Top 5 Reasons I Hate Changsha

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/apr/26/everyone-connected-death-of-conversation

I first noticed it in a restaurant. The place was strangely quiet, and at one table a group seemed deep in prayer. Their heads were bowed, their eyes hooded and their hands in their laps. I then realised that every one, young and old, was gazing at a handheld phone. People strolled the street outside likewise, with arms crooked at right angles, necks bent and heads in potentially crippling postures. Mothers with babies were doing it. Students in groups were doing it. They were like zombies on call. There was no conversation.

Every visit to California convinces me that the digital revolution is over, by which I mean it is won. Everyone is connected. The New York Times last week declared the death of conversation. While mobile phones may at last be falling victim to etiquette, this is largely because even talk is considered too intimate a contact. No such bar applies to emailing, texting, messaging, posting and tweeting. It is ubiquitous, the ultimate connectivity, the brain wired full-time to infinity.

The MIT professor and psychologist Sherry Turkle claims that her students are close to mastering the art of sustaining eye contact with a person while texting someone else. It is like an organist playing different tunes with hands and feet. To Turkle, these people are "alone together … a tribe of one". Anyone with 3,000 Facebook friends has none.

The audience in a New York theatre now sit, row on row, with lit machines in their laps, looking to the stage occasionally but mostly scrolling and tapping away. The same happens at meetings and lectures, in coffee bars and on jogging tracks. Children are apparently developing a dexterity in their thumbs unknown since the evolution of the giant sloth. Talk is reduced to the muttered, heads-down expletives brilliantly satirised in the BBC's Twenty Twelve.

It seems they're just catching up with us well-mannered beasts.

Just wait until the new phones implanted into people's bodies become available.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/apr/26/everyone-connected-death-of-conversation

Quote

I first noticed it in a restaurant. The place was strangely quiet, and at one table a group seemed deep in prayer. Their heads were bowed, their eyes hooded and their hands in their laps. I then realised that every one, young and old, was gazing at a handheld phone. People strolled the street outside likewise, with arms crooked at right angles, necks bent and heads in potentially crippling postures. Mothers with babies were doing it. Students in groups were doing it. They were like zombies on call. There was no conversation.

Every visit to California convinces me that the digital revolution is over, by which I mean it is won. Everyone is connected. The New York Times last week declared the death of conversation. While mobile phones may at last be falling victim to etiquette, this is largely because even talk is considered too intimate a contact. No such bar applies to emailing, texting, messaging, posting and tweeting. It is ubiquitous, the ultimate connectivity, the brain wired full-time to infinity.

The MIT professor and psychologist Sherry Turkle claims that her students are close to mastering the art of sustaining eye contact with a person while texting someone else. It is like an organist playing different tunes with hands and feet. To Turkle, these people are "alone together … a tribe of one". Anyone with 3,000 Facebook friends has none.

The audience in a New York theatre now sit, row on row, with lit machines in their laps, looking to the stage occasionally but mostly scrolling and tapping away. The same happens at meetings and lectures, in coffee bars and on jogging tracks. Children are apparently developing a dexterity in their thumbs unknown since the evolution of the giant sloth. Talk is reduced to the muttered, heads-down expletives brilliantly satirised in the BBC's Twenty Twelve.

It seems they're just catching up with us well-mannered beasts.

Yeah, I read that too and thought he was describing China pretty well.

After three years of living and teaching in the PRC, I've seemingly had more than my fair share of students from Hunan and Changsha. I haven't been to Hunan or Changsha yet, but I plan to go. This thread will not deter me! 

I have a friend from Australia who absolutely LOVES Changsha ... he said the girls there were gorgeous, and he loved the city and the food! Any truth to these so-called FACTS?   

--GA

If you like spicy, you'll like Hunan food and Hunan girls. 

Changsha Sucks. Don't go there.



Leave it all for me

Changsha Sucks. Don't go there.



Leave it all for me

haha.. i had to quote this to see the response from the man that's been there since the ming dynasty 

Stil,  you afraid of a little competition with the girls 

I have a friend from Australia who absolutely LOVES Changsha ... he said the girls there were gorgeous, and he loved the city and the food! Any truth to these so-called FACTS?   

--GA

I'd have to see a photo of your Aussie mate first and perhaps talk to him.

Changsha Sucks. Don't go there.

Please also do not go to Nanjing. Leave it all for me.