But undoubtedly this is NOT the vibe of how Mr. Li would have wanted it said to him 🤣

Yeah, people when talking politely to their taxi driver, or any skilled trades worker really, would call them "师傅" as well. The term generally has a strong connotation of the traditional culture and all the types of works and environments that passed on knowledge via apprenticeships.

Well, the DPP has been advocating for more than a decade that Taiwan has nothing to do with China, or Chinese culture, not historically, not now. Even when the KMT were in power for decades, due to its own history of "fighting" against the CPC, they implemted full-on propaganda about how crappy Mainland China was, how horrific was the communist system there, how oppressive, how Mainlanders hate them and always only want to oppress the Taiwanese, etc. Etc.

Honestly the Taiwanese people are pretty innocent folks mostly, not very interested in political nuances, but after all these decades of propaganda from every single party,,, separatism is basically politically correctness there now. The constitution, along with the "ROC" name, alas, might as well just be a piece of paper

China also has a more efficient energy transfer system than elsewhere in the world, so the loss is a lot less than you would expect, lower than, for example, it would be in US.

Look for seller with longer history and good ratings. I've bought hundreds of dollars of random little items there, 100+ packages, and only 2 or 3 had issues or lost due to lost in transit after reaching my local area. If broken upon arrival, received refund, etc.

If that's still the case, then PRC wouldn't feel any urgency regarding Taiwan. But decades of anti-Mainland China public education - which included writing China out of Taiwanese history, so Taiwan seemingly popped out from nowhere as an island that birthed itself LOL - there are fewer and fewer ppl in Taiwan who believe they are Chinese. The current party in power is openly separatist and intensely propagandizes everything anti-China, so even mentioning the ROC as a concept these days has became politically incorrect. If they could change their constitution to cross out ROC and become the Republic of Taiwan instead, they would. But they dare not as yet.

Hence you're seeing things like these where the PRC is stepping up efforts to emphasize everywhere they can, and in all their foreign policy interactions, that Taiwan is part of China etc. Etc.

It appears China and Russia are visa-free for each other's tour groups since 2023.

Actually, they haven't, lol.

The focus on one word has to do with how the CPC announces its policy. George Yeo has described interpreting the CPC's policy announcement akin to interpreting the Catholic Church's proclamations. Each year they announce their current updated position, and everyone (including all the party bureaucrats who will be executing policy, the Chinese ppl, media, etc.) compare the current version with last year's version to see what is the change that is now being promoted by the central government. That is, the differences between the 2 texts IS the policy change xD

So, in fact, they are doing the right thing by this narrow focus on a word or two. What they are doing deliberately WRONG, though, is to interpret it only for their own fearmongering purpose.

In fact, the very vagueness and ambiguity of broadcasting policy this way is deliberate: doing so allows local officials to (1) implement policy changes in ways that fit local situations, and (2) have some creativity and flexibility in coming up with potential ways to implement the policy change.

So really, the CPC's policy changes are always a direction to move toward, a general result aimed to be achieved, by a certain time line, without any specific steps as to how.

And in the specific case for Taiwan, (3) this is the CPC itself allowing themselves the ambiguity and flexibility to change policy on Taiwan depending on how things work out as this year goes on. All they're saying is, things are going to change now so everyone, be prepared to change.

They may have omitted this word in the past but currently it is a reflection of a meaningful change in policy.

This change is a recognition that, only giving benefits to Taiwan (ECFA; allowing practically zero import tax of Taiwanese goods sold into mainland China; all kinds of respecting Taiwan's one-sided political assertions at the expense of the mainland's positions, etc.) without ANY teeth, is a bad policy that need to be updated.

What had worked to preserve peace 15 years ago no longer work, when the DPP is actively engaged in separation tactics, deliberate provocations (to the point of complete silliness--an incident ongoing right now, where Taiwanese coast guards caused the deaths of two mainland fishermen, with ongoing refusal to apologize, recognize any fault, outright lies that keep getting discovered in embarrassing ways a day or two after the lie , claiming no video evidence existed though the ship + 4 guards are all supposed video all incidents, refusal to give up the dead bodies or allowing the mainland to participate in examination/dissection for cause of death, etc.), and continuation of anti-China education in their public school system.

What this is not, however, is a sign of imminent invasion or whatever, which seems to be the main implication whenever Western media wrote about Taiwanese things. They deliberately fail to point out that there are like 100 steps the mainland can take, going from inconveniencing Taiwan to outright economically devastate Taiwan, before reaching any kind of hot conflict.

In the tier-1 cities most people, especially younger, can manage a few words in English (although many are very accented and may be hard to understand) and all public transportation and facilities will have English translation accompanied.

Outside of those, English REALLY isn't a lingua franca here, people will not even be able to guess what you're trying to convey in English. Also, many of the wordless assumptions behind design, procedures, and how things work that many travelers can rely on in countries with more Western influence are also different, which can be challenging.

Massive upsides: everyone is comfortable if you use translation apps or devices to communicate; people are friendly and approachable and pretty social culture-wise, and will go out of their way to help you. It's also extremely safe everywhere, well organized, easy to travel to wherever you care to go, and everything is accessible digitally (although sadly you'd have to be able to read Chinese for most of apps and websites, but it'll be easy for other ppl to help you out by just pulling out their own phones to do xyz).

So yes, you absolutely can go as a tourist without knowing the language ;D

It used to be pretty interesting to read people's questions with genuine attempts at answering. I paid the $5 to be able to post... Haven't been back in years though