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Q: What would you do with your time machine?
Imagine there is a time machine, and very much like this question - what you do with it has to be China related. It can also only go back in time.
What would you do..honestly?
Knowing all that you know now, would you still have come to China, if so...would there be anything along the journey that you would have changed?
I would go to the UK and make sure they didn't hand back Hong Kong. British rule in Hong Kong today would be the best way of showing the Chinese people that their present and past rulers suck.
Maybe go back and kick Confucius in the nuts.
After some solid training in Mandarin and classical Chinese characters, I would go back to the middle of each dynasty, touring the country for 6 months each time.
Apart from the amazing tourism opportunity, I would try to answer a question that bother me a lot. Does the problems of modern China are mostly the consequence of 20th century (mis)adventures ? Or were those problems recurrent, since ages ?
When I read Lu Xun novels, the biography of General Stillwell,and various historical studies about early 20th century's China, it feels strangely modern, like if the problems are exactly the same, just in a different setting. But the topic is huge, so I just can't draw conclusions.
Rather than bashing Kong Zi with Scan, I would bash the latter scholars that turned literature and philosophy into some rigid scholarly dogma. And spend a night in a tavern with the author of The Journey to The West, he sounds like the best drinking buddy ever ^^
Scandinavian:
Maybe there is something more constructive to do with Kong Zi, I was merely looking for a world class photo op. Me and the great scholar right after a good ballbash.
go back to 1972 and blow up richard nixon's plane before he goes to china.
Scandinavian:
couldn't you just pee in his drinking water so he would have to stay home?
I'd go back to 11.15 this morning (five minutes before my son took a whopping great poop) and make myself scarce so my wife would have to change him. Honestly, it was like a cow had exploded in there.
'76 Sept. 09 .. see Uncle,, show pics of SHG (pudong), SZ, GZ,. ooops,, guess capitalism kinda fk'd over ur communism. along w/ pics of granny eating outta garbage bins due to this failed system which affords so little Social Welfare (perhaps partially excused due to severe over-population)... vain man who was actually just in it for himself. maybe, maybe, maybe cared about peasant some times in romantic moments but ultimately became vainglorious. if he only had had the common decency to back off and allow reforms,, just listen to and accept Liu, Deng, Zhou.
if I wake up dead tmrw. so be it.
I would come to China, go to ChinaMerchantsBank (Love Window) in Urumqi, and turn time machine off!
If you had asked this in a western context, I would have said I would go back and invent something before someone else, and make a lot of money from it. I am assuming paradoxes are not allowed in this thought experiment of course.
But in a Chinese context I can't think of any famous named inventor. I can't think of any famous Chinese person I would want to go back to have a chat with.... got me thinking now.....
Yeah, I would go back and have a chat with Bo X.
Kill Karl Marx.
DrMonkey:
With the number of workers that were daily abused by the wealthy ones back then, I'm pretty sure someone else would come up with the same ideas at roughly the same time.
Spiderboenz:
Time travel, so full of paradoxes (not sure of the plural for paradox) that it would probably be impractical to even attempt. Eliminate one historical figure, maybe the circumstances would create a different person fullfilling that role. And of course, in that timeline you wouldnt go back to change it, so then the original thing would have happened... It's an infinite loop. The idea was to stop the founding of communism.
Shining_brow:
But if you bump off Mao at the right time, then Zhou or others would quickly step in, and things would be quite different!
I would go back in time and blow up Mao...
JUST after he united China but JUST before he screwed it up with the "The Great Crap Leap Forward" and "The Cultural Revolution".
I think if China still had some sort of religion today they wouldn't be so messed up.
DrMonkey:
Yeah. A really slippery stair and a push in the back, Mao grabs a few hard-liner on the way, and they all hit the floor head first, woops... Zhou En Lai get the power, rationality prevails, 25 years are not wasted in shenanigans.
I would set my time machine to live forever!
In China!
if only related to china, than just go trough each other my days in China, some maybe skip, some repeat several times,
If completly anytime, than go back to mym mom, when ( when we do not listen to her and do not do what she asked from us )
she told us this : Shall I tell you this again in Chinese or what ? 
So, I may teach her something 
?
So, only going back in time - so you can't return to the present?? That'd suck!
However, if thus was the choice, and I was forced to, I supposed I'd have to take with me a good tablet with plenty of chemistry and engineering books... and take over the world 
:D:D
Spiderboenz:
Hope you can read fast, because unless you bring a generator with you...
Shining_brow:
Dude! I'm in a time machine!!! Pretty sure I'll have access to a power supply :p
I will put it on a static mode for its a good day, weather, fresh air, no work load and badminton in the evening on schedule. 
thefidu881:
You know how important O2 is....here in China specifically.
I would go back and stop a friend from getting deported so he'd still be here to hang out with me...
study breakthroughs in history, and keep chronological notes. Then, starting from the earliest inventors, get to know them and see if they have personalities that are favourable to an utopian future. I wouldn't expect them all to be saints, but i'd look for religious moderates just before the reformation, abolotionists just before the abolition of slavery, non-chauvinists before the advent of feminism, pacifists before wars, and so on. Progressively minded people, and inventors often are just that. If not, i'll snatch whatever breakthrough they were going to make away from them, to put it to better use. With the excesses gained, I can do some behind-the scenes scheming until I've gathered enough power to rival the clandestine empires of today's banking dynasties. And I'd be a force promoting humane, ethical behaviour. China wouldn't be populated with ignorant people, because my dynasty simply wouldn't allow the CCP to do it. Articles promoting shallow materialism, like this one, would never appear: http://www.echinacities.com/china-media/Chinas-Godfather-of-Sexology-Say...
lol... go back to when I was tagging Ms. Hotty.... I was dumb enuf to let her slip thru my fingers.... jeez, I'd like to hold her again today..
