Look for seller with longer history and good ratings. I’ve bought hundreds of dollars of random little items there, 100+ packages, and only 2 or 3 had issues or lost due to lost in transit after reaching my local area. If broken upon arrival, received refund, etc.

It appears China and Russia are visa-free for each other’s tour groups since 2023.

In the tier-1 cities most people, especially younger, can manage a few words in English (although many are very accented and may be hard to understand) and all public transportation and facilities will have English translation accompanied.

Outside of those, English REALLY isn’t a lingua franca here, people will not even be able to guess what you’re trying to convey in English. Also, many of the wordless assumptions behind design, procedures, and how things work that many travelers can rely on in countries with more Western influence are also different, which can be challenging.

Massive upsides: everyone is comfortable if you use translation apps or devices to communicate; people are friendly and approachable and pretty social culture-wise, and will go out of their way to help you. It’s also extremely safe everywhere, well organized, easy to travel to wherever you care to go, and everything is accessible digitally (although sadly you’d have to be able to read Chinese for most of apps and websites, but it’ll be easy for other ppl to help you out by just pulling out their own phones to do xyz).

So yes, you absolutely can go as a tourist without knowing the language ;D

K that’s beyond my knowledge level to answer xD I mostly know what Huawei want it to become and how they likely can make it happen compared to Google Home and Apple versions of the same dream but badly realized, give the more friendly environment to Huawei in China, its relationship with more companies and branches of products, and ppl being more used to doing literally everything already via their mobile os and very willing to be even more immersed

No, so far as I understand it it’s a separate system that may not be compatible with android. HarmonyOS is intended to be a cross platform operating system from the ground up linking phone, car (electronic vehicles growing exponentially in China), desktop, household electronics, household AI, etc, completely seamlessly. If you aren’t part of that entire ecosystem as Huawei visualize, which is likely the case if you’re not in China, you probably won’t experience the benefit of HarmonyOS, it’ll just be another system running another set of apps. But ppl in China will if it rolls out as intended.

Outside of China, HarmonyOS will probably eventually need to be compatible with Android to be competitive.

What Ma Yingjiu was able to do 10 years ago is no longer as feasible today. The wealth disparity and military disparity between the two regions has grown much greater so Taiwan is now in a even worse position and unlikely to get what it had been offered then. Taiwan itself also has been undergoing 10 additional years of anti-Mainland propaganda, the DPP has been actively cutting off engagement between the people, as compared to 2014 when relations had been quite friendly with open policies to visit, tourism, and business etc.

While the KMT is at least prepared to acknowledge that permanent separation is unlikely, and while it is the most pro-“Chinese culture” party (as in, willing to admit they are Chinese but not that PRC is the representative of China), the KMT is not ready to officially active engage in reunification. They have their own deeply entrenched interests and benefits in keeping Taiwan separate, which they know they will lose if Taiwan becomes a part of China.

Finally, the KMT has crap reputation with the younger generation, as their authoritarian rule for decades had tortured a lot of Taiwanese citizens with horrible policies, and to this day they haven’t found the words nor policies to attract a younger crowd.

In the election that’s just happened, NO candidate dared even to mention the fact that separation is probably impossible, that Taiwan should probably have some contingency plans to prevent a conflict with China, or for negotiation in face of what is factually inevitable. The KMT didn’t even dare to mention that Taiwan had Chinese origin, or that they are Chinese under ROC. Everyone is all acting like ostriches–though the non-DPP supporting citizen knows better and hence the DPP only had 40% win out of the 70% turnout. But the political rhetoric was all unbearably hypocritical and not based on anything realistic.

The KMT is not pro peaceful reunification. There are no reunification party out of all 3 parties vying for power. KMT is at best pro “saying the right things to placate the Mainland so they can maintain the current situation for as long as possible, probably indefinitely if they can” , while making no real efforts to change the anti-Mainland propaganda and education that’s been going for the past few decades.

There are very little internal forces within Taiwan that actively wants reunification. Those who support it are majority an elderly generation who are increasingly dying out. The younger generation, especially the past 15 years, have been educated to believe Taiwan is not Chinese despite speaking/writing Chinese and having all the same traditions. It’s politically correct there to despise the Mainland despite watching Mainland TV shows and pop culture, and engaging in Mainland’s social media.

Of course the PRC leadership knows that there are no political faction in Taiwan that will move toward reunification. They also understand that Taiwan’s so called independence exist only due to US keeping it as a chesspiece to poke PRC whenever it likes. So they will exert some pressure but mostly leave Taiwan alone for now (unless they do something unbearably provocative) but will prepare to fight if necessary to push US power out of the South China Sea. Once that’s done, Taiwan will have no ability to maintain its separation and will fall into the orbit whether it wants to or not.

I only realized it’s NOT an armband after you pointed it out x)

If you live inside the heart of the West, your life is still good enough—yes, even those struggling and clinging on the edges of poverty—and the bread and circuses still mostly work as distractions. But the world isn’t only the West. There are plenty in the other 6/7 of humanity who are willing to die for the hope of change. Life was hard before, but having endured impacts of a global pandemic, wars, and starvation, people are getting pushed to their limit. We are seeing many sparks of revolution starting to light on the dark prairie.

How many of them are fighting for the “right” reasons? How many of them will end up in a better place? Nobody knows. But if even one or two turn into full-on fires, things will certainly get shaken up. And thereafter, unlike the Arab Spring days, there are Global South countries arising that are strong and wealthy enough to lend a hand, whose national interests lie toward helping regions to transition toward stability after any social blowups.

At some point, change will come upon us, and we won’t have any say in how peaceful or violent it will be.

Maybe not left wing, but more likely to be socially liberal due to this stance generally goes against the social and cultural messaging, which considers having children to be a normal part of life and necessary to experience, or even mandatory as your duty as a human.

I think you can do it using boost right now…

If they just want to stay out of the situation they wouldn’t make this statement, which sets forth their position very thoroughly: a two state solution based on 1967 borders. They’ve made this position clear for decades.

Chinese influence is coming into West Asia without a doubt, but they do NOT intend to be another great power that has clearly picked a side, clearly favoring certain countries over others. Picking side is how the West had played things, divide and conquer, sow distrust. After all this time, all countries there KNOW the Americans will pick Israel above all others, and thus the US can never act as a genuine peacemaker, no one will trust them to be fair. Nor can Russia, which has picked their sides fairly clearly too. But China can, having established trade relations with many countries in the region, and therefore in a position to talk to all sides and actually have the believable neutrality to pass messages, promote negotiations, and maybe achieve something.

I’m little frustrated, because it seems like people just want China to turn into another US, to interfere deeply with other countries’ internal affairs but just do so with whatever side that is different than what the West had traditionally picked. That doesn’t result in a multipolar world where great powers respect every country and regions’ sovereignty; that’s just tilting the world toward another pole. So they aren’t going to do it, there is clearly stated principles behind their stance.

Finally, the Chinese historically did not played politics by using forceful power. For thousands of years, the way they dealt with foreign powers is through a system with tieres of BENEFITS and honors (apart from short aberration, such as Mao era). So they’ve always been more about the carrot than the stick, and now too they work more with dangling potential benefits to the West Asian countries in their effort toward providing more stability. It’s more about painting a picture to all the leaders about how great it would be if everyone is not fighting as much, the potential for prosperity, etc, which is always going to be a longer process than straight up sending violence.

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A society literally dominated by chaebols… The system doesn’t work well 😔

I really need a “hide read post” option 😺

OK, here’s a couple more that are famous and great for touristic reasons of history /culture /good food /great landscape /etc

Xi’an (one of the ancient capitals of China, starting point of the traditional and new Silk Road), Guilin (every single time they show China in cartoon, with giant mountains and winding rivers, they’re basically showing here), Shenzhen (the new hyper modern high tech city), Guangzhou (old English name was Canton, as in Cantonese food), Suzhou and Hangzhou (historically famed for being chill and beautiful, lakes and canals etc), Hainandao (Chinese version of Hawaii), Nanjing (another ancient capital of China, lots of culture), Harbin (lots of Russian architecture here, and a FANTASTIC and huge ice sculpture show every year)

Was not expecting 济公 here along with the Marxists xD

…sounds grim and surreal. Pretty sure I’ve read post-apocalyptic fiction with similar backgrounds :|

China has been working to increase the PLAN’s power and reach this past decade. They are nearing to a blue water navy at this point, and have broken through the first island chain, within which they are no longer considered to be defeatable without extreme cost.

The US has withdrawn their concentration back to Guam (previously, they didn’t bothered to arm the second island chain).

China has 20x the manufacturing power of the US and a bigger PPP (more efficient use of their military budget) , and they have known the US will one day come for them since Mao. Their recent ships are lighter in tonnage but newer than the American fleet by several decades, carries better equipment, radar, with greater fire power that makes them more equal to traditional ships one category higher in tonnage.

Finally, they aren’t building a navy to project power around the globe like the US navy does. The PLAN intends to have the capability to defend their home waters and to protect their economic interests abroad, that’s it, so it will never need to have as many ships as the US navy, so a tonnage or ship number comparison would not be an accurate measure of the PLAN capabilities.