Robots: The solution to the one-child policy demographic crisis

Today I started a discussion about the one-child policy and its impact upon Chinese demographics.  Namely, that in 40 years, most of the population will be of pension age and will need to be supported by a smaller workforce.  The Chinese people in this discussion took the argument down a path that I would have never foreseen: the future robot population in China.

No, I'm not kidding.  This group spent an entire hour discussing not if robots could fill in the workforce gap, but when, and what type of robots would be used.  Would the robots be machines or artificial intelligence? would the robots be able to make critical thinking decisions?

Oh China, everyday you surprise me.

hospital photos

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"Xiao Ya, my coworker and one of my good friends- somehow still looking ok even after surgery"

The little boy in the market

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"The little boy in my market"

Accidentally getting Shock Therapy treatment: The 5th Worst China Hospital Experience I've had.

"Bzzz! Bzzzz!" the doctor explained to me, jerking his hands spasmodically to show the effect of electricity on one's body.  It was at this time that I first noticed that the doctor was not wearing a shirt under his doctor's coat.  My doctor was no more legitimate than my Chloe bag. Conned again.

I considered my options.  My first instinct was to fling myself off the table,  emphatically stating that there will be no electrocution of Meghan today!  Only... there were needles on my head, neck, hands, feet, arms, and chest.  The needles were attached to electric wires.  The electric wires were connected to what I could only hope was a safe-for-humans voltage box.  And the voltage box was controlled by Dr. Qu, who was currently miming the word electricity in a very theatrical way.  

Obviously, jumping off the table in a righteous fury would be challenging.  Righteous fury is often lost in translation, I don't know the word for electrocution, and most importantly, I had dozens of tiny needles piercing my skin.  

My Dr. Kevorkian/Qu smiled benevolently down at me, and I was filled with a sense of foreboding.  But the idea of plucking each needle out of my skin while trying to convey my horror seemed dismally time consuming, and I made the executive decision to just let this happen.  After all, the worst that worst that could happen: my brain frizzles. 

I passively watched as Dr. Qu turned the dial on the voltage box.  The needles started jumping around in my head while Dr. Qu interrogated me as to my favorite type of Chinese food and how I could possibly prefer Greek food to Chinese food.  

"Greece is so small!  How could you like their food more?  So strange!" he marveled.  When I noted that actually, this (meaning the electric needles) was more strange than my food preference, he and the other patients and nurses in the ward all laughed at me. 

Beijing at night

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the Joint Conference on the "Harmonious Human Machine Environment"

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"Tsinghua university. Chinglish or a freudian slip?"

But the question remains, are they saying that humans are machines? or is this a conference about the harmonious co-existance of humans and machines? Hopefully the former, because if it is a later, that is an entirely new set of disturbing questions.

Out and about in beijing

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"The daily crowd waiting for the grocery store to open"