04/16/24 - Religion naturally wants to evangelise, and the goal of any government is to end religion.
Under the hashtag #China has 11 days of public holiday a year, a blogger writes, “I’ve looked it up, and American has 11 days of public holiday in a year. Britain has 10, Italy has 12, and France also has 11. That’s the amount of guaranteed paid leave you get.
So from the sheer number of days, China isn’t too bad off.
The reason Chinese people feel like they don’t get enough holidays comes from two sources:
Paid leave isn’t enforced in most private businesses, especially in small to mid-sized businesses. If Chinese workers all had 5-15 days of paid leave a year, then rest and consumption would get a lot better.
We’re still a long ways off from being able to protect worker’s rights. People do a lot of overtime, especially in small to mid-sized private businesses. People are burnt out already, most bosses are more exploitative than slave drivers. It’s especially bad in new industries like takeout or delivery drivers. They’re not even considered employees, but just private contractors, so don’t even think about rest or leave.
If we could actually enforced paid leave and labour rights, then Chinese people wouldn’t complain about not enough rest so much.”
Comments say, “Look at how much annual leave they get overseas. Europe and America starts at 30 days.”
“Lol, I can tell you didn’t edit this post at all. I know you say the key point is that paid leave isn’t enforced. Honestly, even proper weekends aren’t enforced, and there’s a lot of overtime, you’re right. But it seems like a lot of people in the comment section just read the beginning and immediately started accusing you of whitewashing and bringing up the points you already make in the latter half. I work in a mid-sized private business, and what can I say…at least workers in production want less leave and more overtime, because at least we get paid for overtime.”
“The amount of paid annual leave in each country: France, 30 days. Britain, 4 weeks. Germany, 24 days. Sweden, 25 days. Japan, 10 days. America, no federal regulations, specifics are decided by negotiation between unions and business owners, but most businesses offer paid annual leave between 8 to 20 days, based on time worked.”
“A real estate retailer in Wuhan got smashed up for selling units for too cheap. Homeowners got together and put a stop to their business.
It was some development around second ring. Started out selling for 23,000 RMB/sq m, fully finished, but nobody was buying, so they lowered the price to 18,000 RMB/sq m, unfinished.
But after making such a historical price cut, still nobody was buying, so now they’ve lowered it to 14,000/sq m plus a free parking spot. A bunch of homeowners who bought a unit at the highest price point couldn’t take it and smashed up the retail office.
You gotta accept that houses go up and down in price just like stocks do. A hot stock might double and triple in value just to plummet down again. You just gotta stay chill.”
Comments say, “I wonder if they get as mad if units rise in price [doge].”
“What goes around comes around. It works every time.”
“If they smash the place up, won’t they get arrested? Don’t they have to pay the damages?”
A video of footage from a nanny cam inside a home, where a man beats his wife. Half an hour later, his wife pours a pot of boiling water all over him in revenge. I’m almost certain youtube won’t let me post this sort of thing, but you can see the original video through the link [if you can open weibo links.]
Comments say, “Serves him right.”
“She was still way too hesitant about it, but still, good job, I guess. Next time, have better aim. You go, girl.”
“Nothing is as venomous as a woman’s heart.”
“Just saw this picture, and all of a sudden, I have nothing to say on the Israel-Palestine Conflict anymore.”
OP shows a screenshot that reads, “7th of October, Hamas attacks Israel, and the Israeli-Palestine conflict begins, shocking white liberals everywhere. Anti-Islam movements start up in most western nations. That’s something Hamas and their supporters never expected.
Muslims make 1.8 billion prayers every day wishing for the destruction of Israel.
15 million Jews have obtained 187 Nobel Prizes in scientific fields.
You figure out who’s actually changing humanity.”
Comments say, “So, because Japan was more scientifically developed than China back in the day, you have to support what they were doing in Nanjing?”
“If you have nothing to say, then say nothing. If you have something to say, then say it clearly. And by the way, can OP make a list of these 187 Nobel Prize winners and let me be properly impressed?”
“What an extraordinarily evil blogger, still trying to whitewash Israel.”
“Kids these days do too much useless homework. It’s not even useless—it’s actively harmful.
These homework are so boring that it completely destroys children’s interest in learning. From its detrimental effects on kids’ intelligence, it’s like the opposite of learning. It’s become some sort of anti-learning. I like to call it “homework violence”.
There’s three types of homework violence.
The first type is homework quantity.
This is a very typical Chinese homework for kids in first grade. Five new characters, plus their pinyin pronunciation, copied 20 times, in homework booklet A and B each. All in total, they have to write 200 pinyin, 200 characters, and then make three sentences. If the student made a mistake the day before, they have to copy the mistaken word thirty times. That is, if they screw up one of their characters, they have to copy 30 pinyin, 30 characters. If they made two mistakes, that’s 60 pinyin, 60 characters. And this is just for Chinese. Math and English assigns the same amount of homework. Just think about how long that’s going to take a kid to get through. And he’s only in first grade!
The second type is punitive homework.
I’ve seen a 8th grader’s Chinese quiz, with some mistakes on it. That day, his homework was to fix all of his mistakes, and copy each correct answer 20 times. For example, if he miswrote a character, he has to copy it 20 times. If he explained a idiom wrong, he has to copy the idiom 20 times. If a transcript [I have a hard time finding the correct word for this, but it’s the part of a Chinese exam where you write out a poem or a passage from a book from memory.] has two sentences with mistakes in it, or five misspellings, it’s considered completely wrong, and you have to copy the entire passage 20 times.
The amount of work between students with good grades and bad grades can be night and day. Clearly, the teacher’s intention is to have students learn that there are consequences to getting bad grades.
The third type is abusive feedback.
When my daughter was in middle school, she had an English teacher that would mark an entire quiz 0 points if there was a single mistake. She’s brought back zeros many times too. Maybe the teacher was trying to teach kids that if they don’t want to get nothing, then they have to strive for perfection, but isn’t this obsessive? It’s like some sort of evil exploitation. And she punishes students by making them copy out homework too.
Educator Sukhomlynsky said that, “It’s only when teachers and children have built a relationship of trust and good will that feedback and grades can become a stimulus that incentivises students to productively work their brain.”
Homework violence often shows some aspect of all three types, just like greed and selfishness and jealousy tends to go together. They’re not just painful for children right now, they destroy children’s interest in learning and their willpower. It makes them hold a negative attitude towards learning for the rest of their life. The “violent” aspect of these homework will even damage their sense of morality.
As teachers, we must first not create homework violence. And as parents, we have to steadfastly say no to homework violence.”
Comments say, “I misspelled three words on a middle school quiz, and the teacher made me kneel for an entire period.”
“I’ve discovered to my disappointment that most parenting group chats are in support of copying homework. I was the only one who was against this type of homework violence. I don’t even know what to say.”
“When can we actually hire people who are educated, thoughtful, loving, and with perspective as teachers? That’s when this phenomenon will actually get better.”
Lately, a girl in Baicheng Medical College in Jilin passed away while exercising [community colleges have mandatory exercise in the morning, usually running laps]. The day of the incident, she had complained to her friends and her advisor that she wasn’t feeling well and that she had a history of heart problems. Her advisor accused her of lying and forced her to participate in exercise anyways, and she had a sudden heart attack and passed away. The latest news is that on the evening of the 15th of April, her family says that they have reached a settlement with the school. And on the 16th of April, the walls of Baicheng Medical College has been lined with flowers and fish from netizens commemorating her.
Comments say, “Isn’t this a criminal case? How is there a settlement?”
“Isn’t the advisor guilty of murder? This is a criminal case!”
“Girls need to learn how to refuse people and fight back. You’ve got to say no to things that aren’t good for you, because if you die, you’ll get nothing but some money and a speedy burial, and everyone will forget about you quickly.”
Lately, a video of a woman praying to the Buddha at Mount Putuo, complaining that it already cost 240 RMB to get admitted to the temple, and now it costs another 6 RMB to make a prayer. This blogger reposts someone’s comment in response to this incident, “I’m a tour guide. I know very well about this “flower ticket” [money you pay to make a prayer]. The monks can’t stop relevant departments from commercialising everything either. They can’t afford to make enemies. They’re the ones who suffer all the scorn and pressure from society because of commercialisation, but they really don’t get to decide whether they sell tickets and for how much.
For example, in 2022, head monk Daoci at Mount Putuo went everywhere calling out to people, hoping to make Quanshan Temple free to visit. The departments in charge had stamped everything, and the policy almost went through. They even made an official announcement. But at the last second, the government went back on their decision, and put out an emergency notice to put a stop to it, and he had to give up. There was nothing he could do no matter how influential and well-known he was in the Buddhist world.
I don’t dare to say where the money eventually ended up, but the temple definitely didn’t get a cent.”
Comments say, “I mean, my personal opinion is that no matter where the money ended up, the believers paid it willingly, didn’t they? Rather than giving this money to the Buddha, it’s better off in the hands of the government, right? At least then, it could be put into building aircraft carriers. What can the Buddha do with money?”
“Temples charging admission is just like Zhu Yuanzhang [founding Emperor of Ming Dynasty] banning the construction of temples. It’s to prevent people from going to religious places. The reason monks don’t want to charge admission is to get more people to come. Religion naturally wants to evangelise, and the goal of any government is to end religion.”
“I went to Mount Mao once, and got forced by the Daoists there to spend several hundred for a blessing. I paid it directly to the Jurong Daoist Association.”
The reason a holiday doesn’t feel like a holiday in China is because you have to work on the weekend to make up for it. Never experienced this in any other country. I figure it’s because China hasn’t had a labour movement. Western countries had labour movements; employers can’t force you to work weekends unless that’s an explicit part of the work contract.