A Very Chinese Time… | Ep.055 Lemonade Stand🍋

27:29I think seeing it be done in this way with this many people makes me, it's a model in a way that we can do it too. Like the size factor, whenever you make a point about like infrastructure or things in the U S and people argue, like we have too many people, our country's too big, things are too spread out or whatever. I think this demonstrates that like, dude, it's possible. These things can be built. Well, was it ever questionable that it was a question that it's possible? No, I think will we know to me that's always been the bigger one. I think people argue a lot of times when you argue with people about public transportation in the U.S.

28:09or infrastructure in the U.S., they will tell you that a lot of the things you would want are not possible because of things like like the amount of amount of people we have or like like politically it's impossible or logistically it's impossible. but people make it. Yeah, but it's just like, it's never been, the robot has always been political. Yeah. It's always, we've never even gotten to the point where it's like, oh, we built it, but there's so many people, we can't, or we're hitting a mountain and it's not, you know, it's just, we don't even start building. Yeah. I mean, I think if you looked at something like the high-speed rail network here and thought about, people would be like, oh, the country is just too big to build something like this.

28:50It's like we, so, and that is a justification. It's too big to build from Los Angeles the beggars feel but we went to the train the train that we went on last night was basically the equivalent of us going from la to dallas overnight that's what we did it was 14 hours uh yes technically we transferred because brandon let's tell a story is there any all right so we decided to take a sleeper car now this is kind of quaint right this thing is is much slower much older it's only 200 kilometers an hour yeah which is like for 120 miles an hour for context our fastest train in america bright line averages 69 69 miles an hour 69 yeah that's the average that we got that's our newest and best man weren't went to go faster than 69 okay 69 is where he top out at safe speed yeah gives you time to think gives you time to think and look at that scenery and enjoy life so we decided to take the slow one the 200 kilometer or an hour because that way we could do a sleeper car where we all get in beds and we could do it overnight and it'd be 14 hours instead of 10 if we'd done the faster one and uh and then we get to the station at 6 30.

30:04okay i'll just tell them so yeah we pulled up to the largest train station i've ever seen in my goddamn life we go through the security where i have to show your passport and i do show it and then i get through and between walking from one end to the other we had the last train car we were the very end of the thing somewhere in that in that gap i lost my passport. And so we're trying to board the train and everyone is through the security and I am not, and I can't find it. And so I sprint full speed back through the largest train station I've ever been through in my life, sweating through my shirt with our interpreter.

30:34I get to the front. I ask them for my passport. They don't understand a word. The interpreter has not caught up to me yet. So it's just me. Nobody understands what I'm saying. I can't get my passport. I'm freaking out. She finally catches up. We talk to people. They say there's a lost and found, but it's outside of the train station in a basement. And like, if you leave, you can't get back in without your passport. So I'm freaking out. We do go out there. We go to the basement. They're like, uh, and it's a run because the station is so big. So to get outside of it all the way out, out around and then down sweating, just sweating and running.

31:06And there's a lot of people there. And so we get there and they're like, uh, anyway, they, they found it. Lost and found has it in different areas. Someone returned it. Thank God. But we already missed our train. So we get back to our spot. and you know i think we're cooked i mean i'm very happy that we found it because otherwise it's you know it's go find another password go to the embassy so bad it would have ruined the trims your passport for everything here for everything getting on a train going to a hotel fucking going to a spa you need for everything it would have been quite a disaster but thankfully they have it so we get it and i think we're probably good we're gonna have to get a flight we're gonna do something else they go okay you can get on the faster 300 kilometer an hour super train speed past your other train and catch up to your original tickets on the first ride which is crazy and awesome they suggested it and so we go yeah so we get on a later train oh between between we should tell i gotta tell the story because this is fucking funny uh i've been carrying around a basketball all right you can talk about whether this is a good thing or a bad thing in a whole different podcast they'll have a separate patreon hey hey think about this at home while you're listening to this here on a trip with some of your best friends and one of them you have a small group one of them goes to a store he buys a basketball at the beginning of the trip and begins to carry around and bounce said basketball everywhere you go for the rest of the trip how would you feel about that you guys are being so if dude you're a terrorist if you're in boston you just live in boston and a chinese guy's dribbling a basketball you don't go oh my god this this guy what a crazy tourist with his basketball.

32:44Nobody cared. Hold on. A thousand year old temple. And you were bouncing a basketball. I was balling. First of all, let's be clear. I wasn't bouncing a basketball. I had handles like nobody's business. Imagine if we went back to Boston and in Boston, there's no Asian people. And then the first chinese guy that's showed up in you that in like a couple weeks rolls up and he's dribbling the basketball it's not about it's like we were not the first white guys in shangha no that's not my point that's not my point it's not my point it's the groundwork for future white basketball players you already you obviously stand out already you represent something it's like you're clearly a foreigner.

33:37So, and so you said, every Chinese person who talked about me has made conversation about basketball. Some guy talked to me about Kobe. Maybe it's fine. I think it's fine. Do you mean the way in the basketball court? Did you tell him what's, what's, what's Chinese, what's Chinese Google again? Baidu? Baidu. Baidu. I wonder what happens if you type in Kobe Colorado. I did not tell him to look up Kobe's history, but he did tell me he likes Kobe Bryant. Anyway. So here's where the basketball comes into play. other than them not happy with it. We are waiting for our second train. And by the way, I do feel like Shakespeare because I passed forward and people had to wait on me and I just felt bad.

34:13So I walk away from the group into an open area and I'm just dribbling my basketball in the middle of the station. Alone and sad. In the middle of the station. There are thousands of people around. Literally nobody else is caring or looking, but you guys are buttoned up and freaking out. But okay, I'm drilling the basketball. No one else is caring except the fucking military official. This is where it gets weird. Okay. So a guy strolls up in an outfit that even our interpreter has not seen. This is not a normal station outfit. He is wearing like a military colonel's hat. Like he looks like he's part of the CCP military.

34:45He's also tall. He's tall. He's like 6 '5". And he has an extremely stern face, like a naturally resting stern face. Yeah. He walks up to me like confidently and points at, turns out not a basketball, but it looks like he's pointing right at my basketball. and then he points over to the area and then he turns into the crowd like over far from me, but in the stage and he points at Aiden and Aiden's face is the funniest face I've ever seen. Aiden goes a pure look of horror, number one, and I don't know this guy. I've never met him. I did not do that. I did not do that. He was trying to sell me out and throw me under the bus, bro.

35:24Think about this. Think about this. Your white friend in the middle of this train station in the middle of China is bouncing a basketball and the scariest looking man you've ever seen walks up to him, motions, and then from across the room, locks eyes with me, points at me, and then points away, like come with me. And in that moment, I am thinking, oh, Brandon's basketball has just sent me to prison.

35:55By the way, I'm also kind of freaking out because this guy's face, I swear to God, this guy's face is not i smile at him like hey what's up stern like does not smile back did you mention kobe did you mention the lakers kobe ryan he doesn't eat i saw i was so mad i was maybe the most mad i've ever been and i look over in and i'm trying to tell him to get our interpreter but he is like trying to run away from me and pretend he never heard me no okay this is this is why it was such a disaster is because stefik wasn't around yeah stefik perry and doug are off we were all split up so we each individually came back and then were motioned by this guy from across the entire train station and he i'm like kit stefick and i don't know that i'm getting pulled over by this guy and he he you know he pulls me away from everyone else to a passport reader and he like points at it and again i think and it's like next to a gate leading off into nowhere i think i'm being pulled away it does feel like that and then i realize what's going on which is just that he's trying to help us get on our train and he's just doing a nice thing he just Yeah, he just wants us to, in advance, scan our passport, because he knows it's going to be a little slower for us, and we'll just get it done.

37:00It was great. Yeah, it was actually very nice of him. So we get scanned, and one by one. But every single person in our group has to individually be kind of freaked out, because they keep coming in. Because it's one at a time. One at a time. And then at least two of us are looking concerned near this tall military guy. Also, this is not a normal thing, because I also looked at the faces of... Bouncing a basketball in the middle of a train terminal is not a normal thing. Thank you. Regular, Chinese people around. No, they were not worried about the basketball. They did think something was going on.

37:26Like they also looked a little bit like what the hell is happening? So anyway, we did. We did get on our speedy train. We caught up, which I think is just cool. I think it's just incredibly cool. It's like it's like a moment in a movie. It's like we missed our train. So we just got on the faster one and caught up to it. But we caught up to it and we caught up to a 200 train. No, we with the 300. Got there 30 minutes before. We had time to kill. That's why you were bouncing the basketball. It's like we were bored waiting for the slow-ass train to catch up. If only their trains were slower, I wouldn't be bouncing the basketball.

38:00Support for this show comes from Tasty Trade. Guys, I'm getting real tired of you not knowing serious financial terms on this show. Okay? Steve Eisman comes on, and we can't even explain ourselves in complicated financial ways. We seem like chumps. Is Bitcoin a money? This is a problem. Aiden, so I came up with a quiz to test you on your financial knowledge. You're going to tell me if these are real or fake. Okay? These are financial terms. Yes. The Lady Macbeth strategy. Is that real or fake? That's a chess opening. That's not real. That's real for sure. It's real. Really? It's real. Yes. Everyone knows that.

38:35What about momentum canceling? Momentum canceling? That's from Melee. Fake. Fake. Yeah, it's from Melee. All right. What about a broken wing butterfly? lie. That's gotta be it's too weird to be made up. That feels like it's real. That's a fair point. Okay, it is real. So you guys are getting some of these right. What does it mean? Let's not focus too much on the details. You know who could explain it really well? Tasty Trade. Because they have an actual jargon library that breaks down these terms to help you understand so you can trade with understanding. Wow. Are you saying I could go to tastytrade.com slash lemonade today and that Tasty Trade Inc is a registered broker dealer.

39:20That's exactly what I'm saying. You finally got it. Okay, I'm picking up on it. And it's a member of FINRA, NFA, NSIPC. Well, hold on, hold on. Is it? Yes. Okay, I'll be in. All right, man. Thank you, Tasty Trade, for supporting the show. Guys, I've been waiting for a call every day here from Xi Jinping. And he hasn't done it yet. And I think part of it is that when I see a number I don't recognize, I hang up. I'm scared of picking it up. But if I had a program that would allow me to take all of my spam calls and filter them with AI to know who was calling me and for what reason, that would actually be pretty helpful.

40:02Sorry, I've just been scrolling through all of my messages and emails across all these different apps on my phone right now. Yeah, but it's taking all your time and you seem like a loser. So if you were to get Quo, spelled Q-U-O, the smarter way to run your business communications, which over 90 ,000 businesses use, you could make this the year where no opportunity and no customer slips away. Try Quo for free. And no leader of a country. No, don't let him slip away. We won't. Try Quo for free. Plus get 20 % off your first six months when you go to Quo.com slash Lemonade. That's Q-U-O.com slash Lemonade.

40:31Quo. No missed calls. No missed customers. No missed... Boys. This hotel room. Look at the skyline. Look at this beautiful city we're in. I can't believe we got here. It's... I just didn't think Madrid would look like this. and if you're visiting Madrid or say somewhere else somewhere in South America other parts of Spain for instance you might want to learn something like Spanish and with a Babbel there's plenty of options to learn plenty of different languages one of the best places that you can learn Spanish from I've heard people have plenty of success with Babbel over competing apps yeah it's incredible well you speak a little Spanish I think you could work on it.

41:15I do need to work on it because of my wife's family, but I have been using Babbel instead of its leading competitor, and I won't say the name, but you may know it from its stupid stupid mascot. If you want to start speaking a new language in three weeks, go to babbel.com slash lemonade, and you'll get up to 60 % off your subscription. That's up to 60 % off your subscription when you use our link. Join the millions of Babbel learners breaking the language barrier every day, and babbel.com slash lemonade. This has been Dredd. One thing about the trains, and I've noticed a lot of the buildings and infrastructure here in general, is we're on this incredible 300-kilometer train catching up to that one, right?

41:58And on that train, the inside of it is honestly not super nice. And I don't mean this as a big critique. I think there's a theme across what I'm seeing of the projects or buildings or infrastructure here where they don't like I'm not on the nicest subway you've ever seen or the nicest high speed rail you've ever seen or the best bus you've ever seen. But they exist and they work and they serve their purpose. And I feel like that is that is a theme of the the buildings and infrastructure specifically. I've had that thought many times. In fact, even you guys said Shanghai was incredibly clean. I thought Shanghai was a very clean city compared to Los Angeles, for example.

42:37But I thought Tokyo is significantly cleaner. But what I got from Shanghai is that like it has everything is just functional and works. That's what I did. I did not get the sense of it like it was insane. It was like off the charts on any one metric. It was just that they've got all the stuff you need for a functional modern city that serves a lot of people. And here in Chengdu, I feel the same way. I just think they've I don't know. That is the impressive part is they've gotten all the roadblocks out of the way to get the majority of people moving and doing things. And things are relatively very clean.

43:12Consumer electronics or consumer stuff. Yeah, I would say that's where they're going to edge. That's where you're like, we went to the Huawei store and saw their trifold phone. You bought your Huawei earbud things. We're seeing these cars that are just mind-blowing. So it's consumer tech. It is just like so much farther than we have. There's definitely cutting edge on that. The difference I would describe is if you've been to a city like, or I don't know, like Amsterdam or Utrecht or, or like, uh, I don't know, like Zurich or something. I feel like the things are, are like nicer, nicer there. And in Chengdu, it's like, there's still huge intersections.

43:54There's still a lot of like traffic. It's not like you're watching this perfectly designed like Dutch city. you saw on some YouTube video, but everything just gets the job done. It's so sick. Yeah, I would say that. That's what I've been impressed with. Yeah, the ability to get the job done for a lot of people. You guys want to hear some fun train stats? Yeah, fuck yeah. So we talk all about this high-speed rail stuff. So I was looking at how exactly did it grow to this point, right? So there's like some key... So we talked to this guy on the train again who slept in your guys' car, and then in the morning, Stevan and I were sitting out in the hallway, and he just struck up a conversation.

44:31We talked about a bunch of stuff. So he, the highway system is like a clearly a point of national pride. Right. And he's talking about how he takes it every week for work that tons of people do. And you take it all the time for trips. Like you just do a day trip because one hour on a high speed rail, I mean, it's the equivalent, you can go to Los Angeles to San Diego in 40 minutes in 300 kilometers. You go LA to San Francisco in two hours, New York city to Miami and 6.5, right? Like the, the amount of area that you can visit in like an hour is just like massively expanded. And I was like, oh, in California, we're 18 years into our train.

45:06We haven't built any yet. He said, ah, that demonstrates incompetence. I think it was the word he said. Yeah, he was just like laughing at us. Like, oh, you're very incompetent. Okay, so quick history of the Chinese rail. Basically none that was really, you know, coherent or usable or connected through the end of World War II, just because civil war, like colonial powers are doing stuff, all these different problems. There were some, but not a ton. So then Mao comes in, they do a giant build out and they actually get up to 33 ,000 miles of railway by 1978, which is huge. That's a lot. And I'll give some exact numbers later.

45:41But then in the kind of like modern reform era, they keep adding until 1997, they get the 44 ,000 miles. And then basically from 1997 to 2007, they start doing these nationwide campaigns to speed up all the rail. So they're like going to the existing railway infrastructure and upgrading it. they do speed speed up campaigns and so they start getting the trains to go like 100 to 120 miles an hour on their upgraded track this is like by 2007 right this is 20 years ago and then over the past 20 years right as the the great recession hits they do massive massive subsidies and start pouring tons of money into national infrastructure so then it just skyrockets so in 2007 they're like 48 000 miles and they have 400 miles of dedicated high-speed rail three years later they have an additional 9 ,000 miles of track with 5 ,000 miles of high-speed rail.

46:29By 2017, it's 81 ,000 miles, 17 ,000 of which are high-speed rail. And now 2023, like a late concrete number, over 100 ,000 miles of track with 28 ,000 miles of high-speed rail track, which is more than the entire rest of the world combined. So just to give sense, the last like, you know, 40, 50 years, they went from 33 ,000 miles of okay infrastructure track that's slow to now 100 ,000 with 28 of high-speed rail us by comparison we actually have a shitload of railway i didn't know that 250 000 miles in 1916 that's just because it was like all over the place uh and it's actually gone down pioneers and rail back when rail was early yeah and then hundreds basically from 1916 onwards it's just been plummeting and so now 2023 by comparison again china has 100 000 miles of 28 000 of which are high speed rail we have 137 miles of track but zero high speed rail and that's basically all freight.

47:25That's not like really passenger line. We have Amtrak kind of, which is in America, that's the line you used if you want to get somewhere as a passenger. But even then they're renting the freight line. So it's a bunch of private companies running freight track rather than, you know, what's happening here where the, you know, the Chinese governor is managing the whole thing. Numbers by comparison, Japan has 15 ,000 miles of conventional track, 1 ,800 miles of Shinkansen. So if you just like Japan is so famous for the Shinkansen, the high speed rail, and it's 1.8 thousand miles of high speed rail.

47:58China has more than 15 times the amount of high speed rail. And that's, you know, that's have been happening over the last 40 years that they've just outbuilt. France has 18 ,000 miles total with 1 ,700 miles of high speed rail. Spain is doing pretty solid. They have 9 ,600 miles and 1 ,800 of which is high speed rail. So there are like these periods in Chinese history and it's particularly from 1997 to 2007, they started expanding infrastructure. And then since great recession, they're like, we are massively investing in this and they're just gone absolutely fucking crazy. So history is nuts.

48:32And now it's like a flywheel, right? Like if you have this much of your economy and system that is able to build this with that level of expertise, like it just keeps speeding up, right? Like it gets cheaper. And of course, very notable thing you don't have to do land acquisition battles the government you don't have to deal with local governments you don't have to do budget flights and fights in legislation you know you don't have environmental law review stuff you can just build you just chop through which is the obvious caveat to all of this which is that there is not like stakeholders around the country who get to like really talk about it but i think the barriers are different any one of those things individually you could argue is a good idea and we did it in america But when you add them all up, you end up what we have, which is so much red tape has choked our ability to build things on grand projects.

49:19So clearly there's a problem. I will say, you know, I don't know the specifics on like, my understanding is you do get paid a market rate if you have land that is in the way of a project here in China. They just pay you. But you have to take the payout. Yeah. There is no option. You get paid out. And so like, you know, you can make the argument that somebody lost their grandfather's farm or whatever. But like, this is what they do to build gigantic projects that get done on time and they're good at it. And so it's trade-offs that people should think about more in America is like, maybe we need some of that, or at least to cut back on some of the regulations we put in place on those areas because everybody, anybody can stop, everybody can lawsuit to stop it.

49:54And so, yeah, it's interesting. Uh, what else, what else, what else? different direction i think the surveillance is interesting oh yeah like it how visible it is and we apparently the most obvious it is is in beijing and like we won't even i mean we won't even see that yeah so just being in shanghai and then even in chungdu if you've ever been in a las vegas casino it is honestly very reminiscent of that there are cameras everywhere especially inside buildings, but there's a ton outside as well. And, uh, aside from the fact that it exists, I think the reactions from people about it, uh, one woman that Stefan talked to, uh, noted that like, Oh, it's so like, it's literally called Skynet literally, uh, is so good.

50:45Uh, it keeps everybody so safe. There's all this accountability for like traffic infractions, theft. A lot of, the person at the university we're speaking with noted this fall in a lot of major crime in China and attributes a lot of it to this enforcement mechanism. I mean, your fucking American passport was on the ground somewhere in a train station that was just returned to information. Yeah. I mean, I think someone just handed it in. Yeah. I think that, that reaction of people have a confidence in the way that it benefits life here. It is in juxtaposition of the American view of it being, so intrusive and painful.

51:22Yeah, I'll say it. My thoughts on it are a little dystopian that's called Skynet and you see cameras everywhere you go, 100%. I will say the area where it clearly is just a net good, and we should probably adopt at least this area, is cameras regarding traffic. So they have cameras on every intersection everywhere. And the idea is if you are speeding, if you cross the line or whatever, you get a small ticket every time. And so the way he was talking about it was like, if they have a rule, people will, they have to do it. Like they're just, it's funny because I actually want to push back against this in the traffic here is insane.

52:02Not necessarily in the quantity, but in the way that traffic flows, people don't, I don't really feel like crosswalks are a great right of way here for pedestrians. People just drive ahead and like, don't really look at you in Chengdu. There's been like a ton of honking. it's interesting to me because all of these things seem to be acknowledged by people we talk to they recognize that you know I wouldn't necessarily step out in front of a car with confidence on a crosswalk like you would in many parts of the US but apparently it is such a substantial upgrade in difference from what it used to be and that is because of the camera infrastructure so it's funny to be like oh it's so good here when to me honestly it's one of the worst parts about being here the only thing I felt it for is scooters for scooters but that's part of it that's part of it the cars and the scooters are absolutely problematic lanes and the scooters literally just ignore the area they should be in yeah the scooters will drive on pedestrian lanes on sidewalks they will cut across they have to have areas that are have like literally barriers and walls to stop scooters from being and say no scooter zone because outsiders out of the globe even stavik was telling me there's a path along the river that's designed for runners you know it's made for runners it's pick lane and now the runners have to like literally almost avoid or go like one side of it because scooters just use it because there is so much pressure we spoke to a scooter driver you know they they get paid on delivery and time is very very important and if you have a shortcut there's any way you can make that's what they're gonna do they're gonna they're gonna optimize their time and so yeah i think it feels like you're playing frogger when you cross the road it's awesome the scooters are are truly insane and and uh what's weird is though even they i mean i guess the cameras aren't hitting them or I'm not sure how it's worked, but you know, the guy we talked to, he did get a fine for speeding.

53:46And he was like, yeah, it's 50 yuan, which is again, seven or eight trips. So it's like a significant fine, like, but he still has to do it, I think, for the pressure of that job. So yeah, I think the scooters are very interesting. I think that's actually one of the things that struck me the most that I hadn't heard about too much or knew about, but didn't recognize how prevalent it is. There is multiple scooters almost everywhere you look at all times in the city. They're always traveling. Every shop you go to has a uniform delivery driver, often picking something up, going out, walking around.

54:17It's everywhere at all times. The ubiquity of these app delivery services is kind of at a scale that I haven't seen. It's kind of crazy. Yeah, the delivery driver stuff. Okay, we were talking about this kind of consistent flow and class of delivery drivers that kind of underpins everything in the city. Like as you walk into a building, it doesn't matter what type of building it is. There's always delivery drivers walking in, out of it, parking, going. They exist in like all facets of life. They're so present in a way that they aren't in the US, probably because everybody's in cars. And I think it is more popular here, 100%.

54:56Partly because of how cheap it is. So you ordered three meals one of the nights that we were in Shanghai for 12 US dollars? 12 US dollars total, including delivery. These were three full meals, you know, chicken and rice and vegetables, delivered to our hotel by a guy. And all of it adds up to 12 total. It was an absurd number. Now we've sort of investigated a bit. And I think part of it is that there is a brutal competition going on between the three major delivery companies. And so they are cutting margin to the bone. And that is why we're getting just a truly impossible deal. but it's like the point is like if you lived here it's and you make you know anyone white collar job i guess it would be almost uh absurd to not do delivery because of how insane they've cut the margin to you can literally get delivery from a million places every place has it and you can get it at absurdly cheap prices it's like if movie pass was for everything it's you know it's fast the you know the scooter drivers can get through traffic a lot faster right as cars are backed up in the major cities they just go right through like pedestrians are just suggestions like it's super fast and then i you know if you're in a hotel they just deliver it in a robot they don't even have to like it's the whole chain is just ridiculously convenient if you order to a hotel the delivery driver will go take it to the hotel counter the concierge drop it off they will then put it in a robot that drives into the elevator that uses bluetooth to go to your floor and knocks on your door and you open it up and the robot hands you the food.

56:29This is all for insanely, insanely cheap. It's pretty surreal. Yeah, it's wild. I will say, here's a debate I want to have. Nothing that I've seen on this trip has dissuaded me from my opinion that China is a, not only capitalist country, but almost a hyper capitalist country that is kind of just beating America at its own game. And I wonder if you have things that disagree with that. I've seen, I'm reading a literal book called Capitalism right now. And there is no, I mean, people are working jobs for private companies getting paid in money that they're using to buy their own things there's not there is literally nothing about other than the government takes taxes and spends on you are a sitcom character you are a sitcom character you buy your basketball you dribble it in the middle of the trade station you lose your passport you're reading a book that i think is that is the two x the size of of what bible of the bible that is literally says capitalism in giant letters on the front of it and brought it to china whether it be intentional or not no it's not intentional yeah but yeah i just you know that is that is what i'm seeing and that like the privately owned tech companies are out competing the the tax dollars are spent on just better things like they're just being smarter with their tax dollars like i don't think it's like a a fundamental uh economic system difference i think it is literally an intelligence of how you are allocating your tax dollars difference that is yeah i mean the infrastructure that like we talked about it's not like the craziest thing ever but it works and it's well done i think there's a lot of focus on city services.

57:55Well, you guys went and had a different conversation. I just like ran for a long time down the Shanghai river. And as I went farther and farther down, it became less developed and whatnot, but there's still like all these public servers work service workers cleaning random walkways, clearing this area of bamboo. Like do, you know, it's just this endless, just wide system, wide collect, you know, I don't know, organization of people at this mass scale. and there's that and then there's insane capitalism on top of it at a level that is like way beyond ours not beyond ours but like is is wild a lot of the time yeah i don't feel like it's necessarily changed my opinion or understanding it i think going into this i from everything we've read and talked about china before it's like the state is very heavy-handed in picking like the winners and losers of overall industries.

58:52Like we're going to allocate assets to benefit public infrastructure or to benefit specific types of companies so that things flow in a certain direction. But if you're a part, it's like the, the free, the, the free market or the capitalism part of it is it within the industries that they want to see like proliferate and succeed. and I feel like that's what I'm witnessing. Yeah, I think they're not picking winners and losers. They are picking - I think they're not picking winners and losers within the industries. They're doing everything they can to emphasize start successful companies within these spaces and industries and then compete with each other.

59:32For example, I think the perfect example is the EVs thing where it's like they're creating laws that emphasize EVs, the license plates that creates a market for it. And they're saying whoever figures that out can get rich. I mean, I think. And then there's just brutal competition for people to try and get the market share in the EVs area because they've created this massive. My like week in China synopsis of it is like. I'll tell you, no weed in China. That was not what I was going to bring up. That's where Aiden was getting. I wasn't going to bring up no weed. Aiden has been desperate for weed since we got here.

1:00:07What have I been smoking? You've been eating betel nut. No, I'm too much of a coward. Look, I'll answer the question you're really asking. I would let the CCP run Los Angeles. I think it'd be better. You specifically said you would let Trump end his term now and give it to Xi Jinping for three years at the same time as he's running China. You'd say you'd do it as a side job. Yeah, I would. That I didn't disagree with. What's an extra 300 million people? At that point, it's a rounding error. It's a rounding error, bro. He has a suburb. We could move them into Shanghai. Have you seen how many buildings there are?

1:00:40There's a lot of buildings, man. And we don't have enough in Los Angeles. That way everybody can keep the character of Los Angeles. I think in the country, the government wields the power to make sure that corporate interests can't overwhelm anything. Which it's like, if anything falls out of line in terms of competition, they have the power to be like this. There's a bunch of billionaires in China. China has plenty of billionaires. The second most billionaires in the world. There's a gigantic wealth gap in China. But anybody who like falls out of line or isn't acting in the country's like best interest, they can kind of come in and hammer that thing down and change it.

1:01:19And I feel like in the U.S. it's not the same. Like in the U.S., corporate money is so tied into politics that the government's ability to effectively influence business in a direction for the country's best interests is not there in the same way. And I'm not saying that doesn't come with like trade-offs here or something, but I think that is the difference is like when you see billionaires in China held accountable by the government in a way that I don't think is really possible in the US. I think that's part of the reason that like the competition exists in China in the way that it does. Yeah, I mean.

1:02:00There isn't democracy here. that is the the obvious clear counterpoint to all this you know it's like i i think what i've been surprised by on a broad high level is like holy shit this is really well done and so many people's lives are clearly improved and you can hear it in the way we talk to people and the pride they have for the country they explicitly say how much better their life is how convenient it is here and it's like in that context yeah of course you're gonna feel more receptive to that and it's also weird to be like if anybody here doesn't like that they cannot voice that online we spoke with um not only our interpreter but also the folks who work at university saying how podcasts here will talk about current events but you don't talk about politicians by name you just sort of like yeah yeah like mr jen like you you kind of allude to it because if you ever start on the nose talking about the political side then you just get removed and it's less like dramatic Just to clear.

1:02:55Yeah, because I think that was a good thing to clear up. Yeah. You're not getting removed as in you're getting tossed in a prison or anything. Yeah. It's much less dramatic. You can just get deleted. Your content will get deleted. If you have a post that is critical that gets viral, it's deleted. Yeah. I think this whole dynamic was really interesting. This was in our conversation with the director from the university. And he explained how he listens to a lot of podcasts. And there's free versions of podcasts and subscribe to versions of podcasts, much like we use Patreon for this show. and in the subscribe versions people have a comfort with speaking a little more freely about political issues that they don't in the public versions of the show and it's not that that's not accessible or policeable because at the end of the day if you keep poking the bear in the subscribable version it's still you're still going to be held accountable somehow but there is a freedom of speaking in those subscribe to podcasts which I mean it's like us we don't tell you what we really think about Trump until you get our Patreon until you get it.

1:03:52We've kept it low key, but when you get to the Patreon, we tell you what we really think. I talk about how hot Pete Hegseth is on there. And I'm not scared. It's a total 180. It's a 180, bro. It is a Tucker Carlson buy, I guess. We just asked straight up. It was like, what's your thoughts or understanding of people being, you know, thrown in jail or facing consequences for speaking out against the government in China? Like, explain to us how that actually works. And because the government has such an influence or control over social media platforms, which he also added is not direct control. He basically said that the rules of the government are so broad that there's a lot of incentive for the platforms themselves to police themselves and be really specific in their terms of service and the way you can use these sites and the things you can talk about.

1:04:43And the companies do a lot of the legwork of enforcing more broad rules that the government has put in place. and then if you do overstep the line like say I go fucking crazy across my social media platforms and I'm really critical of the government and they decide to pull the plug and the thing is I lose my access and my influence across all of these platforms at once so in the US it's like if I get banned on YouTube I might be able to communicate and update to my fans through my big Twitter or Instagram following and people can get an update of like what site to jump to I can carry on my influence somehow But in China, once you use your influence on one of these sites, you've lost it on everything.

1:05:24And your ability to rebuild your following isn't really existent. It's like you just pay the price. You're not going to jail, but you've lost all of your influence. Yeah, I would say, yeah, the way you describe companies and the way I see it happen with local governments, it's really more that the high-level federal government is pretty broad on setting large macro goals and being kind of vague. They're not doing a lot of things you hear about happening in China. A lot of things that are done on the enforcement level or people choosing to self-censor are done either on the individual level, on the company level, or on the local government.

1:05:57Like all that stuff is them trying to adapt to these larger goals. Yes, but like we read a book and the university person mentioned that like more and more party representatives have to be in every company. Like that is increasing over the past like decade. For sure. There is more of a sense. I mean, for context, you literally have to, with a company of any size, have multiple CCP members who are party members who are there to make sure the interests of the party are represented at your company and they're at a high level in your company. That is way different than the government's like, oh, do whatever you want.

1:06:32Am I crazy? That feels like extreme heavy handedness. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think you're totally right. I mean, it'd be similar to what's happening with Intel right now in America. But yeah, I'd say like. uh are we are we installing like party met like trump party has to do is baron working at intel geopolitical goals of america which is to build certain things within the american border which whether why they're propping them up and forcing them to be like that's i guess that's true he dude he mentioned how before it was like his office was kind of like separate and you know it was you know again not to cross the line but don't go too far but now it's like you're literally in like different administration groups are being like you're in the same building in the same room in the university now and the ccp party member is is there in the same room there's just like more and it goes up and down he said depending on but even the party members i'm talking about the party members probably someone from the local government right not yeah i i think uh i think okay here's an example i can think of that kind of supports what you're saying it's actually the the social credit system that gets talked about a lot so we've we've joked and talked about this on this trip a little bit.

1:07:37But basically the way that started is broad requests from the, I guess you call it the federal government, the central government came in and the social credit system as it was floated around in the US was an example of more local government trying to take these like broad stroke goals or rules from the central government and employing a policy in one specific place. Was it a specific city, right? And then trying this sort of like social credit-esque system out where like officials would like note good deeds or bad deeds and like try to build something out of that. But it didn't actually work and it never expanded out of that one place.

1:08:18And that expanded into this news story of the social credit system as we know it in the U.S. But that from, I mean, admittedly, stuff I've just like read and watched, this is an example of how the central government in China works. is they'll roll out some new goals or things that they want to change in broad terms and then let local government officials approach tackling that problem as they wish. Yeah, I mean, I'll give a specific because it goes back to the open cloud thing. So the big Chinese five-year plan meeting just happened very recently. And one of the things they walked away from saying is that one of our big goals for the next five years is to be a world leader in AI.

1:08:58AI is a big goal of the Communist Party for China. And so all the local governments are given that goal and said, you know, figure it out, help your area of the country be a leader. And so a lot of local government money is going towards funding things that have to do with boosting AI productivity or whatever in the area, which is why many companies or areas are using this open cloth thing because they can get local government funding to be a leader in that. That's how it trickles down from like broad idea to local government money to actual action. And so, you know, they did that with EVs. And that is why EV factories popped up in all different parts of China.

1:09:34And there was huge competition because they said that's a goal. It's a broad goal. Local government figure it out. Local governments give subsidies to EVs or create the, you know, the license plate law. And like license plate law starts in a city and it works. And so everyone goes, oh, that's a good idea. Yeah, it was stressed to us that like these local places that try something become testing grounds for laws that can be applied at scale across like the whole country. I think one of the downsides to that, too, is you often hear these stories of how much debt China has actually taken on. And it's also a result of this system, from my understanding, is like local government officials take on debt in order to build large infrastructure projects that the public still benefits from.

1:10:16right but the debt is accumulating in china in a different way where local officials are choosing to spend this money and the debt accumulates at a local level which is like tracked differently so the amount of debt that china has is actually much much larger than the central government shares because a lot of the debt is held by like specific areas of the country or like by these local positions or parties uh yeah they have local debt and we have national debt i will say like Like, you know, at the end of the day, it does seem like they got more for their day. Like they. Yeah. And there's there's arguments you can make.

1:10:50And I'm sure you've heard about overcapacity overbuilding. I will say that the, you know, having been around here a few days now, not really anything deep, but we talked to the we talked to the guy whose dad worked in construction. You know, the Evergrande thing is there is a reality to that in that construction on some buildings we've seen pass by has frozen and stopped. And there is so much capacity. So if the population is shrinking, there's just so much housing. So housing prices are shrinking. And because the stock market is not a place most Chinese have put their savings, savings, people's retirement savings that are in housing is slowly going down because the price is going down.

1:11:29I think they're unwinding the bubble in a pretty smart way from what I've heard and seen in that they had a real estate bubble, they knew they had to fix it, and they are slowly deflating it to where it's not causing chaos. But it is happening. And the people we talked to that aren't in the areas that are thriving, which are EVs, robotics, areas that are crushing, are saying there's fewer jobs. We're seeing that there's a job slowdown outside of the areas that are crushing. Well, the one young kid, the delivery driver, he was from a different part of the country. He was from Hunan. And he said the reason he left is he literally cannot find work back home.

1:12:07and even if he could, he said that job would pay a lot less than like delivery driver in Shanghai. He was like, yeah, me and my five friends just moved to Shanghai to look for work. So that was interesting. To be fair, you know, there is the scale of the buildings and infrastructure is so massive, but I have yet to take binoculars and see if there's people living in these things. You know what I mean? It could all be, like, let's be clear. What I can definitely confirm having seen 0.5 % of China is that there's a fuckload of buildings. Just a fuckload. Like, it's New York City times 100. It's not just, oh, it's a little bit.

1:12:44It's no, it's like bigger than anything you can possibly imagine. And then maybe there's people in it. It could be like this. I think in Chengdu, there's people in it. In the city, I don't know. I'm saying, have you proven it? Have you done real investigative journalism? Or are you just fucking reading what you heard? Let's go knock on doors unit by unit. With my basketball, and we're going to ask him about Kobe Bryant. I acted in my Alex Jones voice. do people even live in these buildings we live we're saying in this for a hundred dollars a night there's a two-bedroom fucking apartment this is a condo building okay we're like this is obscenely nice and that points to nobody lives in this building all right let me just say no it does point this no i think it points to a lot of supply there's a crazy amount of supply no actually dude again this very anecdotal i'm curious to see more of this but it does feel like there's such a focus on building and it seems excessive at this like spa thing we went to yesterday there's like one of the nicest spa things i've seen and it just keeps going it's like oh there's an outdoor area the outdoor area has a movie area and it has another bar and it has karaoke and it has soccer over here here's the gaming here's the pc cafe here's the pc cafe here's the like fighting stick here's five different steam rooms here's the rock room here's it just keeps going and going and then this buffet that we went to was like incredible we just it was like oh if you're here you get a buffet at 5 p.m.

1:14:01or whatever it was. And there were not nearly enough people for all the food there. I don't know if you guys noticed that. Where I felt this was the malls. When we went downstairs and there's three people waiting by the door while we wait for our Uber, there's like five people down there. In America, that would be one person maybe. And this whole complex had maybe 30 customers? No, but in the malls, did you feel that? We were in some of the nicest, largest malls I've been in my life. Spotless malls, floor to ceiling filled with all full stores. The other traffic on a weekend was like yeah, this is a weekend yesterday was it was like nothing It's just crazy.

1:14:38I think it just wasn't full. I think it would tell normal so I think it's a Barry's making a face at you. I think that it's I've seen balls that are dead that have more people per For you know, I thought it was it wasn't that was I think it's dead You're probably the image from what I'm saying that is dead I'm just saying the size versus the, you're never touching another person. There's plenty of room. It's like relative. Yeah. We're in multiple malls. We're like, they're not that far from each other. Until we went to the food trade show, at which point it was the busiest. All right. So leading into that, so we're on the train.

1:15:12Many strange experiences are stemming off of man we slept next to on the train. So one of the things he said that he travels back and forth, he works for a food company and there's a trade show in Chongdu that's happening that day. And he's like, if you guys go in there and say you work for a foreign food company, you'll be treated like VIPs. Turns out we don't have to say that we have a foreign food company. We explicitly said we are not a company. But the fact that we are just like foreigners was very exciting. And so we went into this place and it was like a convention, like in any other country.

1:15:44The most packed convention. Way too, way too full. Shoulder to shoulder. And I got shoveled a bag of these, the best rice crackers I've ever seen. I kind of dragged the whole group because a woman came up and was very excited to talk. Tell you how powerful her company was. Yes. And she said, we do 40 crates of rice crackers a month. And I speak. I have friends in America. And Americans, I like you because of your outgoing personality. And we're friends now. And I want you to meet the boss. And we are powerful. The big boss of the rice cracker company is here today. And I was like, wow. That's impressive, guys.

1:16:14We got to go. And she gave me all these things. And we're now friends on WeChat. And I am promising right now, okay? Yeah. Because I don't want to disappoint her. that I'm going to calculate how much money I personally take home from a weekly Patreon episode. And I'm telling Susanna on WeChat, this is my budget. Send me this many rice crackers to our studio in Los Angeles. We're going to get so much. We're going to get so much. I don't know if I've... We're going to get so much. And it's not because the amount of money he makes from that episode is that much. I want to stress that. It's probably like a thousand or something.

1:16:45Because this would be after we pay. Because we're buying bulk prices. You're buying wholesale cost. No, exactly. That's what I'm saying, dude. But even if it's like a few hundred dollars, it's going to be an obscene amount of rice crackers. And I think it's going to be more than a few hundred dollars. So I've committed. We haven't done the calculations. I'm fully committing to this. I'm going to make it happen. And all I'm saying is that she pointed out, again, we were very clear. We're not a food distribution company, but she kept saying. We said it so many times. And I was like, oh, but we make videos.

1:17:10We make YouTube videos. She's like, oh, okay. But you could start selling food. So what we could do is open up the office. She's kind of making us food entrepreneurs for rice crackers employees. and I could run a rice cracker business out of there. And they're very good. They're honestly very good. They are good. Thank you. I'll meet a Wongsy for the lovely rice crackers. You might be having a thought if you're listening to this. She kept saying powerful. And maybe it's just like a mistranslation. Like maybe she doesn't mean, like why would she stress that word so much? Maybe she just doesn't know that much English.

1:17:38Like it's fine. No, when Steffek interviewed her for us, she kept using the word powerful in Chinese. She just kept talking about how powerful the rice cracker companies of rice crackers a month. She told me that three times, which does not sound that impressive. I want to, I was saying, you know what I was thinking is like she, we're in this multi-floor building, right? And the first floor is the most packed one for obvious reasons. She kept saying powerful. She took us to the fourth floor. We were top floor. And it's like, oh, I meant that's the worst floor to be on. This is the hardest one to get to.

1:18:08Oh, but that's where the boss is, dude. Up the top. No, that's completely wrong. That's ridiculous. And that's insulting for the big boss. My fault. Of the, of, uh, I went to a orange booth And we found out that it was like 13 % of the world's Mandarin oranges go to this company. They're like the largest exporter of fruit in the world. One of the, it was crazy. It was fascinating to be in this. Like, so the idea is all these food companies trying to pitch to a potential retailer of like what their food is. That was the context. And then we are just randomly in there walking around. If we were like buyers for Walmart, we would have been treated like God.

1:18:42I mean, we were already given the real treatment. We were treated as kings. And we would kind of ascend to some sort of divinity that people would be unable to look directly at us. Yes. Everyone handing you juice every three feet. Yeah, that was a really cool experience that happened kind of randomly by happenstance. Support from this show comes from... Yes, dude. Anthropic. Yes. Go ahead, Aiden. So I've been using AI for a while to help with things like research for the show. It's how I find a lot of data and links off-site to prep for how we do this and talk about subjects with each other, which is cool.

1:19:20It's been super, super helpful for me. It's been helpful with language translation to have conversations to practice Swedish and things like that. And I recently unsubscribed from the one I had used for a while and I started using Claude by Anthropic and I've been super, super happy with it, to be honest. Yeah, me too. I use AI primarily for learning and listen, the one thing I hate about a lot of LLMs is their tendency to overly glaze you or overly be complimentary. And this is, Anthropic and Claude is the one I've found to be the most direct and honest and just do the job. That's been a breath of fresh air for me.

1:19:56You guys know how I feel. Are you ready to tackle bigger problems? I was going to say, Doug doesn't have any experience with this. Ready to tackle bigger problems? Get started with Claude today at claude.ai slash lemonade. That's claude.ai slash lemonade. And check out Claude Pro, which includes access to all of the features mentioned in today's episode. or dot AI slash lemonade. What is an LLM? It's okay, buddy. You'll catch it. You'll figure it out. Support for this show comes from Factor. Some of you out there are the real go-getter types. You're probably listening to this podcast while training for your local 5K, while others might be out running errands for your entire household.

1:20:34But wouldn't it be nice if you had a few things taken off your plate? Factor wants to help you by actually placing a few more things on your plate. Factor can provide you with fully prepared meals designed by dieticians and crafted by real chefs. Ready in two minutes, no planning, no cooking. All Factor meals come with quality, functional ingredients, including lean proteins, colorful veggies, whole food ingredients, and healthy fats. Always fresh, never frozen. No prep, no stress, so you can stop worrying about finding the right foods to eat and focus on sticking to your goals. Head to factormeals.com slash lemonade50off and use code lemonade50off to get 50 % off and free breakfast for a year.

1:21:15Offer only valid for new Factor customers with code and qualifying auto-renewing subscription purchase. Make healthier eating easy with Factor.

1:21:28In a classroom of sodas, most stay quiet. Then there's Mr. Pibb. sweet cherry bold outbursts the kind of flavor that gets attention

1:21:41all right another funny little tidbit i thought was interesting i again start coming from train man when we talked to train man um he mentioned a quote to me which is he kind of randomly was like oh he heard we're americans like oh it seems like i forget the first thing was i believe going into Iran was a mistake. That's they're much more powerful. They're much more powerful than, than Trump realized. And I like felt a little embarrassed by this because I'm like, Oh man, is there going around the world? Does everybody think we're like a bunch of war hungry, crazy lunatics? And he was then followed up and said like, but I think most Americans don't really like Trump or they think he's crazy.

1:22:19And I was like, yeah, I don't. And I think most people don't, I think probably 75 % of people think he's crazy or that this is a bad idea. And he laughed and he said, I think it's 90%. So his view as like an average Chinese citizen who has not left China, but is very proud of the country, as I learned over the course of this conversation, is Trump's like this crazy guy and 90 % of people hate him, but he's doing his wacky thing. And then mentioned a couple other kind of analysis of the rest of the world that felt a little bit uninformed. I don't want to say uninformed, very China-pilled maybe is the way to...

1:22:53Yeah, he was very China-pilled. I think there was nothing more... It was interesting because I feel like he was, the way he talked about global and political issues, I feel like he was informed in the sense that I knew what his American counterpart looked like in the US. Someone who's relatively tapped into news and events and does pay attention to this stuff. Watches the nightly news. Yeah, yeah. Like that vibe. And it can have a nuanced conversation about it, but clearly has a very focused perspective from the media he watches, which is everybody. everybody like it was it was interesting to meet yeah one of one of the things where i was like that seems a little off is he's like the ukraine i forget the exact wording and correct me if i'm wrong but it was like the ukraine and russia war it's not really a war it's just about selling oil and i was like it's a war it's like it's i don't know it's a war and then another one was if we just got rid of nuclear weapons then there would be peace then it would wars would be over and i was like i also don't know there was actually uh famously a lot of war before nuclear weapons Yeah, there's a good argument that that would be the opposite.

1:23:54Right. And I, at this point, this is seven in the morning off of a sleeper car sleep. I feel like shit. And we're translating through stuff. I'm not going to be like, well, actually, I think that actually some of the let's get into this. Yeah. And so but I did think this was interesting. And then the line that super stuck out to me was he said, no country on earth loves peace more than China. And I was like, that is so fascinating because that's not really the American version, right? The American version is China's being aggressive and blah, blah, blah, blah. And so I like thought about it. So I looked into it.

1:24:26All right. Let me give you guys some numbers. So I basically started to research this question of is China more peaceful than any other like great empire or power historically? And let's say past like 500 years to like narrow it down. Right. Who do you think is the most? Who has invaded the most foreign countries? What can I say? It's the Brits. It's the British. You're proud. You love those Brits, don't you? All right. so uh leaderboard people don't do it like them scoreboard right up there so there's a book called for a brit from a british person all the countries we've ever invaded and a few we never got around to of the 193 countries that are recognized by the un at some point british has invaded 171 there are only 22 countries on earth that they have not invaded at some point That is goat static.

1:25:20God, it is truly impressive. French Empire, they had 80. And these are all kind of estimates depending on how you define war, right? And define country, because a lot of the countries they invaded have changed since then. Yes, but that's just in terms of... Yes, so some caveats here, but general idea of French Empire, 80 times they've gone into other countries and invaded. US, we're at only 68, more peaceful than the French. Unfortunately, we're not very old, so we're a little more dense. We're getting it done quicker. If you're at home, don't do the math. It's like Cooper flag, dude. USA cylinder Cooper flag.

1:25:57Generational talent. We're putting up big numbers at 19, dude. We're putting up big numbers. Dude, but we're probably, you know, Trump's going to tear our ACL and we're going to bomb out. All right. And then, but. A strain of Hormuz is our ACL. Yeah, yeah. And then by the same, you know, kind of definition of this war stuff, China would be at 12. Like just, you know, massively small. And so if you are a Chinese citizen, is this this is a sincere question is this China as in post World War II CCP takes over as that version of China the past 500 years you're talking about 500 years of China yeah okay yeah so not going to ancient times where like I'm not even including like Mongol you know times here because then that even skews it because then it's like the Mongols are okay 500 I'm not an expert I'm not an expert and I think these numbers are don't get me wrong these numbers are a little damning if you think about them I would like to say, though, that China famously, in a historical context, kept to themselves.

1:26:51And there was a lot of wars in China between Chinese people. So I think... So I thought it was interesting if you kind of look at the type of aggression that China is criticized for in the West. What it almost always is, let's say in the last 70 years, is it's China saying, this is our historical border and we're going to enforce it. In a way that other people are like, we don't think that's your historical border. famously Tibet in 1950 that they went and invaded and basically took Tibet. Right. But like that was that was them saying Tibet has historically been part of the greater Chinese empire and influence.

1:27:26And of course, there's a whole lot of discussion around that. But if you believe if you are in like, well, that is our historical border, then that feels less of a war and more of we are restoring. We're restoring this after World War Two, after the century of humiliation. Korean War was like sort of justifiably defensive. Many asterisks there, obviously. But like that's like the The U.S. is like sweeping up through Korea. There's skirmishes with India. There's skirmishes with Vietnam. A couple of these are like harder to defend. There's the South China Sea stuff of, you know, saying here's the nine dash line and now the 10 dash line that's including whatever else.

1:27:59But if you are sort of like, look, this is us reclaiming historical boundaries over a long period of time, I could completely understand why that would feel like this isn't really aggression. Whereas to many other people around the world, they would go, well, actually, we believe this country is this area. And therefore, and so I thought that was pretty interesting of it's depending on how you view this. Certainly, I think without question, China does not have nearly the same history in modern time of go to another country and just fucking get in there. And like we do this quite a lot. And like, but we always had a good reason.

1:28:33It's just you just think about how many times we've done this this year, this year. How many times we've done this? Fuck it. We're putting up. We're generational. generational numbers it's so fascinating to me that in the west we're like oh trying to show aggressive and then you know to a person here it's like we we have stuck to our fucking selves we're reclaiming the you know the the ancient history that we've had for thousands of years and that's it and you go around bombing and stealing from whatever country you want of course you would feel like this yeah yeah i mean it definitely it definitely makes sense yeah i i As a result of this trip, I want to really dive into some more Chinese history because this is obviously the, I don't know, mainstream news version of it.

1:29:20Sure, yeah. I think it's fascinating the way you might view geopolitics. And this guy was very respectful about it. He was just like, one of the lines was like, I think it's very silly how America keeps going deeply in debt and spending money on wars. You should do it like us and spend it on infrastructure for your country. And I was like, yeah, that fucking makes sense. Yeah, actually. No, that's a good idea. yeah i mean i you know speaking is that like correct like yeah roughly the it's all through through our interpreter obviously iran war i i wanted to bring up you know as i've spent a ton of time on chinese social media and weibo and just brain rotting and scrolling it yeah i want to give you credit right yeah i i you have done more journalism like with the people than any of us because you all the time are scrolling on chinese social media and hitting translate i'm not even kidding you have really gotten in there no i'm reading what they're thinking and it actually is just a great way of seeing like what is trending right now and what are people talking about and i i it is in a way that would not be the case scrolling instagram or anything the a third of content it feels like is about the iran war like it's really it is talked about a lot there is a lot of stuff about it and oh oh bad of course they don't like it of course bad but and and uh Most of the comments, again, I'm clicking random comments and just translate.

1:30:39I'm going down the whole thing. It's a lot of just kind of making fun of how badly this is going, of how this about Trump is kind of like, for example, I saw, again, but it's always put out in an almost cartoonish way. They'll have an AI video of a cartoon Trump tripping into a wall or something. It's kind of what? But then all the comments will be like, yeah, this is a really stupid idea. and you know recently trump made a uh this is like as we're recording recently he's like hey if the next 48 hours if you don't allow free passage of tankers with the straight of hormuz i'm going to start blowing up electricity grids in iran which first of all insane thing to do i think we're the second most peaceful nation great britain would have done it too and uh and but the thing was that iran's response was like go ahead we're not gonna you know we're not going to change, which then puts us on a clock.

1:31:34We are coming up near the end of this 48 hours. And it's seeming likely that Trump won't actually do it, which then becomes a kind of embarrassing thing. And all the comments are kind of pointing out that it's like they know he's not going to do it. Like, no, nothing's going to happen. Like, it's a real loss of credibility that I'm seeing on the ground, like a regular person's level. If Trump doesn't take care of this, his reputation will be damaged. but you know what's funny is i think that's genuinely happening obviously it's happening in america but from what my understanding is that there's some people in china that thought trump was a better leader in his first term they thought he was kind of like someone you could respect or you know they had a less of understanding but he is proving to be more of a i don't know the word paper tiger or whatever but like just it's not there's an emptiness to his threats and his cluster that is more revealed to regular people in this from what i'm seeing on social media and again i'm reading a lot of comments yeah the rest of the world is like has their shit together and trump's walking around in the middle of them bouncing a basketball yeah sort of like that but in a much different way because that would be dropping his passports that would be very cool actually i the when the guy said i think he like laughed he was like i think 90 of americans think Trump is crazy.

1:32:51I was like, do you not think we, do you think we didn't vote for him? Do you think he's a dictator? Because that's great for me, right? I'll be like, oh yeah, it's a 90. Couldn't do anything. We all hated him, but he got in there and grabbed the golden idol and power was restored to his body. That would be one way to do it. I think we have, you know, there'll be a lot more to talk about on the Patreon episodes than the other. We're going to do one more episode in China while we're here i got one more little thing which is i this is sincere okay so two days ago when we were driving to the train station to come to chongdu this is in the middle of shanghai greater population of 80 million people is a bafflingly large city and we drive through an area that you know you can see back here behind us right tons of giant buildings all over the place when we're in the nicest car i've ever been in my arms are resting on top of an iphone for no reason which is what will allow me to move the chair back if I want.

1:33:47I'm playing Flappy Bird. You're playing Flappy Bird. And I notice, all three of us did, Perry and Steffek, that it is, we pull up to a stoplight and it is dead silent. It is dead silent and it's noticeable because we can hear birds chirping next to us. It sounded as though we were in a park somewhere way out in the forest. And it was beautiful. This is going to sound stupid and sentimental, but it was genuinely beautiful to me because it made me feel like maybe the development of humanity with our infrastructure and technology, maybe it isn't just towards an increasingly destructive version of the world.

1:34:27Maybe it isn't just destroying nature and making everything worse and louder. It felt serene in that moment. It is dead quiet in not as much Chengdu, but in a lot of the cities. Chengdu is honking. The cars are electric. Honking seems to have largely been reduced. Even the amount of honk you guys are talking about. This is a hundred times less than New York city. Right. And I just, I, it just sounds weird, but it was, it was like, I'm in the middle of a mega dense city in a country that you're always told is like the biggest contributor to, you know, uh, pollution and all these things. And those are true.

1:34:57Right. But in the middle of one of the biggest cities in the fucking world, it is dead silent. You're hearing birds chirp all around you and it just felt serene. And I was like, maybe, maybe the future as we keep building, expanding, doesn't have to be awful and loud and dirty. yeah I thought a funny point on this story is went through one of the intersections we were in in Shanghai there was a board and it said if you're it was cars over 80 decibel infractions and then it listed the license plates of people who had broken the rule public shame public shame you if your car was too loud by your license plate so you'd have to see like Joe's license plate number and be like what is that fucking Brandon's plate dude Brennan's haunted fit was over 80 dB I knew it what a fucking scumbag and then we were joking about how if that existed in the US it would become like a leaderboard it would everybody and then there was this giant poster of any foreigners carrying basketballs and they were just shaming them building those across all the but I think that's a really beautiful sentiment actually I hadn't thought about that but I definitely this has made me feel very positive about the future.

1:36:09It's not like we're walking through these spaces that are perfect cities or the most beautiful cities I've ever been, but just so good in so many of these ways that are difficult to experience at home and at a scale that I just didn't really think was possible until I got here and saw it for myself, even though I've read so many things about China. And I don't know, I'm really looking forward to the rest of the trip. Yeah, me too. I will say it definitely motivates me at home. We're talking about the difficulty and scale of this task, but truly it makes me think how with a few changes, these things are not that impossible.

1:36:54They're not that crazy. If only someone is willing to do what must be done. I think it makes me like we need to get going at home. It makes me be like we need to get Trump out. I want to move forward on some basic shit and put some money towards buildings. Right, and we all know what you're saying. We all know. Nobody should do it. No, nobody should do it. Nobody should do it. Something needs to be done. You shouldn't even think about it. No, I'm not. I'm not even saying that. I wasn't saying that at all, by the way. I can read it. Say it? I wasn't saying. What were you saying? I wasn't even implying that.

1:37:28I was just saying. No, don't worry. I'm picking up what you're putting down. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for listening. show here in China. We will have Patreon bonus episodes. We want to hear more of our walk-in talks as we walk around some of these cities. We've been recording a lot of B-roll, a lot of extra stuff, some of our interviews. And yeah, there's just more bonus content on the Patreon. We're going to have another main episode here from China later on in our trip after we've seen some of these super high-tech cities like Chongqing and Shenzhen. So yeah, appreciate it. Thank you again to the Patreon supporters who gave us the opportunity to do this trip.

1:38:01Hitting 10 ,000 patrons what gave us the opportunity to do this thank you so much and uh it really has been an eye-opening and a very cool trip and it's just nice with the amount that we read and talk about china i think the u.s china relationship is the grand story of the 2020s and the foreseeable future and what's the deterioration or the rebuilding of that whatever happens and it's cool to have some boots on the ground experience of just seeing you know a picture's worth a thousand words i think walking through a city tells you a lot more than a lot of articles we're getting in here and we're reading chinese twitter yeah okay yeah we're on the ground scrolling what is it baidu weibo weibo weibo we're doing it all right no one else will all right no one else is doing it and we're gonna tell you all the memes probably brandon will literally compile memes and share some memes i'm going to share that are truly i mean i showed in one that is like dude they're psycho they're psychotic some of them anyway uh guys thanks for watching Thanks, everybody.

1:38:54If you're an experienced trader like me, who knows what is possible for you? It's an audio, but I'm rolling my eyes. You're probably familiar with what trading stocks is like. I don't believe you because you've lost all of your money trading. I know I haven't. Look, I'm tasty trading. You can trade stocks options. Futures are more all in one platform with low commissions. You keep more of what you earn. My IQ is off the charts. No, no. Your bad trades are off the charts. Fine, fine. I lied. I'm an idiot. I'm not experienced but if you were an experienced trader you could become the trader you always wanted to be you could go to tastytrade.com slash NMNA to get started Tastytrade Inc.

1:39:30is a registered broker dealer and member of FINRA, NFA, and SIPC