I have no illusions about "understanding" China. I've only spent 2 weeks there. This trip is a beginning, not a capstone, of my curiosity ab

Notes on China - by Dwarkesh Patel - Dwarkesh Podcast

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2024-12-27 20:00:05

I have no illusions about "understanding" China. I've only spent 2 weeks there. This trip is a beginning, not a capstone, of my curiosity about China. And I hope to share what I learn with you via future podcast episodes.

It’s funny how China has basically the inverse problem as America. We subsidize demand and restrict supply. They subsidize supply and restrict demand. We can’t rebuild fallen bridges. They build bridges to nowhere. In the most desirable cities in this country, every random Victorian house and park bench is a historic site that can’t be disturbed. There, they’ll bulldoze a 500 year old temple to build an endless skyscraper complex that no one wants to live in.

My overwhelming first impression was: wow this place is so fucking big. Travel often teaches you things about a country which you honestly should have intuited even without visiting. Obviously, I knew that China is a big country, with over 1.4 billion people. But it was only after I visited that the visceral scale of the biggest cities was impressed upon me.

Even in Dujiangyan, a city of just half a million people (considered a quaint countryside town by Chinese standards), we found a Buddhist temple of staggering proportions. The scale was almost comical - we'd enter what seemed like an impressively large compound, only to discover it was merely the entrance to an even grander structure right behind it. This pattern repeated 5 or 6 times, each subsequent building larger and more ornate than the last, like some kind of inverse nesting doll.

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