(Part 3) Top products from r/HongKong

So, yea, people literally are programmed to behave this way. They are literally brainwashed [1].

• Fact: The Chinese themselves say they brainwash. We use the word "brain washing" because the Chinese created this word and concept based on the original idea by Stalin which they expanded upon. 1 2 3
  
• Fact: Chinese themselves say they were brainwashed and didn't even know it 1 2 3
  
• Fact: The term brainwashing and thought control are accepted term in academic and psychology circles when referring to China's education system 1 2 3 4
  
• Fact: China has a long history of thought control with its roots predating the communist party 1 2 3 4
  
• Fact: Textbooks (and books or even TV shows) that that promote “Western values” are banned in China. 1 2 3 4 5 6
  
• Fact: The Chinese government calls this unity of thought and is intended to be planted in the minds of all citizens. 1 2 3 4
  
• Fact: The Chinese Communist Party has pushed ideological education on students, requiring tedious lessons on Marx and Mao and canned lectures on the virtues of patriotism and loyalty. 1 2 3
  
• Fact: Children as young as six are taught to struggle for the cause of Communism 1 2 3
  
• Fact: All schools have a Communist Youth League (CYL) organizations for students with mandatory activities. 1
  
• Fact: This in turn reduces Chinese students capacity for critical thinking. 1 2 3 4 5
  
  Brainwashing (which actually is a direct translation from the Chinese word 洗脑) is very effective. I am always surprised at how much Chinese think they have free thought, yet when quizzed on the key points, universally their viewpoints (for example that Taiwan and Tibet belong to China, or that falun gong is a evil dangerous cult) line up almost exactly with the official viewpoints of the communist party. Which indeed is not surprising considering they are educated this way in a vacuum. Online you have the 50 cent party (who guides public opinion through online comments), internet censors (who have to learn the truth so they know what to censor), and flooding (deluging the citizen with a torrent of information – some accurate, some phoney, some biased – with the aim of making people overwhelmed). And in the offline world the analogy that their souls have been engineered has been used. You can't grow up in this environment without it having a profound effect on you.
  
  I have no doubt that many Chinese believe they are mostly free. And that is what makes what the party has done so impressive. It's almost as at some point the communist party ceases to exist as a stand alone entity and it just becomes one with the general population.

Tuttle has a lot of admirers and if you like the "story" method of remembering glyphs it can be fun and productive. I don't know if it's as effective for someone who already speaks fluetly, though. The drawback is that Tuttle only uses pinyin. You have to work just with the character and english definition, then supplement by looking up on Cantodict.

Hey Taybyrd, I read an amazing book as a kid about Guillain-Barre. It might help. It was called Masks. http://www.amazon.com/Masks-Hatrick/dp/0531095142/ref=sr_1_89?ie=UTF8&qid=1336515493&sr=8-89

Do you have this or would you like this?

I'm all tied up with our toddler, but if you don't mind it, I can try and find this book for you and swing by one weekend with the toddler.

Are you in HK for the next six months?

Sorry to hear about your condition and I hope you're doing well.

Oh PS I am a dude too.

The world's a complicated place, my friend. No point arguing in a sandbox.

Thanks. Some food for thought in return: http://www.amazon.com/Why-West-Rules-Now-Patterns/dp/0312611692

It's an expansive and unifying theory about major historical developments in this world that took all this over-complication head on. Great read. Mind expanding. A different perspective at least.

May the Force be with you.

Cecil Clementi, Kai Ho, Robert Hotung, Noel Croucher

Some interesting HK figures.

Edge of Empires is a good read for some more personalities of the time..

Not what you're asking for, but I highly recommend this book: http://www.amazon.com/Feeling-Good-Together-Troubled-Relationships/dp/0767920821

Hollywood road has a few good spots. I took this last time I was there http://imgur.com/a/Uxvn7 - Also, my previous lecturer published this book of building/perspective shots in Hong Kong https://www.amazon.com/Figure-Ground-Daniel-Buzzo/dp/1364412241

Officially, they espouse state atheism, however, that have allowed them to prosecute practitioners of the religious/spiritual practice Falun Gong for promoting superstition and social unrest in the population.

They then decided to start harvesting their organs to profit from their genocide rather than pay for it.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1PrBwDoQVzA

https://www.chinaorganharvest.org/

Fascism in China takes a more direct approach in regards to eliminating an undesired cultural identity. They start tearing down it's religious, educational and general support infrastructure. This includes nurseries, schools and mosques.

https://www.npr.org/2019/09/26/763356996/afraid-we-will-become-the-next-xinjiang-chinas-hui-muslims-face-crackdown?t=1572281364941

China actively censor all negative news regarding their country and its past. Furthermore, the author Howard W. French argues in his book "Everything Under the Heavens: How the Past Helps Shape China's Push for Global Power" that "the old imperial worldview in which China was the central civilization of Asia while its neighbors, who lived in its cultural and military shadow, paid tribute and acknowledged its superiority in exchange for trade. It was a position China held in the past through a mixture of bullying and benevolence, and Mr. French suggests that it once again underlies China’s ambitions for the future." (Wall Street Journal Article by Stephen R. Platt, Updated March 24, 2017)

Personally, I believe it also explains why they have been so aggressive towards more independent territories such Tibet, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Xinjiang.

https://www.amazon.com/Everything-Under-Heavens-Chinas-Global/dp/0385353324

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-chip-on-chinas-shoulder-1490388803

China has ALWAYS had a rather severe social hierarchy. This article from Foreign Policy argues that there today exist nine tiers of well defined social classes in China: https://foreignpolicy.com/2014/04/25/chinas-new-class-hierarchy-a-guide/

Additionally, strong nationalism and general racism is rampant in China. (Not going to source that. A quick search on your search engine of choice should do the trick)

*So, yes, I think we can conclude that they do have all of that.

There are so many tales of such for Everest, many of which are not exactly pretty. I am not sure how anyone can point fingers to her under such extreme conditions.


Still, I think her response (respect different voices, but disagree the thinking behind such questions) is pretty measured and diplomatic - I guess it comes from being a teacher?

> look at the old man's crazy CV

Any place I can find more info about him? Wikipedia gives top level information.. have read asian godfathers - amazon link Here but it doesn't give full details about that guy.

I don't think that's reason not to worry...it only takes one

https://www.amazon.com/Spread-Nuclear-Weapons-Enduring-Debate/dp/0393920100

It's literally 5th century Chinese thinking, nothing new.

https://www.amazon.com/Art-War-Sun-Tzu/dp/0981162614

Anyone read Ghetto at the Center of the World: Chungking Mansions, Hong Kong?

http://www.amazon.com/Ghetto-Center-World-Chungking-Mansions/dp/0226510204/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1341548993&sr=8-1&keywords=Chungking+Mansions

All protesters should read this book

https://www.amazon.com/Utility-Force-Art-Modern-World/dp/0307278115

But my memory isnt that great and learning the characters is difficult for me (I've tried believe me!). I thought I might start off from the basics (with textbooks and stuff) and work from there.

Should I go for a simplified or traditional Chinese textbook? (See example)

http://www.amazon.com/Reading-Writing-Chinese-Traditional-Comprehensive/dp/0804832064/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1376045169&sr=8-1&keywords=writing+cantonese

Sorry if this is a dense e-mail, could really do with the advice - thank you so much for replying!

I just started reading The People's Republic of the Disappeared. It covers the stories of about a dozen people who were subjected to China's extrajudicial prison system. It's pretty terrifying.

Just want to shoot my mouth off here for a minute.

Incarcerated, Ted Bundy gave a number of interviews in the misguided hopes of being deemed a valuable contributor to law enforcement, and thus spared the death penalty. In several of these he went at length on the "hypothetical" origins of serial killers, and why they enjoyed such success in 1970s America and onwards.

One of his insights was society had become depersonalized, with communities disintegrating, and people traveling across the country, surrounded by strangers who didn't necessarily notice or care that someone was here one day, gone the next. While Bundy disregarded advances in law enforcement technique, it's also true many of those technologies and sciences emerged from high profile cases like Bundy's.

That's part of the nature of serial killers, being predators of populations requires vulnerable targets, or at some level society having a blind spot. The most prolific serial killers targeted so called victim populations- homeless, prostitutes, homosexuals, those society generally didn't address or concern itself with.

THe other part goes back to the nature of societies- Gladwell's seminal work makes a case for differences of culture between east and west dating back to agrarian roots-tight knit cultures of rice paddies developing societies intrinsically different than the labor intensive but individualistic trends that emerged in the feudal fields of Europe.

The consequences for these among predators is the nature of the victim pool-simply that in an individualistic, privacy minding and impersonal society, there is less watchfulness( bearing in mind generalities, not absolutes across all communities or ethnic groupings, but as broad strokes of cultural influence). What impact this may have for criminals preying on targets can probably be discerned from instances like Hong Kong's scarcity of serial killing.

TL;DR: Whether from tight knit community awareness, government crackdown on 'deviants' that catches would-be killers early in their development, social factors like Triad protectionism, or a greater sense of community vs western individualism that readily identifies problems with individuals relating to the group, Hong Kong is not prime real estate for budding psychopaths.