Yeah being on an island does make it easier but it still requires good governance. The UK being a prime example of an island nation performing badly.

Yeah, I share your feelings towards both r/china and r/sino.

The pandemic certainly didn't help to keep people grounded to reality. The diet of just high level political and economical news was turning people cynical.

To get more Chinese people on the forum, it should be accessible from China.

I'll be traveling to China soon and am curious if latte.isnot.coffee is blocked.

Lol: "is Taiwan not China?".

But how did he not have his passport checked before leaving?

Also just 2hours to get a visa when he didn't even bring his correct passport, damn. I wish it was that easy to get into China. If a normal person tried that, they'd have to fly back...

It certainly wasn't as strict by a long shot but at least for me it was a very stressful period but for the opposite reason.

People were absolute assholes to each other and were making rancid jokes about people dying and actively and openly sabotaging government attempts to prevent spread and deaths.

And the government fucked up on so many levels, it really made me lose faith in our collective ability to solve difficult problems like climate change.

In China people died in front of hospitals due to insane rules and outside of China people died in hospitals due to lack of care and lack of rules.

An elderly lady (not very old, around 60), I knew, broke her leg in April 2020, caught Covid in the hospital and died. And my grandparents were in a retirement home and somehow survived even though they were both around 90 but there were 3 major outbreaks killing over half of the people in there.

So it seems it sucked everywhere, aside from Taiwan and New Zealand perhaps?