You killed it, AnRong Xu. I have one other real friend in Taipei. She stayed with my wife and I at our apartment when we lived in Hangzhou (she said it was the first time she was on mainland China, although her father worked there), and we visited with her in Taipei, Taichung, Tainan when we were on a business trip there (but we are good tourists wherever we go). Once I found out Taibei was “beijing de bei” and there was also a “middle” and a “south”, I had to go, you know.
I made a video of my wife saying one, two, three…GO! when a traffic light changed green and there were six lanes of scooters racing straight for me as she crossed the street and I filmed. I love Taipei 101 Building. More than any building on earth that I have seen in person. Each year on New Year’s OR Spring Festival, I watch the Taipei 101 fireworks on YouTube and recommend it to others, as well. Hong Kong skyline is right up there with it.
Speaking of which, like my friend, a Taiwan native told me when I asked, but don’t you guys have democratic elections? I mean you vote for mayor of Taipei and stuff like that. She said, Shhhh…we only can whisper that. If we say it too loud…I finished, China will crush you? Exactly, she said. And that is what they are doing to Hong Kong now. One of the leaders of last couple years’ student protests in Hong Kong was found somewhere in China, and quoted, oh, it’s fine. I’m just visiting here. So maybe he will die under house arrest or in a prison like the Nobel Prize winner Liu Xiaobo 刘晓波. I read that at least his wife did get to leave her house arrest after her husband’s death. How very big of you, 中国.
I wish you the best of everything! I love your choices in focus among the hoards of streaming scooters on the streets of beautiful, crowded Taipei. Please be careful out there. I don’t think the United States should do business with China at all (not that they need us, in 2018 — they got what they wanted from our businesses who went there for cheap labor and gave up everything they owned to excellent copycats), not while Uighurs in Xinjiang province of China are being rounded up and sent to re-education camps! Is it 1949? Is it Year Zero in Cambodia?! No, motherfuckers, it is 2018, and we should accept NO MORE TIANANMEN SQUARES! I know you are not even allowed to write the number 6 and the number 4 in the same sentence on Chinese social media apps (all of which have more members than Facebook) in case you may be expressing an opinion about June 4, Tiananmen Day.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/aug/07/why-uighur-muslims-across-china-are-living-in-fear
