I suspect that when the NYTimes reports from Turkey or Tunisia or Thailand, they employ a staff of native born reporters that have intimate access of the country, its language(s) and the culture. Raymond answering questions from an unidentified person about the use of WeChat's in China as an analogy to "The Jetsons" is disturbingly puerile. Journalism is an activity that should be reserved for material, and yes locales, where it can be professionally delivered. The difficulty in reporting about China for English language readers is substantial. When those barriers cannot be breached, silence is preferable to screenshot journalism and tourist narratives.
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Thank you for your reporting from China. But be careful not to get hauled off to jail and tortured for stealing “state secrets”.
Hope you are there w at least a US passport though that doesn’t provide much more protection these days. Hope you don’t have kids there who may be prevented from leaving the country. If you do have young children especially boys who look like the millions of other Chinese kids, beware of kidnappers who will sell your sons to wealthy childless or son-less couples.
I know you are already very careful while crossing the street to look in all directions before crossing as drivers turn right on red, left onto oncoming traffic and generally don’t obey traffic rules (what rules?).
What would be helpful to readers who never lived for extended periods in China is for you to share such details of daily life there. Such as people not getting on line, the lack of rule of law, the limited social mobility & low childbirth rate due to the continued hukou system, plight of migrant workers who leave their children back in their home villages precisely due to the hukou system, the social merit system, etc.
However, this may really get you thrown in jail.
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