I lived in china for 4 years and what I miss most is not having to own a car. Whether it was walking to the store/bar. Biking to work, or riding the train to see the sights on my weekend there was no point I thought to myself "a car would make this better/easier"
this post was submitted on 12 Sep 2026
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Brand new and already broken - the boost pads (dash panels) clearly don't work! https://drop.geekbox.info/bike.mp4
I was wondering also. Maybe you need to ride really in the center of them?
Do they drive on the left or right? I'm having trouble telling from the gif
Yes, this is china, people drive wherever they like
Besides Hong Kong, they drive on the left I think
Other way around no? Because HK was british owned
They drive on the right. Chinese traffic is kind of controlled chaos and people park wherever their car fits, but at least there's still some semblance of order unlike some other countries where it really is just a free-for-all. Road rule enforcement is basically done entirely by fixed cameras (which are all clearly marked on every navigation app), and in between those anything goes. I've never seen a cop pull anyone over in the nearly 3 months I've been here.
By contrast, Hong Kong is quite different. They drive on the left (a legacy of British colonisation) and drivers are much more predictable. The road rules are more strictly enforced and it generally feels much less chaotic.
I had to stop watching because the number of people riding the wrong direction was triggering me.
Bichael
So if i'm getting this right, in europe they are red, in china blue, and in NY (North america ?) they are green....
Europe isn't one country, and there is differences between places on which colour was picked.
The Netherlands was an early adopter and they picked red. So countries close to the NL (like Germany and Flanders in Belgium) and countries inspired by the Netherlands also defaulted to red.
Denmark went with blue, which is also in turn inspiring some countries to go with blue instead of red.
France seems to have gone with green, and by extention I've seen quite a few green bikepaths in the Francophone sphere. (Though Paris seems to have gone with purple for some of its paths?)
It doesn't really matter which colour is picked, as long as it is distinctive colour that clearly communicates that this is a space for cyclists.
There is actually an interview online with the people who picked the colour of the path for the pilot project that caused the Netherlands to go with red for it's bikepaths.
They initially wanted the bikepath to be yellow.
But when they went to inquire about cost, yellow tiles cost twice as much as red tiles. And red tiles would be clear enough for the purpose. So they decided to go with red for the pilot project instead.
The rest of the NL followed from there.
Edit: I do quite like the earthern red colour of Dutch bikepaths. It fits very well in the Dutch urban spaces which use a lot of brick.
It's the same in most Chinese cities especially Shanghai for many, many years. 90% of the streets have bike lanes plus in Shanghai there are amazing bike routes along the river. The bike sharing here is truly amazing and cheap. 0.25 β¬ cents for a trip.
Somehow doesn't show any of the silent electric scooter/mopeds that use the bike lanes and footpaths at double the speed of actual cyclists.
Correct me if I am wrong, but I get increasingly the impression that the average Chinese lives a better live than the average US-American. Living conditions seem to improve in China, whereas they decline in the US.
Google the term β996 work cultureβ, or βmigrant worker rightsβ and see if you want to stick to that statement afterwards.
Yeah but can they own a bazooka-flamethrower combo or hurl racist slurs in public whenever they want? Checkmate.
They can certainly hurl racist slurs in public whenever they want.
Watch some tourism videos of what China is like today and prepare to be envious
If a tourism video made you not want to visit a place it would be a pretty bad tourism video.
Certain aspects of life are bad in China.
In the US, there was a failed conman and a failed reality TV character (same person) who campaigned on making the country worse but claimed it'd make the country better (while not actually expecting to get elected), and people decided that he should be president. They elected him again recently.
The alternative party seems to campaign on "Let's make the country less worse and more slowly". Anyone who campaigns on making the country better doesn't make it far in politics.
So yeah, it makes sense that life in the US has been getting objectively worse.
Yeah sure, unless you hold a picture of Winnie the Pooh in public. You'll be arrested and imprisoned/disappeared for life... Or say anything about tiananmen square. You'll get 7 years but for sure will be disappeared shortly before release. That's the quality of life Lemmy users crave πππ
Edit: BRING ON THE DOWNVOTES YOU HYPOCRITICAL AUTHORITARIAN WORSHIPPING TANKIES
Canβt it be both? Canβt it be that there is higher life quality and also the regime can be bad? I mean I feel like thereβs room to criticize both. And then reflect back on oneβs own country.
Yes, of course. But it's very important for some reasons to strongly associate better quality of life with poor political freedom.
You know: just so that no one asks to take the good parts only.
...
Dude. that is not the preferred nomenclature.
Well yeah sure China is not a utopia, but at least they have universal healthcare. I'd rather not be able to talk about certain things than not being able to afford medical bills. Imagine going into generational debt just for calling an ambulance. Just recently I read an article here on Lemmy where 92% of all US-Americans postpone going to the doctor because they can't afford the bills. If this is not textbook sh*thole country, then I don't know what is lol.
And no, I am not glorifying China, I just think the comparison between the US and China is very interesting, because of how China is portrayed by Western Media often as a development country and how they lag far behind the Western World in terms of quality of living. Meanwhile the quality of living in the US is rapidly declining, although it is such a rich country and could easily afford at least the same standard of living you can see in Western Europe.
So if Trump introduced universal healthcare in exchange for not being allowed to criticize his regime YOU'D BE ALL FOR IT? WOW
The catch is that you voted for it. You know the stereotype that Americans are dumb? Well...
At least we get to vote. In China you get disappeared for trying to vote yet they SO SMART π€π€π€
It's not that they can't vote, it's that they get nothing else to vote for but The Party.
And if you try to challenge that party off you go^oooooo^
Yet people will upvote the word China like it's the gold standard ππ
That mechanic is what's letting them succeed.
Rather than winner-take-all elections where Party B spends 4 years unwinding everything Party A did in the last 4 years, the decisions can be made inside a party framework built for continuity.
Almost better then The Netherlands. Too bad they made it the wrong color/jk
..