It's pretty clear he meant Europe as the continent, which London is a part of.

It's very similar to "Europeans" broadly generalizing the US as one homogenous country, assuming everyone and everything in Chicago is the same as New York or Dallas.

Source: me, a brit, who has lived and worked in UK and US.

He’s a Chinese guy in the US. He thinks in terms of large monoliths. The nuance of 40 different cultures on a small continent might be lost on him.

That’s OK.

We all have some approximation of reality in our brains which is necessarily shaped by our life experiences.

There is something very irritating seeing someone dismiss someone else on the internet using condescending therapy speak 'Thats Ok', nevermind the fact that calling him out as some ignorant Chinese guy while China has hundreds of cultures and languages, as if a Chinese person couldn't comprehend... Europe.

The way to respect isn’t through shaming people into it. It’s through demonstration of value, in this case understanding of nuance.

Instead we get an application of external logic and values which can’t be used to properly reason about the entity they’re applied to.

There’s no need for frustration. We take the stoic approach here. It’s OK. You are a product of your environment. Everything you’ve ever experienced told you this is the way to act.

FWIW this comes across as very condescending to me too. Maybe try a different framing.

Interestingly, you’re demonstrating arrogance.

All you’re bringing to the discussion is “my feelings are hurt”. And you’re putting the onus to fix that on me.

You have the power to change your paradigm, but you refuse to. Others have to see things through your lens, you won’t have the flexibility to change yours for a moment.

Meanwhile I’ve started with a plausible explanation of why someone sees things differently.

From the get go, I had more willingness to understand than you did.

How’s that for a framing?

Good framing

Europe and China are quite different, historically and culturally. It would make sense that people from the two regions wouldn't know about each other. The world is full of detail. As someone who's lived in both the west and asia I'm still surprised by little differences I see every week.

Your statement here is pretty ironic.

China also has many different cultures, languages and so on for the over 1.4 billion people who live there. Why would the “nuance” of Europe be “lost” on a Chinese person?

China mostly has a single national identity, and provincial differences are way too nuanced to be mapped in the same way that country differences in Europe would be. It would be like trying to get Americans to understand that "Henan man" is a meme similar to the "Florida man" meme.

I thought it was Guangxi man...

No, guangxi isn’t even technically a province (another weirdness), but having been to guangxi a few times (Guilin, Liuzhou, and Nanning), I don’t think anyone thinks much of it beyond it’s beautiful karst and southern culture. Anyways, there is actually a wiki article on henan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Henan_sentiment

double ironically, your comment precisely answers your question

the two of you operate on different scale of unification - what you see as "many different cultures", chinese and americans see as "a single country". What they see as "Europe pulling in many directions" - you might see as independent national interests

perhaps the best way to recognize the attitude is to think what you feel about subsections of your country - while Scotland/England divide is common, it's rarer to hear in what Yorkshire differs from the Cornwall; and I bet not many people would guess what beef is there between french citizen from Normandy and from Nice

it is this kind of scale that allows China to build transmission lines through the whole country's diameter. It is that kind of scale that made americans scream at each other because of abortion high court decision - while said decision simply said "let states decide"

it's a lot of difference, and there's a lot of nuances "on both sides" - but simply of a different kind

> The nuance of 40 different cultures on a small continent might be lost on him.

I don’t know about the author in particular, but Americans are generally aware of the “nuanced” European history of near constant war between rival nations, states, factions, and religions.

I think they could do a better job communicating that, but I’m glad that Americans are educated and curious about other parts of the world.

His wife is Austrian though, I would have hoped that adds a bit to his perspective.

He's a Canadian in America writing about China. He writes about bloc strategic competition. EU+UK is treated as bloc in this context, individual European countries are generally irrelevant alone.

Since I’ve lived in the UK before, I will say that yes it is not the same as continental Europe, but culturally, socially, and economically it is deeply tied into Europe, is European. One could say the same thing about Ireland—except the majority of Ireland is in the EU. Does Europe stop at the border of Northern Ireland?

Northern Ireland is quite different to Great Britain, moreso than the difference between England, Wales and Scotland.

So you’re saying Northerm Ireland is less European than than Great Britain, whereas the Republic of Ireland is more because they’re in the EU?

> Never mind that (despite my personal wishes) we're not even part of the EU (which I assume is what he means by "Europe").

Nah, Americans aren’t particularly interested in which Europeans are offended by being identified as “Europeans” this week. If we say “Europe” without qualification we’re probably just talking about the continent. (And no, we don’t even use the word “continent” as a distinction within Europe, except when referring to hotel breakfasts.)

Americans don’t really have much of a concept of what European identity is, and we don’t really care (other than being grateful for a few decades of relative peace after 1,000 or so years of near constant war).

> Americans don’t really have much of a concept of what European identity is, and we don’t really care

Cool. Look, I made that comment with a lot of fondness, but if this is the case, maybe leave the European analysis to someone else..

It was really poorly written in hindsight. I didn't mean for it to come across as bitter/accusatory as it does and you don't deserve to read people talking random jabs at you when browsing HN comments, I'm sorry

He’s writing about China and US. Sure, you can call Europe more diverse, but still it makes sense to draw some generalizations, and I don’t think he’s far from the mark (having myself lived in EU, UK and US).

Just like San Francisco and Dallas/Texas (from his article) are very different in the US, we should expect lot of differences in Europe (as others mentioned, he clubs UK with EU). Housing is a general problem for all major cities though, not sure why you think it is unique to London in the whole continent. Stockholm, Paris, Dublin, Lisbon to name a few, are pretty bad for housing in their own unique ways. Certainly shouldn't be "breaking your brain".

> Just like San Francisco and Dallas/Texas (from his article) are very different in the US, we should expect lot of differences in Europe

Dallas and San Francisco are both English speaking cities with a shared recent history of being part of the same nation. Most cities in Europe are as close as New York and Mexico City - Dallas and San Francisco is probably more analogous to Milan and Naples (different cultures, different histories, but now speak the same language and are part of the same nation).

I found it the right granularity. He talks about USA, China, and Europe: within each have considerable diversity in culture, history, and identity.

He mentions Europe without more nuance for the same reason he mentions China without more nuance: he’s talking big picture.

"Africa"