Asians are…different from Caucasians. I’ll leave it at that. As for anyone wanting to emigrate to China: Who, given a choice, would choose to live in China? How about we simply exile all those in the US who go on and on how China is superior to America. Vox Day is probably the most repellent example. He claims Christianity but then lauds Chinese thought and spirituality. The vicious Christian-hating brutes who run China do not seem to phase him. Fred Reed is another one; Thomas Friedman another; “Spengler”— David P. Goldman—yet another. Sycophants, boot licks and rump swabs the lot of them. Though they praise China, they don’t live there.
Such attitudes have been around for millennia. Many Greeks praised Sparta, but did not live in that brutal, totalitarian city-state. In our own time people have praised the USSR, Cuba, Vietnam and Nicaragua—but of course did not live in them. Now these “political pilgrims” have fallen in love with China.
These traitors and parasites enjoy in the US a life-style that would be unavailable to them in China. For my money if you don’t like a place, get out. “America: Love it or leave it.” Works for me.
FreddoJanuary 22, 2022, 6:01 PM
Go ask the Chinese whether their children will have a better time than the current generation, and then ask the same in America/Europe. Watching the democrats at work is like watching Moloch and Mammon dancing; to commemorate the words of one of their adepts: they didn’t build it, and are sure trying to subvert it.
JackJanuary 22, 2022, 6:13 PM
I only wish we had a large pneumatic tube for the express purpose of ridding ourselves of those who hate this country. I have no patience with them….one quack, one slur, one word belittling the people of the US and off they would go, never to return.
Personally I rather like the Orient. I find it a nice place to visit, but no, I wouldn’t want to live there.
As to China, admittedly the only place there I sent any time was Hong Kong, before it was long gone.
The lower forty eight today? Frankly I don’t want to visit let alone live there. Not faulting those of you that do, you understand. Personal choices, I’m comfortable with mine.
Mike, you mentioned that Mexican, Fred Reed. Hadn’t read him for quite a while. I see he recently noted (December); US trade with “…China in goods in 2020 was $660 billion, $120 billion of that being exports, making it America’s largest trading partner… Cutting this off would wreck the American economy. “. I was thinking the other day, it’s sadly interesting we still send aid money to China while paying them interest on the $1.1 trillion of US debt they own.
Old blind Fred proves the saying, “Un blanco que fue mal en los tropicos.”—white man goes bad in the tropics. He can see no evil in Latinos or the nations in which they live. He has no problem with millions of illegals pouring across the US border. He believes that Americans who worry about such things are really stupid, ignorant and unenlightened. He thinks Asia is the cat’s pajamas, and that the future of the earth lies over there. Ol’ Remus said of Reed, “He doesn’t see his engine light going on.”
As for the debt we owe to China: Recall that old joke. “If I owe you $100, that’s my problem. If I owe you $100,000,000,000,000, that’s your problem.” China needs our imports, our food, our markets, and for the US to stay healthy enough to pay her debts. The American economy has no need of China. Americans have no need of the Chinese, a people who create nothing but steal everything. Imagine if we simply repudiated the debt we owe. Alas, we would have to import our chopsticks from somewhere else.
FrankJanuary 22, 2022, 3:56 PM
Reminds of those fifties idyllic housewife with the washing machine and other assorted mod cons, but for millennial asians.
The answer to the question posed in the video appears to be:
Work. Lots more work.
I could understand the work if it was the woman who makes those videos where she’s out in the country, doing everything the traditional way and taking care of her granny – at least that’s a life worth working for. But living in a little box, pushing buttons and keeping everything ruthlessly sterile? No thanks.
Princess CutekittenJanuary 22, 2022, 5:19 PM
I’m confused. Looks to me like she owns plenty of gadgets? What did I miss? And which gadget is the commercial selling?
The “commercial” is selling a life-style agreeable to the Chinese politburo. Gadgets, nothing more. Did you see one book in her slave pen?
John G CondonJanuary 22, 2022, 8:30 PM
Please note that these gadgets are in top notch condition – looks like they’ve only been used at most a handful of times… and with gadgets, comes maintenance.
She is the ‘peasant archtype’ that is being projected in this video.
Reality is faaaar grittier.
LPJanuary 22, 2022, 5:41 PM
what a weird bunch of gadgets. I don’t clean my sneakers as I enter the house, I don’t soak my feet, I don’t clean and puff up and store my jacket, I don’t organize my vegetables in linear bins, I don’t live in a piece of white plastic.
Princess CutekittenJanuary 22, 2022, 7:02 PM
I wonder if any of those gadgets really exist?
I once lived in an apartment painted all white. Unfortunately, unlike the lady in the commercial, mine wasn’t big enough to hold half those gadgets.
MIJanuary 24, 2022, 2:33 PM
To appreciate why cleanliness is so important in her house, you need to realize that outside her house, it’s a mess. Pollution, dirt, trash, etc. China is only halfway up the development path, but they’ve created a huge mess in trying to get there quickly.
Yep. 300,000,000 Chinese live in rural poverty. Their “gadgets” tend toward the common: the plow, the shovel and the broom.
Snakepit KansasJanuary 23, 2022, 6:48 AM
Mike,
I am sure you are well aware in your vast travels that most of the world lives a lifestyle much lower than the average American. I lived in the PI for most of two years and if you get out into the province you will see how most folks live. There is no AC and most of the doors and windows are open for a draft of air, which allows mosquitos and large roaches to come as they please. There is no hot water in the shower, but you don’t need it. Don’t drink the water, ever. Americans pour drinking water on their lawns. Trash tends to pile up at an abandoned lot. Yet in the PI at least, even the poor keep their clothes and themselves clean. I’ve seen similar living standards in Mexico, Vietnam and South Africa. The vast number of folks in the Chinese provinces don’t have all the electronic gadgets. They might not even have electricity to run them.
Very true. So often in the tonier pars of Central and South American cities one can see a house of immense proportions—usually gaudy, with a swimming pool, a nice lawn and a Mercedes or two—right next to the most wretched slums outside of Calcutta. Naturally the folks who live in that fancy home have high walls with shards of broken glass embedded in them , concertina wire, and well-armed guards and chauffeurs. The contrast between those two worlds is stark. But one gets used to them after a time.
I’ve never been to China, however, I did read “Riding the Iron Rooster” by Paul Theroux. He spent several months there, so I don’t have to. Paul rode a lot of trains, slept in hotels and hostels, hung out with a lot of Chinese and managed to speak passably to navigate through it all. It was pretty disgusting. He’s an American telling you it’s best not to visit. I believe him. There’s a fair amount of agreement from others that read the book. https://tinyurl.com/2p9xbyab
It was Theroux’s “The Great Patagonian Express” that encouraged me to head south of the Rio Grande for 14 years. He is an eternal pessimist and a bit morose, but a great read.
ZaphodJanuary 23, 2022, 5:33 PM
Ah… Riding the Iron Rooster. That’s all you need to know. Because China hasn’t changed since the 1980s when it was written. Author an infamous misanthropist. Back When, I did find the quotes from the Jing Ping Mei (some classic Chinky literary pornography) deeply inspiring and immediately decided to relocate myself to East Asia.
China has changed more since then than Japan did between Perry and Tsushima.
Some of you old codgers need to clue up. Poor old Admiral Rozhdestvensky at least had the wit to know that he was cruising to a bruising at Tsushima. He wasn’t reading the Tale of Genji and the piano score of the Mikado to cheer himself up about his impending meeting with the Japanese who crossed his T at Tsushima. He worked with what he had (not much) and did his (not very good) best with shitty ships and some pretty useless fellow officers.
Loving your country is one thing. Throwing mud at others because it’s easier than fixing up your own backyard is another thing.
gwbnycJanuary 22, 2022, 8:19 PM
that meth, man that meth, that meth is an MF’r, man…
nunnya bidnez, jrJanuary 22, 2022, 8:24 PM
Not Nuked Enough
definitely not nuked enough.
AggieJanuary 23, 2022, 8:30 AM
It occurs to some, maybe even to the faceless administrators of the Social Credit system, that when you have very little, it’s much easier to take everything away from you.
Kat in IndianaJanuary 24, 2022, 4:55 AM
I would watch it, but TicToc?…never on purpose.
CallmelennieJanuary 24, 2022, 5:45 AM
The real question here is could things be better in a country that is 5 times as crowded as the US. China has 1.4 billion people and the population is dispersed in much the same way as the US. The West and North of China is completely devoid of people, more so than our Rocky Mountain States. Ninety percent of Chinese live on 30% of the land — 1.2 billion on about 1.2 million sq miles. Thats five times as crowded as the US east of the Mississippi
Moreover, all Chinese are aware of the staggering poverty that has always accompanied its enormous population. That girls parents probably had personal experience of it as little as forty years ago. Read about natural disasters in China — An earthquake in Shaanxi province supposedly killed 800k people some 450 years. A Yangtze River flood in 1931 killed 3.7 MILLION people.
Two thousand years of this creates a culture that willingly submits to overbearing authority due to an ingrained terror of the possible alternative. That girl may be totally satisfied because, at least she knows that she wont starve or be a burden to her parents
Throughout its nearly 5000 year history China has had to endure a staggering amount of earthquakes, famines and flooding. Added to this were the constant civil and foreign wars. Hundreds of untold millions perished in these natural and man-made catastrophes. As recently as 1949 – 1976 100,000,000 Chinese lost their lives in the various social experiments imagined by Mao. I think you are correct in the type of man created by such horrors.
Teresa PittmanJanuary 26, 2022, 11:28 AM
I like minimalism, because I get tired of dealing with all this useless junk. But I sometimes wonder if it isn’t being pushed to soften us up for “you will have nothing and be happy.”
Intellectual disgrace
Stares from every human face,
And the seas of pity lie
Locked and frozen in each eye.
Follow, poet, follow right
To the bottom of the night,
With your unconstraining voice
Still persuade us to rejoice.
With the farming of a verse
Make a vineyard of the curse,
Sing of human unsuccess
In a rapture of distress.
In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountains start,
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise.
– – WH Auden
from “1054 AD”
Sometimes it seems I had a dream, and, as a dreamer woke immersed in mineral baths closed within a cool, dark chamber fed by streams flowing in from the center of nowhere.
Hanging from the granite ceiling a kerosene lantern cast shards of light through the pale steam rising from the surface of the pools.
Ripples radiated outwards from the edges of my body and tapping faintly on the rock revealed the edges of the chamber.
Outside I could hear the wind slide across the spine of the mountains, speaking in a language that I remembered but could no longer understand.
Steam filled my nostrils and heat penetrated my bones until, after a time, I had no body, only a sense of silence and distance and calm.
The steel mill sky is alive.
The fire breaks white and zigzag
shot on a gun-metal gloaming.
Man is a long time coming.
Man will yet win.
Brother may yet line up with brother:
This old anvil laughs at many broken hammers.
There are men who can’t be bought.
The fireborn are at home in fire.
The stars make no noise,
You can’t hinder the wind from blowing.
Time is a great teacher.
Who can live without hope?
In the darkness with a great bundle of grief
the people march.
In the night, and overhead a shovel of stars for keeps, the people
march:
“Where to? what next?”
— Carl Sandberg
Camouflage
Sourdough Mountain Lookout
Down valley a smoke haze
Three days heat, after five days rain
Pitch glows on the fir-cones
Across rocks and meadows
Swarms of new flies.
I cannot remember things I once read
A few friends, but they are in cities.
Drinking cold snow-water from a tin cup
Looking down for miles
Through high still air.
BY GARY SNYDER
Chimes of Freedom
Starry-eyed an’ laughing as I recall when we were caught
Trapped by no track of hours for they hanged suspended
As we listened one last time an’ we watched with one last look
Spellbound an’ swallowed ’til the tolling ended
Tolling for the aching ones whose wounds cannot be nursed
For the countless confused, accused, misused, strung-out ones an’ worse
An’ for every hung-up person in the whole wide universe
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing
“From a student radical/hippie/leftist of the Free Speech Movement/Vietnam Day Commitee era and a full-on Democratic Liberal in the decades after, I think I’ve evolved a politics that is neither right nor left but is, in its elemental nature, draconian. In the last 20 years, I’ve taken apart my beliefs with a sledgehammer. Now I’ve got to put the surviving parts back together with tweezers and other ‘shabby equipment, always deteriorating’.”
Byzantium
That is no country for old men. The young
In one another’s arms, birds in the trees
—Those dying generations—at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.
O sages standing in God’s holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.
Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
– – W. B. Yeats, 1865 – 1939
De Breanski
VAN GOGH
Hillegas
To the Stonecutters
Stone-cutters fighting time with marble, you foredefeated
Challengers of oblivion
Eat cynical earnings, knowing rock splits, records fall down,
The square-limbed Roman letters
Scale in the thaws, wear in the rain. The poet as well
Builds his monument mockingly;
For man will be blotted out, the blithe earth die, the brave sun
Die blind and blacken to the heart:
Yet stones have stood for a thousand years, and pained
thoughts found
The honey of peace in old poems.
— Robinson Jeffers
Real World Address for Donations, Mash Notes and Hate Mail
Gerard Van der Leun
1692 MANGROVE AVE
APT 379
Chico, Ca 95926
from “1054 AD”
Sometimes it seems I had a dream, and, as a dreamer woke immersed in mineral baths closed within a cool, dark chamber fed by streams flowing in from the center of nowhere.
Hanging from the granite ceiling a kerosene lantern cast shards of light through the pale steam rising from the surface of the pools.
Ripples radiated outwards from the edges of my body and tapping faintly on the rock revealed the edges of the chamber.
Outside I could hear the wind slide across the spine of the mountains, speaking in a language that I remembered but could no longer understand.
Steam filled my nostrils and heat penetrated my bones until, after a time, I had no body, only a sense of silence and distance and calm.
![That Was the Whopper Weekend That Was [Illustrated]](https://americandigest.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/welcometohell-150x150.jpg "That Was the Whopper Weekend That Was [Illustrated]")
![Allen Ginsberg: The Interview, <strong> ➡ 1972 ⬅ </strong> [Republished by unpopular demand]](https://americandigest.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/ginsbergnirvana-150x150.jpg "Allen Ginsberg: The Interview, <strong> ➡ 1972 ⬅ </strong> [Republished by unpopular demand]")
Stone-cutters fighting time with marble, you foredefeated
Comments on this entry are closed.
Where’s the cat(s)?
you mean the chickens?
In the refrigerator. Left-overs.
Rimshot!
So sterile.
Asians are…different from Caucasians. I’ll leave it at that. As for anyone wanting to emigrate to China: Who, given a choice, would choose to live in China? How about we simply exile all those in the US who go on and on how China is superior to America. Vox Day is probably the most repellent example. He claims Christianity but then lauds Chinese thought and spirituality. The vicious Christian-hating brutes who run China do not seem to phase him. Fred Reed is another one; Thomas Friedman another; “Spengler”— David P. Goldman—yet another. Sycophants, boot licks and rump swabs the lot of them. Though they praise China, they don’t live there.
Such attitudes have been around for millennia. Many Greeks praised Sparta, but did not live in that brutal, totalitarian city-state. In our own time people have praised the USSR, Cuba, Vietnam and Nicaragua—but of course did not live in them. Now these “political pilgrims” have fallen in love with China.
These traitors and parasites enjoy in the US a life-style that would be unavailable to them in China. For my money if you don’t like a place, get out. “America: Love it or leave it.” Works for me.
Go ask the Chinese whether their children will have a better time than the current generation, and then ask the same in America/Europe. Watching the democrats at work is like watching Moloch and Mammon dancing; to commemorate the words of one of their adepts: they didn’t build it, and are sure trying to subvert it.
I only wish we had a large pneumatic tube for the express purpose of ridding ourselves of those who hate this country. I have no patience with them….one quack, one slur, one word belittling the people of the US and off they would go, never to return.
All of Washington DC and the Ivy League would then be empty.
Jack sez: “…. large pneumatic tube for the express purpose of ridding ourselves of those who hate this country. ”
Well, we do have a lot of steel tubes to rid ourselves but that have not yet been brought into play.
Personally I rather like the Orient. I find it a nice place to visit, but no, I wouldn’t want to live there.
As to China, admittedly the only place there I sent any time was Hong Kong, before it was long gone.
The lower forty eight today? Frankly I don’t want to visit let alone live there. Not faulting those of you that do, you understand. Personal choices, I’m comfortable with mine.
Mike, you mentioned that Mexican, Fred Reed. Hadn’t read him for quite a while. I see he recently noted (December); US trade with “…China in goods in 2020 was $660 billion, $120 billion of that being exports, making it America’s largest trading partner… Cutting this off would wreck the American economy. “. I was thinking the other day, it’s sadly interesting we still send aid money to China while paying them interest on the $1.1 trillion of US debt they own.
Old blind Fred proves the saying, “Un blanco que fue mal en los tropicos.”—white man goes bad in the tropics. He can see no evil in Latinos or the nations in which they live. He has no problem with millions of illegals pouring across the US border. He believes that Americans who worry about such things are really stupid, ignorant and unenlightened. He thinks Asia is the cat’s pajamas, and that the future of the earth lies over there. Ol’ Remus said of Reed, “He doesn’t see his engine light going on.”
As for the debt we owe to China: Recall that old joke. “If I owe you $100, that’s my problem. If I owe you $100,000,000,000,000, that’s your problem.” China needs our imports, our food, our markets, and for the US to stay healthy enough to pay her debts. The American economy has no need of China. Americans have no need of the Chinese, a people who create nothing but steal everything. Imagine if we simply repudiated the debt we owe. Alas, we would have to import our chopsticks from somewhere else.
Reminds of those fifties idyllic housewife with the washing machine and other assorted mod cons, but for millennial asians.
The answer to the question posed in the video appears to be:
Work. Lots more work.
I could understand the work if it was the woman who makes those videos where she’s out in the country, doing everything the traditional way and taking care of her granny – at least that’s a life worth working for. But living in a little box, pushing buttons and keeping everything ruthlessly sterile? No thanks.
I’m confused. Looks to me like she owns plenty of gadgets? What did I miss? And which gadget is the commercial selling?
The “commercial” is selling a life-style agreeable to the Chinese politburo. Gadgets, nothing more. Did you see one book in her slave pen?
Please note that these gadgets are in top notch condition – looks like they’ve only been used at most a handful of times… and with gadgets, comes maintenance.
She is the ‘peasant archtype’ that is being projected in this video.
Reality is faaaar grittier.
what a weird bunch of gadgets. I don’t clean my sneakers as I enter the house, I don’t soak my feet, I don’t clean and puff up and store my jacket, I don’t organize my vegetables in linear bins, I don’t live in a piece of white plastic.
I wonder if any of those gadgets really exist?
I once lived in an apartment painted all white. Unfortunately, unlike the lady in the commercial, mine wasn’t big enough to hold half those gadgets.
To appreciate why cleanliness is so important in her house, you need to realize that outside her house, it’s a mess. Pollution, dirt, trash, etc. China is only halfway up the development path, but they’ve created a huge mess in trying to get there quickly.
I’ll bet there’s a bunch of gadget-free Chinese living outside the cities.
JWM
Yep. 300,000,000 Chinese live in rural poverty. Their “gadgets” tend toward the common: the plow, the shovel and the broom.
Mike,
I am sure you are well aware in your vast travels that most of the world lives a lifestyle much lower than the average American. I lived in the PI for most of two years and if you get out into the province you will see how most folks live. There is no AC and most of the doors and windows are open for a draft of air, which allows mosquitos and large roaches to come as they please. There is no hot water in the shower, but you don’t need it. Don’t drink the water, ever. Americans pour drinking water on their lawns. Trash tends to pile up at an abandoned lot. Yet in the PI at least, even the poor keep their clothes and themselves clean. I’ve seen similar living standards in Mexico, Vietnam and South Africa. The vast number of folks in the Chinese provinces don’t have all the electronic gadgets. They might not even have electricity to run them.
Very true. So often in the tonier pars of Central and South American cities one can see a house of immense proportions—usually gaudy, with a swimming pool, a nice lawn and a Mercedes or two—right next to the most wretched slums outside of Calcutta. Naturally the folks who live in that fancy home have high walls with shards of broken glass embedded in them , concertina wire, and well-armed guards and chauffeurs. The contrast between those two worlds is stark. But one gets used to them after a time.
It’s pretty futuristic when you think about it. The girl is living like an astronaut.
JWM
I’ve never been to China, however, I did read “Riding the Iron Rooster” by Paul Theroux. He spent several months there, so I don’t have to. Paul rode a lot of trains, slept in hotels and hostels, hung out with a lot of Chinese and managed to speak passably to navigate through it all. It was pretty disgusting. He’s an American telling you it’s best not to visit. I believe him. There’s a fair amount of agreement from others that read the book. https://tinyurl.com/2p9xbyab
It was Theroux’s “The Great Patagonian Express” that encouraged me to head south of the Rio Grande for 14 years. He is an eternal pessimist and a bit morose, but a great read.
Ah… Riding the Iron Rooster. That’s all you need to know. Because China hasn’t changed since the 1980s when it was written. Author an infamous misanthropist. Back When, I did find the quotes from the Jing Ping Mei (some classic Chinky literary pornography) deeply inspiring and immediately decided to relocate myself to East Asia.
China has changed more since then than Japan did between Perry and Tsushima.
Some of you old codgers need to clue up. Poor old Admiral Rozhdestvensky at least had the wit to know that he was cruising to a bruising at Tsushima. He wasn’t reading the Tale of Genji and the piano score of the Mikado to cheer himself up about his impending meeting with the Japanese who crossed his T at Tsushima. He worked with what he had (not much) and did his (not very good) best with shitty ships and some pretty useless fellow officers.
Loving your country is one thing. Throwing mud at others because it’s easier than fixing up your own backyard is another thing.
that meth, man that meth, that meth is an MF’r, man…
Not Nuked Enough
definitely not nuked enough.
It occurs to some, maybe even to the faceless administrators of the Social Credit system, that when you have very little, it’s much easier to take everything away from you.
I would watch it, but TicToc?…never on purpose.
The real question here is could things be better in a country that is 5 times as crowded as the US. China has 1.4 billion people and the population is dispersed in much the same way as the US. The West and North of China is completely devoid of people, more so than our Rocky Mountain States. Ninety percent of Chinese live on 30% of the land — 1.2 billion on about 1.2 million sq miles. Thats five times as crowded as the US east of the Mississippi
Moreover, all Chinese are aware of the staggering poverty that has always accompanied its enormous population. That girls parents probably had personal experience of it as little as forty years ago. Read about natural disasters in China — An earthquake in Shaanxi province supposedly killed 800k people some 450 years. A Yangtze River flood in 1931 killed 3.7 MILLION people.
Two thousand years of this creates a culture that willingly submits to overbearing authority due to an ingrained terror of the possible alternative. That girl may be totally satisfied because, at least she knows that she wont starve or be a burden to her parents
Throughout its nearly 5000 year history China has had to endure a staggering amount of earthquakes, famines and flooding. Added to this were the constant civil and foreign wars. Hundreds of untold millions perished in these natural and man-made catastrophes. As recently as 1949 – 1976 100,000,000 Chinese lost their lives in the various social experiments imagined by Mao. I think you are correct in the type of man created by such horrors.
I like minimalism, because I get tired of dealing with all this useless junk. But I sometimes wonder if it isn’t being pushed to soften us up for “you will have nothing and be happy.”