04/25/24 - He never went to the hospital once with her from the time she showed symptoms to when she got diagnosed.
[Long article took up today’s word count again, a story of a man who lost his wife to lung cancer. I know it seems like the typical “shitty husband being shitty in predictable and disappointing ways”, but this is really what weibo has been in an uproar about lately. There’s a lot of discussion on this. So I thought it wouldn’t be particularly representative if I skipped it and didn’t cover it at all.]
“Lately, this article, “My wife’s death” has been circulating in all kinds of group chats. I guess it’s spooked a lot of middle-aged people—a highly-educated, 37-year-old woman, in the prime of her life, passed away in just two short months from starting to feel unwell to dying of lung cancer.
I read the article twice, and although rationally, I empathise with OP’s grief at the loss of his wife, every time I re-read it, I felt a weird sense of uneasiness.
In the moderated comment section, there’s a comment, “As a woman, I’ve never been loved this much in my life by anyone. Your wife was happy in life. She didn’t have any regrets. You can move on now.”
When I saw this comment he allowed to show, I understood where my uneasiness came from.
It looked like an ode to his love for his wife, but it was full of selfishness and narcissism. The article efforts to praise the wife for her “sacrifice” and “hard work” and “suffering” sounded like the summary of a slave master for his slave.
The deceased life is documented by the still living, and they have no way to argue back. The husband can cry about how much he misses his wife in front of hundreds of millions of readers, if only it weren’t for Canada’s shitty doctors.
But while his wife was still alive, he never investigated why she suffered so much. He never went to the hospital once with her from the time she showed symptoms to when she got diagnosed. It never even occurred to him to help shoulder on a part of the tremendous stress his wife was under supporting their family of five.
The best comment on weibo was, “Chen Lang’s article talks endlessly of hate, but it’s coloured by love. “My Wife’s Death” talks endlessly of love, but it reads like an alibi statement.”
After his wife passed away, he wrote on and on for tens of thousands of words and thinks of himself as a romantic. He says his pen name is made up of his three children’s names, one character from each child. Does that sound familiar to you? The last time someone named themselves that way, it was that hairdresser in Hangzhou [an influencer who got famous through the death of his wife and children, only to have been found to have been engineering the whole thing for money.]
This wife has had such a painful, hard life. Based on the husband’s past articles and her Linked In, it’s not hard to piece together her short life.
“I have known my wife for almost 20 years. We’ve been married for 13. She met me, a man older than her by 10 years, when she was just entering university at 17, 18 years old.”
And at 24 years old, within a couple of years of graduating university, she married him.
She’s got good grades. “She got 9 points in IELTS, almost full marks in TOEFL,” studied overseas in America’s Tulane University’s business school and graduated with honours.
She had a decent amount of luck too. While most international students failed at the American work visa lottery, she managed to get her H1b and find work in America.
Since her husband worked for the government in China, she gave up on her precious H1B and work and went back to Shanghai to end their long-distance relationship.
From 26-years-old onwards, she started getting pregnant and having kids. In between studying, taking tests, and working, she had 3 kids in 7 years, two older daughters and one younger son. Anyone who’s had children knows how exhausting kids under 3 are. She spent the best parts of her life repeatedly getting pregnant, breastfeeding, and raising children.
At 32-years-old, she got pregnant with her third baby, but since her husband worked for the government and third children weren’t allowed yet at the time, for fear of losing his job, they decided to give birth to this baby in Canada on a tourist visa.
Now, the most amazing part came.
You don’t get any health insurance with a tourist visa, and self-paid labour and delivery costs in North America are sky high. Her husband documented the details of her labour in a different account of his. In order to save on money, she delivered her baby on her own in their communal rental while the landlord was visiting family in China.
After they had the baby, they decided to transfer from a tourist visa to a student visa and stay in Canada as a family.
Of course, she would be the one who supported the whole family. And she had to walk the same path she already took 7-8 years ago—taking her exams again, applying for university, studying, finding a job, putting bread on the table, getting everyone in her family citizenship.
She really was brilliant. She found a full-time job at a bank while she focused on her second Master’s Degree. To make extra money, they started up maths and English tutoring classes in their basement, and she spent 6 hours every weekend teaching students.
A lot of netizens have pointed out that North American basements often have problems with excessive radon, and harsh Canadian winters can last up to 6 months, where they would have very bad air flow. Could it possible the long hours she spent teaching lessons in the basement is a part of the reason for her cancer?
And as for her husband? He’s completely lost his ability to adapt as soon as he quit his job and came to Canada.
He was unemployed, couldn’t speak English, didn’t even have a driver’s license.
Living in North America, not being able to drive is like not having legs. You can’t get anything done without a car, whether it’s grocery shopping, taking kids to school, or running errands.
Putting bread on the table and taking care of a family of five became burdens that fell completely on the wife.
He loved talking about international politics on his social media accounts, debt imperialism blah blah blah, Korean War blah blah blah, America’s importance blah blah blah, why did Finland join the European Union…
Remember the obituary Chen Lang wrote for her husband a while back? A strange sort of call back formed between the living husband and the dead husband.
“Move? I remember when my kid was at home sick from covid. I was exhausted, and he was directing the world on the internet—governments, revolutions, modernity, what does it have to do with me? While he and his friends were talking about feminism, I was just scoffing to myself.”
It seems a common problem for men to have their eyes on the world, and yet completely lack any care for the people around them.
Some people say that you can’t even work livestock like this. His wife was ran to the ground.
Maybe that’s just angry venting, but it’s not completely baseless. Stress, exhaustion, depression, pregnancy could all be causes of cancer.
This wife spent every second of her short life being a good daughter, a good sister, a good student, a good wife, a good mother. All of these “goods” were also blades in her heart.
If you’re good at overcoming suffering, you’ll have endless suffering to overcome.
At 37-years-old, when she started feeling unwell, she took NSAIDs on her own. When she got worse, she took an Uber by herself to the hospital. And she never returned.
She already had end-stage lung cancer. In her last, most helpless days, she had to face t he abyss by herself. Her husband said, “So far, I have yet to visit her in the hospital. I can’t help it, someone needs to watch the three kids at home.” She could only text him over WeChat, “I’m scared.”
But her husband still remembers to mention several times in his article how strong and healthy she was. Shortly before she was diagnosed, she was still lifting heavy boxes by herself. She vaginally delivered all three children. She couldn’t have done that without a strong constitution.
In her last hours, he still had to wake his wife up to make her sign documents that would make him the executor of her estate. And he even remembered to praise that, “Although she scrawled everything, she still spelled everything right.”
“After the doctors left, about 6PM, two friends came over as witnesses and had my wife write a document assigning me as executor. The friend said that without this, the government would become executor and charge a large fee. I gently said in her ear, “Amin, wake up, for the children.” My wife got it right away and sat up and wrote a couple of lines in English. She fell back asleep right away, but although the lines were scrawled everywhere, she spelled everything correctly. For a briefly moment, I saw my brilliant wife with 9 points in IELTS and almost full marks in TOEFL again. The honours graduate from Tulane University.”
His praise was only ever focused on her “usefulness”, and he seems entirely unaware and used to this.”
[Screenshot of a comment] “I saw him say that he was willing to use 5 years of his life to trade for one year of his wife’s, but he won’t use 10, because he didn’t want to miss his kids going to school and dating and getting married. Like, my heart dropped, because don’t most people assume they’d be trading the last ten years of their life? He’s only in his 30s. Even if his life was shorter by 10 years, he won’t miss any of that. I just don’t know what to say. I feel bad for his wife. It feels like he’s just using her.”
Back to the donation problem. Sure, he’s got three kids to raise. And donating is a standard way you get community help. That’s all fair.
According to Winnipeg locals, right after his wife passed away, the local Chinese Association already did a fundraising event for him and raised about 50K CAD. The friends from his church also started a gofundme for him and raised 40,759 CAD.
So why do a lot of people call him a cyber-beggar?
Because half a year after his wife passed away, he’s came back to a Chinese audience and tried to get donations using her name yet again.
At the very end of the article is a QR code to send him money. He tells people that if the QR code got banned, then they can use weibo’s tipping function to give him money. If that’s still inconvenient, he doesn’t mind adding people on WeChat to receive money. He’s acting so…hungry.
His wife was so proud in life, so talented, but he exposed her last video for her children on his public social media. Such a prideful woman is now seen by all kinds of strangers at her weakest, most sickly, most undignified state. Was this the goodbye she wanted?
I put myself in her shoes and I couldn’t accept it. Anyone who respected their partner’s independent will wouldn’t have done this.
This woman spent 37 years like a tireless silkworm, like a burning candle. She finished her life as a sacrifice.”
I will introduce a simplified way to evaluate a man as a romantic partner.
It is about investment and commitment.
For this man...
Investment - He is unemployed and made her do all the work.
Commitment - He did not visit her at hospital, until forced (to save on inherence fees?)
It would be better if...
Investment - He worked in Canada and supported her in raising their children.
Commitment - Did something before being forced to.
What's the backstory of Chen Lang? The blogger seems to assume that the audience knows about this person.
Also, is it common for people in China to post public obituaries of their loved ones? (Honestly, I also don't know how common this is in the US or Europe, as Blog-adjacent, long format writing like on WeChat is not really supported that much by Instagram, Facebook or Twitter. I just feel I never came across an obituary that was not somehow about a semi famous person)