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There is so much amazing beauty in the world, including the largest country on the planet, Russia - and then especially areas in China, which I would LOVE to vi

There is so much amazing beauty in the world, including the largest country on the planet, Russia - and then especially areas in China, which I would LOVE to visit, but the governments of each country kinda suck, so its not a place I'll likely go (imagine mtn biking through some of the amazing landscapes of either) With that said, I'd love to hear Lex Fridman's opinion on all of this.

DiogenesKynikos 4y ago
It's not difficult to visit China (except that you'll probably have to apply for a visa, but Chinese people have to do that to visit Western countries too). You won't experience much about the government while there. Police aren't really that present in public. Border control is like any other country. The only issue you're likely to run into is the Great Firewall, for which you can just install a VPN before arriving in country. Many Westerners experience a sort of shock when they first visit China, because the dystopia they're expecting to see never materializes.
- atdrummond 4y ago
  Very much this. The only area where I felt uncomfortable was in Xinjiang, as two friends in that region have effectively been “disappeared”. While I am skeptical of much of what has been written on this topic, due to its obvious use as propaganda, many of the tours I had there reminded me of those in DPRK. There was an obvious level of orchestration designed to show you a face of Xinjiang which lacked any warts.
  - FooBarWidget 4y ago
    When were you there? Did you choose to have a tour instead of freely traveling on your own, or was it not a deliberately choice?
    - atdrummond 4y ago
      This was right before COVID. I was there as part of an economic cooperation summit, so the tours were part and parcel of that event. I am supposed to visit again later this year.
      - kelipso 4y ago
        So presumably you can wander out into town in the evening after work? Maybe you should try doing that next time. Even bog standard tourist bus trips in literally every country have obvious levels of orchestration designed to show you a face of that region which lacked any warts.
        atdrummond 4y ago
        I did visit parts of the area on my own. My issue was with the discordance between what the Chinese press and my more militant Chinese friends say and what I saw in the totality of my time there. I had no less than 6 seemingly non-extremist Uighurs express their desire to live in the states for religious freedom reasons.
- kortilla 4y ago
  The dystopia is right in your face. VPNs don’t work well and with them turned off there is a ton of stuff you can’t access.
  - FooBarWidget 4y ago
    You may be surprised to find out that outside of HN, not many people use Internet freedom as a prime measurement of dystopia. As a techie I am personally also very annoyed at the lack of Internet freedom. But as a Chinese I also recognize that there are many more aspects in life and society that are more important than Internet freedom, and that China scores pretty high at (especially in historic context).
    - krzyk 4y ago
      Like the right to protest?
      - FooBarWidget 4y ago
        Well people protested against 0-covid during a time that the media reported as "Xi wants to maintain 0-covid forever because he wants more control". Mere days later, 0-covid was lifted. Sounds like a prime example of "the expected dystopia never materializes" to me.
        seanmcdirmid 4y ago
        Uhm, people were protesting 0-covid in China for almost a year before Xi lifted it. It wasn't like there was a protest, and Xi lifted it right away. It took the CPC sometime to figure out they were doing the wrong strategy.
        krzyk 4y ago
        I'm sure people that protested were taken care of. Like the one that just got out of jail after 3 years (he reported the spread in Wuhan). BTW. How is Wikipedia looking from China, blank spots?
    - 4y ago
- janalsncm 4y ago
  American police are actually much more scary tbh. Physically, many Chinese cops are fairly scrawny and usually don’t carry guns, maybe just handcuffs and a baton. Their main weapon is their body camera. Sometimes they do carry guns but it’s not the norm imo. I will add one more aspect is the almost complete absence of traffic cops. A lot of the most dangerous situations with cops in the US have been at traffic stops. But in China there are cameras that send out tickets automatically. I’m sure there are due process concerns with that implementation, but there is also a zero percent chance you will be killed by police at a traffic stop.
  - vorpalhex 4y ago
    Every cop I saw in Guangzhou had at least an old makarov in an aging holster, except the metro police.
- adamsb6 4y ago
  If you bring your own cell data plan you won't even need to futz with VPN. Cell data tunnels back to the carrier and the Great Firewall doesn't block anything.
- bitL 4y ago
  I still can't forget how the immigration tried to disassemble my camera lens in Shanghai (not just remove them from the camera, but also tear them down), so visiting China might lead to some unexpected bad impressions. Also being barely able to see sun in Beijing due to fog/smog everywhere when arriving from pristine New Zealand looked very unwelcoming.
- stcroixx 4y ago
  Is it allowed for foreigners to travel to where the forced labor re-education camps are? I’d assumed it was not.
  - MSFT_Edging 4y ago
    > XINJIANG, China (AP) — The razor wire that once ringed public buildings in China’s far northwestern Xinjiang region is nearly all gone. https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-lifestyle-china-health-travel-7a6967f335f97ca868cc618ea84b98b9 https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-lifestyle-ch...
  - iudqnolq 4y ago
    To the extent you are all you'll see is buildings. This illustrates the limits of using personal observation to learn things if you aren't an expert. A lot of the forced labor involves people involuntarily working alongside voluntary workers at ordinary factories. As a foreigner you won't see anything notable there.
- iudqnolq 4y ago
  .
  - MSFT_Edging 4y ago
    If you ask Chinese people outside of China, they also really don't care. They know what happened, its like the Kent State shooting for them. The west severely exaggerates every bad thing that happens over there then pretends like every misstep is solved with execution. Sure there's censorship but its exaggerated to a level of fiction in the west, like a movie that's "based on real events". More than likely if you ask a Chinese person in China about Tiananmen, they'll see you like one of those Nazi streamers who call girls whores in public. Just a weird edgelord looking to stir up trouble.
    - iudqnolq 4y ago
      .
      - MSFT_Edging 4y ago
        No, I mean the person I had in mind knew full well about it. Just thought of it as something that was bad, but not an indictment of an illegitimate state like people talk about it.
      - mannerheim 4y ago
        Most people know what happened, but nobody refers to Tiananmen Square because 1) that's a pretty notable place on its own and 2) the protests were a nationwide movement, of which international journalists only ever saw any of it in Beijing. Akin to calling the January 6 protests the Capitol Hill protests. You'd call the Tiananmen Square protests June 4, or if you're being rather cheeky, May 35.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
- ido 4y ago
  Are "many Westerners" really expecting China to be a dystopia? I'm a westerner and my impression of the Soviet Union (and now Russia) was intuitively dire (probably exaggerated compared to reality) but my intuitive expectations of China isn't really. I feel like "westerners" today treat China like they used to treat Japan in the 70s/80s, not like they used to treat the Soviet Union. There's plenty of positive reporting about how things "just work" in China compared to the west (especially constructing infrastructure) and strong economy development.
atdrummond 4y ago
I encourage you (barring safety concerns) to travel to countries whose governments are considered illiberal. Some of my most enlightening trips were to DPRK, Russia, China, Turkmenistan, Brunei. You learn a lot about how the western media tends to exaggerate for political ends.
- catiopatio 4y ago
  No, you learn a lot about how illiberal governments treat foreign visitors from wealthy western countries, and how they leverage their power to control what you as a tourist see and hear. The first country you list is the DPRK, who are famed for carefully stage-managing any visit by western tourists. If you want an honest view of those places, you have to speak with people who aren’t risking their lives or livelihoods if they tell you the truth.
  - janalsncm 4y ago
    North Korea is an exception, since it’s pretty hard to talk to actual locals. Having lived in one of those illiberal countries for a while (China) I could clearly see how the US media distorted everything, reduced Chinese people to a monolith, downplayed or simply ignored all of the genuinely good things happening, and took every opportunity to highlight the negatives. It is to the point where every positive, interesting, or beautiful thing is reflexively shot down and dismissed.
    - mannerheim 4y ago
      Maybe you should have gone to China last year or the year before to enjoy the authentic Chinese experience of living in a cage without food because grocery shopping was verboten.
      - janalsncm 4y ago
        With sufficient repetition, propaganda embeds itself into a person’s core belief system. This makes it self-replicating in ways that no state alone has the resources to accomplish. Very quickly when people travel (even if within their own country), they realize that their worldview has been shaped by what others want them to see. Maybe it is a benign travel ad that crops out the favela in the background, maybe it is genuinely lovely people colored as backwards or belligerent. There’s a reason someone has chosen to post that video or show you that picture.
myth_drannon 4y ago
Russia and China are large but not even half of our planet. There are plenty of amazing places to visit to fill your entire life.
poisonarena 4y ago
this has got to be the most reddit thing i have ever read
- yucatansunshine 4y ago
  guarantee you it's a r/worldnews poster
- wing-_-nuts 4y ago
  Is he wrong though? No way I'd set foot in russia and I'd probably just avoid china as well. Plenty of other places to see in the world.
greenie_beans 4y ago
> I'd love to hear Lex Fridman's opinion on all of this why?

DiogenesKynikos 4y ago

It's not difficult to visit China (except that you'll probably have to apply for a visa, but Chinese people have to do that to visit Western countries too). You won't experience much about the government while there. Police aren't really that present in public. Border control is like any other country. The only issue you're likely to run into is the Great Firewall, for which you can just install a VPN before arriving in country. Many Westerners experience a sort of shock when they first visit China, because the dystopia they're expecting to see never materializes.

atdrummond 4y ago
Very much this. The only area where I felt uncomfortable was in Xinjiang, as two friends in that region have effectively been “disappeared”. While I am skeptical of much of what has been written on this topic, due to its obvious use as propaganda, many of the tours I had there reminded me of those in DPRK. There was an obvious level of orchestration designed to show you a face of Xinjiang which lacked any warts.
- FooBarWidget 4y ago
  When were you there? Did you choose to have a tour instead of freely traveling on your own, or was it not a deliberately choice?
  - atdrummond 4y ago
    This was right before COVID. I was there as part of an economic cooperation summit, so the tours were part and parcel of that event. I am supposed to visit again later this year.
    - kelipso 4y ago
      So presumably you can wander out into town in the evening after work? Maybe you should try doing that next time. Even bog standard tourist bus trips in literally every country have obvious levels of orchestration designed to show you a face of that region which lacked any warts.
      - atdrummond 4y ago
        I did visit parts of the area on my own. My issue was with the discordance between what the Chinese press and my more militant Chinese friends say and what I saw in the totality of my time there. I had no less than 6 seemingly non-extremist Uighurs express their desire to live in the states for religious freedom reasons.
kortilla 4y ago
The dystopia is right in your face. VPNs don’t work well and with them turned off there is a ton of stuff you can’t access.
- FooBarWidget 4y ago
  You may be surprised to find out that outside of HN, not many people use Internet freedom as a prime measurement of dystopia. As a techie I am personally also very annoyed at the lack of Internet freedom. But as a Chinese I also recognize that there are many more aspects in life and society that are more important than Internet freedom, and that China scores pretty high at (especially in historic context).
  - krzyk 4y ago
    Like the right to protest?
    - FooBarWidget 4y ago
      Well people protested against 0-covid during a time that the media reported as "Xi wants to maintain 0-covid forever because he wants more control". Mere days later, 0-covid was lifted. Sounds like a prime example of "the expected dystopia never materializes" to me.
      - seanmcdirmid 4y ago
        Uhm, people were protesting 0-covid in China for almost a year before Xi lifted it. It wasn't like there was a protest, and Xi lifted it right away. It took the CPC sometime to figure out they were doing the wrong strategy.
      - krzyk 4y ago
        I'm sure people that protested were taken care of. Like the one that just got out of jail after 3 years (he reported the spread in Wuhan). BTW. How is Wikipedia looking from China, blank spots?
  - 4y ago
janalsncm 4y ago
American police are actually much more scary tbh. Physically, many Chinese cops are fairly scrawny and usually don’t carry guns, maybe just handcuffs and a baton. Their main weapon is their body camera. Sometimes they do carry guns but it’s not the norm imo. I will add one more aspect is the almost complete absence of traffic cops. A lot of the most dangerous situations with cops in the US have been at traffic stops. But in China there are cameras that send out tickets automatically. I’m sure there are due process concerns with that implementation, but there is also a zero percent chance you will be killed by police at a traffic stop.
- vorpalhex 4y ago
  Every cop I saw in Guangzhou had at least an old makarov in an aging holster, except the metro police.
adamsb6 4y ago
If you bring your own cell data plan you won't even need to futz with VPN. Cell data tunnels back to the carrier and the Great Firewall doesn't block anything.
bitL 4y ago
I still can't forget how the immigration tried to disassemble my camera lens in Shanghai (not just remove them from the camera, but also tear them down), so visiting China might lead to some unexpected bad impressions. Also being barely able to see sun in Beijing due to fog/smog everywhere when arriving from pristine New Zealand looked very unwelcoming.
stcroixx 4y ago
Is it allowed for foreigners to travel to where the forced labor re-education camps are? I’d assumed it was not.
- MSFT_Edging 4y ago
  > XINJIANG, China (AP) — The razor wire that once ringed public buildings in China’s far northwestern Xinjiang region is nearly all gone. https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-lifestyle-china-health-travel-7a6967f335f97ca868cc618ea84b98b9 https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-lifestyle-ch...
- iudqnolq 4y ago
  To the extent you are all you'll see is buildings. This illustrates the limits of using personal observation to learn things if you aren't an expert. A lot of the forced labor involves people involuntarily working alongside voluntary workers at ordinary factories. As a foreigner you won't see anything notable there.
iudqnolq 4y ago
.
- MSFT_Edging 4y ago
  If you ask Chinese people outside of China, they also really don't care. They know what happened, its like the Kent State shooting for them. The west severely exaggerates every bad thing that happens over there then pretends like every misstep is solved with execution. Sure there's censorship but its exaggerated to a level of fiction in the west, like a movie that's "based on real events". More than likely if you ask a Chinese person in China about Tiananmen, they'll see you like one of those Nazi streamers who call girls whores in public. Just a weird edgelord looking to stir up trouble.
  - iudqnolq 4y ago
    .
    - MSFT_Edging 4y ago
      No, I mean the person I had in mind knew full well about it. Just thought of it as something that was bad, but not an indictment of an illegitimate state like people talk about it.
    - mannerheim 4y ago
      Most people know what happened, but nobody refers to Tiananmen Square because 1) that's a pretty notable place on its own and 2) the protests were a nationwide movement, of which international journalists only ever saw any of it in Beijing. Akin to calling the January 6 protests the Capitol Hill protests. You'd call the Tiananmen Square protests June 4, or if you're being rather cheeky, May 35.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
ido 4y ago
Are "many Westerners" really expecting China to be a dystopia? I'm a westerner and my impression of the Soviet Union (and now Russia) was intuitively dire (probably exaggerated compared to reality) but my intuitive expectations of China isn't really. I feel like "westerners" today treat China like they used to treat Japan in the 70s/80s, not like they used to treat the Soviet Union. There's plenty of positive reporting about how things "just work" in China compared to the west (especially constructing infrastructure) and strong economy development.

atdrummond 4y ago

I encourage you (barring safety concerns) to travel to countries whose governments are considered illiberal. Some of my most enlightening trips were to DPRK, Russia, China, Turkmenistan, Brunei. You learn a lot about how the western media tends to exaggerate for political ends.

catiopatio 4y ago
No, you learn a lot about how illiberal governments treat foreign visitors from wealthy western countries, and how they leverage their power to control what you as a tourist see and hear. The first country you list is the DPRK, who are famed for carefully stage-managing any visit by western tourists. If you want an honest view of those places, you have to speak with people who aren’t risking their lives or livelihoods if they tell you the truth.
- janalsncm 4y ago
  North Korea is an exception, since it’s pretty hard to talk to actual locals. Having lived in one of those illiberal countries for a while (China) I could clearly see how the US media distorted everything, reduced Chinese people to a monolith, downplayed or simply ignored all of the genuinely good things happening, and took every opportunity to highlight the negatives. It is to the point where every positive, interesting, or beautiful thing is reflexively shot down and dismissed.
  - mannerheim 4y ago
    Maybe you should have gone to China last year or the year before to enjoy the authentic Chinese experience of living in a cage without food because grocery shopping was verboten.
    - janalsncm 4y ago
      With sufficient repetition, propaganda embeds itself into a person’s core belief system. This makes it self-replicating in ways that no state alone has the resources to accomplish. Very quickly when people travel (even if within their own country), they realize that their worldview has been shaped by what others want them to see. Maybe it is a benign travel ad that crops out the favela in the background, maybe it is genuinely lovely people colored as backwards or belligerent. There’s a reason someone has chosen to post that video or show you that picture.

myth_drannon 4y ago

Russia and China are large but not even half of our planet. There are plenty of amazing places to visit to fill your entire life.

poisonarena 4y ago

this has got to be the most reddit thing i have ever read

yucatansunshine 4y ago
guarantee you it's a r/worldnews poster
wing-_-nuts 4y ago
Is he wrong though? No way I'd set foot in russia and I'd probably just avoid china as well. Plenty of other places to see in the world.

greenie_beans 4y ago

> I'd love to hear Lex Fridman's opinion on all of this why?