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anon · 5d
hi! thanks for your kind response to my last message. i get it if cia affiliation is a turn-off; i suggested cdt because it’s a decent entry point if you’re new to the world behind the great firewall, but if you’d rather look to other sources or rawdog weibo yourself, obviously that’s fine too.
of course you’re allowed to say you fuck with china. i’m really sorry if it sounded like i was saying you couldn’t. i’m not trying to make us seem like an unliveable hellhole lol. i guess i’m just paranoid because i’ve seen a lot of well-meaning western leftists sink into the trap of thinking the us is the only evil in the world, which makes them more likely to repeat chinese state propaganda on their behalf. but as long as you keep your critical thinking skills with you, you should be fine.
if you’re at the point where you genuinely believe 6/4 never even happened, then um…😬 i’m not sure what to say to you. like, nothing i say would change your mind. but that kind of denialism is a very easy way to piss people off, especially older folks from beijing, so if you’re wondering who you’d be hurting, that’s your answer right there.
on chinese imperialism: if you have any friends from hong kong, taiwan, vietnam, the philippines, anywhere else in the south china sea, tibet, altishahr & dzungaria, or inner mongolia, they might be good to talk to about this kind of stuff. you’d probably find them a lot more convincing than some random anon. if you don’t have any friends from those places, you can see if there’s a community centre or temple or mosque in your area where you can chat with some of the diaspora.
besides that, i guess my main tip would be to learn at least a little bit of mandarin chinese. i can’t emphasize enough how much you’re missing if you don’t know the language at all. what else…avoid falun gong at all costs lol, they’re a cult notorious for right-wing views. generally speaking, always listen to a chinese person before you listen to a white person. listen to ethnic minorities before you listen to han chinese. listen to working class chinese, especially any migrant workers, before you listen to wealthy urbanites. all that good shit 👍
haha thank u for coming back with some concrete tips for me! this is what i was loooking for for sure. i just answered a way longer message about this n don't wanna repeat myself but i do work with a lot of immigrants from china, taiwan, the phillipines, mongolia, central asia, vietnam, who talk about china in various ways based on their own political affiliations. honestly one issue i keep running into is that diaspora who move to america are inherently more pro-america. like they have drank the american kool-aid because they want to live here. they are also often upper middle class, since it costs a lot of money to imigrate here. this makes their political perspective sort of skewed and still a reflection of what i've heard a lot before. it doesn't mean i will discount it, obv, but it is super different from someone who has not chosen, or is unable, to immigrate here. i seriously would love to talk to chinese people who aren't han chinese, people who are working class, and people who are migrant workers. i don't think those people are on XHS from what i've seen--i heard it's a lot of middle and upper middle class han chinese women.
you're definitely right that my best bet is learning a bit of mandarin. otherwise, how am i really gonna know what's up? but for now my views are just views, my thoughts are just thoughts, and my opinions are still percolating. but again, as someone who is a communist, it makes sense i will sometimes have positive opinions about a large communist country. whether or not i get into it as deeply as some other people... i don't know if i am ever going to know enough to have a strong stance. i'd certainly like to get there! but there's so many barriers, mostly economic, to me being able to go to places and talk to people who will give me other perspectives.
anyway thanks for coming back and giving me more to think about!
anon · 6d
hello! I want to encourage you to put some attention into learning more about China before you start falling into tankie rhetoric. China is an enormous country with thousands of years of history and billions of people living in it. I would ask you to think - how much do you know about China? what do you know about the demographics, about the generational gaps, about the difference between city and rural life, about the pop culture, about the average person's life? how much do you know about the history and present of the CCP?
it's absolutely true that the American government has vested interest in manipulating information about China, and it's true that there is a lot of casual sinophobic mindset and rhetoric within America because of the propaganda framing of China as "evil communists." I ask you to consider your current level of knowledge not because China is inherently Evil (or Good) but because it is a country full of people that operates like every other country full of people. the casual sinophobia in America means that people are very prone to exoticizing it in one way or another, but it is just a country - a country with a lot of thriving culture and subcultures, and with a lot of beauty, and with a lot of varied ways of life. it is also a country that has been under a communist dictatorship for most of the modern age, and that is currently under the absolute power of a dictator who has displayed interest in further restrictions of freedom.
I would encourage you to learn about the mass surveillance, censorship, ethnic cleansing, and protest-crushing under the CCP - especially the human rights violations against Muslim minority groups in Xinjiang and the repression of the Hong Kong protests. I would also encourage you to learn about the beauty of Chongqing, Shanghai, Chengdu, Xi'an, and so many other cities. there is so much life in China, because it is a country full of people who are alive. I'm not saying you need to have memorized a textbook in order to have an opinion about a place, but sometimes you need to learn and listen and understand before you start speaking. what I am seeing right now is a lot of Americans talking about China as either an evil unknowable state, or a benevolent cute-innocent socialist paradise - and both of those things are not just orientalism 101, they also flatten a huge complicated country into whatever narrative serves you as an American best. I think the more you can learn, the more you can actually understand about the reality of a place - and the less you are in danger of slipping into tankie rhetoric and disregarding the humanity of the people who are subjugated under the CCP
you're absolutely right that it's impossible to generalize a huge country, and it makes sense that from an american perspective once you unlearn sinophobic propaganda, it's easy to swing in the other direction and think of it as some flawless communist utopia. i'm not really operating through either framework. i'm able to look at some things tankies say and acknowledge they are true and i agree with them. i hear some of the things the people i know who live in china/have lived in china/hk/taiwan say that are critical of the govt and i believe those things too. the thing is, my political principles make me a communist, and china is a large communist country, so of course i am going to agree with some of the actions of their communist government.
i like that you're encouraging me to just learn more about china in general because i think that's what i would like to do. if you have any non-CIA, non-Voice of America resources that I can use to learn more, please send them my way.
i know it's not the same but i am cuban and was raised in a household where the only time we talked about cuba was when my grandma complained about the revolution, about communism, about the senseless killing and looting of the upper middle class. of course, i believed her--after all, she was there! she saw it happen! she left on a boat with only a suitcase and a newborn baby! but then once i got older, i was able to take a step back and look at outside perspectives. i realized my grandmother is and has always been extremely conservative, racist, capitalist, and traumatized--and that lens is not the one i want to look through. i realized i had to also value the opinions and knowledge of people who were not connected to cuba through identity. they were able to see things my grandma, from a rich upper middle class farming-owning family, was not. i'm sure my family benefitted from the slave trade, and i'm sure they underpaid their workers after slavery was abolished. a lot of their trauma came from the destabilization of their perfect life that was built on the backs of poor people in punishing conditions.
i'm talking about this because it's the reason i'm not inclined to take all my opinions of a place from the diaspora. if you had asked me as a member of the cuban diaspora if i was a communist, if i supported the cuban revolution, up until a few years ago i would have repeated the same lies and biased opinions my grandma told me!
i'm not saying that's exactly what you're doing here. i'm not saying that you're even wrong or i know more than you. that's not true and not really what i care about. what i am saying is there's a chance you're motivated to send this message because you can't take a step back and be objective. that's not a bad thing necessarily, but it does change how you view things, and why you'd choose to send me this message.
fwiw i'm not uncritical of tankies either because i find some of them are patronizing and cynical and obsessed with theory. but i keep being told to focus only on confirmed history (confirmed by who?), only on history that i've already learned, only on history reported by news outlets funded by the CIA, and i am not super interested in that right now. it's literally the only kind of history i've ever gotten on china. please understand i don't have an uncritical lens even if i talk like i do sometimes. i want to know the whole truth, the good and the bad. i just think it's impossible for me to not compare what i learn with the truth of living in america, and how america comes out worse every single time. like i cannot stress enough how so much of my unlearning of american propaganda is focused on how america is a singular evil in this world, genuinely. because of that, i can look at almost any other country and find the good things about it.
also this isn't just a specific focus i have on china. i also feel this way about cuba too. i've read and listened to a lot of info about cuba, but i know in the end i won't truly know what it's like until i go and see for myself. i'm excited to have the chance to unlearn things i thought would be true, to demystify this place that i was so propagandized about. hopefully i can get to china someday too and see the good, bad, and everything in between.
this has been an interesting topic to discuss w anonymous people for sure, but i would like it better if it was more generative rather than these "warnings" i keep recieving. i am well aware that i should be critical and question things. it feels a little patronizing to recieve these messages where you're well meaning but kinda talk down to me. i don't think i'm in danger of slipping into a place of no return idealogically. in future if you (or anyone else who wants to talk about this) want to send me a message on this topic, please come with some links to things i should be looking at, reading, listening to. if you don't want to do that i understand, but if you had the time to type this message out you could probably have made it shorter and just sent me a few articles.
also, my dms are open! i would rather talk about this with You, a Person, instead of someone anonymous on a website that won't exist in two months. have a good night!
anon · 6d
hi, i'm a longtime follower on your priv but don't feel comfortable DMing, which is why i'm writing to you here since i'm not sure how else to reach you. you don't have to respond to this and i get it if this feels like overstepping, but i felt like i had to say something. with the recent hype around XHS, i noticed you recently RTed some accounts which minimize 6/4 (aka the tiananmen square massacre) or support the one-china policy. and as a chinese diaspora person who is a leftist but still has a healthy distrust of the ccp...please. please, try to keep a level head on your shoulders. you seem cool and adept at cutting through american propaganda, which is nice. but please know chinese propaganda also goes crazy. i get that it's exciting to talk to leftists from around the world, but we have our fair share of problems, and anyone who uncritically paints the PRC as some kind of fantasy socialist utopia should be viewed with skepticism if not outright contempt. a good rule of thumb is to remember chinese imperialism exists and is just about as awful as american imperialism. please learn to apply that lens if you want to speak on asian politics. if you really want to learn more about the PRC, i recommend china digital times and made in china journal; both have solid english-language coverage and analysis, and you can continue exploring from there. CDT in particular is great for learning about chinese memes and online culture. i genuinely think it's nice you're interested in learning more about us, but it's also important that you don't go hurtling off in a weird direction
hi!! ty for sending this message. ur right that i don't know a lot about chinese imperialism yet although i do know a bit about chinese propaganda and corruption. im honestly very open to learning from any source that doesn't have ties to the CIA. Unfortunately CDT is funded by and run by people affiliated with the National Endowment for Democracy, which is a defacto department of the CIA. China Journal doesn't seem to share those affiliations, so I'll check that out. believe me when I say i'm trying to come into new information with an open mind, but at this time i've heard prevailing narratives from america, and even from chinese leftists, for my whole life that are being challenged. i obviously don't want to hear misinformation but i do want to hear the truth, yknow? it's so hard to find One Truth and i don't think i can, but i want to at least gather as many sides as i can and hunt down a truth that isn't state-sponsored in any way. i keep asking myself: who does it serve for me to believe this? who does it hurt? and my retweeting of some things from an account isn't an endorsement of everything someone says.
but thank you for sending this message, i am well aware that no country is a perfect country, and that no system with poverty exists without repression, and i do know that china implements state repression. however, it does seem like some of the things presented here might still be american propaganda, ngl!
anon · 8d
Mawma when this site is done, we're doing neospring or what?
anon · 8d
we need to get you into hockey rpf theres several fellas i see and think wow starcreator wld have a ball with them
i......................................................................................... dont want to because all i can think of is sash because she stole hockey rpf fics. also the sports guys aren't gay enough for me. i need to be writing fic about bonafide homosexuals, not straight guys doing ritualistic antihomosexual skinship methods
anon · 8d
have you read any good fics lately?
anon · 8d
also any new fics planned or is your employment era too busy
nope i am run dry hahaha i have nothing left i want to write for now. kpop is still something i really enjoy but for some reason fic writing is just not compelling to me anymore. i would love to start writing original fiction but also i do feel a little bit like the world is burning down so it's making me a little stressed out. but no i would really really really love to write fic again it's just that nothing has really compelled me in a while.
anon · 8d
Are we going to get WakeOnez interactions with this overlapping comeback season, and if not, when are we scheduling the group suicide? I’m free on Fridays
anon · 8d
i know you’re on priv now but can you please come back to us on main. and will you make a neospring
anon · 3mo
Ngl the first time I saw this my first reaction was literally "wife? 🫨"
https://x.com/sounds_of_cheol/status/1851559236704030981?t=j4gZHC8kaOxCIBwEUxDtkw&s=19
anon · 6mo
Oh u r really cuckoo about phaerae like did ur other ships before ever make u feel like this
no i think this one was the highest stakes one that i had ever encountered. like it was happening in realtime before my very eyes. i got to define the lore of it. that gave me a really vested stake in the ship. vs like... i was a huge soonwooist but i was mostly watching and reading old content of their and then reinterpreting it through my lens. but this is like... we were making the lens. so i feel a sense of ownership over the ship and that's what makes me cuckoo
anon · 5mo
Hey hope you are doing well <3 you are one of the few sane evnne/zb1/boys planet accounts so I miss seeing you around. I miss your retrospring rants to lol. I hope everything is ok wherever you are (and if it’s not god please double your troubles and give it to Gyuvin)
anon · 6mo
any new phaerae thoughts after seeing them together at isac? i guess we kinda knew this from the switch practice room but it's so interesting to see how tsundere taerae is with hanbin given how i kind of attribute that to how he acts with people he doesn't know too well as a defensive mechanism or how he acts with matthew as a silly bit/maybe not a bit. with hanbin it feels like there's history behind it if that makes sense? like in the clips where hanbin runs up to him and hugs him and where hanbin keeps leaning back on him it's more of an exasperated fondness that comes with years of dealing with hanbin's touchiness lmao. like ooh i hate that you keep doing this but keep doing it anyway bc i actually don't hate it and you know that. and hanbin knows him so well to know how to push it just far enough where taerae isn't scared away like he is with gunwook sometimes lol. i wish i was at isac like sorry for being insane taerae but my camera would've never left you. there are probably so many things that happened that we'll never see godddd.
lowkey they are exactly how we thought they were the first time we wrote them but we just didnt realize they're not like this with ANYONE ELSE like omg the months we spent being like yeah we just dont know taerae at all i guess hes not shy or tsundere like we thought ONLY TO FIND OUT THAT HE IS... BUT ONLY WITH HANBIN... like whats going ON i was ready to completely disavow my earlier characterization choices but now im like oh... no we had the correct read on the situation. hanbin is soooo posessive with him!!!!!!!!!!!!! so pushy and posessive and taerae pretends he hates it but he's next to him the whole time.
idk i guess my main takeaway from this is we should have trusted our intuition. like. taerae is not like this with ANYONE ELSE. maybe he knows something we dont (that the more he pushes hanbin away the more hanbin will come back again)