Oh yea. National anthem and flag raising ceremony in school on monday morning. Meanwhile the school building itself was dilapidated af, bathroom was dirty. When school was over, I walk home to a slummy area of apartment buildings, right next to a mountain with so much mosquitos. With only grandmother at home, and mom and dad wouldn't be at home until night. Sometimes my grandmother was busy with... idk what she was even doing, and wasn't even home when my older brother and I were home. Particulary during breaks when there was no school. We just kinda chilled at home. Too young to go outside by ourselves, mom told us the outside was dangerous, supposedly a lot of kidnappers.
Parents were just at work all the time, no unions, no bargaining, shit pay. Dad was just constantly searching for jobs, never had one for a long term before having to find another job. Its so rare to even have any family time when we were in Guangzhou, don't have much memories of having fun while there.
Americans had internet since the 90s? In Guangzhou, right before we left, around 2010, we never had internet access, doubt the slum area we were in was even connected. I can't speak for the rest of the country, but the neighborhood of Guangzhou I was in definitely was lacking internet.
I go to Baidu Street maps and looked up the neighborhood I used to live in... it was still a depressing sight, even as of now. Still looks broken af. Make me depressed for the alternate-timeline me that would probably still be stuck there, or worse, back in Taishan.
Yea, idk what the propaganda is gonna achieve, nobody is buying the bullshit when they look out the windows and see those dirty backalleyway, like, you can't even see the main road from the window. In America, you look out your front door and its a street with cars, and human activity. Look outside my former apartment building, it' literally like looking into your backyard on trash collection day. Clothes randomly hanging outside windows. Floor is filled with muddy waters that never drains properly. Its never cleaned.
Funny thing is, after they got of the 地主 (Landlords), you get people hoarding up property and lease them out, but they're just now called 房东 (another term, basically means Landlord). Lmao. There are like handwritten "For Rent" posters everywhere. People have housing in their villages, but jobs are in cities, so they go to cities, and they don't have housing, so they have to rent. So we go back to landlordism in a roundabout way. Way to go, "communism", so glad the landlords are "gone"... wait a minute... wtf...