This morning I read an interesting post from my friend Trevin about the election and wrote a comment in response. His post was thoughtful and not at all combative, in part expressing surprise at the low voter turnout and the makeup of voters, citing:

Clinton won 65% of Latinos and only 54% of women. Even more surprising, Clinton only won 51% of “White women college graduates”.

The comment I wrote in response is pictured below… but you’ll notice the red exclamation point next to it:

If you read the comment, I think it’s pretty clear that it’s civil… you might even go so far as to say that it’s thoughtful and furthers the discussion! But… you won’t see that comment on Facebook:

It was “deemed abusive or otherwise disallowed” by Facebook’s algorithms (it was too fast to be done by anything but a machine).

It reminded me of two things:

1. Mark Zuckerberg calling it a “crazy idea” that the spread of fake news on Facebook influenced the election. Obviously this post isn’t about fake news, but it’s a conversation about how trustworthy polling is. And, Facebook blocked that conversation from occurring.
2. Having some flashbacks to my time in China where it was well known that WeChat had certain keywords that would get you flagged or banned.

Of course, this could be just a bug. But, it was a good reminder to me that Facebook is not mine. Your Facebook wall is not a blog under your control. Your Facebook messages are not private communications between you and the recipient. Your speech and behavior within their walled garden are subject to their terms and conditions.

I have basically accepted the echo-chamber that comes from seeing things shared from people you already associate with and identify with. But, I’ve been increasingly concerned about digital redlining, and only recently have considered the fact that I’m not even seeing the “real” echo chamber, but some subtly modified version of it.

Last year I spent about a third of my time in China. I didn’t post many pictures, I often travelled alone, and I had a difficult time succinctly summarizing what China is like. As a result, I don’t think many people know much about my time in China.

Roughly every 6 weeks I went to China for 2 weeks, throughout most of 2014. I flew Hainan Airlines a few times (which was nice because those flights are on Dreamliners) but ultimately settled in on a regular Delta route, and switched loyalty programs from United to Delta as a result of all of those 11-hour trips. Each time I visited, things got easier to the point where it became a routine.

Before leaving I’d swap out my regular wallet for my “China Wallet”. The flight to Beijing is about 11 hours from Seattle, enough to easily watch several movies. And, in my case, eventually get through most of the Delta movies worth watching and start bringing my own.

China Standard Time is GMT+8, so it’s either 15 or 16 hours ahead of the West coast depending on our daylight savings. When you fly West to China you cross the International Date Line and lose a day. And, the flight itself takes 11 hours. So… what that boils down to is that when you fly there, you land the next day, a few hours later than when you took off. I always prefer to fly out in the evening so that as soon as I landed in Beijing, I could go to bed. When you fly back, you land the same day, a few hours before you took off. I liked leaving in the morning from China, and would land and go straight to work from the airport. Seeing two sunrises on the same day was strange at first.

My home was always the Holiday Inn Express Beijing Huacai. Truth be told, I really liked it. I got to know many of the people there, I loved the breakfast buffet even if it got tired after 10 consecutive days, and it really did eventually feel like home. On Christmas, I brought everyone candy canes.

It’s big

Having travelled mostly to Europe and South America, I really never appreciated this fact:

That is to say, when I used to think of “the rest of the world” the places that came to mind are not actually the places that most of the world lives. There are countless mind-boggling facts about the scale of China (and India). There are 15 cities with more than 10 million people (more populous than New York City). There are 170 cities with more than a million people. The US has 10.

Beijing itself is built as a set of concentric circles (“rings”) around the center of the city. The center of the city is The Forbidden City and people don’t live there. I lived up near the green checkmark. To get from there to the forbidden city by taxi would take about an hour. I never felt like I saw “a condo building” – a building by itself didn’t even seem to count as meaningful residential construction. At a minimum, I’d see 4 identical condo towers, sometimes 8. It’s a big city.

Information

Yes, Facebook, Twitter, and Google are all blocked. The Great Firewall of China exists, and your only way around it is with either a VPN or a foreign SIM card. In fact, a regular VPN won’t even do the trick, you need one that supports additional encryption/scrambling because the GFW can block things based purely on encrypted traffic patterns. I used Astrill and it was great.

The TV in the hotel has a few English channels, including the CNN International channel. However, whenever they would do a story about China, the TV would go black.

In China, you’d use Baidu instead of Google, Weibo instead of Twitter, and WeChat instead of Facebook. You’d shop at Taobao (by Alibaba) or JD instead of Amazon. These aren’t perfect analogs, as the different services have different featuresets, but between them they cover the same sorts of things the US sites do for the western world. These services all operate within the rules of the Chinese government, and implement the required censorship and monitoring. In China you have a vastly different view of the Internet than the rest of the world.

The pollution

People asked me about the pollution… at times, it was quite bad. This is a photo taken from the window of my hotel one morning. I didn’t wear a mask, but many people did. Fortunately, being a 2-block walk from work meant I could stay indoors when the air got this bad.

There are some exceptionally clear days, but overall I think Beijing has a smell to it, that I eventually got used to. The people who live in Beijing and other big cities are aware of the problem and don’t like it. Children get sick and some people choose to move their families to less polluted towns.

The language

Mandarin is by far the most-popular natively spoken language on Earth.

Unfortunately, it is hard to learn. Since it doesn’t have a phonetic alphabet, you basically have to learn how to speak and how to read as two independent activities. Foolishly, I focused on learning how to read, so I had a decent shot at parsing menus. This came in handy when I could point at things, and was useless when I needed to say them out loud. I used Memrise for this, and it was pretty fun. The Chinese characters have interesting origins and it’s fun to try to come up with mnemonics for some of them. For example: 牛肉. 牛 looks a bit like a cow with it’s head over a fence, and means cow. 肉 looks like 2 steaks on a pan, and means meat. Together, it’s the word for beef.

I did not to a good job of focusing on learning the language. I know many people who have done it, but for me it was difficult to prioritize particularly given how often I was coming back to the US.

The food

I tried to eat adventurously. The only thing I really wouldn’t go near were the spiders. Here are some of the more unusual things I ate:

Rabbit Heads

Snails

Tried scorpion (but didn’t touch spiders)

Jellyfish

Chicken feet

Pigeon

Some food seemed adventurous initially, like the fact that virtually all fish is served whole, but it just became normal. I loved the Chinese food. It bears almost no resemblance to American Chinese food.

Spicy Fish

Zongzi – traditional food of the Dragon Boat Festival

Steamed Buns (Baozi. My favorite.)

Chinese Hamburgers

Hotpot

Spicy beef (or pork)

The people

I met a lot of fantastic people in China – both expats and native. On only one occasion did someone come up and ask to take a picture with me, and that was when we were in the Forbidden City on the weekend. People in big cities like Beijing see plenty of foreigners these days, but The Forbidden City is a tourist destination that attracts people from all around China (you can compare it to people from around the US going to Washington, DC).

The most challenging parts of interactions were (obviously) the language, and the customs. People are generally forgiving that I don’t know their customs, ex. sometimes I’d forget and offer/accept something with one hand instead of two. Similarly, I’d find myself forgetting that they don’t share western customs – holding a door open, saying “bless you” when you sneeze, etc. It’s different enough that I never really felt like I was fitting in. Unlike Shanghai which is uniquely international and pretty easy for Westerners, Beijing is a very Chinese city. Most people don’t speak English. Of the people who do speak English, most don’t speak it much better than I speak French (ie. they learned it in school but don’t have much excuse to use it). So, that makes a lot of interactions hard.

I eventually did a fine job at navigating the “happy path” of interactions, but I would get in trouble if things went off course. For example, I can pay a bill at a restaurant, but trouble strikes if they have an issue with the credit card. Or, if I’m checking out at the grocery store and they ask me anything other than “do you want a bag?” by pointing at it.

The sights

Unfortunately I didn’t see much of the country overall. Virtually all of my time was in Beijing, with the exception of one weekend in Shanghai, and one trip to the Great Wall. The urban and rural parts of China are drastically different, and I wish I’d had more exposure to the rural parts.

Protip: Discover Cards are compatible with China Unionpay. It’s the most compelling reason to get a Discover Card.

It’s different here

It’s always hard for me to summarize what it’s like in China. One thing that really struck me is that people didn’t look at me as “American” – I was just “Western.” In other words, the differences are so vast that knowing I’m from the West is enough to have a feel for my general worldview, my common customs, the food I typically eat, the fact that I probably don’t speak Chinese, and probably do speak English. Relative to China, Westerners are alike and the differences between Western countries are minor.

I was fortunate enough to get one of the newer 10-year visas before I stopped traveling for business. I hope I’ll have the opportunity to make further use of it.

A few weeks ago I spent a week and a half traveling across the country by train. I enjoy traveling. By that I don’t just mean “going somewhere” – but the whole act of traveling, including long plane rides, airports… the stuff that many people dislike. Though there’s some burden to having to be somewhere at a given time, for the most part the whole act is decision-free. You get on a (plane/train) at X o’clock. You sit in your seat. You can read a book, watch a movie, or use the computer. It’s hard to explain why having a tightly constrained list of options feels so freeing. But, anyone who feels burdened by endless decisions can probably understand what I mean.

California Zephyr Route

I decided to take Amtrak’s California Zephyr train, which starts in Emeryville, California and ends in Chicago, followed by the Capitol Limited which starts in Chicago and ends in DC. I started the trip by spending a night in Sacramento, boarded the train, and made a 1 night visit to Denver, 1 night in Omaha, 2 nights in Chicago, and 2 nights in DC. In each city, I booked hotels but otherwise made no plans.

When you ride a long-distance train (versus a commuter) you have two options: a Coach Seat, or a Roomette. I tried both: got a roomette for my longest leg (30 hours from Sacramento to Denver) and coach seats for the shorter legs.

The Roomette is designed for two people, so it’s quite roomy. As seats, you’d be sitting facing one another. As beds, he two seats slide down and fold together, and the second bed is the “top bunk” which folds down from the ceiling. It’s comfortable, private, and comes all-inclusive with meals in the dining car. Each sleeper car probably has a dozen rooms, there are multiple bathrooms and showers per car, as well as an in-car attendant (similar to a flight attendant) who sleeps in the car as well.

Train meals are considerably better than most domestic flights’. They have a dining car with a kitchen, so the food is cooked to order. The menu is small, though. In 2-3 days you can easily go through all of the breakfast, lunch, and dinner options. The dining car also requires all tables are seated with 4 people, so if you’re traveling alone or as a couple, you’re guaranteed to be seated with other passengers.

The coach seats are not remarkable, again unless you compare them to airplanes. They have considerably more legroom than even a domestic first-class plane seat, recline much further, and there’s an outlet for every pair of seats. The best part though, is that if you’re on an overnight trip, they somehow seemed to find a way for every passenger to get 2 seats. I never had a neighbor for a “redeye” trip. So, you can kick up the legrests on both chairs and make a pretty decent bed.

Surely the sights on the train vary based on the route you take, but here are a few examples of mine… riding though Colorado, and then a sunrise trip leaving Omaha:

While you’re reading, or watching movies, or writing code, you can always look out the window and watch the scenery change.

In each city, I tried to see the kind of sights, and eat the kind of food, that the city is known for. Sportswise, I saw a Rockies game in Denver, a Bulls playoff game in Chicago, and a Cubs game at Wrigley. I had a “Helton Burger” at Coors field, Nebraskan steak in Omaha, a few deep dish pizzas in Chicago, and a Half Smoke at Ben’s Chili Bowl in DC.

Most of the people on these long-haul trains are retirees who enjoy the rumble of the train and aren’t in a rush to get anywhere. Everyone’s quite talkative during dinner, curious where everyone else is from, going to, etc. If you spend time in the “view car” – which is a car with bigger windows, designed just for watching the scenery, you’ll likely find the same type of travelers looking to chat. On the lower-level of the view car is the “snack car”, also known as the “bar car.” I didn’t spend much time there, but I did meet an aspiring hip-hop producer who spent the better part of his journey there.

Some people asked me if it felt lonely. I was somewhat surprised that it did not. I don’t credit my fellow passengers for this, either. I think it’s because -though many stretches of the country don’t have cellular service- you’re still mostly connected. It’s not at all like a long plane ride in that way. If you have a funny experience, you can call or text back home, and get a response. Though you may be away from your friends and family, you’re not disconnected. The balance between “getting away” while still “being in touch” was something I really enjoyed. During the times you are offline, you can take that as your cue to read a book, or watch a movie, or look out the window and doze off. The brevity of your list of options is as calming as the options themselves.

Yesterday a few of us went on a 9-stop, all-day Pizza Crawl across Seattle. We hit up a series of spots based on location and reputation. Most were either Neapolitan-style or New York Style places. Facebook posts as follows:

Belltown Pizza