04/22/24 - My professor is well into his sixties, and he still responds instantly when I text him at 7AM or 2AM.
“In order to crack down on cross-border lewd chatting, extortion, internet fraud, and other criminal behaviour, our law enforcement offices has been working together with Laos police. We successfully destroyd three criminal dens in the Laos golden triangle, capturing 250 Chinese suspects. Currently, all related personnel and items of evidence has been successfully handed over to us through the Yunnan Xishuang Banna border post. This is yet another fruit of international law enforcement cooperation. We have dealt a severe blow to the arrogance of criminals.”
Comments say, “Good job, police!”
“Conmen are everywhere—everyone needs to be careful!”
“What a great country!”
A blogger reposts a cropped section of a news article, which reads, “As a result, very commonly, we see that teachers at famous universities in Zhejiang with their own doctorate degrees might not make as much money as the school janitor or security guard. They often make far less money than primary school teachers in Zhejiang.”
And shows an infographic comparing primary school teaching income and university teaching income:
[The top four columns are various primary schools around Zhejiang, the bottom four columns are various universities. The blue box is the amount of money you get in your bank account, the white box is how much you get in social security contributions and housing subsidies.]
The blogger writes, “Honestly, it’s not ridiculous to pay primary school teachers more than university teachers, since primary and middle school teachers have a damn hard job too.”
Comments say, “University teachers have a much harder job, it runs 8-12, 7 days a week. At worse, middle school teachers do 996 days. My professor is well into his sixties, and he still responds instantly when I text him at 7AM or 2AM.”
“The problem is the sunk cost of becoming a university teacher. You work your ass off for a PhD, and this is all you get?”
Question: “Would developed countries really teach international students their core technologies?”
Answer: “In the Qing Dynasty, westerns brought the electric fan into China.
“Dowager Empress, this is the electric fan the westerners presented us with.”
“What’s it for?”
“It can fan you automatically, without using people.”
“What, you don’t want to keep fanning me anymore?”
“It’s my greatest fortune to be able to serve you, Dowager Empress, but this is a gift from the westerners after all, and it is pretty interesting.”
“Let me try it out….why is this thing so loud?”
“Dowager Empress, it might be loud, but it doesn’t take any manpower. It can fan you nonstop 24 hours a day.”
“But without it, you guys fan me 24 hours a day anyways. And the servants used to my preferences knows just how much wind I like. It’s better to be fanned by people. What the hell is this thing called again?”
“It’s an electric fan, Dowager Empress.”
“Throw it into the warehouse. Don’t want to throw it out and have some westerner see it and think we don’t have any manners.””
Comments say, “Look how much technological developments we’ve made in the last 40 years. If we didn’t learn those technologies from somewhere, did you think we reinvented all of it by ourselves?”
“They would never.”
“They’ll teach it in their schools, but their core companies won’t hire Chinese people, like Airbus or Reinhardt or whatever.”
“Guilin’s University of Electronic Science and Technology kicked up a shitstorm lately. On the 18th of April, the school suddenly announced that it’s rearranging the dorm rooms of Chinese students, and plans to put them all into the older and more worn down dorm buildings, so they can leave the newer living spaces for international students. This sounds like a perfectly legitimate reason.
But as soon as people found out, it’s caused massive amounts of dissatisfaction and doubts from Chinese students. They feel like they’re being treated like second class citizens. How could they just get thrown into worse dorm rooms for no reason like this? And all the school will be giving them to make up for it is just 50 RMB per person. That might as well be small change to them. It doesn’t solve anything.
So students started voicing their complains and anger. They feel like this treatment is trampling on their pride. Are their rights and dignity only worth 50 RMB? They feel deeply disappointed in their school.
Honestly, this kind of thing would make anyone upset, wouldn’t it? As an educational institution, schools should care about every student’s rights and dignity, and not move people around randomly with such low reimbursement. I hope the school can listen to everyone’s voices and solve this problem quickly, so students can continue to study and live in a fair and just environment.”
Comments say, “A third rank race start educating you from your youth that you’re not as important as foreigners.”
“Does this university also assign its international students “study buddies”?” [A controversial case a couple of years ago when a university in Shandong was found to assign 3 study buddies to their international students, and only accepted pretty girls for the position.]
“Newborn population is plummeting. Daycares, primary schools, middle schools, and high schools are all going to rapidly close down in the future. Any university that can’t put its students first are gonna close their doors soon too.”
Question: “How do you feel about the line that “Parents are only being parents for the first time too”?”
Answer: “One day, my daughter was fighting with her dad and her dad said something very similar.
And my daughter went, “But I’ve given you over ten years to learn.””
Comments say, “You’ve never been a parent, but have you never been a child?”
“That’s why you’ve raised an animal like me. Makes sense, doesn’t it?”
“Sometimes it’s not a problem of being parents, it’s a problem of being human. And they’ve had decades of time to learn how to be a proper human.”
“We have a shitton of reality TV shows about MIL and DIL problems, but nobody ever talks about SIL and FIL problems, because they don’t need to divide housework. Whenever they get together, it’s just cracking some beers, watching some TV, and chilling. It’s hard for conflict to exist.”
Comments say, “No, conflicts still exists, but they don’t like to write about conflicts between men, because female scriptwriters don’t have too much experience in that regard. Also, men who hate each other would never live under the same roof.”
“I make more money and my work is super busy, so at the start, when my husband was at home more, he had a lot of conflicts with my mom. But I never had a problem with my MIL.”
“In parks, older women are all babysitting kids. Older men are all playing chess or poker. I’ve never seen a big group of older women playing poker, or a big group of older men watching kids.”
A tiktok video of the “edge of the earth”, a sheer cliff in Sichuan that goes straight down almost 1200 metres, and stretches for about 10 km long:
Comments say, “Wow! I want to kill myself here!”
“Majestic!”
“Can someone show me an unphotoshopped picture so I stop wanting to go so badly?”
“Why haven’t such a beautiful place been marketed before? What the hell are you doing, Sichuan Tourism Board? You gotta go out more and see if there are other hidden treasures in Sichuan!”
I put the teacher salaries in a spreadsheet, divided the bonus by 12 and convert it to GBP
Decent cash monies!
Salary Subsidies Bonus Total Total GBP
钱塘某小学 CN¥3,500 CN¥6,000 CN¥5,500 CN¥15,000 £1,662
余杭某小学 CN¥5,700 CN¥7,900 CN¥5,500 CN¥19,100 £2,116
萧山某小学 CN¥3,300 CN¥6,700 CN¥1,083 CN¥11,083 £1,228
临平某小学 CN¥6,000 CN¥7,800 CN¥3,333 CN¥17,133 £1,898
某杭州省属 CN¥5,300 CN¥2,900 CN¥2,333 CN¥10,533 £1,167
省属某理工 CN¥6,000 CN¥3,100 CN¥2,500 CN¥11,600 £1,285
省属某师范 CN¥6,200 CN¥3,100 CN¥1,083 CN¥10,383 £1,150
省属某财经 CN¥5,700 CN¥3,300 CN¥2,167 CN¥11,167 £1,237
I love this substack!