Blogaround

1. Justice Sotomayor's dissent in Donald J. Trump vs United States (July 1, via) "Never in the history of our Republic has a President had reason to believe that he would be immune from criminal prosecution if he used the trappings of his office to violate the criminal law. Moving forward, however, all former Presidents will be cloaked in such immunity."

2. Texas’s Abortion Ban is Killing Babies (July 3) "But the people most at risk, in my opinion, are people who DO want children. Because while abortion in the early weeks and months of pregnancy is now safe and easy, pregnancy remains a very dangerous condition. You may be able to detect a nonviable fetus early and fly somewhere to get an abortion if you can afford it, but even a well-off woman can experience an emergency and simply not have the time to get somewhere they can access decent medical care. In an emergency, a pregnant person will need to go to a local hospital, and in Texas a doctor will be forced to decide how much risk they want to take on. Is the woman close enough to death to perform an abortion? Should we roll the dice and hope she lives? Personally I wouldn’t want to bet my life on a doctor prioritizing a fetus over me."

Yes. This. When I was pregnant, I was following all the news stories from the US about wanted pregnancies which had gone horribly wrong. It's so heartless, the way these "pro-life" politicians treat women. Imagine being pregnant, and you love your baby already, and then you find out the baby has some terrible medical condition and is very unlikely to survive, and you spend so much time researching it, trying to see if there's any hope, and finally you come to the terrible conclusion that the least-bad option is an abortion- and then you have to FIGHT for it, fight for something you don't even want, you wanted a living baby but that's not an option, and these "pro-life" politicians act like they love your baby more than you do, like you're the one being bad and immoral, on the worst day of your life when you are finally able to get the abortion.

Makes me so mad.

(And also, if you just simply don't want to be pregnant, that's a valid reason to get an abortion too.)

3. ‘The Political Violence Of Herod’ (July 15) "Voter suppression and voter intimidation is political violence. Forcing women to carry health-threatening, nonviable pregnancy is political violence. Deporting 20 million people is political violence. Declaring some presidents to be above the law is political violence that endorses political violence."

4. LLM error rates (July 16) "If you expect LLMs to have god-like reasoning skills, or to magically know things they were never taught, it’s not going to work. If you expect them to perform well on a task that realistically speaking requires 99+% accuracy, they don’t do that. But if the LLM is trying to complete a task that would otherwise be done humans, we’re also extremely prone to error, so there must be some level of error tolerance. In this case the LLM doesn’t need to be perfect, it just needs to do better than our sorry human asses."

5. China’s Visa-Free Policies Spark Tourism Spike (July 16) Cool! China has been expanding the list of countries whose citizens can enter China without a visa.

Also from Sixth Tone: China’s MBTI Obsession Has Gone Too Far, Academics Say (July 17) "Users are swapping tips on how to game tests during job applications, and some companies have even begun advertising MBTI tutoring services to help job seekers align their answers with employers’ expectations." Oh geez.

6. United Airlines expands China-US routes with more direct flights (July 17) This is good news for immigrants like me.

7. This tweet

plastic surgery used to make me uncomfortable, but then someone I loved had terrible dysphoria about her small breasts & wanted implants. I said surgery couldn’t fix emotions. But I was wrong! She’s been fine & happy fifteen years on. It helped me understand gender affirming care https://t.co/VArLlB5tWJ

— 🌈Dr. Frizzle (@Swilua) July 16, 2024

Plus the next one in the thread

If you feel miserable in your body and it’s making it hard to live your life and there is something you can do to fix it, why is that bad?

— 🌈Dr. Frizzle (@Swilua) July 16, 2024

This is interesting to me because I grew up evangelical, and in that culture people are always talking about how if there's something you really really want, and you feel like you can't live without it, and you feel like it would solve all your problems, well that's never true. Evangelicals say that the truth is only God can satisfy our desires- if you finally get that thing you really really want, it still won't be good enough, you'll still be unhappy and desiring even more. You're making it an idol. The only solution is to learn to truly be content in God, to truly believe that none of those other desires really matter. (Philippians 4:12)

Fast forward to when I became an adult, making adult decisions about things like my job and where I would live, and- get this- when I made changes to improve my life, it really did make things better! Like "wow I'm so glad we don't live in that old apartment any more." Being much happier every single day because of a life change. Wow! Is it supposed to work that way? Wasn't I just supposed to "be content in God"? (See: In Which John Piper Doesn't Tell You To Find A New Job and I knew Desiring God ideology is spiritual abuse, but wow.)

So this tweet is about getting breast implants- as a cis person, not for transgender reasons- and how it really did improve someone's life. To be honest, I've always wondered how it worked getting breast implants, because in pop culture it's always talked about as a joke. I wonder, do you go to the doctor and say you want bigger boobs, and the doctor is all wink-wink-nudge-nudge-giggle-giggle, like the wedding dress consultants on those reality shows talking about making "the girls" look good? ("The girls" means one's boobs.) Or is the doctor very professional about it and talking frankly about what exactly you want? And what would you even say, in a frank conversation about how you want your boobs to look?

Anywayyyy just linking the tweet here because the idea of breast implants genuinely improving someone's mental health (and not related to transgender reasons) is something I haven't thought about before.

8. Brooks Falls Brown Bears Low powered by EXPLORE.org (started streaming June 21, via) This is a livestream of a bear cam in Alaska. I love this!

Blogaround

1. THE EMPEROR'S NEW GROOVE and Self Love vs. Narcissism (November 8) "The Emperor's New Groove" is such a good movie!

2. Some good news on climate change (November 18) "The best message, practically speaking, would combine sounding a very loud and continuous alarm with various facts about how real progress is being made on the technological side toward ameliorating the trajectory of climate change, on both a long term and shorter term basis."

3. At SpaceX, worker injuries soar in Elon Musk’s rush to Mars (November 10) [content note: injury and death] "'Elon’s concept that SpaceX is on this mission to go to Mars as fast as possible and save humanity permeates every part of the company,' said Tom Moline, a former SpaceX senior avionics engineer who was among a group of employees fired after raising workplace complaints. 'The company justifies casting aside anything that could stand in the way of accomplishing that goal, including worker safety.'"

4. Has the ‘Double Eleven’ Shopping Festival Lost its Luster? (November 21) In China, "double eleven" (双11, November 11) is a big online shopping day, kinda the same idea as Black Friday or Cyber Monday. But this article says in recent years, the excitement for double eleven deals has kind of worn off.

Also from Sixth Tone: A Food Courier’s Pursuit of Equal Treatment (November 25) "He shares that a large state-owned enterprise that he often visits doesn’t allow couriers inside, nor will it put a table at the entrance for riders to leave takeout deliveries, meaning they need to wait downstairs and hold the food until the customer comes to collect it." 

Yeah, I order food to get delivered almost every day- it's very convenient in China, and I always see tons of delivery drivers on their electric scooters, rushing around to deliver food. From what I've heard, they're under a lot of pressure to deliver the food as fast as possible, or else they get fined- and this means they often rush through red lights and do other unsafe things, to shave off a few seconds. Sounds like a really hard job. At the office building where I work, there's a locker outside the back door of the building, and the delivery drivers put the deliveries in the locker and then you get a notification on the app- this seems to work out well for the drivers because they just stick it in the locker, give you a phone call to let you know, and then they can leave, they don't have to wait for you to come down in the elevator and pick it up.

I've had situations where the driver was at the wrong building, and calling me to ask me how to get to my address, and he asked me if he can mark in the app that the order has been delivered- ie, he marks it as complete so the app doesn't get him in trouble for being late, and then he finds his way to the right address and gives me the food. 

5. Plain white Cru not white enough for Florida evangelicals (November 22) "As a result, those Republican Christians no longer respond to Cru the way that any normal person would. A normal person would be, like, 'Oh, you mean that campus ministry group that’s so fundie they make Young Life seem cool by comparison?'"

6. I Don’t Think That Parable Means What You Think It Means (November 22) "As I encountered these parables growing up in my faith tradition, I was taught that the most powerful person in a given parable—the vineyard owner, the rich man, the king—is supposed to be God. Bolz-Weber addresses this directly: 'Why in the world do we always assume that the ruler, the slave owner, the property owner, the tyrant in the story always represents God?'"

7. In wake of state bans, abortions overall rise, reproductive care falls (October 25) "Where abortion is banned around the world, there is usually more death, not less, on account of maternal mortality rates (MMRs)."

8. Will Anti-abortion Laws Drive Women to Colleges in Blue States? (November 4?) Wow, this is really fascinating to me, because when I was in college/ in high school deciding where to go to college, never in a million years would it have occurred to me "what if I need an abortion? I should go to college in a state with abortion access." I was "pro-life" back then, because everyone I knew seemed to be "pro-life"- I had never even heard any pro-choice arguments, and I hadn't the faintest idea about what kind of reasoning could possibly lead people to be pro-choice. The idea of me having sex was unimaginable to me, the idea of me ever having sex before marriage was unimaginable to me, the idea of being one of those "bad" women who wants to have an abortion was unimaginable to me. I very much did not see it as a "women's issue" that affects everyone with a uterus- I saw it as only something that bad women would ever try to access, and of course we should make laws to stop those bad women, right?

So, really mind-blowing to me to think about high school girls putting serious thought into how these laws affect them. (I mean, also apparently a lot of high school kids are having sex, and I find that hard to fathom too...)

Also from Skepchick: The Hamas Hostage with “Stockholm Syndrome” (November 11?) "Instead of it being an actual psychological phenomenon, it’s just a story the media likes to tell when explaining victim behavior that people might not immediately understand."

9. Ah, in my post about young-earth creationism, I can't believe I forgot to include a link to Joel Duff's blog, Naturalis Historia. (I have now edited the post to include a link.) If you want to know all the specific details about how young-earth creationism can't account for the scientific evidence we find in the fossil record, etc, you definitely want to read his blog.

10. [trigger warning for transmisia] I don't recommend reading this one, but I want to at least mention it here so nobody ever forgets what kind of hateful trash The Gospel Coalition is publishing about trans people. On November 22, they published a post called "I Love My Transgender Child. I Love Jesus More." (archive link) 

I'm not gonna respond to this, I will just say this: God is nonbinary. And Jesus said, "whatever you did for the least of these, you did for me"- if you're mean to trans people, you're being mean to Jesus. (Observant readers may notice that this is THE OPPOSITE of what that article headline says- like you have to choose between loving Jesus and loving your trans child. WTF.) And if you cause a trans child to hate themself, well, Jesus said, "If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea."

And just as God is the Creator, people are made in God's image, and people reflect God's image by creating too. Trans people create their own identity, their own gender expression, and that's an amazing and godly thing.

And if you worship a god who requires you to be cruel to trans people, that's on you. You could worship a different god. You could worship no gods at all. What does it say about you, that you choose to worship that kind of god?

11. China trials visa-free travel for six countries (November 24) The six countries are: France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, and Malaysia- travelers from these countries will be allowed to stay in China for up to 15 days, without a visa. Interesting! I wonder why they're doing this- I'm guessing it's to encourage tourism, to have good relationships with those countries, and because they aren't worried that people from those countries will want to illegally overstay. Anyway, cool, good news if you're from one of those countries.

I got covid (don't worry, I'm better now)

Stock photo of a woman taking her temperature because she has a fever. Image source.

Complete list is here: Index of Posts About the March 2022 Shanghai Covid Outbreak 

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Hi readers, I guess I should post an update about covid and living in China, because, I got covid this summer. Actually it happened while I was on vacation in the US. Kind of the worst, being sick on vacation. Me, my husband, and son all got it. (And none of us had had covid before.) I had a fever and a really bad headache for a few days.

Maybe we got infected on the flight from China to the US, because the longest leg was 12 hours and we didn't wear masks. Who knows.

One really weird thing was, when I went to urgent care in the US, the receptionist wasn't wearing a mask, and I told her I had covid, and she still didn't put on a mask, and the nurse wasn't wearing a mask either.

Anyway, I don't recommend getting covid, also I don't recommend getting covid on vacation. 

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In other news: China is no longer "requiring" covid tests when entering the country. Here's an article from ABC News about it: China won't require COVID-19 tests for incoming travelers in a milestone in its reopening (August 28). I frown disapprovingly at this article, because of how it talks about "A U.S. federally funded study this month found the rapid dismantling of the 'zero COVID' policy may have led to nearly 2 million excess deaths in the following two months" ... 2 million excess deaths compared to... compared to the Before Times, or compared to if China had just let everyone have covid starting in 2020 like all the other countries did? And also it mentions China's "sluggish economic recovery" as if all the other countries have been doing any better. I don't like the bias in this article, but anyway, I want to share a link about how covid tests are no longer "required" when entering the country, so here it is.

But I put "requiring" in scare quotes because, like, this policy (as it existed as of August 2023) was such a joke. Before April 29, 2023, the policy was not a joke; China was requiring PCR tests (also known as nucleic acid tests), where you had to go to a real testing place (and pay over a hundred dollars, that's how much it cost me at Walgreens) and get a real report, and you had to time it so it was some number of hours before the takeoff time of the leg of your flight that entered mainland China, and the airline employees checked the reports very carefully before letting you on the plane, etc etc etc. This policy changed back in April- it is no longer in effect as of April 29, 2023 (here's a link to South China Morning Post, and here's where I mentioned this on my blog).

So back in April, they changed to a new policy, which is: you're supposed to do a self-test, and then when you enter China there's an app with a customs form to fill out, and one of the questions is "was your self-test positive or negative" and that's it. You just check the "negative" box, nobody asks for any proof, nobody cares, probably most travelers didn't even do a self-test, whatever.

So now they announce they're no longer requiring covid tests for people entering China, like, my dude, you stopped requiring them back in April, and since then everybody's been going through this charade where we pretend we did a self-test but nobody cares if we actually did. The only change now is the customs app no longer asks the question.

I actually know someone who tested positive in the US during the summer, flew back to China anyway, checked the "negative" box on the customs app, and when he landed in Shanghai he was randomly selected to be covid-tested, lol. A few days later, someone from the airport called him and said he had tested positive. But, they didn't tell him he should, like, do anything. Like, you tested positive, but I guess no one cares. So. Yeah. The policy was a joke. 

I guess it's nice that they're changing it, but it shouldn't be reported as news, because it doesn't actually matter.

---

Next, let's talk about masking habits here in Shanghai. Well, it seems like most people aren't at all worried about covid any more, and mostly aren't wearing masks. When I was on the Shanghai subway recently, I estimated maybe 20% of people were wearing masks. 

I wear a mask on the subway, and in most indoor public spaces like malls, but also I eat at restaurants a lot, no mask. I feel like, I don't want to get covid again, but the probability of getting it from any single place I go is so low, it feels like it's not worth the trouble of inconveniencing myself. Wearing a mask on the subway isn't an inconvenience for me, so I do that, but if I was going to like, avoid eating at restaurants, blah that would be too much trouble.

But also, we have no way of knowing when the probability of getting covid is high or low.

So, probably the best strategy is to get as many vaccines as we can. Which, on that note, China hasn't rolled out a new booster recently, and it really seems like they should.

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And one more piece of news: Notice on Walk-in Without Appointment Visa Application Service (October 19) "To further facilitate foreign nationals’ travel to China, the Chinese Embassy and Consulates-General in the U.S. will provide walk-in visa application services starting from October 23, 2023."

When the quarantine policy ended (January 8, 2023- I wrote about it here) and then visa services for non-Chinese citizens resumed (March 15, 2023- I wrote about it here), Chinese consulates in other countries had to deal with TONS of people suddenly applying for Chinese visas. (Most were probably non-Chinese citizens who have relatives in China, whom they hadn't been able to visit for 3 years.) There were so many applications, that the consulates could not allow people to just walk in and apply, you had to try to reserve an appointment or something (I don't know the details on this). 

Well it sounds like they've worked through that backlog and now there are a reasonable number of visa applicants every day, so they're back to doing walk-in applications. Very cool. China is a good place to visit, now that zero-covid is over! (Oh, actually, scratch that, plane tickets are still absurdly expensive. Maybe wait til next year.)

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That's all~ Maybe I won't have to do any more covid updates, because things in China are pretty much the same as the rest of the world, at this point.

I'm in the US (why don't y'all wear masks?)

A sign that says "Masks are optional." Image source.

Complete list is here: Index of Posts About the March 2022 Shanghai Covid Outbreak 

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Hi everyone, just wanted to put an update here and say I'm in the US! After being stuck in China for 3 years! (I mean, not literally stuck, it was easy to leave China and hard to get back in...)

My son and I are here on vacation for a few weeks, and then back to China. Fortunately, China no longer requires a quarantine when entering the country. All that's required is 1 negative nucleic acid test before you get on the plane. (There have been so many versions of the rules about getting into China during the past 3 years- the policies have changed a whole bunch of times. Now it's so easy though- just 1 nucleic acid test.)

How do I feel about being in the US? Well, it's great being here, but the really weird thing is I don't feel like I've been gone for 3 years. (Sort of like the mirror of what I wrote in this 2013 post.) Everything seems so natural and like I fit right in. I guess this is a kind of reverse culture shock.

It's great, and I don't want to be away for 3 years again. In the Before Times, I came to the US twice a year. That was a good amount- I want to do that. And I can now, because zero-covid has ended and it's no longer hard to get into China. (I mean, China is still not issuing tourist visas, but for people who legitimately live there- like me- it's not hard to get into China.)

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Why don't y'all wear masks?

Like, this strikes me as super weird. We get off the plane, walking around in the airport, and most people aren't wearing masks. ??? Why not? You're in an airport. Why would you not wear a mask?

And basically everywhere we went, in public, sometimes crowded places- most people are not wearing masks. Why not???

I have some thoughts about it, but since I'm on vacation I don't want to spend time blogging about it now, so I guess maybe I'll write a post on it some other time.

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A few other covid-related differences

So, at a lot of stores in the US, they have plexiglass set up in front of the cashier, so you're not breathing on them. I've never seen that in China.

Also, apparently, in the US, social distancing was a real thing. There are marks on the floor showing you where to wait in line, and people actually did that. In China, we had the marks on the floor, but nobody ever paid attention to them. We barely did any social distancing. With a few exceptions: I remember at Shanghai Disneyland, the employees were enforcing social distancing at some of the places where you wait in line, and when you meet a character there are marks on the ground showing that you have to stand a certain distance from them- and that's enforced. And during the Shanghai lockdown when we all got mass-tested every 2 days, they were telling us we had to stand in line 2 meters apart, and people actually paid attention to that and did it. (Definitely not everybody did it though.)

I think in China, there is just less of a concept of having "personal space." Like when you wait in line, the person behind you is RIGHT THERE, and that's just seen as normal. If you left a bit of space, people would think you're not actually in the line, and they'd cut in front of you. So social distancing never really caught on. Also, the Chinese government needed to make covid rules that were an absolute thing- having a vague sense that probability generally increases as distance decreases just wouldn't have fit into the policies.

I've also heard people in the US talking about staying a certain distance away from someone who might have been exposed to covid, and calculating which day they would be contagious if in fact they were infected- and we just never really did any of that in China. Like, they either label you a close contact and put you in quarantine, or they don't. There's no "well, it's probably fine if you stay X distance away from them/ if they were exposed yesterday because they won't be contagious yet/ etc."

The key thing here, I think, is that in the US, everyone's on their own. So you assess the risk to you as an individual. If there's a 1 in 1000 chance you could get covid, well, that's pretty small, so you don't worry about it. But in China, the government was trying to stop 1 billion people from having covid. If there's a 1 in 1000 chance that someone has covid, and over the course of several weeks there have been thousands of people identified who are in that situation, well probably at least one of them really does have covid, and we just can't have covid-positive people walking around in society, so we have to quarantine ALL of them.

(Of course, this isn't the case any more, because the zero-covid policy has ended, and the Chinese government is just letting everyone have covid now.)

So for Chinese people, the set of things that would get you put into quarantine is a much bigger set than the things that make you have a high probability of actually having covid. I think it will take some time for me to work out what the actual risk to me is and how to go about life.

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Links

A few links on the goings-on in China:

Sixth Tone: 

‘It’s Finally Over,’ Say Doctors in China as COVID Cases Ebb (February 9)

SHINE:

Suishenban now offers free Chinese-English PCR tests (February 7) 

OMG, Big Changes to the Zero-Covid Policy

An airplane landing at an airport in China. Image source.

Complete list is here: Index of Posts About the March 2022 Shanghai Covid Outbreak 

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Big news! On November 11, China issued 20 updated guidelines for the pandemic control policies.

Here are links to news articles about it:

SHINE

A quick look at China's new COVID-19 control policies (November 11) This page has a really nice infographic that explains the biggest changes (it doesn't include all 20 of the new policies though).

Quarantine period slashed for inbound travelers to China (November 11)

Sixth Tone

China Eases COVID Curbs, Cuts Quarantines and Flight Bans (November 11) Very good article, definitely worth reading.

The New York Times

China Eases Some Pandemic Policies, While Sticking to ‘Zero Covid’ (November 11) Interesting how the New York Times focuses more on the economic impact of these changes, and also emphasizes that this does NOT mean zero-covid is ending. Very true.

NPR

China eases its 'zero COVID' policy with shorter quarantines and fewer restrictions (November 11)

Reuters

China shortens quarantines as it eases some of its COVID rules (November 11)

CNN

China scraps Covid flight bans, cuts quarantine for inbound travelers (November 11) As always, CNN is here with their "zero-covid is bad, everyone hates it" spin.

Since none of these articles have the actual numbered list of 20 policies, let me just type it up here. I got this English translation from an article on the "I Love Shanghai" WeChat account (they cite Bloomberg as a source- but the Bloomberg article is paywalled):

1. Cut isolation for close contacts to five days at a central facility and three days at home, down from 7+3;
2. No longer identify the close contacts of close contacts;
3. People leaving high-risk areas must spend seven days at home, rather than at a centralized quarantine facility;
4. Remove the "medium" risk category; only homes, workplaces and areas often frequented by someone infected will be deemed high-risk; all other areas are low-risk; high risk areas should mostly be confined to residential units or blocks, and cannot be extended at will;
5. Workers in high-risk positions exiting closed-loop operations must spend five days at home, down from seven days at home or in a centralized isolation facility;
6. Remove mass testing in most areas, with citywide tests given only when the source of infection is unknown; [note from Perfect Number- interestingly, our apartment complex's "mandatory" testing this weekend has now been cancelled]
7. Scrap circuit breaker bans for incoming flights and reduce pre-flight PCR testing to one from two;
8. Allow closed-loop systems to ease rules for business executives and sports stars;
9. Set cycle threshold values at less than 35 to diagnose Covid in new arrivals;
10. Cut quarantine for new arrivals to five days in a hotel and three at home, down from the previous 7+3;
11. Increase health care resources, including hospital beds;
12. Promote vaccine usage, especially booster shots for the elderly;
13. Stockpile medicine and equipment to treat Covid;
14. Determine the size of the population still at risk for Covid; [note from Perfect Number- from reading the Chinese version, this means people who are most at risk because they are old or have other medical conditions]
15. React quickly to outbreaks to reduce size and duration needed for pandemic control;
16. Halt excessive anti-Covid measures imposed by local governments;
17. Provide adequate supplies and necessary medical care for people in quarantine;
18. Improve pandemic control measures on school campuses;
19. Implement pandemic control measures in industrial parks to ensure smooth supply chain operations;
20. Arrange orderly departures for people who are stranded during lockdowns.

So, a lot going on here. The policies mentioned in most of the news articles are the very concrete ones- like, changing quarantine time to 5+3, instead of 7+3. ("5+3" means 5 days in the quarantine hotel + 3 days at home. Though actually in reality, from what I've heard from people doing quarantine in Shanghai, the "7+3" policy is really "10+0"- they're making people do all 10 days in the quarantine hotel. So think of the new policy as 8+0.) And then there are the ones that are more vague, like they want to "improve" this or that. Not really sure what that means, but okay, those are good changes, if they actually happen. And then items 11-14... which seem a little different, like, these are the sorts of things you do if you are planning to end the zero-covid policy.

My take on it is, no, they are not ending the zero-covid policy any time soon. I *think* probably the Chinese government believes they can still maintain zero-covid even with these shorter quarantine times, without designating any "medium-risk" areas, only doing contact tracing to the level of "close contacts" and not "secondary close contacts", etc. And they certainly have a lot of data on this- they have the data on "how many people in quarantine tested positive on the 9th or 10th day?"- if it's basically 0, then yeah you can shorten the quarantine by 2 days. "How many secondary close contacts ended up testing positive?"- if it's basically 0, then yeah you can stop contact tracing them. Etc. They definitely have the data on it. 

Or, perhaps a different view on this is: Right now several cities in China are having covid outbreaks (I have heard Guangzhou is having a particularly bad time right now). Perhaps because the number of covid cases is so high right now (not in Shanghai but in other cities throughout China), they just don't have the resources to do all that contact tracing and keep people in quarantine that long. So it's a sign that they're not able to control covid, and won't be able to maintain zero-covid. That's not really my interpretation of it, but I have heard that from some Chinese people.

But of course, for international people in China, this is incredibly good news. We are thrilled. Like, when I heard that the circuit breaker policy is no longer in effect- oh man, you guys, you do not know how incredibly good that is. Like, probably y'all are reading these articles that mention "circuit breaker" and you're like "well that's an odd name, and also I don't really know what it means here." Let me tell you. So the circuit breaker policy said that, for international flights arriving in China, if a certain percentage of the passengers from the flight end up testing positive on arrival or in quarantine, then that airline has to cancel that flight number for the next few weeks. (I am not sure on the specific number of weeks, it depends on how many people tested positive; also the policy has been tweaked several times. Probably about 2 weeks.) And of course, everyone entering China has been required to have 2 negative PCR tests, in order to board the flight (new policy changes it to 1 though)- when people test positive on arrival, it's not their fault and it's not the airline's fault. These are people who have already jumped through A LOT of anti-covid hoops in order to get back into China. So honestly I never thought the circuit breaker policy made much sense; it just felt to me like if they're getting more travelers testing positive on arrival, then they want to limit the number of travelers entering the country, so they picked this mechanism to do it.

Because of the circuit breaker policy, SO MANY people trying to enter China have had flights cancelled, over and over. Like, flight gets cancelled, you buy a ticket for a different flight, that one gets cancelled too, and so on. I have heard of people buying refundable tickets on several different airlines, in the hopes that at least 1 of the flights will actually fly. It is just... oh my goodness, these past 3 years, it has been so HARD to get into China, and the circuit breaker policy was one of the big reasons why. (Another big reason was the requirements for testing before your flight- those policies changed a few months ago to become much more workable, thank goodness. And now, with the new policies announced on November 11, only 1 PCR test is required before flying to China, rather than 2.) 

Like, now it feels like it's actually doable, to leave China and come back. Still have the do the quarantine when you arrive in China, of course; but now it's 8 days instead of 10.

(I have been stuck here almost 3 years, you guys. It's easy to leave China but it's hard to come back.)

And ticket prices should go down now. A few weeks ago I searched, and round-trip flights from China to the US were maybe $2000 or $3000 ish, per person. Cheapest I could find was about $1500. And if your travel dates are not flexible, then I mean yikes you might end up paying $6000, because there are so few options- those relatively cheaper prices I found are NOT available every day. Typically each airline only runs about 2 round-trip flights per week from China to the US. But the flights are definitely going to get cheaper now. I am sure the circuit breaker policy was very costly for airlines; now that it's no longer in effect, prices will come down.

So anyway, wow this is big. We'll see how it goes.

Homesick

The iconic Shanghai skyline. Image source.

The short version is, I established my life in China under the assumption that international travel is something I can pretty easily do. Okay, not "easy"- it's a thousand or so dollars and I have to sit on a plane for 14 hours and then deal with jet lag for days afterward- but at least if I was willing to go through that, I could do it. I moved to China because I lived in a world where it's no big deal for me to fly back to the US twice a year.

That world currently does not exist. Because of COVID.

I'm stuck here. I've been stuck here all year. And yeah, this year everyone is stuck in a country, so I'm lucky the one I got was the one I would have wanted. I have friends who weren't so lucky. We built our lives on the assumption that we can easily travel in and out of lots of countries, and when that suddenly wasn't true anymore, some people ended up stranded for months. Flights cancelled, borders closed, and they're trying to continue paying rent on their apartment in Shanghai as it sits empty. 

I'm lucky- if I have to be stuck in 1 country for the entire year, China is the one I would pick. But... obviously I wish we weren't all stuck.

---------------

Last year I published my "6 Years Later" blog series, and I hinted that I'm ready to be done living in China. Our long-term plan is to move back to the US.

I wrote about privilege, and I said:

And my life in the US is still there, still available, I can go back any time. Sometimes literally- I know I can go stay at my parents' house and not pay for food or housing, any time I want. I'm so privileged... I'm writing this blog series to say "well it's been 6 years and here are the things I learned about the world, culture, and being an immigrant, well that was a fun experience but I'm ready to be done, gonna go back home now" and then I can just go back, simple as that. A lot of immigrants can't do that. A lot of immigrants don't have a choice.

How ironic, that suddenly this has changed. Suddenly, I can't "just go back."

Or, well, I could. Technically I could. There are flights- though way fewer than before. But the issue is, the US I left at the end of my visit in 2019 doesn't exist any more. Now there is a global pandemic, and the US is doing way worse than China.

From what I hear, you are all wearing masks and social distancing. I'm gonna let you in on a secret: I've never social-distanced. I basically stayed at home for a few weeks in February, only going out for groceries and to take my baby for his vaccines. Then I went back to work, and over the next few weeks, more and more people started to go back to work, til the subways were back to their normal capacity. I think it was May when I went to a restaurant for the first time. And ever since then, I've gradually settled in to being "back to normal"- I go places and do things and take my baby out to do fun stuff, and don't worry about COVID.

Yes, masks are required everywhere. That rule is enforced in the subways, but nowhere else at this point. Sometimes I forget to wear a mask when I go to the mall.

Oh, and I don't travel. So: masks, and not traveling. Other than that, I am "back to normal." 

And let me make this clear: The reason people aren't serious about masks and stuff here in Shanghai is that SHANGHAI NEVER HAD ANY LOCAL TRANSMISSIONS. Every single case we've had in Shanghai was someone who had just traveled from a known high-risk area (or their close contacts), or an international traveler- and all international travelers are required to get tested for COVID and also quarantine for 14 days. And this quarantine is very serious, it's a "you CANNOT OPEN THE DOOR" kind of quarantine.

The Chinese government did the right thing, and now stuff is under control in China. Every now and then there's a new "outbreak" that has everyone concerned- 12 new cases in Qingdao this week, everyone is talking about it- and so that city gets locked down and they are in the process of testing all 9 million residents. That's what you do if you actually want to stop a pandemic.

From what I hear, in the US the situation is much worse. Apparently, you are doing outdoor dining and trying to have church with everyone sitting a carefully-measured 6 feet apart. Apparently, everyone who can is working from home until next year. Apparently, it's awful for everyone's mental health.

I can't go back.

---------------

My mother-in-law (Nainai) is living with us, to help take care of the baby. And umm, how do I put this, it's awful. She's good at cooking and housework and childcare, but she doesn't like me, and she's really passive-aggressive and childish about it.

And about once a month I can't stand it, and I think "all right let's pack up and go, let's apply for that US green card, I don't even care that there's a pandemic, we're leaving."

Weighing our current bad situation against the hypothetical bad possibilities in the US.

---------------

And of course I'm concerned about the election. Vote. Vote vote vote. To be specific: Vote for Biden, because we need to get Trump out.

When we move to the US, my husband will be an immigrant. My son is US citizen born in China. And the president is stirring up anti-immigrant and anti-China hatred. He thinks only certain people count as real Americans who have rights. He encourages people to gather in groups with no masks- he only cares about himself; he doesn't even pretend to care about the 200,000 Americans who have died.

What if Trump wins, and US gets more and more fascist? I'm on the outside looking in ... at what point do I decide "ehhhhhh I can't go there"?

I keep telling myself, I'm privileged enough that the worst of it won't affect me and my family. That's probably true. I hope it's true. But also, is it bad to think that way? Why should I be able to "go to the US for a better life" when so many other people can't? 

Yeah it's true that the world is unjust and effed-up, but it doesn't help anyone for me to stay in China just because I ... feel bad for having privilege, or something? No, that doesn't help anyone. I vote and I give money to organizations that help marginalized groups. Those are things that actually help. Me staying in China because "it's not fair that I have access to opportunities that other people don't" doesn't actually do any good for anyone.

Anyway, vote for Biden.

---------------

I grew up in the suburbs in the US, and now I live in Shanghai, the 3rd-largest city in the world (or thereabouts, depends how you measure).

Ugh, everything would be so much easier if I had a car (and also roads with little traffic, and plenty of parking- having a car in a big city would be way more trouble than it's worth). Everything would be so much easier if I had a dishwasher. And a real oven. And a dryer for clothes. And a grocery store with western food.

I guess it was fine living in a big city like this, before the baby was born. But now everything is harder, and all these little annoyances are suddenly a big huge deal. Like taking the subway- that used to be a little bit annoying because I had to walk for 10 minutes to get to the subway station. But now... navigating around narrow bumpy sidewalks with a stroller, trying to find an elevator at the subway station, avoiding rush hour because there will be no space for the stroller if the subway car is completely packed full of people. Taking a taxi used to be a bit annoying, but now with a baby, I have to fuss about with the seatbelts and car seat for a minute or 2, I have to fold up the stroller and put it in the trunk, I have to entertain the baby so he doesn't cry (the taxi driver will be like "just take him out of his seat and hold him" ugh, no). And then once I get where I'm going, I have to drag the car seat around. Fortunately we have a car seat that clips into the stroller, but it's still annoying.

And I want a second baby. But how would that even work, in a big city? Can you imagine bumping along on all these narrow sidewalks with a double-wide stroller? Dragging around 2 car seats? Ugh, I wish I had a car, everything would be easier... but obviously when I say "I wish I had a car" I also mean "and I wish I lived in a place that having a car would be nice and convenient, ie NOT SHANGHAI."

---------------

The short version is, I'm ready to be done living in China, right when the US is ... how shall I put this ... not livable.

Maybe my timing is the worst. Taking care of a baby, living with my mother-in-law ... at the same time as a pandemic.

Or maybe the fact that I can't go back makes me want it even more.

We are gonna go back. We are. We're gonna get there. Hopefully next year?

---------------

Related:

On Immigration and Double Standards

Culture, Objectivity, God, and the Real Reason I Moved to China

Did God Make Me Miss My Flight?

Two people with luggage, running through an airport. Image source.

So here's some exciting news: I am now part of the elite group of losers who has run through the Chicago airport panting and wheezing, and arrived at the gate to find out the door's been closed and I'm not getting on my flight. And, actually, I'm in an even more exclusive group of losers, because it was an international flight, yep, the kind of flight that only happens once a day. Chicago to Shanghai. And bonus points for me because the plane was sitting right there, right outside the window. I asked the gate agents, "I really can't get on that plane?" If I had been 10 minutes earlier, I would have made it. Not my fault, it's because my first flight was delayed and arrived in Chicago several hours late.

Check that off the bucket list.

So they booked me on the same flight but 1 day later, and gave me a hotel room for free. I ended up contacting some friends who live in Chicago and I got to see them. And had fun exploring Chicago, because I'd never been there before, apart from all those times I've been in the airport. Yep, and by "exploring Chicago" I mean I rode the subway and I bought a smoothie. ("Wow, I wasn't expecting I would need American money today...") Fun times.

The next day, I got to the gate 2 hours early, got on the plane, 14 hours later arrived in Shanghai. Missed 1 day of work.

So, because I'm an ex-evangelical, this has all got me thinking about why God "let this happen." Is there "a reason"? I don't believe in that anymore, but I used to, and this kind of stuff is a big deal in the Christianity I was taught. If something bad or inconvenient happens to you, well, it must be that God has "a reason" and it happened because of "God's plan."

If this was a sermon illustration, you know the first plane would have crashed. It would have been a story about how somebody missed their plane and was so mad at God, so stressed out, and then that plane crashed and everyone died and our hero learned that God was taking care of them and they shouldn't have been so angry at God, they should have trusted. A happy ending to a nice story.

Why were there so many sermon illustrations where death suddenly makes an appearance? Anybody else grow up in a church like that? Stories about getting shot because you "stand up for God", about missionaries being tortured, an effed-up retelling of the trolley problem where a man pulls the switch and the trolley kills his son, to show up how God felt about sacrificing Jesus, and make us feel guilty for not appreciating it enough. Sermon illustrations that make you go "well, that escalated quickly."

But this wasn't a sermon illustration, this was real life. I looked up the flight number on google. Arrived in Shanghai on time. And then, the next day, the flight I managed to get on: arrived in Shanghai on time. One uneventful flight, and then the next day, another uneventful flight. I arrived in Shanghai on time. Well, 1 day late.

And the evangelical I used to be wants to find reasons. Okay, we know that nothing bad enough to be newsworthy happened, but we can speculate about other hypothetical bad things that I avoided by not being on that plane. Maybe I would have gotten into an argument with the person in the seat next to me. Maybe there was a baby crying the whole time. Maybe someone was throwing up, in the seat next to what should have been my seat. Maybe the line to go through immigration at the Shanghai airport was really long and slow that day. Maybe I would have lost my luggage. (Well, definitely. If I had to run through the airport to make it on to the plane, you know my luggage wouldn't have made it.) Maybe a thief would have stolen my phone while I was waiting in line for a taxi in Shanghai.

Yes, lots of bad things that God decided to spare me from. But God's totally fine with those things happening to the other 300 people on that plane.

See that's the problem with these stories where God causes an inconvenience in someone's life, but it turns out to be a good thing because they end up avoiding some worse problem. In these stories, it's all about you and everybody else is a red shirt. God has a plan for your life, but apparently not for all those other background characters in your story.

When I hear those sermon illustrations, I don't hear "don't worry, trust God." I hear, "isn't it great when God makes bad things happen to other people instead of you?"

I look out for myself first. That's good and normal. But God shouldn't do that. God shouldn't be biased towards helping me over other people.

Or perhaps the "reason" God "made" me miss my flight wasn't so I could avoid a bad thing, but so I could have a good thing. Maybe to give me the opportunity to see friends in Chicago I haven't seen for a long time. Maybe so I could do some fun sightseeing (ahem, ride the subway and get a smoothie). Maybe so I could be friendly to other people who also missed their flight and cheer them up a little. Maybe that was the day that the in-flight movies got updated and I got to see some new ones that weren't there the day before.

Or maybe God did this as a punishment. (Like what happened in The Worst Bible Story.) Hmm, let's think back on the past few weeks- did I commit any major sins? Maybe I haven't been "putting God first." Maybe I haven't been making God a priority, maybe I've been too busy and haven't read my bible enough. (Note: I rarely read the bible now, but back when I was an evangelical I did every day because obviously that's what good Christians are supposed to do.) Maybe I had been having some selfish feelings. Maybe I didn't pray for God's protection over my travels, and that shows I'm arrogant and I think I don't need God, and God is like "well I'LL SHOW HER!" (Wow, I'm so glad I don't believe in any of that anymore. So glad I'm no longer constantly thinking in terms of "am I putting God first?")

Or, how about this: God was punishing someone else who was on my flight into Chicago. God delayed that one so that this other person would end up missing their next flight, and unfortunately I happened to be on the plane too so I got caught up in it accidentally. But no, nobody in evangelical land speculates along those lines. "God's plan" is always all about me, and everyone else is an unimportant background character. I'm never the background character.

And we could go on and on like this forever, imagining things that aren't real and believing that's what was on God's mind when They "made" this happen. I don't believe any of that. I don't think there was a reason; I don't think God had anything to do with it. I think it's just bad luck. Every day, people miss their flights. Miss their international flights, even. It's a pretty normal thing. Just bad luck that it happened to me that day.

Back when I was an evangelical, I always heard people say, "everything happens for a reason," and I told them I didn't believe that. Because I knew they didn't really mean "everything"; they meant "things that you are emotionally invested in enough that you want to have a reason when they go wrong." RIGHT? Like, let's say you dropped your pen on the floor and you picked it up. Did that "happen for a reason"? No, nobody is talking about the "reason" for that because it's such a small thing it's not even worth mentioning. Like, it's so small it doesn't even count as an inconvenience. Probably a minute later you forget that it even happened.

When something doesn't go according to plan, but you quickly adapt and move on with life, take it in stride, roll with it like it's no big deal, then you don't ask God "why?" But if it's something that you just can't accept, if it takes time to cope with it emotionally, if it means you lost something important to you and you have to mourn it- that's when people want to believe God has "a reason." And- get this- it could be the exact same bad thing, but because you attach different emotions to it, in the first case you barely give it a second thought, while the second case has you praying and looking for the "reason" for days.

Missing this flight means I missed 1 day of work. Just a regular day, didn't have anything important planned. Not a big deal. But what if there was something really important scheduled for that day, something I had been looking forward to for months? What if it really mattered that I wasn't there? What if ... what if it was something I had been praying about as I prepared for it? Then the evangelical version of me would have believed there was "a reason" and it was "God's plan." In fact, the reason would have to be proportional to the emotional fallout I suffered from missing whatever important event I missed.

That's what I believed. If I prayed about something and was looking forward to it with a ton of emotions and anticipation, then it was less likely that something would go wrong. Because, like, God wouldn't do that.

I don't believe that anymore. Now I just believe in probability. The universe doesn't care if you're happy to take an unplanned vacation in Chicago or if you're missing your grandma's funeral. In both situations, you have that same probability of missing your flight. I believe in a God who causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.

And when I travel international, I always build in an extra day so I'm not missing any hugely important thing if I end up stuck somewhere unexpectedly. Because, it happens. It's just bad luck. So I do what I can to minimize the damage.

So no, I don't believe God made me miss my flight. If it was to spare me from something bad, well what about the other 300 people on the plane, doesn't God care about them? Believing that there's a "reason" means believing in a reason that's proportional to the emotional distress I feel about it, and that just gets too complicated- why would "God's plan" depend on the whims of my emotions? And I don't think all this endless speculation is healthy either- all this imagining of hypothetical "reasons" that God "made" it happen, trying to force myself to believe one of them must be true.

No, I don't believe any of that. It's just bad luck. It happens to people every day. I made the best of it- I got to see friends in Chicago. It worked out okay. But it doesn't make sense to believe God had anything to do with it.

--------------------------

Related:
Prayer Rates Don't Correlate With Actual Risk

Prayer Rates Don't Correlate With Actual Risk

Image text: "Pikachu's ketchup broke. 1 like 1 prayer." Poor Pikachu. Image source.

I'm kind of afraid of flying. I know the statistics, I've heard how it's "the safest way to travel" and I'm a math person so I believe that and I buy plane tickets and fly domestic and internationally several times a year. (See this article and this one for some information- basically when you get on a plane, the odds of dying in a crash are around 1 in several million.)

But I still worry about it, whenever I'm on a plane. I bring books and force myself to concentrate on reading so that I don't think about the fact that I'm scared of flying. I take a lot of deep breaths and try to think about all the happy things in my life, instead of imagining the plane suddenly falling out of the sky. And sometimes I even pray. Yeah I don't normally pray, but when I'm on a plane, sometimes I'm scared enough that I do.

But logically, it doesn't make sense to pray for safety when I'm on a plane and not pray for safety when I'm in a car. Riding in a car is much more dangerous than flying (this article says you have a 1 in 98 chance of dying in a car accident at some point in your life, and a 1 in 7,178 chance of dying in "air and space transport (including air taxis and private flights)" in your lifetime.)

If we believe prayer actually has an effect on the real world- an effect outside of psychological benefits, I mean, an effect that occurs because my prayer activates some external force that can influence situations that I'm not involved in at all- then shouldn't we figure out which things are the most dangerous, and pray about those? Let's see, let's go find some statistics on the biggest causes of death in the United States. Here's an article from 2015 called The top 10 leading causes of death in the US:

1. Heart disease: 23.53% of deaths
2. Cancer: 22.52%
3. Chronic lower respiratory disease: 5.74%
4. Accidents: 5.02%
5. Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 4.97%
6. Alzheimer's disease: 3.26%
7. Diabetes: 2.91%
8. Influenza and pneumonia: 2.19%
9. Kidney disease (nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis): 1.81%
10. Suicide: 1.58%

So really, if we believe that prayer actually changes things external to ourselves, we should adopt the following strategy to maximize the impact of our prayers: Spend 23.53% of our prayer time on heart disease, 22.52% on cancer, 5.74% on chronic lower respiratory disease, etc. Or, perhaps, rather than using statistics about all Americans, you might want to just focus on certain demographics. For example, if you are a teenager and you want to maximize your prayers' effect on the safety of you and your friends specifically, maybe you want to pray against the biggest risk factors for teenagers' deaths. In that case, you should spend 48% of your prayer time asking God to prevent fatal accidents, 13% for homicide, 11% for suicide, 6% for cancer, and 3% for heart disease. (And maybe prayer is more effective when it's for a person you're close to, so this strategy of praying against the biggest risk factors for the demographics best represented among your loved ones may be the optimal way to go about it.)

Or, perhaps, you want to pray against other things besides death, maybe other negative things that are more likely to happen- things that, realistically, pose more of a risk in your day-to-day life. Okay, go find statistics on those, and maybe multiply each risk rate by some weighting factor according to how much it would screw up your life if it happened.

(OR MAYBE flying is the safest way to travel BECAUSE a lot of people are nervous about it and therefore it gets a disproportionately high amount of prayer, and therefore God makes it safer than other less-prayed-for modes of transportation. If this is the case, then really we need to establish some kind of feedback system for our prayers- we should expect that, if we can get enough people to focus their prayer power on one thing, then we should see a real-world response in the statistics about the danger of that thing. At that point, we should re-evaluate our strategy and re-direct that prayer power at whatever the new biggest danger is. And no, I don't believe this at all.)

If we believed that prayer actually makes a difference in the world, and sheer numbers of prayers translate into a bigger impact, this would be the way to best use that power. [I think? Any other math nerds out there with a different strategy? Show me the math and we can discuss it.]

But that's not what Christians do. At church, they share their prayer requests with each other, and those prayer requests relate to their current problems or worries, rather than the things that, from a statistical point of view, have the biggest potential to screw up their lives. They pray for God to give them safe travels on their vacations- but did you know that 69% of car accidents happen within 10 miles of a person's home? Have you ever heard anyone share this prayer request at church: "Please keep us safe all this week while we go about our usual, mundane errands, driving from place to place"? And really, if you were praying for that, I would be concerned for your mental health. (And I'm saying this as someone who has a lot of trouble with anxiety- I'm not using "mental health" as some kind of insult, like people commonly do.) If you're regularly thinking about the fact that you're not safe from car accidents as you go around to all the places you normally go to, well, dang. I really hope you can relax and not think about that. I really hope you can feel safe. I really hope you feel so safe that it never even occurs to you to pray about it.

And I really hope the God that exists isn't one who would use that feeling of safety and lack of prayer as an excuse to let bad things happen to you. I really hope the God that exists isn't one who only protects people overrun with anxiety, people who constantly imagine all the bad things that could happen and pre-emptively pray against them. I really hope living in a constant state of panicky desperate prayer is not the key to lowering your odds of dying a violent death. I really hope that God doesn't take mental health as a sign of sinful pride, like you're defiantly insisting that you don't need God every second of every day- and God's going to make you suffer in order to teach you a lesson.

People pray that God would keep us safe from terrorism. Have you ever heard anyone pray that God would keep us safe from falling in the bathtub? (This article says that 13,000 Americans died from falls in the year 2000- not sure how many of those fell in their bathtub.) Then again, here's an article that makes a case that it's not really fair to compare the number of deaths from terrorism and the number of bathtub deaths [the article is specifically about government spending], because a single terrorist attack with a "small" number of deaths can have a huge, society-wide impact. Okay, maybe you agree with that writer and you want to factor that into your prayer rate calculation.

People don't pray for the things that actually pose the greatest risk to themselves. They pray for the things that they're currently worried about.

But. I very much OPPOSE adopting this calculate-the-risks-and-pray-proportionately strategy I'm presenting here. Oh dear goodness, can you imagine the anxiety that would cause? In my normal life, I never think about things like heart disease, cancer, respiratory disease, etc- but what if I made myself think about them every day, so I could pray against those things? What if I made sure I was always aware of death rates from various causes, so that I could pray in the most efficient way? What if, every time I got in a car, I reminded myself that I have a greater chance of death from a car accident than a plane crash, and, logically, I should pray for my own safety now at a rate that's a thousand times higher than the rate I pray on an airplane? What if I continually imagined terrible things that could happen, and estimated probabilities for them, so that maybe my prayers could keep them from coming true?

HOLY CRAP that sounds like a TERRIBLE way to live.

And even if you're not a huge math nerd like me, even if you don't look up all these statistics and calculate weighted assessments of risk- even if you don't think about the math, the fact remains that if prayer has an effect on the real world external to yourself, then if something bad happened, and you didn't pre-emptively pray that it wouldn't happen, then it's sort of your fault. Or, not exactly your fault, but that you could have done more to prevent it, and in the future you should do more.

Wow, oh my goodness, wow. DO NOT try this at home. I wouldn't wish that kind of guilt and anxiety on anyone.

One way to get around this problem is to just pray very vague, generic prayers, which don't conjure up horrific scenes of death. Just pray "God, keep everyone safe" or something like that. But, is a general prayer less effective than a specific prayer? Would "God, keep everyone safe" do more than "God, keep everyone safe from fatal car accidents"? Hmmmmmm that doesn't really seem fair, seems like it's too easy. Maybe the power of a single prayer gets spread out over all the affected people. In that case, maybe you can still equal the prayer-power of the imagine-specific-awful-tragedies strategy while avoiding the anxiety, by praying "God, keep everyone safe" over and over and over again, until you've done it enough times that it equals the prayer-power you would have produced if you'd prayed for specific problems one time each.

But damn, imagine the anxiety from THAT. You'd be all like "every day I have to pray 'God, keep everyone safe' 150 times." Then you'd think "but wait, maybe I should do more, maybe every spare second I have, I should repeat that prayer." The more you do, the more you save the world. It never ends- if you're a good godly person who really wants God to keep everyone safe, there is no logical reason to ever stop repeating that prayer. OH DEAR GOD, that sounds like a horrible way to live, that sounds like a mountain of guilt. DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME.

At this point, I know that good Christian readers probably have some objections with the way I'm quantifying the power of prayer. Let's try to answer some of those:

Objection 1: "No, the real-world impact of prayer is not based on just the number of times you pray! It's based on your emotions/ if you really mean it. It's based on how close of a relationship you have with God."

Okay, if it's based on "really meaning it", then add that to the heap of anxiety involved in this prayer scheme. Not only do you have to pray "God, keep everyone safe" 150 times per day, but you also have to manufacture certain emotions while you do it. Yeah that sounds healthy. (Or, if we go with the initial prayer scheme I proposed, not only do you have to spend 23.53% of your prayer time on heart disease, you also have to feel some deep sadness over the existence of heart disease and how so many people die from it, or else God doesn't "count" your prayer. Then move on to being deeply emotionally moved about the tragedy of cancer. Etc.)

Or, if it's based on the "closeness" of your relationship with God, okay fine, so each person would have a scale factor for that, just multiply their prayer power by the scale factor. The rest of the math remains the same. Still just as anxiety-producing and unhealthy.

Basically if you believe that prayer does cause real changes external to ourselves, but that my mathematical model is invalid because the amount of real-world impact is based on some other factor I haven't included, then okay fine, just add that other factor to the model. You haven't really done anything to answer my point that it would be incredibly unhealthy to live this way.

Objection 2: "No, our prayers aren't causing things to happen- things only happen if it's God's will. If you pray for something outside of God's will, then it won't happen- there's no 'rate of effectiveness' calculation to make."

Yeah, I actually think this view of prayer makes a lot more sense. It would be really bizarre if God's work in the world was controlled by a popular vote. (God is not "American Idol.") That would mean that God works harder on issues that are generally believed to be big, important problems- regardless of what the real problems are. Should God work harder to free someone who's imprisoned unjustly and gets a lot of news coverage than someone who's imprisoned unjustly but the world never hears about it? (And the team with the most religious fans would win the Superbowl.)

[Or, perhaps we could still hold the "prayer has an effect on the world" belief, but also add a scale factor for morality. Prayers for something that would have a massive positive impact on humanity are more effective. Prayers for something morally iffy might get multiplied by 0.]

But if you take the "God's will" view of prayer, then that means you DON'T believe that prayer has a real-world impact external to yourself. So don't go around saying "prayer is powerful" because nope, that's not what this view says. It says that God is already planning to do or not do certain things, and if you pray for the ones that God was going to do anyway, then good for you, your prayer came true! It should be pretty obvious that in this line of reasoning, the prayer itself did absolutely nothing in terms of causing that thing to happen.

I guess the idea here is that if you have a really close relationship with God, God will give you advanced insider knowledge on what God is going to do, and then you can pray for those things and feel really proud of yourself when they happen.

I guess I don't really have a problem with that interpretation, I just think it's kind of weak. So what's the point of praying, then? But, if you're the kind of person who struggles with guilt and anxiety, it would be MUCH BETTER for you to believe the "God's will" view rather than the "prayer is powerful" view.

However, I do have a problem with how Christians take the "God's will" view when someone asks very tough philosophical questions about how prayer works, but they take the "prayer is powerful" view when it comes to practical application. They're all like "does anyone have any prayer requests?" and they hope to get a lot of answers, they hope that everyone will share some kind of problem so that their Christian brothers, sisters, and siblings can pray for them. They don't ask people to only share things that, after careful listening to God, they have good reason to believe are in "God's will." In fact, if you refuse to give any prayer requests, Christians will judge you- maybe you're too proud and you think you don't need prayer. Or maybe you're not connected enough to the body of Christ and you're not willing to "be vulnerable" and talk about your problems. They never think maybe you're prudently refraining from claiming you know God's will.

Personally, I don't believe prayer has effects in the real world external to the person who prays. I think there can be a lot of psychological benefits- if praying on an airplane helps you feel safer, then that's great. (Conversely, if praying based on the actual statistical danger posed by various things makes you feel all kinds of anxious, then for the love of God, STOP PRAYING!) Also, it's a way that people can show that they care about each other. "I'm praying for you" can be a way that people express love. (And it can also be a way to say "you clearly don't know what's good for you, I hope God convinces you that I'm right." Ugh.)

As for the question of communicating with God and being close to God, I'm not sure about that. It doesn't really make sense to me- seems like that would mean religious people have an advantage that non-religious people don't, and I don't believe in a God who would discriminate like that.

The things we pray for are the things we're worried about, not the things that can actually hurt us the most. But I don't necessarily see that as a bad thing- if we're honest about the fact that the power of prayer is psychological, rather than God influencing situations the pray-er isn't involved in.

Where was God? 上帝在哪儿？

Image source.

God, you could have f***ing saved them. What the hell?

You should have.

I am soooo angry. So so so angry. Last night I heard the news about the Malaysian flight- how it crashed in the goddamn Indian Ocean with no survivors. All of China has worried about it for 2 straight weeks- worried so much that I got tired of worrying.

Why did this happen? The world is stupid.

God, why did this happen?

It hits me hard because those people were all just like me and my coworkers and my students. People who have the money to travel internationally. Maybe for a vacation or a business trip. People who shared photos on social media and posted about how excited they were for the trip. And worried about their luggage exceeding the weight limit. And got stopped at security because of a water bottle.

The majority of the passengers were Chinese. The ones who were my age were their parents' only child. And I don't even want to think about what happened on the plane, and the extra confusion thrown in by language barriers.

This is so stupid. The world's not safe, you guys. WHERE WERE YOU, GOD?

What can we do? Just keep praying, keep living our lives- value every day because life is so fragile. And look forward to the day when God will save us all, and there will be no more crying or pain.

But until then, God, WHAT THE HELL?

Yeah, this post was supposed to be about Psalm 94. It's not. But if there's one thing the psalms have taught me, it's that you can tell God exactly how you feel. He can take it.

And he feels all our pain.

But this is still not okay.

It matters so much to me because there's a freakin' planet and a 12-hour flight separating me from my family. I'm already afraid of flying.

Oh God...

God... why?

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This post is part of a link-up on the topic of Psalm 94. To read other people's posts, click here: What do we do with vengeance Psalms? Here are 4 ideas.

Even there...

"If I rise on the wings of the dawn,

if I settle on the far side of the sea,

even there your hand will guide me,

your right hand will hold me fast."

-Psalm 139:9-10

Image source.

“我若展开清晨的翅膀，

飞到海极居住，

就是在那里，你的手必引导我 ；

你的右手也必扶持我。”

- 诗篇139:9-10

6 Ways I'll Face My Fear of Flying

Good news! I'm moving to China soon!

Bad news... I'm sort of afraid of flying. Like, just kind of moderately afraid... it's never stopped me from buying a plane ticket and getting on a plane, but seriously, all through the flight I'm trying not to think we're about to just fall out of the sky.

Good news! I have flown a lot. I've been to China twice, so, ya know, that's 4 13-hour flights right there, plus whatever silly places we needed to stop for layovers. Seriously, coming back from my first trip to China, I took 5 flights in like 48 hours and by the end I was like, okay let's just take off and land already, I am SO OVER this "fear of flying" thing.

All right. So. Here are Perfect Number's 6 tips on dealing with fear of flying:

1. Statistics. Okay so in the United States, 28000 commercial planes take off and land every day and ALL OF THEM ARE FINE. (Couldn't find a super-legit-looking webpage that said this, so here are 3 mediocre ones which agree. And tsa.gov says 1.8 million passengers pass through US airports every day.) Seriously. ALL OF THEM ARE FINE. Like, we've heard news stories of plane crashes, but just think about all the days you DON'T hear stories of plane crashes. Yep. Each of those days, 1.8 million people are FINE.
2. The pilot. The pilot has probably flown this exact route hundreds of times. Also, the pilot and whoever else is up front have a whole bunch of safety things to keep an eye on. They're not just going to accidentally not pay attention and the plane falls out of the sky. Remember, they are also interested in not dying in a plane crash.
3. Engineering! A lot of people spent a lot of time building the plane and thinking of everything that could go wrong and how to put backups in place. This isn't like hopping in a barrel to go over Niagara Falls. This is decades of engineering, mandatory inspections, redundant systems. (And I think the more I learn about the technology behind passenger planes, the more obvious it will be that they are not just going to fall out of the sky.)
4. Don't read the "emergency information card in your seat back pocket." Don't pay attention to the safety talk from the flight attendants. If you've flown before and you've already heard it, then there's no point to focusing your attention on worst-case scenarios. You already know the spiel. Use your seat cushion as a floatie. The nearest exit might be behind you. Put your own oxygen mask on first. You should generally know the information, but beyond that, DO NOT let your mind imagine horrible emergency situations and how much you are going to die. (Although, every now and then a plane has a problem but IT'S STILL FINE. Like this one, which had to do a belly-landing because its landing gear wasn't working. And EVERYONE WAS FINE. A little bumpy, but IT'S FINE. The pilots and flight attendants are trained for this kind of stuff.) Seriously, if it's going to make you panic, tune out during the safety talk.
5. When there's turbulence or the plane seems to be tilting WAAAAYYY too much, look over at the flight attendants. Look how much they don't care. Seriously. They're just walking around acting like everything's normal. They've probably experienced a bunch of turbulence a million times and they know it's nothing to worry about.
6. Just relax and think happy thoughts. Read a book. Try to forget the fact that you're flying through the air at hundreds of miles an hour, shoved in a metal tube with a bunch of strangers. I mean, if you're gonna die in a plane crash, it's not like there's anything you can do to stop it. Might as well just forget about the plane and read a book. OH ACTUALLY, wow Perfect Number, let's try to spin this in a more positive way. Ahem. During the flight, you might want to marvel at the amazingness of modern technology, allowing us to travel all the way around the world in a matter of hours. Oh isn't that wonderful! Think of the cultural exchange that takes place, think of all the awesome things made possible by air travel. And oh my goodness, you can be part of it! You can experience this fantastic phenomenon for yourself! They sell tickets!

All right wish me luck because I'm going to have to use all these tips in a few weeks!

One more thing: Seriously, check out flightradar24.com for a real-time map of planes currently in the air. There are TONS. And ALL OF THEM ARE FINE.

Also, I'd like to point out that several of these tips are very meaningful for me because I'm a math and engineering person. I wonder if other people are as moved as I am by the statistics and the engineering things. So please tell me in the comments: Are you afraid of flying? How do you deal with it?

"I can go home now."

On the highway. In the middle of the night.

In Beijing.

"I was right."

The exit signs on the highway, covered in Chinese characters. Oh, I was right, I was right.

Driving home from the airport. My friend's parents had picked us up. They were asking me questions in Chinese. Which places in China had I visited? Had I seen the Great Wall?

Finally everything felt right. For weeks and weeks, my mind had felt like it was tearing itself apart, because of a belief in a culture so completely different that no hint of its existence could be found in my American life.

A place where the exit signs on the highway had Chinese characters.

And there in that car, I kept saying to myself, "I was right, I was right." It does exist. And I knew I had to be there.

Driving home from the airport, reading the Chinese highway signs. This is what I came to China for.

And then, I thought, "I can go home now."

Because that was all I needed, to see the street signs with Chinese characters. It felt so good, so natural, that I'd forgotten my "home" wasn't like that. My own country, where I had been just 14 hours before this... maybe it was the jet lag that made me forget how much I had struggled to remember China in my own country...

Struggled? How? Here I was, in reality, with Chinese characters telling me the names of the streets. Of course this is normal, and this is all I need, I can go home now.

All those worries about whether my memories of China were accurate. All the doubt and wondering if I was crazy to want to go there again. All the excitement, the feeling like it was too good to be true, when my friend invited me to visit her home in Beijing. All the money for the plane tickets, the phone calls to get a visa, the passport photos at CVS. All that effort- and it all was forgotten in my jet-lagged state in that car. Of course I'm here. How could it have been hard to get here? This is where I'm supposed to be.

And the exit signs with the Chinese characters...

"I can go home now." Forgetting that at home I couldn't rest, for fear of forgetting China. Forgetting that at home, there were no highway signs with Chinese characters.

"I was right." I was right to go to China. I was right to believe in it even when I couldn't see it.

"I was right, I was so right."