The percentage of younger women in the U.S. who express a desire to migrate permanently has surged in the past decade.

But why?! The USA is a paradise for women! Isn’t that what Margaret Atwood taught us!?

  • ZDL@lazysoci.alOPEnglish
    3·
    6 months ago

    Talking of cost of living, however…

    In … I want to say 2007? … an old colleague and his wife visited my SO and me for six weeks. When he got back home he started going over their finances, cringing at the anticipated expenses.

    They’d saved money.

    They spent a ridiculous sum on airfare. They lived in a hotel near my home for the entire six weeks. We ate out for each meal daily. And yet, when they got home, between the drastic reduction in their utilities usage over the period and the zero cost in groceries for six weeks they came out ahead (by about two weeks, according to his analysis).

      • ZDL@lazysoci.alOPEnglish
        2·
        6 months ago

        What are your favorite snacks in China?

        This is going to sound weird because of a vocabulary issue, but … sweet potato jerky. (“Jerky” is just the closest word I can use for what this stuff really is, but it doesn’t cover how tender, sticky, and oh-so-sweet that it is.) “Spicy sticks” are also a guilty pleasure of mine. I grab a pack every second day or so and just eat them over the course of a day at work. And there’s any number of street foods I love, with 锅盔 being my current favourite.

        Are you fluent in both Mandarin and Cantonese?

        Nope. Never touched Yue, Wu, Gan, Min, etc. at all. Mandarin is rough enough for me, thanks!

          • ZDL@lazysoci.alOPEnglish
            1·
            6 months ago

            The closest I got to Guanzhou proper was Hong Kong, and that only to deal with visa issues before that avenue was closed. I’ve never lived anywhere with Yue as the dominant language. I lived briefly in a city (Xiamen) where Minnan was a huge influence, and lived for two years in a city (Jiujiang) where Gan was a major dialect, but most of my actual living here was done in Wuhan where a form of Mandarin (albeit a very loose form of it!) is the dominant dialect.

            • bitofarambler@crazypeople.onlineBanned from communityEnglish
              0·
              6 months ago

              I was in foshan, which I liked a lot, still very chill compared to Beijing which has gotten a lot more strict in recent years.

              Interesting, how is Mandarin loose in wuhan? The dialects have a strong influence?

              • ZDL@lazysoci.alOPEnglish
                2·
                6 months ago

                武汉话 is a 普通话 dialect, but at its most extreme is incomprehensible (right down to having a fifth tone!) to 普通话 speakers. It is, naturally, also one of those dialects for whom “四十四是四十四十四是十四” comes out as “sisi si si sisi si sisi si sisi”.

                I knew quite a few people who spent time in Foshan. They seemed to like it as a laid-back place like Shangrao in Jiangxi province for those I knew from there.