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話說天下大勢，分久必合，合久必分
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User ID: 894
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話說天下大勢，分久必合，合久必分
4d ago
It's fascinating to see the fun house mirror reflection of western classical architecture in that development your grandparents used to live in.
It was (and maybe still is) very popular to build things in the "European style" in China. For many Chinese, anything "Western" (farther west than the former Soviet countries) is considered higher class. It's part of the reason you might see random English letters/words on clothing or decoration. It's quite similar to how Westerners will get random Chinese or Japanese tattooed on themselves without knowing what they say, sometimes to hilarious effect:
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話說天下大勢，分久必合，合久必分
4d ago
I left fairly young so I never really made friends in China. I know that every one of my cousins that are working are no longer in AnShan. I was lucky to go during a holiday so I could see all of them. On the ground, basically everyone knows that AnShan is depopulating. Schools are closing and everyone knows the reason. However, compared with America, there's less of the typical depression you might see associated with the population decline.
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話說天下大勢，分久必合，合久必分
4d ago
It's generally quite similar. There are different regional influences, as @ResoluteRaven said. LiaoNing has a lot of Korean restaurants, and Kimchi is a staple, for example. There's also the fact that Northerners farm a lot more wheat and potatoes than rice because of our climate, so bread and noodles are more common. But the main staples are the same. Pickled cabbage is one of the main staples in the North Eastern region. It's generally cooked in a stew with pork. Another one is lamb skewers. One staple that's more often made at home than eaten at a restaurant is "Eggplant Mixed With Potatoes." You literally steam eggplant and potatoes, then mix them together to create a kind of mash, and put in fermented soybean paste. It tastes like home to me.
By the way, the Chinese claim that all dumplings in Eurasia originated in China. To me, this has some more validity than the claim that Italian pasta originated in China.
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話說天下大勢，分久必合，合久必分
4d ago
The northeast/Manchuria/Dongbei region is also famous for people eating skewers and drinking baijiu outside. Though that could just be the recoil from the long depression of the local economy.
It's simply how people are here. Traditionally, the region has been farmland and pasture generations before the industrial overhaul that took place in the 20th century. During winter, when it routinely snows and goes below freezing, you drink to keep yourself from going crazy due to boredom. During summer, when it's night time, you go and have some skewers, drink, and relax and go soak in the public bath. For most people, it's a quaint living, not dissimilar to what you might find in Italy or Greece.
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話說天下大勢，分久必合，合久必分
4d ago
There's also the fact that alcoholism is simply a given here in the North. Similar with Russians and Vodka, the North Easterners have spent multiple generations cultivating the strongest livers with BaiJiu so that while clinically, a large part of the population are alcoholics, they are all well functioning enough for it to be seen as more quirky and quaint instead of dangerous and terrifying. Alcoholism is simply a part of the North Eastern stereotype.
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話說天下大勢，分久必合，合久必分
4d ago
I only know the large picture, but the Chinese real estate crash came as a result of the one-two punch of Covid and the Evergrande disaster. Even Evergrande wasn't really the cause. The real cause was the fact that almost every single major real estate developer in China was leveraging a lot of debt to fund their developments. The Chinese government instituted their "Three Red Lines" policy in order to reign in the developers, but it meant that many of the developers were retroactively made non-compliant. Evergrande was one of these companies and was not able to petition the government for a softening of the policy. Evergrande was in violation of all three of the red lines and was essentially made insolvent. Evergrande was later delisted from the HK stock exchange in 2025. When the second largest property developer in China gets essentially put into a coma, the entire real estate market in China goes into a freefall (this, by the way, was the stated goal of the Three Red Lines policy in the first place). This is my understanding.
There's also a story of their shady wealth management products that I'm not as familiar with.
I haven't seen that channel, but I'll watch a few videos and get back to you. I'm definitely not saying that life isn't miserable for anyone in China, and the GaoKao system is completely psychotic, but most people, even younger people starting out in their careers, can afford to rent their own place. They can afford to eat out and have a drink. Even if people aren't as rich, it seems that their quality of life (in the ways we measure it) is at least improving. Maybe that's just because I have my own goggles on.
Edit: I've watched some of the videos and they're not unrealistic. There are a lot of people who are bring ground down to the nub in China. There are also a lot of people who are content.
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話說天下大勢，分久必合，合久必分
6d ago
Not even my parents/grandparents generations. When I first visited BeiJing in 2004, there were only 2 or 3 lines in the BeiJing subway. Now there are over 20. The amount of development in my lifetime alone has been quite staggering. I know I harp on the lack of development in AnShan in my post, but it's honestly a fairly recent problem. As far as I know, new apartment developments were going up as recently as 2019. Covid and the real estate collapse shortly thereafter put an end to a lot of it.
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話說天下大勢，分久必合，合久必分
7d ago
I find that most western fast food chains are much nicer than they are in the west. I think it’s because they were perceived as fancy when they came to China simply because they were western. Over time, they deliberately cultivated this perception so that now, they simply are fancier.
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話說天下大勢，分久必合，合久必分
7d ago
I’ve found that there are distinct similarities between all communist (or former communist) cities. The biggest I can think of is the ubiquity of the communist apartment block design.
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話說天下大勢，分久必合，合久必分
7d ago
I don’t think they ever did. I just knew about them from the internet. Boss, as far as I know, is not a brand in the US or China in any major capacity.
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話說天下大勢，分久必合，合久必分
19d ago
I was taught through the Alexander Pope Translation and it's the first translation of the Iliad I'd ever read.
https://gutenberg.org/files/6130/6130-h/6130-h.htm#chap01
To me it's very enjoyable. Though technically not as accurate to the original as some others, in English, it's one of the best translations out there.
It's definitely at least partly due to climate. The winters are pretty harsh up here so it's not the 24/7 sauna that is the South. In the deep winter, you can keep food out of the fridge and just leave it outside and it'll stay frozen. It's also gotten a lot cleaner over time. Piles of trash and litter was a lot more common in my youth, but nowadays, it's a lot less common, especially in the city.
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