And people who aren't part of any of these, do you think you are "missing" something?

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[–] 2 points 11 months ago (4 children)

The grocery thing is probably the universal experience when moving from a country where the average person has a high disposable income to low. There are simply more choices.

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  • [–] [S] 6 points 11 months ago* (3 children)

    The grocery thing is probably the universal experience when moving from a country where the average person has a high disposable income to low. There are simply more choices.

    I mean, if you are traveling as a tourist, things seem cheap, but to a local who works there, maybe not.

    Westerners always say China is very cheap to visit, but as a former Guangzhou resident, when I was a kid, my parents had to work all the time and I rarely got to spend time with them. And we lived in a very shitty slum neighborhood. Locals don't really share the same experience.

    I think the people who are on work visas are just doing English teaching, very comfortable job, or maybe even some "White Monkey Job" that pays a lot.

    Most Chinese people cannot teach English... so there's that...

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  • [+] 2 points 11 months ago (2 children)
  • [–] [S] 3 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    Tbh I don't even feel safe re-visiting, unless I get magically body-swapped into a white dude or something.

    From what I've heard, ethnic Chinese holding foreign citizenship still effectively gets treated as Chinese. I'm more likely to get exit-banned than some random white dude.

    Also, I kinda feel sus about my parents. They jokingly threatened to send me back to China because "The West" is becoming "harmful" to me... I'm like... bitch what you mean... you literally brought me here, the fuck?

    I read some news about involuntary psychiatric treatments and I'm just terrified af. I'm pretty sure they have connections back home.

    My fear is that, and to be clear, this is just my own fears, not saying that this will happen, but I fear that my parents could get me exit-banned and bribe some corrupt doctor to declare me insane or something and force involuntary ECT or someshit like that and wipe my memories of their emotional abuse/neglect. But again, that's just my fears, I hope they aren't secretly that controlling/manipulative.

    Here in the US, they are nobodys, they don't have the Guanxi to do weird things, so its harder for them to weaponize the government's tentacles against me. Things have to go through the courts and unlike China, they can't just do involuntary treatments without a court order.

    Sometimes my mom forgets we're in the US and still try shenanigans with the court system, I've seen it first hand, fucking crying in court because she got an unfavorable judgement. Bruh, shenanigans don't work here. (not unless you're part of the 1%, which we are not)

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago

    Wait I thought this was about Brazil and the USA. I know there are shopping malls in some big tier one cities that are primarily aimed for tourists and that’s another story but I meant local grocery stores outside the big cities and then compare that between Brazil and USA or some other lower disposal income country than the US

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