the course of the 20th century, due to many factors, the formerly booming industrial base of China has declined and now is seemingly on its deathbed.
TieDong (East of the train tracks if the meaning is translated literally) used to be the nicer part of town when I was a kid. It seemed that every year there would be new apartments popping up or being built. Here I’ll explain a little bit about how housing works in China. The vast majority of housing in a city is contained in those apartment blocks that you’ll see online. The difference is that some of these apartment blocks are located in gated communities that have their own maintenance and security. Maintenance is usually pretty quick, especially when a community first gets built and lived in. Security is usually pretty lax, with most places letting in everyone except obvious vagrants.
I will be adding some pictures from here on out. I know that a lot of these pictures are not “good” or “beautiful” but then again, I never claimed to be a photographer. There will be NSFW pictures (not sexual, just of some strangeness that happens in China) so be forewarned.
Here is a community that was new around 2008. My grandparents actually used to live here.
As you might be able to tell, it has seen better days. This is the building that used to house the maintenance of the community.
As you can see, it’s completely barren. In fact, the building itself is in miserable shape.
On the right side of this picture, you can see that there are literally holes in the building. From the look of the maintenance building, you might be able to tell that it was inspired by a European style. Many things in the community were inspired by European aesthetics.
Though the management of the community has been defunct for a long while, people still live in the community itself. The inside of the community has seen much better days. Because the maintenance crew was responsible for cleaning everything, trash has begun to pile up at the bottom of the communist blocks that everyone lives in.
There was actually a car that was abandoned in the community. I was even surprised when I saw this.
It seems that someone has started living in the concrete maze that used to be here. I remember playing hide and seek with my cousin here when my grandparents still lived here.
There used to be water and koi fish in this section. This is all open and I used to play here and feed the fish when I was younger. Now it’s all dry. The fixtures that were in the water are still there which makes everything seem even more sad to me.
In fact, one of the gates that used to house the security for the community has been abandoned and the building has turned into a burger spot. Not even a real burger spot because I don’t think they even make hamburgers in the American sense. I think it’s just called a burger spot and makes Chinese food.
Here is the abandoned shell of the police station that used to be in the community. It was actually abandoned quite recently, but it was a long time coming. The city obviously doesn’t lack police presence, so it may have simply been a consolidation. The image, however, was quite striking to me when I came upon it.
With all of that being said, however, there were still parents playing with their kids here. I saw multiple families playing in the public area. Obviously, I didn’t take pictures of random families playing in public. It seems to me that in a hypothetically similar community in an American city like Philadelphia, there might not be so many families playing outside.
To be honest, without seeing how things used to be, it’d be easy to think that things were always like this, especially in a small city like AnShan. The city was already slow in terms of development, and with the slowing of the Chinese economy, development has ground to a halt. Compared to the last time I was here ~2 years ago, barely anything has changed.
Even the better parts of town are not doing as well as they used to be. In AnShan, there’s a part of town called 站前. Translated literally it’s called “Front of the Station.” It’s in front of the train station that is still one of the major transportation hubs of the city. The airport in the city is actually mainly for military use and commercial flights only go to BeiJing or ShangHai. Nowadays, the high speed rail system is what most people use to travel far distances. Driving is fine for nearby cities, but if you wanted to go cross country, you’d generally go on rail. When I first left China, I went to BeiJing by train before flying to America. Not high speed rail, train. I digress. The “Front of the Station” area is where most of the nice things are. Shopping, food, and general merriment. However, even the nicer part of town has become run down.
Here is a picture of a small part of the area.
This used to be a fairly successful mall. On the side of the building, you can still see some of the billboards. Now, it seems that the only remaining shop is Mcdonalds.
This used to be the biggest and nicest mall in the city. During my parents’ day, it was legitimately one of the largest in the area. Nowadays it’s quite run down, but still operational. Even when I talk with my family about it, they tell me about how sad it’s become. More on this mall in the slice of life section.
This is “Computer City.” Or used to be. The sign on top still says “Computer City,” but you can see how worn down it is. It used to be where all of the computer, and later cell phone, vendors and repairers opened their shops. I remember personally coming here with my grandparents when they got their computer and later, cell phones. If you look at the first floor now, that store now sells snacks. I’m not even kidding. There are still smaller computer or electronics vendors on the side, but you can see how the entire building is run down.
This is the unsuccessful half of a successful mall. The mall is called NewMart, and it would have been new about 13 years ago. This mall contains many international brands and is one of the fancier malls in the city. Even though the mall is successful overall, there is still a portion of it that was abandoned.
Here is something that might be interesting. I thought I’d put this in the slice of life section, but it probably fits better here. Here, you’ll see the marriage market in the local park. People, or even people’s parents paste their stats and what they’re looking for here. In fact, you can even read some of these in the pictures. One of these reads:
Male, never married, born in ‘87, Zodiac sign: Rabbit, 1.85 meters tall, college graduate, works in environmental protection, monthly salary 5000 Yuan (736 Dollars), owns car and house, parents healthy and retired, birth family (meaning non-adapted), looking for wife. Parents telephone: telephone number
I’ve written all of the above for multiple reasons. Part of the reason is to order my own internal thoughts. Another part is to contrast what I experienced in China with what I see in America. Because although my home city is in a sorry state, with a stalled economy and shrinking population, most people I met were happy, or at least content. Compare the similar situations between AnShan and Detroit. Or AnShan and Philadelphia. Even with a denuded industrial base, AnShan is still a functional city. To my mind, there are several reasons for this:
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The police state: It’s no secret to everyone in China that they are under almost constant surveillance. In fact, it’s even expected. For all of its negatives, however, the surveillance state does provide security, at least from most common crimes. Thievery and robbery have been generally eliminated. I can still remember when I first came to America where you could leave your wallet or cell phone at your table in a restaurant, and it was considered a surprise if it got taken. In China, I still remember when you were scared of pickpockets. Now, the sentiment seems to be completely reversed. Is that a good trade for constant surveillance? I can’t say.
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Education: People in general in China have had an abysmal reputation overseas due to their horrible customs. It wasn’t too long ago that Chinese tourists had the worst reputation. Shit and piss in public. Being obnoxiously loud. Complete lack of control over their children. I’m thankful every day that global attention has been turned toward Indians. That being said, everything has gotten much better within the last generation. Unlike San Francisco, I did not have to dodge feces a single time out on the street. People stopped throwing trash randomly on the ground for the most part. And in fact, contrary to what you’d find in America, the bigger the city was, the cleaner everything was. I chalk this up to the concerted effort that the Chinese government has made in public education and the fact that the younger generation is now more cosmopolitan.
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Lack of drugs: It’s not a secret that many East and South East Asian countries are vehemently anti-drug. China even has a historical reason. A large cause of the Century of Humiliation, at least according to the Chinese themselves, was due to Opium addiction in the general public. This means that any form of drug possession, outside of tobacco and alcohol, is punished extremely harshly. You are not going to be seeing Fent Zombies anywhere. Quick personal rant. California is trying everything within its power to discourage smoking outside of banning tobacco altogether. In fact, a short while ago, flavored tobacco products became illegal. That means that my beloved Autumn Evening is banned in California, but weed is so legal in San Francisco that I can’t walk three blocks without smelling it.
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General attitude: It seems to me from speaking to some of the people in China, that generally people are much more optimistic in China than in America. In America, there seems to be a feeling of general hopelessness that isn’t present in China. People are still generally content, even in their decline. Why this difference in attitude exists, I’m not sure, but I can definitely feel the difference. Coming back to America, I literally feel myself getting more depressed over time. This can also be chalked up to Chinese propaganda. Most of the Chinese are incredibly assured of their country’s and their people’s greatness.
When I came back to America, I was stricken by how happy everyone seemed to be in China. Even with the economy in decline, the population seemed to be happy, or at least content. I make another comparison between San Francisco and AnShan. If I’m being honest, compared with AnShan, you’d think that San Francisco was the failing city in the second world country. In the people I talked to in AnShan (family and random people), there seemed to be a feeling of “things are going to turn out ok.” Chinese people believe that most people just want a steady job, food and drink, wife and kids, and a warm bed at night. I tend to agree. It seems that for most Chinese people, they can achieve these things. When I’m in the Bay Area, there always seems to be another disaster on the horizon. Another company that did more layoffs. Another thing that Trump or Newsom did that is sure to cause another disaster. I honestly feel the difference and that might be one of the things I noticed most.
There is no real conclusion to this section because the situation is still ongoing. My own thoughts are still not settled. Will everything be ok for all of the people living here, or are we just in the prelude of an even more catastrophic collapse? I can’t really say. I can only try to wrestle with the thoughts and feelings that this recent visit pulled out of me.
That was some of the more depressing writing I’ve done, partly because these feelings are still fresh. Let’s end it off with something more upbeat. The following section is a slice of life of some of the sights I saw in China. I was in AnShan for most of my time here, and spent a day in ShenYang, the provincial capital, with my uncle.
Remember this mall that I was in? The one that used to be really big and nice and now is failing like the rest of the city?
This is what you’d see if you went inside. Rows upon rows upon rows of vendors.
There are still many in China that believes having English letters on clothing makes the clothing more fancy. Obviously, to other Chinese people, this is true. However, it’s also how you get stuff like this:
There are also multiple counterfeit perfume stalls in there. This is more of the China that I remember. When you’re in China, just make sure that cheap cologne you’re buying is actually real.
By the way, if you’re looking for Apple brand shoes, this mall is the place for you. Like Apple Computer branded shoes.
This one is fun. It’s a counterfeit Ferrari branded lighter. If you look closely, however, you’ll notice that it’s actually the Chinese transliteration of “Ferrari,” translated back into English.
These things are now harder to find in the bigger cities like BeiJing or ShangHai, but they are still very common in a small city like mine.
Here we see the Asian style of product endorsement. If you’ve ever been to East Asia, you’ll know that celebrities often endorse any and all manner of products. Here’s international film superstar Ma Dong Seok (Don Lee) in a commercial for an Instant Porridge, Baskin Robbins, and Fried Chicken restaurant, respectively.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=aasw8dfmo8s
https://youtube.com/watch?v=iUeG2u0Wp1E
https://youtube.com/watch?v=8m4dqg8QmB8
Here’s international film superstar Hiroyuki Sanada in an ad for an electric shaver.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=zl2tR_LUE_E
And who can forget those old commercials in Japan featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger
And Tommy Lee Jones
https://youtube.com/watch?v=-U33aQXOPxc
Therefore it is with great pride that I present the following ad for a water filtration system with no further comment:
Let’s change gears now. When you’re in China, you have to eat some good Chinese food. Here are some things that I ate when I was in China.
Like I said before, I’m from North East China, and one of the things we’re most known for are skewers. Lamb is the most basic, and my personal favorite, but you can see chicken cartilage, beef aorta, and chicken here.
Here is a beef offal noodle soup I ate. It’s actually pretty spicy and it’s quite good with the egg and radish I added.
And here’s the lamb offal noodle soup I ate. I added extra chili oil and vinegar into it. This was actually a lunch I had with my grandmother. It really was quite good.
Every time I go back to China, I eat Chinese KFC. It’s actually malpractice how much better Chinese KFC is compared with American KFC. The spicy chicken sandwich is my favorite item on the menu. It’s not flashy, but it honestly blows most of the chicken sandwiches in America out of the water. You’ll also notice that the chicken nuggets are simply McNuggets. At KFC, they’re called the “Colonel's Nuggets.”
Here’s a fun one. Did you know that Pizza Hut in China is actually a sit down restaurant? On the Pizza Hut menu, you can find Tapas, steak, and multiple versions of chicken wings.
I went with a nice pizza and appetizer plate.
Chagee is an up and coming milk tea store. It’s already in LA, and I expect that they will move into the Bay Area, and later nationwide within the next 3-5 years, following a similar trajectory to HeyTea and Molly Tea.
By the way, if you’re ever in AnShan, come to Double Shake for a western style bar. To call it the best western style bar in AnShan would be damning it with faint praise, but it is legitimately a well run bar. I’ve been to dozens of bars in the U.S. that aren’t as good as this. The owner knows the English names for drinks, the house drinks are good, the service is friendly, and the atmosphere is better than most dive bars in the U.S. Ever since I found them, I go back literally every time I go to visit in AnShan. If anyone actually does go, let the owner know that an American told you about them.
Here is the front of a restaurant that sells lamb soup. Not just lamb soup, but also other lamb based dishes. You know their lamb is fresh because there’s a fresh lamb pelt in front of the restaurant.
On that note, here’s a morning farmer’s market that I used to go to when I was a kid. This is a true farmer’s market as well, where farmers will literally take what they grow and sell it here. I’ve seen some people at farmer’s markets in America literally sell supermarket fruits and vegetables.
Here’s people selling meat. Most of the meat is killed and sold on the same day. People will literally just take a whole pig and cut it up on the side of the street.
This has been a brief look at the average Chinese city. I haven’t posted everything that I saw on this trip, but I did post things that I thought would be more interesting. I can post some more if people actually want to see more. I also didn't post any videos of the grandma dance groups that I saw in the parks.
I’ll end this post with this picture. It’s a picture I took while on the way toward the “Front of the Train Station” part of town. I think that it offers one of the better looks of what you’ll actually see in the average city in China. Obviously you see the communist apartment blocks, but you’ll also see office buildings and small businesses on the side. This is the China that I knew, and it’s probably the China I will remember.
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Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
Cogitism is my personal moral framework, developed and refined in my free time. I believe that this specific combination of ideas is novel and useful. I know it's pretty arrogant to claim a novel moral framework, especially considering that before today I was the only person who has been reading my own work, so I'm making this post to get adversarial eyeballs on it. While I'm aware of similarities with other rational moral frameworks, I believe that Cogitism is distinct in grounding value in the nature of consciousness itself rather than in preferences, utility, or consequences. Have fun tearing it apart!
(Edited to include the full essay text)
A Brief Clarification on AI Involvement
People often care very deeply that the involvement of AI in the production of a work is stated upfront, myself included, because the extent of AI involvement in a project and what shape that involvement takes provides useful context for its legitimacy. As a result I feel it is important to disclose and contextualize the involvement of such tools in this work as early as possible.
Over the period where I developed these ideas, much of that development took place in chats with LLMs (Claude, most often), which I used as a sounding board for my ideas. In these chats I gave these models explicit instructions to check my work and reel me in whenever it thought it saw a flaw in my reasoning. A lot of the time it's wrong in the analysis, and a lot of the time that's because it doesn't understand what I mean, but explaining why to the machine and getting it to understand tends to help me think through the problem more clearly than I could otherwise.
The ideas, words, and phrasing in these essays are my own; I am writing this after having solidified and used these ideas privately for half a year. AI models did not write any of this for me. In short, LLMs only had a hand in the development of these concepts as a really complicated, talking rubber duck.
Cogito Ergo Sum
There is only one fact that any individual can know for certain, beyond even the tiniest echo of a doubt: I Exist. Without first acknowledging one's own existence it is impossible to make any logical conclusions or form any stable beliefs about anything in the universe. If you did not exist, you could not think, and so it follows that thinking is itself proof of your own existence.
Of course, this is not a particularly original concept; the phrase "Cogito Ergo Sum" was first coined in the 1600s by the French philosopher René Descartes. However, despite the concept seeming self-evident and being relatively well-known in the modern day, I believe the reasoning is worth laying out here explicitly to ensure the foundations are solid.
Cogito takes care of base reality, but a moral framework cannot be constructed only from raw truth: to decide what one "should" do, a person needs to make value judgements, and for value judgements to be possible one needs to value something. As a result, Cogitism makes one additional presupposition: that the self, the only verifiable truth, has value.
These two fundamentals, the truth that "the self Is", and the belief that "the self Matters", make up the bedrock of Cogitism. From here we can begin to build a fully functional moral framework.
The Quality of Existence
We've established that the self exists and that it has value, but without the tendency for the self to change it's impossible for one to derive any direction from these principles; if nothing you do helps or harms the thing that holds value, then nothing you do holds any moral weight.
Luckily we know that the self has a tendency to change; simply by thinking and observing the self, a person can establish the knowledge that the self is plastic, and that one can sharpen or dull the fidelity of thought by taking different actions within oneself.
If thought is the quality that proves the self, and thinking can get more or less difficult moment to moment, one must presume that thinking could degrade to a point where the self could dissolve, or otherwise cease to exist.
Because the self is our basis for value judgements, and it is possible for the self to end, it stands to reason that any action which brings us closer to that end (incoherence) is negative, and any action that takes us further away from that end (coherence) is positive.
The Reality of the Environment
So far we have only operated within the limited scope of the self, but moral frameworks must account for interactions with reality outside the self. So, how do we prove that the environment exists in a way that matters?
Invoking "Cogito Ergo Sum" only proves the existence of the self, as an observer of one's own thoughts, so it stands to reason that any stimulus that cannot be directly proven by Cogito must be outside it. If external stimuli can be shown to affect the quality or coherence of the self, they must be real, as things that do not exist cannot have an effect on things that do.
By reflecting on oneself while interacting with perceived reality, a person can observe that the self does indeed change due to external stimuli. Thus, there must be a reality outside the self that is relevant to moral discussions.
Note that under this model, the specific ontological nature of reality does not matter. Whether the universe is a simulation, the hallucinations of a Boltzmann Brain, or truly the lowest and most fundamental "reality" that can exist, the fact that the environment can change the self means that it is real in the ways that count to us.
Consciousness and Value Outside the Self
Now that we have established the existence of a world outside the self, a person can observe that they exist within, or at least linked to, a mind and body. One's mind can be seen to have emotions, desires, and impulses, and the body can be seen outwardly expressing these things.
Going further outside the self, a person can see that they exist in a world with other bodies, built similarly, presenting similar emotions and expressing similar desires. Because we know our observations are caused by real phenomena, and because these other bodies are so similar to our own, one must presume that there are other selves present within those foreign bodies and minds.
One cannot deny that these other selves have value under the same principles by which we derive our own value, because confirmation of their existence and moral relevance was reached through the same observation and logic that confirmed our own existence. To do so would call into question the methods by which we assigned our own value, and in doing so, we would degrade our own coherence.
Because of this, all other selves determined to have moral relevance through these or similar methods must hold the same or similar value as the self under our moral framework. This means that despite Cogitism being rooted in the value of the self, self-sacrifice, selflessness, and altruism are coherent under this system.
Keeping all of our principles and observations in mind, and generalizing to allow for beings dissimilar to ourselves, we can derive a singular aim to act as an ethical north star and guide moral discussion:
To Preserve And Enhance The Stability And Coherence of Sapient Consciousness.
Cogitism In Short
In short, Cogitism derives its conclusions along the following lines:
By Observation, The Self Exists ▶ The Self Has Value ▶ By Observation, The Self Can Change ▶ Stability And Coherence Are Positive, Degradation Is Negative ▶ By Observation, An Environment Exists Outside The Self ▶ By Observation, Other Selves Exist Outside The Self ▶ These Other Selves Have Value ▶ To Generalize, All Sapient Consciousness Has Value ▶ One Must Preserve The Coherence Of Sapient Consciousness
It is my belief that in this way, Cogitism presents an ethical and moral framework built entirely from the nature of consciousness, through observations that any person can make, and it does this with no appeal to any tradition or authority except one's own awareness of the self.
While not made explicit in this essay, Cogitism can apply to beings outside the scope of humanity. Animals, which can be determined by the same methods to have internal experience, qualify (just not as strongly). In the same vein, extraterrestrial life and artificial intelligence can also qualify given that certain criteria are met.
It is my intention to expand on these concepts and to dive deeper into the various implications of Cogitism. These explorations will take the form of additional essays published to my site, and crossposted here if and when they're relevant to TheMotte.
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The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
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Post your project, your progress from last week, and what you hope to accomplish this week.
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Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.