Comment by WhySoGullible | Hacker News Reader

Comment by WhySoGullible | Hacker News Reader

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Dancing grannies are actually one of the aspects about China that I absolutely love. I can go out anywhere I want at any time of the night and feel safe. Why? Hoards of wholesome dancing grannies fill all of those dark spaces normally occupied by drug addicts and hoodlums in Western countries.

They make the public spaces feel 'alive'. I've lived in my different cities in the West including those in Western Europe and North America, and all too often public spaces become completely dead and devoid of life all because people have become so fearful of offending others or looking stupid. Everyone just wants to keep to themselves and be left alone. Suburbs are practically ghost towns with everyone (probably on their devices) hiding inside their homes. Physical social networks are clearly on the decline and as a result, depression and loneliness has become an absolute epidemic in the West. The problem only gets exponentially worse as one ages.

Happy dancing grannies engaging in physical exercise, socializing and helping to keep the community safe is what Western countries to be aspiring to have, instead of criticizing and ridiculing.

A lot of Americans have no frame of reference for what you're describing because they've never lived somewhere where "dangerous parts" of the city dont make up a large part of it. My experience in Beijing/Shanghai was that some parts are ultra modern and other parts are run down, but even the run down parts don't feel dangerous and don't put you on alert for getting mugged/robbed. People in the US believe that it's all a strict mathematics/economics function where poverty=danger and nothing can be done about it, they've given up on the culture part of it and just enable the epidemic of junkie and needles and sketchy people take up large swathes of public space, especially on the west coast.

I don't think it is culture or at least not the permanent kind. Asia has plenty of crime. Quite severe crime, and organized crime, and personal crime. From what I've heard large Chinese cities used to have a lot more crime. You can still see the bars on the windows of older buildings.

Just like it is hard to understand that these large cities are generally safe it is also hard to understand the amount of development that has happened. By now most would have probably heard the stories or seen the pictures of things like changing skylines. But it's different when you go there. Almost every year there is one or more projects completed that would have taken 10 or 20 years in western countries. And not just shopping malls but projects that actually do something.

It's really hard to pessimistic with that kind of change despite being faced with a very real reality everyday. We used to speculate that China might be the best country to be born in today. Because it would take ~20+ years until you enter the workforce. And if the next 20 years are like the past 20 years you could do really well. That outlook has of course dimmed a bit since then.

What I'm trying to say it that when people believe things will get better they don't want to give up their future. When things stagnant or getting worse people are hopeless they feel like they have nothing to lose. Crime seems to be factor of that. Maybe just not to those ending up committing the crimes but for everyone else as well.

It's not surprising to me that some crimes and social unrest is on the rise in supposedly prosperous countries when everything is getting expensive, opportunities are getting harder to come by and those opportunities you do have count for less. If those at the top of society all act like there is no tomorrow, or that tomorrow doesn't matter, we shouldn't expect those at the bottom to act any differently. I can agree that this sort of culture, the one of acts and impressions, makes a huge difference.

At least my experience living in Asia is that the crime and drug use still exists, the reason it looks cleaner is simply the police and government don’t tolerate it in public.

Unlike the West, if you’re a drug addict in a lot of Asian countries you’re arrested and put in jail. Or sentenced to treatment which is basically jail for people with mental issues.

Not sure we want to emulate that.

a fond memory of visiting beijing many years ago is all the old folks doing tai chi in various parks and empty lots around the city at like 7am. it made the city feel warm and alive. where i live (in LA), you see folks out jogging and walking their dog at that time, but it’s mostly all solitary activity.

where i live (in LA), you see folks out jogging and walking their dog at that time, but it’s mostly all solitary activity.

In some of the large American cities where I've lived, the parks are populated by groups of Lululemons doing yoga in the morning. Some cities, like Chicago and Houston, even organize the events.

Considering the lifestyle I remember from my L.A. days, I'd say there's probably a yoga group in a park not too far from where you live.

I didn’t know this was common! I see this many mornings in a parking lot in the middle of Denver.

yah, to be fair, i’m sure it does happen here in LA too (in chinatown, for instance), but i don’t see it everywhere like it seemed in beijing.

we do yoga in parks and cemeteries instead in LA

Population density in Asian countries is not even close comparable to Western cities.

Also, if it's dark out, people are generally sleeping- music should not be playing at loud volumes.

They are not going away anytime soon because they are actually endorsed by the state and tech solutions will come out to nullify this

It seems like the solution is to just play the music at a reasonable level? And if they can't do that then start arresting them.

Beijing megablock with 30k residents and vibrant commercial / social activities on ground floor is a nice taste of new urbanism. That said, dancing grannies with boom boxes blasting until 10pm on a school night is what noise regulations are for. And at least in my old compound, security had a very hard enforcing it. Hopefully this is an addressible problem for headphone companies when wireless broadcast technologies advances.

Agree with this. We have dancing grannies in chinatown, nyc. And that is way better than thr alternative.

Wait, what is the alternative to dancing grannies?

>Hoards of wholesome dancing grannies fill all of those dark spaces normally occupied by drug addicts and hoodlums in Western countries.

I know (hope?) you are being hyperbolic, but I don't think these two issues are as directly related as you make it seem.

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