I live in China, and the only building I know that has more than six floors but no elevator is in Chongqing, because it has another walk-in entry in the middle. The vertical distance between the entry and the destination is still fewer than six floors.
Last year during the National Day holiday, I went on a road trip through southern Xinjiang. Kuqa (or Kucha) was one of my stops since it’s the starting point of the famous Duku Highway[0].
Before visiting the Kuqa Museum, I had no idea about the history of Buddhism and Islam in Xinjiang. The government also has a very “official” definition of that history, lol.
The landscapes were incredible, and I wrote a few blog posts about the trip (in Chinese)[1].
No. I think the appearance of life on Earth was the result of a long series of coincidences. If even a small part of that had been different, life wouldn’t have emerged.
I’ve come to believe in the Great Filter theory more and more in recent years.
I believe people are more inclined to trust what they actually see, so I’d suggest you go there and see for yourself. For me Xinjiang is much safer than Gaza.
If your parents aren't related, nor their parents, the 30th-generation(roughly 600–900 years depending on generation length) ancestor group size is 2^30, which is about 1.07 billion.