I’ve been to Taiwan and they have high speed rail the likes of which I’ve never seen here in the US. Once we rode it from Keelung to Hualien, and I only managed to read like two chapters of Dune before we arrived at our destination 101 miles (163 km) away. My mother in law needed some low-stakes medical procedure, so she just took the bus 5 minutes down the road to the hospital, got it done after waiting like 10 minutes, and was back for dinner. It was the nicest hospital I’ve ever been in, and I grew up in one of the biggest cities in America. I was there for a month, most of that spent wandering around Keelung on foot, and only saw one unhoused person. And I don’t just mean I went to the night markets, I got all up in that resplendent urban density, to the point of accidental trespassing.
Even though most people I met worked horrible long hours, the built environment was leagues more person-friendly than the miserable asphalt and stucco wastelands back home. Even for being, yknow, Taiwan, with all the history that entails, I don’t think I ever saw a cop outside the police station, and none of them carried guns. It is insane how much of a hostile shithole America actually is compared to even Small Reactionary China.
Oh, and they have giant buff snails that put ours to shame. Sometimes you and the snail pass one another on the sidewalk.
I’ve been to Taiwan and they have high speed rail the likes of which I’ve never seen here in the US. Once we rode it from Keelung to Hualien, and I only managed to read like two chapters of Dune before we arrived at our destination 101 miles (163 km) away. My mother in law needed some low-stakes medical procedure, so she just took the bus 5 minutes down the road to the hospital, got it done after waiting like 10 minutes, and was back for dinner. It was the nicest hospital I’ve ever been in, and I grew up in one of the biggest cities in America. I was there for a month, most of that spent wandering around Keelung on foot, and only saw one unhoused person. And I don’t just mean I went to the night markets, I got all up in that resplendent urban density, to the point of accidental trespassing.
Even though most people I met worked horrible long hours, the built environment was leagues more person-friendly than the miserable asphalt and stucco wastelands back home. Even for being, yknow, Taiwan, with all the history that entails, I don’t think I ever saw a cop outside the police station, and none of them carried guns. It is insane how much of a hostile shithole America actually is compared to even Small Reactionary China.
Oh, and they have giant buff snails that put ours to shame. Sometimes you and the snail pass one another on the sidewalk.