Geography is four-dimensional

I loved this insight from Derek Sivers:

Last year I went to China and loved it. So clean, polite, efficient, and all-around nice. A German friend said I’m crazy because “China is filthy, rude, noisy, and awful - with everyone spitting and pushing.” I asked when he was there, and he said 2002. Ah! But that place is long gone. It’s not like that anymore.

When someone speaks of a place, you have to ask, “When?” Geography is four-dimensional. You can’t know a place - only a place as it was at a time. Where is bound to when. Unless you are in a place right now, you can only speak of it in past-tense.