Dude looks fabulous

  • RedWizard [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    5 days ago

    I saw the headlines of people being arrested for partying in the streets and my first thought was, yeah you probably need to get a block party cleared by the local government. I mean, when people riot over college basketball and get arrested, no one is writing:

    “In America, freedom of expression is on the decline, as College Basketball fans take to the street to celebrate the end of another season, some were met with brutal police pushback. Some fans were pulled into police cars and asked to ID themselves to authorities, all for attempting to partake in the celebrations at the end of March Madness. Government sanctioned celebrations at the local Wild Wings continued as scheduled.”

    • CloutAtlas [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      5 days ago

      You don’t necessarily need a permit for these sort of street gatherings, but some local governments are aiming to crack down on 洋节yáng jié/foreign holidays for nationalist and/or anti western cultural hegemony reasons.

      Although modern Halloween barely has anything to do with the religious roots as the eve of All Saints Day, some people have argued that it’s essentially a celebration of a foreign religious festival which goes against laws that prohibit prosletyzing religion (no-one really seriously believes this).

      However, coupled with the specific location, which was used for anti lockdown protests, and the fact it was spilling onto public roads, the Shanghai police shut it down with little warning. A bit heavy handed but wasn’t a nationwide ban.

      Like just looking around the XHS I can see costume parties from Chengdu to Beijing. SH police was overcautious due to previous protests at that exact location, and were too heavy handed in dispersing the gathering.

      • SevenSkalls [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        5 days ago

        I’m not like China expert, but this seems to be a pattern in stories for China that I’ve started to notice more, since the different local responses to Covid. Some local police or local government will do something and then it will be applied to the country as a whole, it’s federal government, and/or to Xi.

        Trump praises Xi for controlling 1.5 billion people with an iron fist. Americans actually believe China is some sort of Borg hive mind controlled by Xi where everyone thinks the same thing and it’s always because he extended his will, like the Borg Queen does.

        • CloutAtlas [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          5 days ago

          China is seen as a monolith, sometimes even among the Chinese. Something that came up is 几多 vs 多少 (how much) in modern China. Someone from Beijing will say 几多 is only used in Cantonese speaking areas and in old texts since it’s such an archaic way of asking “how much” that’s been preserved in the far south, despite the fact that I hear it on a daily basis here in Wuhan, it’s like 40/60 for 几多/多少. Also 饮 (to drink, eat or enjoy in general) vs 吃 (eat), 喝 (drink) or 抽 (inhale). 饮 is very rare for my dialect of Mandarin and only really paired with 料 to make 饮料 (drinking mixture/concoction, refers to soft drinks or other non alcoholic beverages or fruit juices), but I think other locations will still use the old verb.

        • SSJ3Marx [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          5 days ago

          Localities get a lot of autonomy in China. The central government generally issues guidelines and only steps in directly in cases of national interest, like with organizing the economy, which is part of why Chinese people when polled tend to have a higher opinion of the national government than they do their local government. It also means that foreign press can cherry pick moments where a local government does something bad while simply never reporting on the things that they do that are cool to paint a certain picture of China.

    • BashfulBob [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      5 days ago

      when people riot over college basketball and get arrested

      Cops in the US will just let you riot, for the most part, so long as you don’t block them or trespass on their turf.

      Was in downtown Austin during a real raccous 6th Street party and the police were simply standing around in front of a few of the nicer buildings. My friend moved out of the way of a big cluster of people in the crowd and crossed some invisible line. Two cops immediately rushed him, tackled him, and dragged him off for trespassing. Some guy was straight up standing on a car half a block away and nobody cared.

      J6 was crazy in so far as how blaise the initial police response was. Whites really don’t have any kind of fear of the police in the US.

      I think that’s the root of the anti-China hysteria. “What if you were in a country where you weren’t completely immune from the law?”

  • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.net
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    5 days ago

    In Madison, Wisconsin, USA the police used to attack the annual halloween riot with chemical weapons until they eventually made it illegal to have fun unless you bought a ticket and had fun in the official fun containment box watched over by armed cops who would shoot you for having too much fun.

  • CloutAtlas [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    5 days ago

    Without doxxing myself that’s 3km from me rn. There’s a really scenic park nearby called 宝岛. On an afternoon it’s old folks playing cards near the lake side and people walking the perimeter.

    • Flyberius [comrade/them]@hexbear.netOP
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      5 days ago

      Do you know a good park or riverside for running? One suggestion was 沙湖公园, but it was from a western site and the route appeared to go along a main road which is less than ideal. If you do know one an amap link would be great

      • CloutAtlas [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        5 days ago

        Riverside is usually a lot more crowded a lot more often. Off the top of my head, 菱角湖公园 has a recently done running/walking track with soft asphalt that’s not too out of the way. In fact it’s like a 3 min walk from 三眼桥 metro station. If it’s not a weekend, holiday or school pickup/drop off time it’s actually surprisingly space for being in the middle of a large city.

        The twin lakes of 西北湖 has a running track that’s almost exactly 1.5km but the running track passes the back of a strip of bars, incl an international one where white people gather. So depending on when you’re running it could be pleasant or crowded with drunks. Ymmv with the white people, they range from cool leftists to completely disengaged from politics to reactionaries.

        Otherwise, you’re in Wuhan, you’re never more than a few KM from a body of water, and all the lakes are public spaces.

  • sweatersocialist [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    5 days ago

    FAKE TANKIE LIES!!! this is NOT a halloween celebration, since yes, halloween IS banned in china. you can clearly see it says “HALLOWE E N H A”

    and by the way, china is a MUSLIM country and we can literally see a BAR in the background. ALCOHOL IS ILLEGAL IN CHINA!!!

  • D0ctorPhi1 [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    5 days ago

    People are in cosplay all the time out here. I see it pretty much everywhere. We also had a Halloween event in our apartment complex put on by the complex folks.

  • merthyr1831
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    5 days ago

    is Wuhan a big tourist area? noticed a lot of English signage there

    • Flyberius [comrade/them]@hexbear.netOP
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      There’s English signage in a lot of big Chinese cities. I don’t think it’s especially touristy here, at least for foreigners. Although I did hear there are quite a lot of historical sites

    • CloutAtlas [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      4 days ago

      Internally, there’s a fair amount of tourists from other parts of China. But it’s large enough to just have an expat/immigrant community, I’m currently in an international bar in Hankou and half the patrons are white