01/12/24 - We haven’t been paid in 3 months, and the teachers are still working anyways.
So, a day after I did my Weekly Roundup, more Big News has come out of China, and I figured I’d write about it while it’s fresh on my mind, instead of waiting another 14 days to cover it in the next Roundup.
So lately, the local government in a county in Guizhou has eminent domain’d a graveyard belonging to a village full of Miao ethnic minorities. People were already upset about having to dig up the ashes of their family members, when the government announced that they weren’t allowed to keep their urns temporarily at home while they figure something out. The urns had to be interned at a government-designated graveyard, for a five-figure fee. This is a very poor rural village, so obviously, people didn’t have that kind of money.
So the government decided to send armed police and SWAT to barge into people’s houses and take the ashes of their loved ones by force. It is…hard to explain just how sacrilegious this is in Chinese culture, but if you’re Christian, imagine if the government broke into your church and took your pastor hostage for ransom. But, like, if you’re also related to your pastor or something.
Understandably furious, the villagers fought back and actually won, capturing what looks like hundreds of police and taking their equipment away and smashing up their cars. The villagers eventually let the cops go, filming their shameful retreat the whole way and cursing at them, but kept all the equipment they won.
I’ve seen some speculation about whether or not there would be any aftermath for these villagers, and the majority opinion seems to be that to send in any more of a force, the local government would have to apply for permissions from someone else. And then this whole incident would blow up. Right now, they’ve kept it hushed up enough that there’s no news about this on the Chinese internet at all, and it’s only circulating outside of the firewall. If it got big inside the firewall, then a) people would realise just how poor the government is getting and lose even more faith in the economy, b) everyone would be on the villagers’ side because the dead are so sacrosanct in Chinese culture, and c) people would realise that it’s possible to fight the government and win and defend your rights.
And any of this happening would be hugely problematic, so most likely, the local government’s going to come out with some kind of statement of like, “Oh no, it was all a misunderstanding! This was all because of that one corrupt guy, Greg. Yeah, we all hate you, Greg.” And keep it hushed up.
“Got home after work at night, and found a peeled, oxidising persimmon on the table, and I understood right away. Saturday is the day my brother comes home from his school in the suburbs, so you’ve peeled a persimmon beforehand so he could eat it when he wanted to. I’ve asked before why you even bother to peel fruit for him. It’s not like he doesn’t have hands and can’t do it himself. You make excuses for yourself and say it’s because you want to eat it. Do you think I don’t know you? You never cut the stem off when you peel persimmons for yourself because you can’t be bothered.
Today, I saw love in you. Shame it’s not directed at me. You often ask me why I don’t want to come home, don’t want to get married. What can I say? From an outsider’s point of view, I see you guys as a happy family of three, and I have no idea what family even means for myself. Now I understand what Emperor Yongzheng said to the Dowager Empress, that she’s never sung him lullabies before.
Some people say that growing up is reconciling with yourself, that the first child you love once you grow up is your childhood self. Today, I finally know what it means. When I met my kitten, I had no idea how it lived before it met me, whether it could find food to eat or have a place to sleep at night. I feel like I met my past self, and I’m doing everything I can to make it up to my missing childhood. Love is feeling like you haven’t done enough. I always feel like I haven’t done enough for my kitten, that it can’t eat the best cat food, or live in a bigger house, or have more toys. What about you? Do you ever feel like you owe me?”
Comments say, “I’ve always been a light sleeper, and a bit of a night owl. When I was little, I slept in the same bed as my sister. And I could always clearly feel that my mom kissed my sister. And I would be laying beside her, my eyes closed, waiting for my mom to sneak a kiss on me too. Until I finally realised, that day was never coming. Later on, when I fought with her, I’ve asked her, and she said, “How do you know I didn’t kiss you?” Because, mom, from the moment you opened the door, I was awake.”
“Parents never realise favouritism is the worst thing they can do. It’s just like what these stories show—even if the kid confronts them to their face, the parents still feel like their kid’s making a big deal out of nothing. They brush it away and keep doing waht they always do.”
“I know I can’t be perfectly fair, so I always planned to only have one kid, raise them well, educate them, and give them all of my love, and that’s enough.”
“I can’t even be perfectly fair to my two cats, so I’m sure it’s the same for moms.”
A tiktok video describes an incident where a train stewardess refused to let a mom keep her breast milk in the fridge on board the train, saying that, “Breast milk is a special food and has the possibility of contaminating other food in the fridge.”
Comments say, “Or maybe she just was worried that their fridge isn’t safe enough. What if your baby had the milk and something happened, and you want to sue? What if other passengers find breast milk in the fridge and want to sue? If you’re going out as a breastfeeding mom, you’ve got to make your own preparations and bring a bag of ice or something. They’ve got every right to refuse your demands. There’s no need to take their morality hostage. It’s just drawing haters to yourself. If there’s special circumstances, of course people will do their best to help you, but don’t think everyone owes it to you to bend over backwards for you.”
“As a healthcare worker, any bodily fluid is assumed to be a contaminant, even if it’s breastmilk. Nobody knows if you’ve got contagious diseases which might contaminate other stuff in the fridge meant for other customers. It’s a real issue.”
“Breast milk is something that’s pretty private. I’m sure you don’t see the problem for yourself, but for a stranger, it’s super uncomfortable to think that the snack they’re going to eat was right next to some other person’s breast milk.”
“What’s the most scandalous thing that’s happened at your workplace?
A female colleague working in HR has super average looks but a goddamn devilish body. If you took her proportions and made figurines out of them, it would sell like crazy. Her skin is super tender and smooth. Like, you wouldn’t notice at first glance, but she gets more attractive the longer you look at her.
I hear that when she first got there (10 years ago), she was already hooking up with her direct supervisor.
That supervisor had a terrible temper and was balding, still single at almost 40. At first, I had no idea why such a delicious cabbage would choose such a pig [common expression for how it feels for a man to date your daughter, to have painstakingly raised a cabbage just for the neighbour’s pig to eat it], and then I realised he’s honestly super nice to her, takes care of her at work, answers every demand in daily life.
I hear that the bright red Mazda 6 she drives was paid for in full by this supervisor.
They’ve been living together for a couple of years. The supervisor keeps pushing for marriage, and my colleague wouldn’t agree to it. Nor would she openly talk about the relationship. It’s always been a kinda shady, underground thing. If no one else brings it up, they act like nobody knows.
Then later on, the colleague said that the supervisor’s already successful, she doesn’t want to keep taking advantage of him, and she wants to find someone who she can struggle alongside with. And that’s how she broke up with her supervisor for a short while.
Within a year of the breakup, this colleague married and had kids with a civil servant guy she knew for only a couple of months. They live with her MIL and raise their kid together.
And before her kid even turned one, she went back to sleeping with her supervisor.
She’s always flirting with him at work, often doesn’t go home at night, and just tells her family that she’s on a business trip or something.
That’s when her family figured something was up, and started asking around at work, and of course, it caused a bloody storm.
Right now, she’s divorced, the kid went to her ex-husband. Since her supervisor was single to begin with, there wasn’t any kind of punishment on him. He even got a promotion.
The colleague saw how things turned out, and went back to being with her supervisor.
What I don’t get is, they could’ve just normally married and had kids together. Why would she go out of her way to find someone else to marry and have kids with? And then cheat after she was married, and do it so obviously that everyone knew? I just don’t get it.”
Comments say, “I don’t believe you on this devilish figure thing. Pics or it didn’t happen.”
“Maybe she wanted to have a good-looking baby.”
“Maybe she just wanted the thrill?”
Sha’anxi Teaching University’s subsidiary middle school has had their electricity cut off after falling behind on electricity bills. The school has sent out a notice for the kids to go home for the time being. School personnel says, “We haven’t been paid in 3 months, and the teachers are still working anyways. But we can’t even make food for the kids in the cafeteria anymore. There’s a lot going on, and there’s not much we can do about it.”
Comments say, “Aren’t we steadily improving? Aren’t we doing better than ever? Why are there problem like this?”
“If this is a private school, tuition should’ve covered everything. If it’s a public school, government funds should’ve covered it. What’s going on?”
“Three months without!? Why aren’t people appealing to the Department of Education? How are we only hearing about this now?”
“Wow, I’ve really the diversity of humanity today. I follow a foodie vlogger (who has totally made a ton of videos on all kinds of Chinese cuisine in the past), who just posted a video of eating a mushroom feast at some place in Hokkaido. He didn’t bring up any kind of politics the whole video, or even mention Japan much at all, only comments like, “Mushrooms are super tasty! It’s great to have a bowl of hot soup in the winter!” Like, super normal stuff. And yet, there are unidentified organisms in the comment section being all like:
Questioning why he didn’t go to Dongbei and instead went to Hokkaido.
Questioning whether Japan’s Tourism Board paid him to make this video to whitewash Japan.
Asking if his mushrooms are radioactive.
Asking him whether he’s checked out the local sex work industry.
Asking if he’s gay and if he’s a bottom. (He doesn’t act weird or dress oddly at all, and is a beardy, manly-looking guy. He’s just got kinda sweet and warm vibes, and talks and acts in a way that’s very polite and well-mannered, and pays attention to how he dresses.
It’s all so typical.”
Comments say, “Hahahaha that’s current nationalism culture for you.”
“It’s people pretending to be haters to smear China.”
“I’ve posted about sumo wrestling before, and all my comments were people furiously calling me a “Jap Quisling”. And I hesitated on whether I should let them know that this video is actually about sumo wrestling in Mongolia.”
7th of February, 2023, the world fell apart for Mrs. Luo. Her fifth grade son, her only child, Fu, fell off the roof top of Hanlin Experimental School. After many days of treatment at the hospital, Fu eventually passed away. Reporters learned that the day of the incident, Fu told his homeroom teacher that he intended to commit suicide, and after a talk, he still went ahead and jumped. Mrs. Luo believes that the school failed in their duties, since they never called Fu’s parents about his suicidal ideations, and never took to the school counsellor. So she sued them in court.
29th of December, 2023, Guangzhou’s People’s Court ruled that the school bore 40% of the responsibility and should pay Mrs. Luo 320,000 RMB. Mrs. Luo says that both parties have appealed to a higher court.
Comments say, “I’m sure his mom is the reason he did it.”
“My bro is a psychiatrist, and his youngest patient is a fifth grader. Most parents don’t care about their kids’ mental health at all. They just spoil the shit out of them, and think that little kids don’t know what stress is. But actually, tweens are just starting to form their world view, and these days, kids have really complicated and yet really naive mentalities. They actually consider what their place in the world is. This is progress, but it can also be problematic.”
“They’re teachers, not doctors.”
“The parents are 100% responsible.”