CloutAtlas

Thumbnail: Chinese flag vs American flag

Actual content: Anything but Chinese

Result: Chinese

Lol

Hello! Depending on where your passport is from, you may not need a visa for a visit under 30 days, consult here (US and Canada are not on the list)

Apps you may need are WeChat and/or AliPay, and for a VPN to be able to onto the liberal website "Hexbear" I use Mullvad.

Early October isn't exactly the best time to visit if you're going during the start, as it's 八一 which means there will be a lot of domestic tourists. A lot of locations/trains will be absolutely flooded or booked out. In later October, the South will still be t-shirt and short weather while the north will be colder, meaning you should pack some jackets (I'd recommend layers to easily put on take off as needed)

The blue share bicycles are available for tourists (as they are AliPay) whereas the yellow Meituan ones are rented through WeChat and require a Chinese phone number (which requires a Visa/身份证 to obtain)

You'll also notice food portions get larger as you travel north. Always reminds me of my Tianjin grandfather saying something about southerners being stingy and/or greedy. If you ever hit the north east (东北）you might actually encounter all you can eat buffets for like $3 USD. Bear this in mind when you're ordering food, to avoid ordering too much once you get to the north.

Larry David-ian bit about a guy signing up to the national guard to get military benefits while having the lowest chance of being deployed overseas or actually seeing combat

KIROV REPORTING

Inshallah

PC towers that light up like a warehouse rave. I don't need to signal to Rohan that my house calls for aid. It's why I've stuck with a Fractal Design for the past 7 years.

The fancy light bullshit should be add-ons for people who want it, not baked in for everyone who don't. And you just know they're slapping a 200% premium on those shitty lights into the cost of the tower.

Possibly not "unsuitable" but they preferred being closer to running water but not too close as a convenience. And/or a trade/fishing thing, I know the Yellow and the Yangtze are both huge sources of food and trade, not sure about Wangxian

Sort of a "this is going to be annoying to build in the moment but will be beneficial in the long term" sort of thing.

It's like one of the older Sims games where if you get a character with certain traits (I think introverted and artist?) you can build them an attic with a fridge, a bookshelf, a bathroom, a bed and unlimited art supplies and they will willingly spend their entire life up there churning out art when they're working and reading when they're not.

Not only are they happy being relegated to a specific part of the house forever, they generate enough to fund the whole entire household.

The little child proof fence in the foreground implies Hasan is in a toddler pen (and not that there's a different toddler in the house)

There's a really good documentary made by a Japanese filmmaker about some of the poorest parts of China and the government's poverty alleviation schemes here

One of the Yi villages in Sichuan is located 1400m above sea level (the capital of Sichuan, Chengdu is 500m, for reference). The cliff side villagers used to have to climb almost 800m of cliffs to go back home if they decide to come down from the mountain, before the government funded stairs so the way up and down is now "only" a 3km stairway where you ascend 800 meters.

Not sure about this place specifically, but before we went and built dams, a lot of these river valleys would flood seasonally. I'd wager the buildings closer to the river are newer than those further away.

Hell, my hometown of Wuhan still floods occasionally and that's post Three Gorges upstream

Stalin was great at getting the whole Soviet Union to sit around a large fireplace while he smokes from his pipe in a rocking chair and tells a good story. Gorbachev was absolutely terrible at it, his stories don't pass the Bechdel test and all his self insert characters are Mary Sues.