customs

Oh so that's why my Lenovo was held for "customs".

The author is wrong because she assumes social customs are immutable.

It started with drug war, when British cannons forced the Chinese customs to open the doors to opium boats.

Any exposure to disease, customs, or technology without their explicit choice will kill them.

He was overseas at the time so if he had happened to get detained in customs while reentering the US and had his browser cache searched he'd be in some serious shit.

I predict the world will evolve techniques and customs to protect against this sort of thing, and look back on our era with pity and horror because we didn't have them.

It's surreal thinking about how TSA and customs will put away recreational drug users for life but the bank that funds the largest drug cartels operates out in the open.

> He eventually realized something that seems obvious to any nonacademic, that poor countries are saddled with laws and, crucially, customs that prevent new ideas from taking shape.

He even had badly packaged illegal drugs sent to me from overseas hoping customs would intercept it and bust me but somehow they arrived safely and for weeks I wondered how I ended up with a bunch of drugs in the mail.

I agree with his point that you'll never be really truly Chinese in China, but foreigners also get all kinds of additional respect and benefits for being foreign, along with a tacit okay to break certain customs and decorums because you don't know better.