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Not everyone can feasibly do this, you need to speak mandarin + read/write chinese, legally be able to work, and have some way to deal with the gfw. Also tap water may not be drinkable but thats more of a nuisance since you can filter/boil it.
Also idk what the article is talking about with flying delivery drones and self driving cars in shenzhen, if you order meituan delivery its probably gonna be delivered by a gig worker on a scooter cuz thats all young people can get employed as these days. Delivery is insanely cheap and can't possibly pay much, but also cost of living is relatively low, but still shenzhen is on the expensive end as far as living in china goes.
Finally paying for everything via alipay/wechat and visiting everywhere with biometrics is yet another convenience/privacy tradeoff. Visit china on a 10 year tourist visa, everywhere you go by train, every tourist attraction or national park you visit, every digital payment, is all linked to your passport. Equivalent for chinese citizens would be the national id card/number. China more or less skipped the credit card adoption phase afaik. Not that places won't take cash but it's less common especially in cities.
China is not a magical land where everything is perfect and futuristic. It's a big country with a lot of people in many, many big cities that operates on totally different cultural systems. It is affordable from the perspective of a tourist who earns USD/Euro etc.
Source: I spent a month there in 2025
When I visited the U.S. the tap water there wasn't really drinkable. People said it was fine, but my friend bought bottled water, which I paid for during my stay because the tap stuff smelled evil. Tried the tap water at a restaurant and I physically couldn't swallow it. Supposedly Massachusetts has pretty good water, too.
I like this take. You often hear places hyped up in media because that garners clicks, but everywhere has its pros and cons. Living in Sweden, I've heard absolutely bananas claims about my country. I'm comfortable here, but not everyone will be, and it's certainly not the utopia some people believe it to be.
China has some good things going for it. I'm not a fan of the lack of privacy there, but simultaneously Europe is taking a leaf out of that playbook. They seem to have decent healthcare, and the infrastructure is seeing some major work that a lot of places here in Europe sorely needs.
The working culture in China is off-putting to me, though I feel similarly for a lot of other places here in Europe as well. Germany for example has a really rough work culture, which always makes it funny when American immigrants sing its praises.
The world is complex.
What else did you think about your visit to Florida?
Don't forget Texas
My tap water is just fine in San Antonio. It's cool because you can either drink it fresh, or boil it off and it'll turn into rocks.
They said Massachusetts lol. I get that everyone has different taste but I don't think I've ever met anyone else that described the water there as impossible to swallow. But I believe them, I thought the water in Poland tasted bad and I'm sure that was largely just because of what I was used to.
Oh, I misinterpreted what they said about Massachusetts, but you're right. I thought they have generally decent water and also couldn't pass up the opportunity to complain about Florida's water. I'm sure there are variances across the state, but what I've experienced in Florida is horrible, sulfur-smelling water. Walking around as people are watering their lawns at night is a noxious experience. But you're also right that a lot of it can be attributed to the mineral content of water in a given place and what we're used to (except for Florida... their water is objectively non-potable).
That's fair, if it's So Flo it's literally swamp water lol
Honestly that can apply to a majority of cities in America.
If I'd gone to Florida I would've wanted to see gators! That would've been exciting.
The water in the US is drinkable almost everywhere. Only very small outliers would exist. So you don't inspire confidence with your take there.
It is insane you’re getting downvoted like wtf do you mean US doesn’t have drinkable tap water?
https://www.nrdc.org/resources/new-map-shows-areas-high-lead-tap-water-levels-lead-violations
Theres more issues with American drinking water than most want to think.
Lead contamination is wide spread.
Theres also many places where drinking water is contaminated with PFAS https://www.ewg.org/interactive-maps/pfas_contamination/
Americas tap water is not as clean or as reliable as one would hope it to be, and it would be a fair concern to want to avoid drinking it.
Which is a very different position than america does not have drinkable tap water
I mean sure, Its drinkable.. anythings drinkable once. Its what happens after thats the danger and concern.
That kind of unfounded, unnecessary aggression is why we need to address the lead issue in the water.
"Here's a link that proves your wrong"
"Fuck off, I don't need facts, I wanna be wrong."
Americans in a nut shell. No wonder Trump got elected.
Ok
Conspiracy nonsense by... Giving links from reputable sources. What are you, a Trump cultist? No wonder you support America's crumbling infrastructure.
Yeah you can tell I'm a trump cultist because I believe stupid conspiracy theories immediately. Oh wait.
Yeah I will never get over how people will just lie to throw shade at people and things they don't like. America pisses me off constantly, I'm from there and I have a lot of rage for it. But lying about how the country's drinking water isn't safe to drink in general is a weird thing to do and it's misinformation which is just gross.
it's the chlorination. makes it smell foul and impossible to swallow, at least for me. last time i had to buy one of one of those bottles with a built-in filter, because otherwise i would just instinctually not drink water.
Then say the water tastes bad. Don’t spread misinformation that the US doesn’t have drinkable tap water.
i wasn't the one making the claim, but for me it is undrinkable. when i say "impossible to swallow", i mean literally. i have an allergic reaction to chlorine, and there's enough in us tap water to make my throat swell shut.
So long as you want to drink from lead pipes. That's safe, right? Obama drank from the water in Flint and said it was fine so I guess Americans are immune to lead poisoning.
That's not true everywhere and besides that's moving the goalposts. OP was claiming the water was clearly so nasty you could tell by taste and smell which would not be related to lead pipes in any way. America has more problems with drinking water than it should by far but it's actually just a lie to pretend it can be considered unsafe to drink as a blanket statement.
So Obama drinking form lead pipes and saying it's safe is good? Or do you believe he was wrong?
Germany has a rough working culture? Where do you get this from? In some unions full-time equates to only 35 hours a week, and we commonly have 30 days of vacation. And our working culture is nothing at all like in the US. We have very good employee protection rights and unlimited sick days. And currently I am working in the public sector, where I can choose to work only 4 days a week (with 80% of the pay, ofc). It is really great.
Think it depends on where you are. I've three close friends who all have had really rough working experiences.
One person was studying at business school and had an intern position at a company. There were legal limits to how much my friend should've been allowed to work, but the company didn't give a fuck. This ended up being a detriment to their studies, which was the whole point of working to begin with. They were tasked with way too much responsibility, and neither authorities or union really gave a fuck.
Another friend works in tech. They had a similar situation during their studies, and have since taken on a "hard work is good" mindset which I find revolting, because hard work isn't intrinsically good, it's rewarded with more work, and you get exploited until you burn out.
Further, the fairly strict social hierarchy Germany has is really off-putting to me, and it's reflected in the working culture. Work meetings I had in Germany were always awfully stiff and weird.
Again, this is from a personal preferences perspective. Some people love the rigours. I do not. Most of the Nordics have been influenced in some manner by Janteloven, and it's reflected here. I cannot stand social hierarchies where someone is supposedly your better for some arbitrary reason.
The former friend moved here, and experienced our working culture. I remember one day they talked to me about how shocking it was to have the CEO of their company bat for them, and talk to them like an equal. They said it would've been unthinkable at their previous workplaces.
I can tell you, your experiences can't be generalized. The work environment can really differ from company to company, and also depends in which industry you are working. I am working in IT, and in my department my colleagues and I can talk to each other in a very casual, non-formal way.
I'm not saying they are, and like previously mentioned lots of people enjoy Germany and its social/work culture. That's perfectly fine, it's just not for me. Germany still has a hierarchical culture we got rid of a while back in Sweden,. We used to use honourifics, titles, and such, but nowadays it's awkward, borderline rude to use them.
There's actually an amusing phenomenon with younger people entering the workforce trying to apply a formal "you" in Swedish. Historically though, that was always used to talk down to someone. We never really had a formal you, but "ni" fits in really well with "vous" or "Sie" if you're unfamiliar with its history.
There's a Wikipedia article on the du-reform here.
The tap water is absolutely drinkable. If you don’t like the taste get a filter.
"Just buy more things to make the water fine to drink" Yep, that's America. No wonder yanks drink so much sugar water.
That is not what I said. The water is fine to drink without it. I do it every single day, as do the vast majority of Americans. If you have a fridge with a water dispenser (90% of US fridges) it already comes with a filter.
What don't you like about Sweden, if you don't mind me asking?
I'd say that our international reputation is kind of undeserved.
For example, we've previously been kind of prideful of our status as "neutral" in conflicts, but I don't think we ever really were. During WWII we were doing the same eugenics stuff that Germany was interested in, we severely maltreated our native population, and ultimately while we didn't exactly ally ourselves with Germany, we also didn't stand against them. We let the nazis use our railway network to attack Norway for example.
Segue: the most recent eugenics law we got rid of, to my knowledge, was in 2013, when we abolished the requirement for trans people to get sterilised. Obviously, the nazi party was against this.
I wrote about a kind of pivotal event here, which ended up shaping how our labour system functions. However, the Social Democrats of old are not the same as those we have today. They've been catering more and more to the right, and the perspective I see the most nowadays is that they kind of just go with the flow. They don't have any significant values, and haven't for a long time.
This shows, because we have some very American problems in society now. Widening gaps between the normal people and the ultra rich. Significant parts of our welfare has been sold off and privatised. We have nazis sitting in parliament.
One example I think is particularly striking is our drug policy. It's the one thing pretty much all parties are in unison on; drugs are and should remain banned, and people that use drugs need to be punished. The stats for drug related deaths here are scary, and the scientists are saying that the policies need revisions because the current draconic approach isn't really working.
The parties however will not budge, instead they sit in parliament and sniff cocaine, and when they're caught it obviously doesn't get investigated.
A social democratic politician from Sweden is also the person responsible for initiating the whole Chat Control thing.
Where in MA? Around Boston it's all high quality, but outside the metro area it varies.
Except Cambridge. Despite being right there with everything else, they refuse to use the same system and instead use the local pond which is all highway runoff.
Tried it in Haverhill at a friends place, Lowell at another friend, and the restaurant was in Salem.
The restaurant kicked ass in general though. Flying Saucer Pizzeria. I am not a big fan of pizza but man, I want those pizzas again. Truly top tier.
I did visit a restaurant in Cambridge actually. It became kind of a highlight of my trip because of another cultural thing I struggled with. See, the toilets I'd bumped into so far in my trip all felt really foreign to me. They were kind of low, and very large. So when I visited the bathroom at this restaurant I was really surprised to see a standard toilet, the kind I had at home.
It was such a thing, I even took a photo of it.
Honestly, International takes in the Netherlands are pretty much spot on. It's mostly the expats living here who have crazy ideas.
I also lived in Shenzhen, except for years. All deliveries are guys on scooters. The drone shit is a fantasy that they make videos of but never actually happens (just like the Sea World water light show). All the tech is janky as fuck and the locals work around and despite the tech. The rich treat the locals like slaves, and some have slaves (usually Filipino). Every bathroom smells like piss and shit because they don’t use bleach or any cleaners. And finally the water is undrinkable and “neighbor smell” (look it up) makes you want to vomit every morning.
Plus, delivery drones have one fatal flaw that always gets glossed over - they're loud as hell. Even if the tech can be made to work right, people simply don't want to put up with that much constant high-pitched noise. If a company ever did figure out large-scale drone delivery, delivery drones would be immediately banned due to the sheer annoyance of the damn things.
Didn't read to be clear, but the buildings in Shenzhen are new enough that simple filtering should be OK. (Was there just a month ago)
Note: For travelers I would recommend bottled water anyway.
Such BS about privacy payoff. Do you know what your banks and venmo know about you? Your chip in your phone or credit card, allows companies to target ads in real time. That's the reality in the US but conveniently ignored because China has to be bastion of privacy violation. In reality China has privacy laws comparable to the European GDPR.
AliPay and wechat are fenomal. It's like in the western world, 1000 apps rolled into one. Paying, ordering food, ordering DiDi, trains, flights, insurance, sports, tickets all in the one app. Plus you can add mini apps within so when you go to a restaurant you can scan the QR code or just put your phone on the NFC tag, and the menu pops up so you can order and pay directly.
China is much better in regards to infrastructure like high speed trains, social security, health care, green energy but again because of the western propaganda this is ignored. Are there tradeoffs? Yes of course.
But from someone who lived and worked in the US for 2 years and now lives in China for over 7 years, I can 100% claim my life is much better here than in the US. And definitely much, much more affordable which is what the article is about.
my cousin spent 1+ there teaching english, he came back to state to try to get into a career in CS, its probably not enough for many peoples livelyhoods.