Of everything I learned and experienced in traveling one thing stands out above all the others:
"self improvement is the primary good in your life"
Traveling involves a lot of hedonism, and one day while traveling you suddenly realize you are on a hedonic treadmill. The first amazing meal you eat is life changing. The second one is about 50% as novel and good as that. Then you're comparing the next meal to 2 others, and the meal after that to 3 others... The cycle continues until you have consumed the earth and achieved emptiness. What remains is yourself. Once there is nothing left to consume to satisfy yourself you really have to ask whats next. The answer is building, and probably building yourself.
The lessons I learned about myself were some of the most hard:
- I understood escapism is not the answer
- I got a realistic set of priorities for my life
- I challenged and surprised myself socially
- I learned what really matters and what doesn't
More explicit examples of things I appreciate from having traveled:
- Someone broke down to me why china is the way it is from an informed and educated position in a way I found mostly compelling
- Visiting Shenzhen made me afraid for America
- I experienced Hong Kong before china destroyed it.
- I watched history in real time (NK trump, HK, covid)
- I saw a Chinese person shrink to 1/4 their size when a conversation got political
- I see video of foreign countries and I see streets I have literally walked on
- I experienced being a guest in multiple different cultures and was culture shocked to my core.
- I saw the insides of homes and buildings in different cultures as well as the different ways things were constructed
- I experienced the inhumanity that poverty causes
- I experienced real life poverty and actual real happening today slavery
- I have seen the costs of not having rule of law
- I have seen pollution on the scale you cannot even imagine until you experience it
- I experienced my own privilege in very visceral ways
- I have experienced cultures without workers rights and its effects
- I have experienced multiple civil protests in other countries
- I have seen what its like to be in a functioning democracy
- I have been in a country where the voting system makes sense
- I have been around police officers that made me feel more safe instead of less safe
- I have made multiple friends I still talk to
- I almost fell in love
- I visited a major holy site and saw religion being practiced in a way I never had before.
- I have seen cultures in decline and cultures on the rise and how the people in them act and function
- I experienced being in cities older than my country
- I met people from parts of the world I wasn't aware of, with histories I'd never heard of
- I saw foreign propaganda first hand
- I found ways of life I liked better (and not) than what I grew up in
- I saw both how good things can be and how bad things can be
- I experienced pro-diversity cultures and anti-diversity cultures and their effects
- I was exposed to multiple different non conventional ways of life
- I have several outstanding invites and opportunities to visit people I have met who were also traveling.
- I saved one person's life with some first aid
- I learned several new skills
Great comment, could you expand on "Someone broke down to me why china is the way it is from an informed and educated position in a way I found mostly compelling"?
The thing that most needed explaining to a westerner is the great firewall of china and lack of freedom of speech. The argument that was made was foreign media dominance would result in 1 billion people being too unwieldy to effectively govern. Without it you have literal peasants with no education being directly exposed to potential (and probable) western manipulation. That manipulation could be political (overthrow the government) or economic (buy American goods) and the cost is direct exploitation of Chinese people and a failure of society to operate at scale. Words like century of humiliation, opium, forced open, and the like were used here too. Western exploitation and manipulation of China is not taught or explained in American schools, nor is it really taught that western powers came in and ransacked the country, to what extent they did, nor the mechanisms by which they (we) did it.
The standout paradigm shift for me was the statement "we want to democratize, but we cannot because our public is uneducated, you cannot have democracy without education." After seeing Hong Kong, I decide that I don't really believe china wants to democratize and this was likely a lie the person I talked to believed themselves, but I believe in the second half of the statement. Growing up in America you never really analyze democracy or its properties, you just understand that it's good and the correct way of life as any good indoctrination will do. Live free or die. A pretty important property of democracy to consider is that it will function as well as the half of its most poorly educated people. It doesn't take much observation of how bad faith republicans are to see the consequences of a society dominated by its least educated people. There is a clear tradeoff between individual sacrifices of rights and the well being of society overall that I think can be argued for successfully here even if I disagree with it personally. Not being the dominant culture ups the stakes on loose controls.
The overall idea of protectionism being necessary but unideal was compelling to me. The overall idea of hard limitations on how society can operate based on the properties of that society was compelling to me. There was a mental shift from right and wrong, to pros and cons and tradeoffs, which is much more healthy discussion to be having.
Another key concept that was explained was the idea of planned vs actual corruption. It was explained that there is a planned acceptable level of corruption in China, and that this is mostly seen as lubrication, a guarantee, or a bounty to get stuff done. Unfortunately, rather than corruption growing linearly in a planned way, it was growing exponentially in an unplanned way and this was causing problems.
The IP theft was somewhat of a "your country was built on it, too" thing. There was a bit of "you have so much, you should share." Somewhat similar with the "we were colonized, now we want to colonize" idea. I think there was a bit of "you wield power or it gets wielded against you." I don't agree at all, but returning abuse you've received onto the world is an unfortunately human thing to do.
I would not utter the words Taiwan, Uighur, Tibet, or Falun Gong while in China, because that seems foolish, so I didn't get any kind of satisfying explanation for those, and there probably isn't one that would be acceptable or satisfying. I suspect at best the explanation would be "look what America did to native Americans," or other justification by precedent.
China knows it benefits from outside experts and it has 1000 talents and other things to get Chinese people, especially, back in the country, but with english being nil, and a culture that is fairly anti-foreigner that is an uphill battle, so there was significant worry about the pace of innovation.
There was a bit of reference to the term "locusts" (not by me) and the reputation Chinese tourists have. There was a fair amount of acknowledgement but also explanation of sudden wealth growth and historic lack of education resulting in low class behavior.
Some of the more high profile IP theft cases (vials in bags) were explained by the idea that that behavior had been consistently happening and it was understood by all parties involved that it was happening, until one day feds showed up. I didn't buy that so much.
There was also a fair amount of "we're nobodies, so we're not at risk" talk when it comes to speech, but I can't operate in a society like that because it's far too much exposure to vulnerability.
I got a mild run down of some of the mechanics of corruption, good faith corruption, and bad faith corruption.
I definitely started to get a lot of the understanding that dealing with the incredible amounts of poverty, dealing with large amounts of systemic corruption, dealing with entrenched power structures, and balancing that against hostile foreign super powers that would almost certainly exploit you was a pretty incredible task. As evil as I think china (the government) is for what it is doing, when you look at its struggles it paints a picture you have to respect, it gives a lot of empathy to the struggles of a Chinese well edcuated person, it makes you feel empathy for the average ignorant person.
I think of all the takeaways I had it was just how significant fear was as a primary policy motivator. Generally, unethical behavior is understood to be a product of unchecked ambition and therefore comically evil, but the idea that most of the unethical behavior is motivated out of fear was fairly compelling.
> - I experienced Hong Kong before china destroyed it.
I've just got to inject some skepticism on this point. This is such a knee-jerk opinion that's popular to parrot, because it feels right to say.
Maybe some small degree of it is true -- but you were able to come to this sweeping conclusion for all of Hong Kong, all of its people, based on your visit? I would question how in day to day life of people there (in working, living, buying, commuting, socializing), you came to this opinion. You saw something objectively changed? People upending their lives? How were you able to visit the city then?
Or were you just reading and regurgitating the news and stories told by the headline-grabbing people who thought this?
This is like if someone from Europe visited the US, and made the bold claim of feeling sorry for Americans because life had been fundamentally destroyed by the Trump presidency years.
I just don't buy these dramatic pronouncements. Not that I don't think China has damaged Hong Kong in some respects, but I just am skeptical that a short visit by some tourist can conclude some deep, fundamental change to a city's persona.
> I've just got to inject some skepticism on this point.
I'll answer you, but first I want you to give me a good faith explanation of what I mean when I say "hong kong was destroyed" and a guess of why I might say that or believe it, one that doesn't assume I'm a sheep or manipulated by media.
Sorry, I said good faith explanation, but I meant good faith guess.
I want you to explain what "Hong Kong destroyed" might mean when I say it because if we're not speaking the same language then we can't hope to see eye to eye. Clearly the city is still standing filled with people who aren't dead. Clearly it's not "destroyed" in that way.
I want you to guess why I would say it, which means brainstorming potential ideas. In good faith means taking those potential ideas and evaluating them yourself, if you don't find them remotely compelling, chances are I won't either. To say or think I believe something that isn't at the very least plausible to you is bad faith.
You accused me of potentially "parroting knee jerk opinions," which I interpret as meaning you cannot imagine why a functioning person capable of critical thinking might believe it or say it.
I will start by explaining why I think someone might find the statement "Hong Kong has been destroyed" spurious: Hong Kong is clearly still standing and the day to day life of a person in Hong Kong probably isn't significantly different than it was 2-4 years ago, businesses still function, people can still feed themselves, I doubt there is military in the streets, the average person can probably still say what they want. If the day to day life of a person isn't really that different, then it's kind of hard to argue that there has been a fundamental change, much less a "destruction."
Well, you might mean "destroyed" from the point of view of someone who wants to advocate for Hong Kong independence from China.
Or destroyed from the point of view of someone wanting to publish certain news articles criticizing China. Or whether your university/school teachers are allowed to even mention Hong Kong independence.
Or from the point of view of investors worried about the independence of the financial system from interference / controls in the longer term. Or that they might be extradited to China for financial crimes (or even political reasons) that previously weren't a concern.
Obviously, I'm not unaware of those points of view and situations.
On the other hand, for someone running a business in Hong Kong, working a 9-to-5 job, or even at a typical multinational corporation, or growing up going to school, or settling in for retirement, or traveling to/from the city, life shows no hour-by-hour or day-to-day difference for the vast majority of people.
Whether on balance, these factors would lead someone to declare that a city (or the idea of a city) has been "destroyed" overall is I guess what we're debating.
I take the point of view that jumping without further clarification to say that Hong Kong has been destroyed, is just a bit of a fashionable hyperbolic opinion to put out there -- an opinion that heavily overweights the concerns (even legitimate concerns) of a, let's call it 1%, special subset of the population. Are you one of that group / are you from Hong Kong? If not, how did you join the concerns of the group for whom the city appears to have been destroyed, rather than the rest of the city for whom it continues with no perceptible change in daily life?
I come from the direction that a place is most aptly defined by it’s culture. Buildings are inert. Infrastructure isn’t very distinguishable other than good and bad. Businesses are fairly interchangeable. People come and go. If you sum up the entirety of a place's values, interactions, and operations, its very way of life, I would call that culture.
So when I say “Hong Kong was destroyed,” the meaning is that there was a destruction of its culture. The word destruction is emotionally charged because a Chinese person probably doesn’t see what is fundamentally a replacement of Hong Kong culture (pretty western) with Chinese culture as destruction. So what you picked up on and dislike (the difference between explicit reality, and my coloring of it) probably has its heart in this interpretation. If you were a Chinese (nationality) person you might, somewhat rightly, feel insulted or wronged by this interpretation of events. I definitely agree it is somewhat hyperbolic, not because it is "fashionable," but because it's an emotional reaction to an atrocious appearing saga.
My first hand experience in Hong Kong is that it was one of the most open and diversity friendly places in Asia. It felt free. I had political conversations people felt safe having. People were fairly vibrant. It was filled with money and ambitious people. I met more rich people in Hong Kong than anywhere else by far. English was better in Hong Kong than anywhere else in Asia by several orders of magnitude. It was, apparently, a bastion of rule of law, rather than rule by law. It certainly seemed well run. I could use the internet.
My experience in China is that it was the least diversity friendly place in Asia. It's the only place I traveled I experienced direct racism (at me and at others). It did not feel remotely free. I experienced people scared to have political conversations. Some areas felt vibrant, and some areas did not. I have never gotten the sense that china was a place with rule of law. I have heard first hand from one American English teacher arrested for saying the wrong thing, and another who was threatened with it. The internet is restricted and free thought is denied. When I said the wrong thing it was “corrected,” like I can’t have my own opinion or at the very least it's dangerous to.
I talked with a fair number of Hong Kong people while in Hong Kong. China was very much seen as an enemy. They certainly had the opinion that china conducted itself as an oppressing force, forcibly migrating people in, forcibly redistributing resources, forcing political change via edict, gutting of the legal system, corrupting the rule of law, and imposing cultural changes. Hong Kong people I met in other countries shifted from vibrant to discouraged over time. I have not heard any Hong Kong person praise China once.
Add in the very good marketing/propaganda by the protestors and there is a very compelling case to me that china’s goal is not to integrate Hong Kong, but to dominate or extinguish Hong Kong culture entirely, which in my estimation has been successful.
How much grassroots pro china press was there? None, because they had no moral or just claim to do what they did. It was all about power, and china executed its power. I could not imagine myself as a Chinese person at all, but when I was in Hong Kong I felt like a Hong Kong person. I can empathize with the videos I saw. I can empathize with the statements I read. I can empathize with the people I talked to. I can empathize with the outrage that made it to the internet. I cannot see how a good person would find ruling of another people without their consent palatable, much less with their explicit protest.
A free people have been turned into an oppressed people and, to me, that is the destruction of a free culture, a culture tied directly to the city.
> how did you join the concerns of the group for whom the city appears to have been destroyed?
Those are the people I talked to. Those are the stories that made it to media I read. I have never seen, heard, or experienced anything that contradicts my interpretation of the situation except by people exerting power (Chinese government) in a way that made me feel it was bad faith propaganda.
The Hong Kong protests were to some degree freedom porn to Americans. Our indoctrination from birth glorifies exactly what the protestors were doing to the highest most patriotic thing one can do. From the revolution to the civil rights movement, the protests resonate with our curriculum on multiple levels. When comparing our history to what we see, Hong Kong protestors are clearly and unequivocally the good guys.
On related points: The framing that this is a fight that only matters to the 1% is a framing I personally consider to be mostly Chinese propaganda, but I can see why a reasonable person would find it compelling. The framing that this is an American plot to mess with the Chinese government is something I guess there is historical precedent for and certainly alignment for, but it's hard to excuse the authoritarian response. I don't find it even remotely compelling personally.
Traveling involves a lot of hedonism, and one day while traveling you suddenly realize you are on a hedonic treadmill. The first amazing meal you eat is life changing. The second one is about 50% as novel and good as that. Then you're comparing the next meal to 2 others, and the meal after that to 3 others... The cycle continues until you have consumed the earth and achieved emptiness. What remains is yourself. Once there is nothing left to consume to satisfy yourself you really have to ask whats next. The answer is building, and probably building yourself.
The lessons I learned about myself were some of the most hard:
More explicit examples of things I appreciate from having traveled: