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I'm not sure if he is trying to tell some version of this joke, but here it goes: (for context, dad jokes are often categorized as "cold jokes" here in China/Taiwan, since often its humor is not appreciated by the audience and thus making the vibe "cold") So a polar bear become bored one day and had nothing to do. So he started to pull off his own hair. One, two, three. One by one the hairs were pulled off. After a while, the polar bear suddenly said: It's pretty cold out here!

Once you are already in prison it's hard to say whether you are forced to do it or not. It's not like you have a lot of employers and professions to choose from. And if the incentives include things like easier to get parole then refusing to participate would mean more time served. It'd be pretty hard to prove some labor is not "forced" in a prison setting.

This is a way over simplistic view. It's not a CIV game where someone decides what "China/Han" should do for all these thousands of years. People's minds change, sometimes the people themselves change, accidents happen. You don't have to find some hidden "truth" that goes back 3000 years to explain what China today does.

For US it will. People in the US seldom think about just how powerful their media environment and general influence is. Like women have been sexually harassed since forever in China, and it's the #MeToo movement that led to a lot of the victim to stand up and people to support them.

She should use 鹄(swan) instead of 鹅(goose). Yes people don't usually use this character for swan and call the thing sky goose instead, but most people know of it as it's part of the idiom: 燕雀安知鸿鹄之志.

Because they imply a safer and longer life and the creativity of dead people are zero. I think it makes some sense.

The mere existence of Wu is an outlier in China (and possibly in rest of the world). As anyone that closely follows Chinese politics know, the CCP is not keen on outspoken/unique people. Rappers has been banned for rapping about money and women (!); women have been arrested for promoting awareness of sexual harassment. I think Wu is simply trying (and failing) to make herself not more controversial than already is.

I just couldn't understand why he thinks the container should be made of hard metal. Sure maybe the current equipment like dry suit + full face mask has limitations. But shouldn't the natural path be building on top of that? Why is a hard long object that can't bend to fit through some narrow gaps, don't have power and don't use the power of the human it contains, and much heavier, be their go to solution?

from Chinese news report: 于某今年35岁，山东人，三年前采购了一批价值11万元的土豆后就消失了，逃到嘉兴西塘开了家民宿，利用弟弟的身份东躲西藏，警方接到报警后，将其列为网上追逃对象。

So it's more like a fraud. He bought some potatoes and then disappeared without paying.

I'm a bit surprised nobody has mentioned the fraud[1]. The reason electric bus becomes so popular in China recently is mainly because of government subsidies. Well that's the intended consequence and most people are OK with it.

What's problematic is that the subsidy is a fix amount for certain kind of vehicle. And it turns out bus is more efficient in terms of subsidy/cost ratio. And since the subsidy is a fixed amount, bus maker can cut a lot of corners and make a bare minimum of a bus which may cost even less than the subsidy. Now they can dump these buses to a local government basically free and bribe the operators to drive the buses once a while to receive the subsidy[2].

I mean I'm all for green buses. But if electric buses out-sale electric cars a lot, you have to wonder why. And one obvious reason is buses are mostly bought in large quantities by entities not very concerned about cost/profitability, ie local governments. So it is much easier for bus related fraud than cars facing mostly individual consumers.

[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-fines-five-auto-makers-fo... [2] http://www.sixthtone.com/news/1001382/company-accused-of-run...

The usual. WaPo/NYTimes both did several stories like this. But keep in mind that one result of suppression of free speech is the lack of clear sources. So anecdotal is sometimes the best we got.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/01/world/asia/china-xinjiang...

I think 'do not disturb' has an option for only allow people from your contacts? and there are crowdsourced blacklist apps for scammer/harassment phone numbers.

When it's hard to draw the line from outside, prosecutors mostly try to prove their cases from the inside communications. If you email your coworker: "Guess what I found ... AMD can go bankrupt over this ..." and then short the stock it should be fine. But if you write "Let's put together an action plan to drive the AMD price down" then you would be in trouble. The FX scandal is an perfect example of this. It's true you can explain your action in perfectly legitimate reasons but you can't also call your self "The Cartel" in group chats.

I'm not a lawyer.

then how do you explain India? Its AQI rivals China's.

By the time you are born it's already getting better. Yes it's dirt poor compared to now but is already on the trend of improving. So the stress level would be very different than the "suddenly become poor" people.

Another point is back in those days the majority of population are poor, which means the social structure are build around poor people. Food, cloths, education, haircut, all of them targeted poor people. You don't need to live in the corner of the city and go great length to find products suited for you.

There's no way Shenzhen is more free than US. I'm not sure you're more misguided towards US or China though.

So i think in both places cooking has become more of a hobby/status signaling thing.

In China there's something similar to blue apron in late 90s or early 2000s. But it kinda die out because it's offered more on the convenience side instead of healthy side.

Baking stuff becomes quite popular in recent years, because it's a western thing, and it's time consuming, good for share with friends in itself or as photos:good showoff material. Whereas the old method of finding whatever is fresh today at wet market and do a quick stir-fry becomes more and more reserved for older genration, and thus is not a fancy thing todo. Pressure cooking also is something you do when you don't have time and worry about fuel bill, not sexy.

Preprepared food is looked down upon in both us and china , it seems. In US i think people feel empowering by the idea of feeding your family in a healthy way without a stay at home mom; in China a stayed at home mom just recently becomes a thing to brag about, and cooking seems to be a important tool to do it.

It's pretty weird when you consider how food trends go. In China, back in the 90s, my parents use a pressure cooker and a wok for everything. And it's the norm as for most families I know both parent work and they have to come home at 5:30 and put food on the table at 6:30, with no easy option like frozen pizza. Now with supermarkets and food delivery you don't need to cook if you don't want to, and if you do choose to cook it becomes much more fancy(and western) with more time consuming steps.

It seems the reverse in happening in us?

If there're a lot of these objects entering and leaving solar system every year, and suppose some day in the near future we can keep track of them all, can we use them for us to send out larger probes? We see a rock coming near us, and send out a probe to its path. And before the collision the probe create a buffer object at the rear end so that it wouldn't be totally destroyed. After that the probe can free ride for a while at a high speed and re-ignite when it decides to go a separate path.

I've read the research about Stuyvesant, and several other articles with similar theme. The data and reasoning seems quite convincing. It's just I can't reconcile it with my personal experience.

All these studies seems to suggest it doesn't matter much where you go to school, everything is already decided. But I know I've learned things in school, things that I can't expect to learn quite systematically should I just teach myself. And I also know there are schools that don't teach much, where teachers are exhausted for just maintaining order and keep violence to an acceptable level. It seems pretty obvious that I wouldn't learn much in this kind of environment. Maybe I can still get to a similar level as I am today but it be would much much harder.

Yes, usually the money appear on the new account in < 1 minute. To facilitate this central bank setup clearing systems that every bank connects to.

The success of AliPay and WeChat Pay is mostly the result of a good banking infrastructure. Even before these services popping up, you already can transfer money from any bank to another bank instantly and with no fee (or a small fee, depending on the bank and your account type). PBoC has been pushing banks to make interbank transfer efficiently and cheaply for years. The new mobile payment systems just use the already built infrastructure and replaced the ugly out of date bank webpages with cute looking apps and also greatly relaxed security so you don't have to keep the 2fa usb key with you anymore.

Could it be they are not merely offering you help but also asking you to help others in this "buddy" program? Help can go both ways.

And the factory is set up by the Chinese company. It would be an understandable demand to insists on local management if the Chinese bought the already existing local operation. But for a brand new operation it's a weird thing to ask.

As always Matt Levine as some interesting takes on this.

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-11-10/bank-hacker...

I don't think you understand what he means. If you change RMB to USD then there must be someone changed USD to RMB as your counterparty. The RMB you had never leaves China(unless one day RMB has the status like USD where people use it outside US for things unrelated to US), it's just in some other people's hands now.

Apple's app store is still in its hands. And because of the fragmentation of the app store, people are more inclined to download app from the website of the maker instead of some "store" that injects "non-kosher" stuff in the app

Well I think the Uber-ization should be on the consumer side, not the production side. What Uber has that taxi don't is not how Uber have so much tools for the drivers to use, taxi company can do and are doing the same thing. The difference is a new way for passenger to find a ride instead of waiting on the sidewalk.

So the Uber of porn would be more like you choose from an app specifying the features of the actress/actor, scene, plot line, the "moves", and other stuff. And then the company will automatically generate a script and find the right people to shoot it for you. I'm not sure that'll work though.

The beauty of WeChat is not it has tons of features, it's the tons of features are well hidden. As another user said, it's very natural to have used WeChat for quite some time and doesn't know all these existed. People always say it's not just a chat app, but if you use it just for chat then it's a pretty good one with good voice and video chat quality, supports group chat well and has a clean UI. All the other features are opt-in, hidden in several level of menus. There are no flashy confusing buttons, no daily reminder asking you to try some new feature, no distraction. For me and my friends who has long abandoned the bloated and flashy QQ for simple gtalk (before google got banned), WeChat is a breath of fresh air.

Being a fundamental right doesn't mean limitless. Free speech is a fundamental right, yet you will get into trouble when you yell fire in a theater. And of course property right is a fundamental right, we just sacrifice some the of the property right in the form of zoning laws to achieve other goals, similar to our other rights. When somebody asked us to sacrifice our rights without enough reason, it is a violation of the rights.