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Comment by dluan | Hacker News Reader

This is absolutely going to fall on deaf ears here, but I moved with my wife and 1 year old to China for 4 months and became the most productive in more than a decade.

Safety, convenience, infrastructure, everything around you isn't solely designed to price gouge you and exploit you, and all of that was just a minor benefit. The biggest thing I felt was an immense existential dread lifting from me. It's like the world millennials were promised when we were young actually exists - working on meaningful things with mental space to breath.

There's too much that can possibly be said of this, but up until now I genuinely thought there was only one way left and we were all doomed to fail, trying to pound sand into intractable problems. I somehow have hope in my life again.

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I've thought about moving to Asia. Then I read about the racism there and realize I'd be right back at home, but now with a language barrier to boot. Oh well.

Everything else sounds great, or tolerable at worst. Public transportation, a more respectful culture, actual 3rd places, housing that isn't treated as an asset to preserve.

I'll still get back to my Japanese learning once things stabilize. Just in case.

Mh. Would like to hear the full story. My initial mental reflex is one of „es gibt kein richtiges Leben im falschen“, that is, „there is no right life in the wrong one“, as Adorno put it.

I think it's simpler to just appeal to every entrepreneur's spider sense - go where the great people are. It really does feel a bit like how Silicon Valley and San Francisco felt in 2000s-2010s. Caveat of course, which is even before 2008, aware insiders of SV were trying to warn that the Goodness of the internet was being squeezed too hard, that VC was turning to rent seeking too soon, the cart is way too far ahead of the basic research pipeline, etc. And of course, there's corruptible people, terrible overwork, insane competition, bad stuff etc in China too.

But there's a determined, undeniable sense of "we're going to make the world a better place", and you can physically see and touch it in China. Once you take a big inhale of that air, you realize just how much you missed it and needed it.

This is literally my first time hearing this. All the stuff I see from china is about lying flat, giving up because no matter how hard you work it won't make a difference? Is this a Shenzhen attitude?

There is probably something to be said about living someplace that is actually investing in itself. Seeing new development actually rise to meet the demands of the population. Seeing new transit expanded. People uplifted out of rural poverty. New technological developments. The whole bit.

The US probably felt a little like that in the immediate post war period. The enthusiasm coming out of a terrible war and a terrible depression and seeing actual changes take place in the scale of weeks before your eyes must have been something else.

But today, most cities seem to have been content with solidifying into amber over the last 50 or so years. No investments into society. The poor are still poor and objectively have worse opportunities given the buying power of the jobs available to them. Development isn't happening on a scale to actually meet the population's needs. Transit and most public good efforts are an afterthought because of no direct business profitability angle. It becomes hard to get excited about medical advances when you understand the realities of our healthcare system and that many who need these medicines or treatments won't ever get them. No enthusiasm for anything. A large population of people against anything changing. Young people and young ideas stonewalled out of positions of power in favor of people who ought to have retired by now maintaining the status quo. Technological advances seemingly solely focused on establishing new ways to rent seek, gouge, police, control thoughts, versus things that are simply beneficial to others. "no brainer" ideas facing pushback. Common sense not being valued. The optimism coming out of the civil rights era dashed away against the realities that hate towards your fellow human is a position that will carry popularity in this country. Profit above all. Control above all. Blatant corruption and cronyism by the ruling elite. Awareness that we haven't taken off the shackles of feudalism.

"lying flat" and unemployment are a thing, but nowhere near as bad as media makes it out to be. My experience is mainly in Shanghai and Hangzhou.

Are you still in China? If so how are you finding the work life? Should blog on it esp as a YC alum that’s a cool perspective

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