A decade ago, Bradley Krae left the United States to teach English in Shenzhen, China. He spends less money and says the has found his own version of the American Dream there.
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.
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.
Paying for everything with Visa/MasterCard is better? I feel like a lot of people’s issues with “privacy” around China are correct. But for some reason are ok with the same exact things in the US/West.
In the West we share literally all of the privacy concerns you mentioned above but instead of them being clearly outlined and regulated by our government; they are instead entirely controlled by private companies that use and sell the information for profit.
I guess it’s the illusion of privacy, or really the abstraction of it being violated, that makes people in the west feel like China is somehow doing something different. They aren’t, they are just upfront about their tracking and data collection.
In China they have CCTV. In the US we have Ring. Like, people literally put Ring cameras INSIDE there house willingly. It blows my mind. And the idea that in the US that it’s “decentralized” or “not available to the government” is a lie.
I guess my point is. You’re not wrong about the payment processing or the privacy concerns in China. But, you live with the same exact thing in the west every single day. Arguably worse because your data is being controlled by a CEO for profit and they’re selling that to anyone and everyone. On top of being given to your government.
Edit: I did agree with the concerns of the original comment over privacy in China. So, id really appreciate a response comment rather than a downvote only. My comment is meant to criticize the US/West (the system most people reading this live under). I wasn’t trying to justify China. I am a huge fan of China and it’s progress in many ways. At least in terms of learning from their success. But one major criticism I have of them is their level of surveillance and, what I see as now unnecessary, levels of control on speech related to government criticism. So, id ordinarily be a “look at their high speed rail” Andy on this topic. I am very critical of China when it comes to this specific issue; and see it as a major weakness for them that they need to address. But, since I live in the west. I want to make people aware that this issue also exists here. I am more critical of my own country because I live under it. And being distracted by China’s problems instead of our own is a major failure.
Also tap water may not be drinkable but thats more of a nuisance since you can filter/boil it.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Tap water is just dependent on the area you live in. You’re use to the tap water where you live and in similar regions. Whether you drink it or not you’re exposed to it every day. It’s normal.
When you travel. You’ll always have this reaction if you’re not use to it. It’s not unique the US and the tap water here is perfectly fine.
People in the US say the same thing about Europe. But I traveled all over Europe and the tap water is fine. It’s “weird” definitely but for the same reasons you think American tap is weird.
Having said that. Lake Tahoe in California is the top tier of tap water in America.
Rome and it’s public water fountains were my favorite in Europe. Really refreshing and cool water on ancient water infrastructure. Top tier for Europe.
europe generally doesn’t chlorinate its water as hard as north america. every bathroom and kitchen ive been in in the us smells like chlorine, and trying to drink the water makes my throat physically swell shut. in europe i only have that reaction if i get pool water in my mouth, which is how i figured out i’m allergic to it.
I’ve traveled most of the US coast to coast. Never had water like that. It varies dramatically region to region and I taste a difference. I’ve traveled to a couple of counties in Europe as well and the water is similar
Also that bathroom smell isn’t the water. People use chlorinated bleach to clean
Depending on where water is sourced and local geography, water can have extremely different characteristics even town to town. Throughout most of Missouri for instance it’s sourced from the Missouri and Mississippi rivers and generally fine. Down south in Nevada Missouri there’s a high sulfur content in the ground. And the water pulled from it has a STRONG sulfur smell and taste. It’s safe to use and drink. But if you aren’t from the area, a struggle to use. Joplin not very far away has a completely different taste and characteristics to their water.
Generally any place that sources from a river as long as they don’t over chlorinate should be pretty acceptable to most people. The places that source from geologic aquifers or other more stagnant bodies that have a chance to leach larger contents of specific minerals from the ground. Can have distinct taste and smell profiles. Especially well water. It doesn’t matter where US or any other place on Earth will be the same.
Interesting. Had to look this up. Apparently a lot of Europe uses small amounts of chlorine too in similar levels to America. But some countries like the Netherlands and Germany have alternatives that use Ozone. I could definitely understand this taste difference if you live in a country that doesn’t use it. Thanks for expanding my tap water knowledge.
For reference. The levels of chlorine added to tap in Europe (UK and others) or America are around 0.5 ppm. A swimming pool with chlorine would have 5.0 ppm. 10x seems actually lower than I would have thought. Especially given how much a swimming pool smells of it.
I lived a month in the Netherlands and never noticed a difference in taste personally. Drank tap a lot of the time.
I’d wonder if you’re from the Netherlands or Germany (or maybe a country that doesn’t add chlorine that I didn’t see listed).
Or maybe it’s used less for cleaning in Europe and your sensitivity to it is due to that. I’d be curious to know where you’re from.
i’m swedish. we generally don’t treat our water at all, it just goes straight from well to tap. the exception is large cities like stockholm that need to use surface water instead of groundwater, and they use artificial infiltration systems followed by uv-disinfection (or ozone, don’t remember which). the water in stockholm also tastes weird to me, but it’s completely drinkable. every time i visit family in north america and forget about the chlorine thing i get a shock.
Interesting. Definitely rings true with my hypothesis on this stuff though. I guess I’d say the taste difference is real. But, having traveled a lot I’d also say that if you “give it a shot” for a couple days your tastes adjust pretty quickly. It’s been my stubborn choice to not buy bottled water that taught me this.
Not to say that some countries may have worse regulations or focus on “more natural” taste priorities. That’s definitely true. But I wouldn’t let the worry of the water being “unsafe” exaggerate those natural feelings.
I’d be more concerned about some small city in America (Flint Michigan being our obvious newsworthy one) than any major city. Though Flint was unrelated to filtration standards and literally just a refusal to remove ancient lead pipe infrastructure.
Though I definitely do trust European standards and regulations more than an American. For the time being, our major cities are still running on proven standards for health and filtration though.
i’ve definitely experienced the “getting used to it” thing in other countries, but unfortunately the throat swelling is a physical reaction to chlorine. i also can’t go in swimming pools without goggles or i get covered in blisters. on the skin it’s fine but if it touches a mucous membrane i’m fucked. also forgot about that when i first took a shower after landing in bc a few years ago, which was a fun time.
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.
What else did you think about your visit to Florida?
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
Generally they’re not, provided they can keep it low key.
And since within the PRC it’s quite easy to fire people, and courts and settlement is about how much 面子 you can make the company lose without pissing off local authorities vs. the 关系 and pressure they can bring to bear to have you drop it there’s not much to be done.
“ask” that people do overtime, and then fire them for not being a team player, or downmote them into a stressful deadend if they don’t take the voluntary overtime.
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.
Yeah. Anywhere would basically be like this if you have enough money to retire luxuriously in that country. And anywhere you do that, poorer people will be making that lifestyle possible with their labor.
While I don’t doubt that the average urban Chinese citizen has a higher standard of living than the average urban US citizen, saying that moving to a poorer country where you are rich by comparison is “the american dream” is pretty wild when you’re just taking advantage of economic disparities caused by capitalism.
It’s irresponsible to move somewhere permanently when you don’t plan on really trying to integrate & instead just want to live cheaply as an expat.
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.
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
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.
Paying for everything with Visa/MasterCard is better? I feel like a lot of people’s issues with “privacy” around China are correct. But for some reason are ok with the same exact things in the US/West.
In the West we share literally all of the privacy concerns you mentioned above but instead of them being clearly outlined and regulated by our government; they are instead entirely controlled by private companies that use and sell the information for profit.
I guess it’s the illusion of privacy, or really the abstraction of it being violated, that makes people in the west feel like China is somehow doing something different. They aren’t, they are just upfront about their tracking and data collection.
In China they have CCTV. In the US we have Ring. Like, people literally put Ring cameras INSIDE there house willingly. It blows my mind. And the idea that in the US that it’s “decentralized” or “not available to the government” is a lie.
I guess my point is. You’re not wrong about the payment processing or the privacy concerns in China. But, you live with the same exact thing in the west every single day. Arguably worse because your data is being controlled by a CEO for profit and they’re selling that to anyone and everyone. On top of being given to your government.
Edit: I did agree with the concerns of the original comment over privacy in China. So, id really appreciate a response comment rather than a downvote only. My comment is meant to criticize the US/West (the system most people reading this live under). I wasn’t trying to justify China. I am a huge fan of China and it’s progress in many ways. At least in terms of learning from their success. But one major criticism I have of them is their level of surveillance and, what I see as now unnecessary, levels of control on speech related to government criticism. So, id ordinarily be a “look at their high speed rail” Andy on this topic. I am very critical of China when it comes to this specific issue; and see it as a major weakness for them that they need to address. But, since I live in the west. I want to make people aware that this issue also exists here. I am more critical of my own country because I live under it. And being distracted by China’s problems instead of our own is a major failure.
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.
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.
Tap water is just dependent on the area you live in. You’re use to the tap water where you live and in similar regions. Whether you drink it or not you’re exposed to it every day. It’s normal.
When you travel. You’ll always have this reaction if you’re not use to it. It’s not unique the US and the tap water here is perfectly fine.
People in the US say the same thing about Europe. But I traveled all over Europe and the tap water is fine. It’s “weird” definitely but for the same reasons you think American tap is weird.
Having said that. Lake Tahoe in California is the top tier of tap water in America.
Rome and it’s public water fountains were my favorite in Europe. Really refreshing and cool water on ancient water infrastructure. Top tier for Europe.
europe generally doesn’t chlorinate its water as hard as north america. every bathroom and kitchen ive been in in the us smells like chlorine, and trying to drink the water makes my throat physically swell shut. in europe i only have that reaction if i get pool water in my mouth, which is how i figured out i’m allergic to it.
I’ve traveled most of the US coast to coast. Never had water like that. It varies dramatically region to region and I taste a difference. I’ve traveled to a couple of counties in Europe as well and the water is similar
Also that bathroom smell isn’t the water. People use chlorinated bleach to clean
Depending on where water is sourced and local geography, water can have extremely different characteristics even town to town. Throughout most of Missouri for instance it’s sourced from the Missouri and Mississippi rivers and generally fine. Down south in Nevada Missouri there’s a high sulfur content in the ground. And the water pulled from it has a STRONG sulfur smell and taste. It’s safe to use and drink. But if you aren’t from the area, a struggle to use. Joplin not very far away has a completely different taste and characteristics to their water.
Generally any place that sources from a river as long as they don’t over chlorinate should be pretty acceptable to most people. The places that source from geologic aquifers or other more stagnant bodies that have a chance to leach larger contents of specific minerals from the ground. Can have distinct taste and smell profiles. Especially well water. It doesn’t matter where US or any other place on Earth will be the same.
i know what bleach smells like, i clean my own bathroom. it’s not that.
In some places peroxide based bleaches are more common over chlorinated bleach. Plus percentages of chlorine vary in different bleach products.
Interesting. Had to look this up. Apparently a lot of Europe uses small amounts of chlorine too in similar levels to America. But some countries like the Netherlands and Germany have alternatives that use Ozone. I could definitely understand this taste difference if you live in a country that doesn’t use it. Thanks for expanding my tap water knowledge.
For reference. The levels of chlorine added to tap in Europe (UK and others) or America are around 0.5 ppm. A swimming pool with chlorine would have 5.0 ppm. 10x seems actually lower than I would have thought. Especially given how much a swimming pool smells of it.
I lived a month in the Netherlands and never noticed a difference in taste personally. Drank tap a lot of the time.
I’d wonder if you’re from the Netherlands or Germany (or maybe a country that doesn’t add chlorine that I didn’t see listed).
Or maybe it’s used less for cleaning in Europe and your sensitivity to it is due to that. I’d be curious to know where you’re from.
i’m swedish. we generally don’t treat our water at all, it just goes straight from well to tap. the exception is large cities like stockholm that need to use surface water instead of groundwater, and they use artificial infiltration systems followed by uv-disinfection (or ozone, don’t remember which). the water in stockholm also tastes weird to me, but it’s completely drinkable. every time i visit family in north america and forget about the chlorine thing i get a shock.
Interesting. Definitely rings true with my hypothesis on this stuff though. I guess I’d say the taste difference is real. But, having traveled a lot I’d also say that if you “give it a shot” for a couple days your tastes adjust pretty quickly. It’s been my stubborn choice to not buy bottled water that taught me this.
Not to say that some countries may have worse regulations or focus on “more natural” taste priorities. That’s definitely true. But I wouldn’t let the worry of the water being “unsafe” exaggerate those natural feelings.
I’d be more concerned about some small city in America (Flint Michigan being our obvious newsworthy one) than any major city. Though Flint was unrelated to filtration standards and literally just a refusal to remove ancient lead pipe infrastructure.
Though I definitely do trust European standards and regulations more than an American. For the time being, our major cities are still running on proven standards for health and filtration though.
i’ve definitely experienced the “getting used to it” thing in other countries, but unfortunately the throat swelling is a physical reaction to chlorine. i also can’t go in swimming pools without goggles or i get covered in blisters. on the skin it’s fine but if it touches a mucous membrane i’m fucked. also forgot about that when i first took a shower after landing in bc a few years ago, which was a fun time.
What else did you think about your visit to Florida?
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).
If I’d gone to Florida I would’ve wanted to see gators! That would’ve been exciting.
Don’t forget Texas
Honestly that can apply to a majority of cities in America.
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.
Buddy fuck off
That kind of unfounded, unnecessary aggression is why we need to address the lead issue in the water.
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.
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.
The tap water is absolutely drinkable. If you don’t like the taste get 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.
996 is illegal and companies who do this are prosecuted, from my understanding.
Generally they’re not, provided they can keep it low key.
And since within the PRC it’s quite easy to fire people, and courts and settlement is about how much 面子 you can make the company lose without pissing off local authorities vs. the 关系 and pressure they can bring to bear to have you drop it there’s not much to be done.
“ask” that people do overtime, and then fire them for not being a team player, or downmote them into a stressful deadend if they don’t take the voluntary overtime.
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We’re taking about China.
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.
Yeah. Anywhere would basically be like this if you have enough money to retire luxuriously in that country. And anywhere you do that, poorer people will be making that lifestyle possible with their labor.
While I don’t doubt that the average urban Chinese citizen has a higher standard of living than the average urban US citizen, saying that moving to a poorer country where you are rich by comparison is “the american dream” is pretty wild when you’re just taking advantage of economic disparities caused by capitalism.
It’s irresponsible to move somewhere permanently when you don’t plan on really trying to integrate & instead just want to live cheaply as an expat.
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.