> being stuck in my apartment, nowhere to eat, drink, or even walk without an appropriate face mask
As someone who never been there (or in China for that matter), is "face mask" a synonym for something or you mean literally a face mask? Don't think it's mandatory to wear face masks, just that a lot of people do it, right?
No, literally a face mask, so that people know that you aren't going to give them the virus. I don't know if it's mandatory to wear a face mask.
But it doesn't seem like it would be too different from what always happens in Chinese New Year in Beijing. All the shopkeepers aren't from Beijing originally, so they close shop for two weeks and go back to their hometown. There's pretty much no restaurants open, except maybe chains. And people are shooting off fireworks all day, so the air is just as polluted as always (generally well above the level of an airport smoking lounge in the winter), so you want to be wearing an N95 mask anyway. (Generally if you can't see the mountains around Beijing, you should consider wearing an N95 mask)
There is usually something open, and the main closures are just for a couple of days during the thick of it, and then afterwards there are lots of CNY sales going on. But that isn’t the point: we usually get out for a few days anyways during CNY, but we are more than a week after CNY-eve, so things should be returning to normal.
In general Beijingers have a higher income while running a shop pays low income, so migrant workers are the ones that mainly fill demand for such labor (including shop keepers, waitresses, cooks, etc...).
Consider that Beijing has 21 million residents but less than 14 million hukou holders, there is a lot of migrant labor to go around.
It's your official place of residence paperwork. It can be used to limit internal migration as many official government activities like voting or paying taxes or whatever have to be done in the area for which your hukou is for. Housing is also suppose to verify you have a hukou for the place you are trying to buy/rent....that sort of thing.
There really is no call for this sort of vitriol, especially when it isn't really paired with any information that we might learn from what you said. If you gave some actually tangible examples, perhaps this anger could at least be intellectually interesting.
I'm not angry. As they say in America, "I have no dog in this fight."
It does not bother me in any way that the government in China gets to decide whether and where people can travel or work or live.
I'm glad they don't do it where I live, but I am sure the average Chinese citizen is glad they don't have to suffer many indignities and strange quirks of western life.
I cannot, for instance, let my child play with a water gun at the public park for fear he will be shot and killed by a police officer. I do not need to pretend that's unquestionably good. It is certainly not the way I would prefer to live. It is just a fact of life.
I'm never going to understand why people love bagels. It's not even the second best bread my people have made. Laffa and Malawach both kick bagel bottom.
1) Beigels don't have as much variety here, and I've only found them on Brick Lane or Chapel Market. Presumably there are some more places in Tottenham.
Synonym is the wrong word here. A synonym means another word that means exactly the same thing. So the synonym of a face mask would, by definition, also have to be a literal face mask.
You mean to ask if this is slang for something else.
Which, in this case, it is not. It's a mask over your face which is extremely common in China.
Not only did your response fail to capture the actual definition of synonym, but you also ignored any nuances. It is most certainly _not_ used linguistically for words with _exactly_ identical meanings.
Here's the definition from Merriam Webster: "one of two or more words or expressions of the same language that have the same or nearly the same meaning in some or all senses."
But, even more importantly, words can have nuances! Here's a nuance: "a word or phrase that by association is held to embody something (such as a concept or quality)."
In both cases, the notion of identical meaning is absent. It would also completely vitiate its common usage. Synonym is best thought as simply a similarity in meaning.
Is it fake? I don't think being posted to tiktok tells me whether it's real or fake.
Even if it is fake, @globaltimesnews is run by the Communist party, so either they actually are sending drones out to tell you to put on a mask, or they want you to think they're sending drones out to tell you to put on a mask.
I was there for a week in November (from NE USA) and our group had respiratory issues with the air there. Shanghai later in the trip was much better. I know it used to be worse, but it still isn't what I'd call good.
Some cities it is required right now (eg Guangzhou). I’m not sure about Beijing, but I could imagine them doing that. The problem is that in those same places face masks are sold out, and you’d have to go out and buy one even if they weren’t. Not only that, but given their scarcity people aren’t probably replacing their face masks as much as they should be, making them actually more unsanitary.
No one will shoot you if you go out without a face mask. However, people will think you are being rude, you might get a lot of stink eye.
I would not be surprised how quickly things might turn from "mandatory home quarantine strongly recommended" to "mandatory home quarantine enforced by military force". This is China after all. If you decide to stay, be prepared.
At this point this is just vacuous propaganda being repeated while adding very little of value. Give us some examples, why do you think this? While you are reconsidering your message, perhaps you can recognise why repeating the ideological messages of your own government overseas might not be the right move for humanity as a whole.
As someone who never been there (or in China for that matter), is "face mask" a synonym for something or you mean literally a face mask? Don't think it's mandatory to wear face masks, just that a lot of people do it, right?
If someone knows better, please correct me