05/08/24 - You might be gold, but Beijing is covered in gold.
“Speaking of romantic relationships, one incident left a very deep impression on me. It was a teacher using his own personal experience to explain to us why we need to strictly ban sex work, so we can maintain conservative marriage values. He was born in the 60s, and stayed and taught at the university that he graduated from. Resources weren’t nearly as plentiful back in those days, so he married very early on and his wife had a horrible temper. He always put up with it, though, and in other people’s eyes, he’s always been a model husband.
Then everything changed. He even left his government job and got into entrepreneurship, and all of it was because he became friends with the wrong kind of guy, and his friend took him out whoring.
The logic is pretty simple. In the beginning, because sex was exclusive for him, he could only go to his wife to resolve his biological needs, so he put up with everything from his wife. Then, he learned to exchange money for sex, and he lost all patience in his wife. Most women are very sensitive to changes like these, and quickly discovered where the problem laid. And because of these morality issues, he quit his job teaching, got divorced, and started his own business.
He asked a question that really shook us: If Chinese men can easily obtain sex outside of marriage, would they still be loyal to their family, invest in their family, and work hard for the next generation?
He himself was a great example. Once he had money, once he started thinking about how best to run a society from the point of view of a manager, his answer was very certain.
Not only do men need to be conservative, women need to be conservative too, because most Chinese men only seek women for sex.
If you apply this logic to the Fat Cat/Tan Zhu case, you can conclude that Fat Cat was a man severely lacking in experience, whereas Tan Zhu had quite a bit of experience. In these kinds of cases, it’s always the less experienced party who’s screwed over. Right now, the challenge is that societal as a whole is still very conservative, but people are very open with their behaviour in reality, so we keep seeing cases where conservative people get screwed. Because you can’t guarantee that conservative people will always meet conservative people.
And everyone puts on a mask of being conservative and loyal.”
Comments say, “I used to be adamantly against legalising sex work before, but after the Fat Cat case, I felt like it’s necessary to legalise sex work.”
“So, forget patriotism, purity, responsibility, duty, sacrifice, and everything. It’s all for the same of tying men, the more capable labour source, and making his body and money serve someone else, whether it’s the government or women or kids. Our morality has always only protected women.”
“This case also highlights that it’s not sex that’s valuable, it’s monopolies. Once sex stops being a necessity, all the rules will crumble over night, just like the real estate market.”
“Just saw Etsuna [Japanese influencer] say that people with depression in Japan can retire early at 30-years-old, and get 60K yen every month from the government. It’s not a whole lot of money, but if you live with your family, you don’t have a lot of expenses anyways. If you have depression, you can get a disability license, and it makes going to the art gallery free, and buses half off, etc, etc. So she can live a normal life, never worry about work, and just spend all her free time drinking coffee, enjoying sunshine, visiting galleries, shopping at vintage stores, doing her nails, etc, etc. It looks so chill.”
Comments say, “60K yen is like 2786.1 RMB. That’s quite a lot of money. T_T”
“Who stole my Japanese nationality?”
“It’s my dream life.”
“How come all the houses now have huge living rooms and tiny bedrooms? What are these interior designers thinking? All the rooms are irregular shapes too. Does anyone actually like these designs?”
Comments say, “I’ve noticed this even as a renter. In older developments, bedrooms are really roomy. You can even do yoga in them. But in newer developments, a bed and a bay window takes up 80% of the room.”
“Because all the interior designers now are 50-year-old boomers who love hanging out in the living room surrounded by grandchildren, so they think their customers love big living rooms too. This is what my designer said once I pressed the issue enough. I guess I get it, since out customer is around that age too. And there’s a ton of 50, 60-year-olds buying a house for their kids who are looking for this type.”
“Because shared space is bigger now. Before, you can buy a 120 square meter house and get 105 square meters. Now, you get less than 90. They have to shrink the bedrooms to make the living room look not so cramped.”
“I’ve been wracking my brain about this question too. All the recent houses, whether it’s newly built or remodelled, have this problem. The main bedroom is a little over 10 square metres. Once you open up the closet, you can barely squeeze past your bed. Some don’t even have enough room for a vanity. All the extra space goes into the living room. It’s so imbalanced. And it’s the same everywhere.”
“And kitchens. An 8 square metre kitchen in a 200 square metres house. Do they assume only one person is gonna cook at a time?”
“A lot of men are hounding after this Fat Cat case and the bride price topic because they want to tie up the concepts of investing material resources into a romantic relationship and morality. They’re attacking girls who seek material resources in a relationship. If you ask for anything at all, you’re a gold digger. If you want to spend any money in your relationship, you’re a schemer.
The more someone separates romance and money, the more that person will never truly invest themselves in a relationship. Because he assumes that money is above all of his emotions. Even if he says he loves you today, if you bring up money at all, he can instantly abandon you. And then this kind of man tries to tell me that only relationships that don’t involve money at all is true love. Isn’t that funny?
If a man says that gender equality has to be built on a foundation of material wealth, then that man is definitely a lowlife.
You can read up on the laws in developed countries, and you can see that in most cases, the law explicitly makes it clear that women should get some amount of material protection in a marriage. The man especially needs to give economic support if they have a child together.
This is because gender differences means that men and women devote different amounts into a marriage. So a lot of men just casually accept women’s sacrifice, like giving up on their career in order to get pregnant, taking care of the family, doing his logistics, and they still want to hold women’s morality hostage and tell them they can’t want money.
That’s, “I want to enjoy your services, but I also want economic equality with you.” That’s scheming to drain you of every drop of blood.
And all the men talking about waking up and looking at the world, talking about how much they empathise with Fat Cat, have they actually spent money on women? Maybe in their eyes, even asking for some fruit yogurt makes you a gold digger.
What I want to say more is, men who think this way, I don’t think you’re wrong. You should take these values and go seek your true love. Go find the girl who doesn’t mind that you have nothing, and is willing to sacrifice everything for you.
I believe that one day, when you finally break through all your illusions about love, you’ll have lost all of your choices too.”
Comments say, “Gold diggers back in the day: getting luxury bags for hundreds of thousands. Gold diggers after that: want hamburgers and boba tea. Gold diggers now: express their opinion.”
“They’re all just whoremongers. They don’t wanna spend money on their girlfriend, but they’ll spend it on a prostitute.”
“Anyone who attacks gold diggers nonstop, whether male or female, does it because they’re poor. They’re all looking to get economic resources out of their partners.”
“This is the last post I’ll make about Fat Cat. It’s a response to all my readers too.
Going back over the last 7 hours of Fat Cat’s life. He finds out that Tan Zhu wants a breakup, and sends her many, many long texts trying to win her back (based on Tan Zhu’s deleted open post explaining the event). He makes a final bet, transferring 6.6666 RMB to Tan Zhu. A couple hours later, he orders flowers from Tan Zhu’s store, 780 RMB, with a note attached that it doesn’t need to be delivered.
It’s two actions obviously seeking reconciliation with Tan Zhu. Based on what we know, Tan Zhu did not response.
Then late at night, Fat Cat contributes over 15K in gifts in his younger sister’s livestream. This abnormal behaviour is probably a cry for help.
He’s obviously someone who can’t open up to others about his problems, and needs someone to proactively ask him. Before he leapt from the bridge, he called his sister over wechat, and she was asleep and missed it.
Fat Cat jumped off a bridge at 4-5AM. Based on other depression patient’s experience, early morning hours is the worst time for many of them. A lot of suicides happen in this time period. Maybe it has to do with hormones, or light? Or magnetic fields?
Based on Ancient Chinese superstitions, it’s because around this time, yin energy rises to a peak in the human body. The three torches of fire on your shoulders and head are at their lowest. This is the easiest time to get possessed by ghosts. Once the sun rises and the sky lightens, your mood changes a lot.
At that time, he couldn’t find any help, couldn’t find anyone to talk with. He was filled with despair. I’m sure he felt wronged and couldn’t put it in words. He never build up any kind of mechanism for how to vent his emotions. In the end, all of his anger and sadness became arrows through his heart. He could only attack himself. If someone was there to talk him through it, he might’ve just gotten over it. But nobody cared and nobody responded.
Maybe around that time, there wasn’t even anyone around on his game servers.
And he happened to be on a bridge. So he threw himself off of it.
Most people who attempt suicide eventually come to regret it if they’re stopped in time. And the worst thing is, suicide can’t get you revenge. The only people who’ll be hurt are those who raised you. And a lot of parents just take their compensation and go back to their normal lives.
Sometimes, the only person who loves you in this world is yourself.”
Comments say, “I saw a really good summary on Zhihu before. Most men in China don’t want sex, but love. Most women don’t want love, but sex. It’s the opposite of what most people think.”
“Chinese men are too shamed to talk to other people about their relationship problems.”
“Only people who’ve been through the same darkness can understand his despair. I’ve tried scrolling through my contacts list over and over again at 3-4AM, not knowing who to talk to. Thankfully, somebody did respond to me in that helpless moment.”
A post by a former tiktok employee, “Got laid off, and went back to my hometown to farm with my 2.6 million in savings. I get 4961.21 RMB in interest every month, plenty for me to live on.”
Comments say, “Why do young people want to go back to farming every time they get upset? Because your rice isn’t going to call you at midnight and tell you it wants to grow dragonfruits tomorrow.”
“Is he gonna have kids? Is he gonna take care of his parents? Is he ever gonna get sick? How is this enough money?”
“I’m still hoping my village will split me a piece of land so I can go back and farm it.”
“What the hell was his job? How did he get 2.6 million in savings?”
A compilation of how stifling it is to be “talented”:
“I never understood this problem, until I read the line, “All the people who worked their ass off to ascent to heaven just because one of the hundred thousand soldiers fighting Sun Wukong.” That struck me right in the soul.”
“A classmate of mine got into Qinghua University by getting the top score in his state, only to find out that he was the only person in his dorm to get in through taking the college entrance exam.”
“Remember, all the mooks that faker [professional e-sports player] takes out are genius mids in their own right.”
“You might be gold, but Beijing is covered in gold.”
“I only studied for 3 months in high school and got into a music school. Everyone else had been studying since childhood, or at least for several years, and only squeaked by. I really thought I was a truly talented singer, until I found out my classmate was Shan Yichun [singer who got famous through the Voice for always effortlessly defeating all competition].”
“I saw a comment once that said he were really good at ping pong as a kid. His family sent him to the state capital to learn ping pong. But no matter how hard he tried, he could not win against this fatty in the same class as him, so he threw a tantrum and swore he’d never play again. Later, he found out that fatty was called Fan Shengdong.”
“I recall a saying, “In badminton, if you have maximum talent, and you work your ass off, then you can jump through all the hoops and defeat all the competition until you meet Lin Dan in the championship match, and become another number on his score sheet.”
“Back in the day, RNG [professional e-sports team] held a youth training camp. Anyone with a platinum ranking or above could apply. A ton of gamer addicts felt like they were a genius and applied, and all quit gaming within a week.”
“Even if you’re number one in your province, we can still mass produce 34 a year.”
“At least nobody can compete with me on dumbness.”