zeerphling

Are you familiar with Tamriel Rebuilt? The team has been adding content to the mainland of Morrowind for 20 years. They're technically not finished, but there's plenty to do.

There's also Project: Tamriel with Skyrim: Home of the Nords and Province: Cyrodiil. There's not as much content as Tamriel Rebuilt, but all are being actively worked on.

Just to add a little more context to the public/private school divide in China.

1. Private schools are generally run separate from Gao Kao training in public schools. That is, a student in a private school is usually studying to go to a university outside China. There are some exceptions like the universities that have joint partnerships with Anglosphere universities, like Duke Kunshan, NYU Shanghai, and Xi'an Jiaotong Liverpool, that mainland students can enter with or without Gao Kao scores.

1a. There are also private schools that are inside public schools that give the students both a graduation certificate from a local public high school and a more international education in programs like the IB, A-levels (Cambridge, Oxford, Edexcel, etc.), AP, among other bespoke curriculums.

2. A student who does not complete the Gao Kao is not eligible to work for the government. There is some sort of stamp that the students get upon graduation from public schools that is needed for their civil service application. If you don't do the Gao Kao, you can't get the stamp.

2a. In order to be eligible for the Gao Kao, the student must have also passed the Zhong Kao (The public high school entrance exam)

3. While the tuition for university may seem like not much to a person used to the costs in the west, it can be burdensome to many locals in the PRC. Here's a few (articles in Chinese) examples of students losing all their tuition, sometimes leading to unfortunate results.

4. There are also schools that students without a local Hukou (household registration) can enter, but I'm not familiar with that side of education.

4a. A parent can get a new Hukou for their child by buying an apartment in a new city, and other options depending on the municipality.

4b. There is talk of some Hukou reforms in large east-coast cities, but we'll have to wait and see what exactly changes

If we are looking for a point-of-divergence within recorded history, there's probably not going to be a scientific reason humans wouldn't be using fossil fuels. That doesn't mean there couldn't be other, less-scientific reasons, like a complete reshaping of 19th century society, or an industrial revolution happening centuries earlier that is more dependent on hydro-power than coal.

While successful socialist revolutions are interesting (it's the main theme of my current writing project), a equally intriguing idea would be to start the industrial revolution in the first century CE. Where Hero of Alexandria^1^ was building rudimentary steam engines not long after the founding of the Roman ~~Principate~~ Empire, maybe he finds a semi-fictional patron^2^ that is looking for more practical applications for this steam engine, for example: farming, textiles, or papyrus production. Then, while using the predictable flow of the Nile for hydropower, industrialisation slowly mechanises the province and spreads from there.

Another fun companion idea would be to have this new industrialisation rise alongside and compete with early Christianity. As one of the main draws of the latter was its relatively good treatment of the poor^4^. But, they view the new technology as a further sign of the coming apocalypse. While the farmers and other labourers are just enjoying not having to work so hard for food and clothing, leaving them free for more creative endeavours. This could create some conflict for a story, in addition to the general anti-Roman-state viewpoint of the Christians^5^.

^1^ Here's a fun little write-up on a gaming website of all places.
^2^ This person could release the technology for the hydro-power engine for free, à la Tim Berners-Lee and the world wide web. Rather than waiting for people to procure machines and spread industrialisation through more creative methods^3^.
^3^ For more information on this topic see: Trade Secrets: Intellectual Piracy and the origins of American Industrial Power by Doron Ben-Atar
^4^ "... by the time ...[of] the late first or early second century organized poor relief was no doubt underway in parts of the Christian world, conducted by either local workers specifically designated for the activity, or by volunteers who heard the cry of the poor." from Yale
^5^ "The Christian movement was revolutionary not because it had the men and resources to mount a war against the laws of the Roman Empire, but because it created a social group that promoted its own laws and its own patterns of behavior. ... Christianity had begun to look like a separate people or nation, but without its own land or traditions to legitimate its unusual customs."^6^ Wilkens, R. The Christians as the Romans saw them pg. 119
^6^ Furthermore, early Christians refused to participate in politics, religion, and to fight in the empire's wars.

I did have a fun conversation the other day about racism in the US with a student, but such topics really only come up in one-on-one discussions. And they don't have time for many of those throughout the year.

True, true. I shouldn't worry about most of them. Perhaps the students are genuinely inoculated against such stupidity.

Sure. A little background first, my students are relatively well-off and mostly did not succeed during their time in compulsory education. So, they decided to study outside the PRC, mostly because they had a small chance of making it into the better domestic universities.

Most students, at least at this school, go to either the UK or Australia. Though a few occasionally do go to Canada or the US. Of course, I don't feel comfortable actively dissuading the students from going (they get enough pressure from parents and other staff at the school), but sometimes I wonder if I should.

Anyway, looking at comments that infantalises an entire group of people just because they were born on a different piece of dirt, not to mention downright genocidal rhetoric, makes me think that students from the PRC isolating themselves from that sort of brain rot is a successful self-preservation technique.

Which, while answering the question of "why do Chinese students seem to only stick together." It feels like people who would comment in such a provocative way are just minutes from doing actual bodily harm to others.

But maybe I'm over thinking it and these folks have little or no chance of coming into contact with PRC citizens.

People like those in the comments are why I worry about my students from the PRC who want to study in the imperial core.

Just as an example there are 32 Graduate level programs taught in English at Tsinghua, and as far as I am aware most universities of a certain stature have programs taught in English (of varying quality) and will also have classes to teach the Chinese language to international students.

There are also USA and UK universities that have partnered with Chinese universities that offer many programs taught in English, like Xi'an Jiaotong Liverpool University and New York University: Shanghai.

It's surprisingly easy to get a teaching job in the PRC and stay for an extended period of time. And I've seen several job postings for CS teachers that are waiting to be filled (WeChat is extremely handy for a job search). From what I understand the pay and work hours are much better for teachers than they would be at a tech company.

Permanent residence is another matter. The good news is that it is becoming easier to get in some municipalities (basically Shanghai). We'll see how long it takes to expand to the rest of the country.