01/18/24 - What the fuck is Korea doing feeding alfalfa to students?
“Asking for help on behalf of my relative. They’re from a normal family and their daughter wants to learn equestrianism. What should they do?
They live in a house that was assigned by their workplace years ago. Although they don’t have high income, at least it’s stable. They only have one daughter, plus they’re not under a ton of financial pressure, so they really put a lot of investment in their daughter. They buy her the newest fashion every season, take her travelling every summer and winter break, and signed her up for any dance or instrument lessons she showed interest in.
As she grew up, she really turned into quite a beauty thanks to her parents’ investment, super confident and poised.
But she didn’t get a good grade in her high school entrance exam. In order for her to have a good schooling environment, her parents pulled every connection and spent a small fortune to put her in a decent private high school in their city.
They didn’t expect that after she got in, not only did her grades not improve, but she started demanding more and more on materialism.
She started complaining about how their house was small and old, so they rented a brand new apartment in the CBD. She started demanding that they travel overseas, so they took her to Russia.
But just recently, she said she wanted to learn horseback archery, like real professional stuff. They really couldn’t afford to satisfy this demand.
I’m posting this with my relatives’ permission. As a normal family living in a small town, making a little over 10K a month, they can’t afford to sign her up for horseback riding. They want some advice from the internet—something that doesn’t involve violence or abuse.”
Comments say, “If they didn’t have money, they shouldn’t have put her in private school, especially not when her morality isn’t done fully forming. You can’t really blame the kid here.”
“Just communicate honestly, tell her that you’re not the ideal rich parents that she wanted, just like she’s not a genius like you wanted. Everyone’s just an average normal person, so no one has a right to look down on each other.”
“Will it kill you to just say, “I’m poor”?”
Lately, some guy pulled the chair out from under a girl just as she was sitting down while in school, and the girl ended up breaking a bone in her fall. She’s exposed the whole event on the internet, because the guy is refusing to pay damages, and all of her family thinks she should just drop it. The case has gained a lot of attention and the controversy has resulted in her withdrawing from her school.
A blogger writes in response, “I honestly predicted this ending, because she was just making way too much trouble for everyone. There was no way she could stay at school. No one would be willing to hang out with her after all this has went down.
Her parents are so mad at her that they’re cutting her off. I’m sure they know more details of what happened, and they couldn’t persuade her to calm down either, so they just had to let her flip out everywhere. At least her parents know what’s up and when to back down.
Sure, she got the money she wanted, but think about how much pressure she put on her school calling the police and posting on the internet. This was such a small case, and now look how much it’s blown up.
I’m sure it’s just a prank gone wrong for the guy. He didn’t think it could be that serious. Of course the first negotiation for damages wasn’t going to go well—I’m sure he thinks he didn’t do anything wrong. The school was already involved in facilitating the negotiation. And yet you still insist on getting the police and media involved?
Even your parents are trying to talk you down based on their plentiful life experience, why would you not listen to them? Sure, you might have won, but the end result is that you’ll end up isolated and abandoned by everyone.
And now she has to withdraw from school. How are you going to face your parents and family now?
Sometimes, you need to learn how to back down and let go, don’t be too headstrong. Girls can’t be too assertive. They need to leave themselves a way out.”
Comments say, “Lol. Refusing to pay when there’s broken bones involved, only relenting once it’s blown up. What you lost might be your life, but he’s lost his reputation! He said he didn’t mean it. It’s her fault that she’s so weak as to break a bone because she fell on the floor! Fine, fine, fine, I guess this is a man’s world. Her parents, her school, even the police are just sucking her blood. If only she’d back down, everyone would celebrate. But she never did anything wrong.”
“Why is everyone accusing her? She’s the victim here. What did she do wrong?”
“Girls can’t be too assertive? What, we just let any kind of retard be an influencer now?”
“I’ve seen a lot of tiktok videos about interviews with dating platforms, where people claim that rich girls don’t want bride price.
Nah, that’s entirely horseshit. If they’re actually super wealthy, then if you want to marry them, you have to gift them a house, minimum. That is, buy a house only under her name, or pay a house off in full and transfer it under her name.
Not add her name to your house. Buy her her own house, under her own name, and sign a contract saying that it’s a gift given of your free will.
At a minimum, you’ve got to buy her a Porsche or other 600-700K car.
And you have to give her expensive jewellery and watches for the wedding, plus another six or seven figures in red pockets to her relatives.
And another round of red pockets when she has a kid.
It’s very expensive to marry a rich girl.
The 188K you pay in bride price to a rural girl is probably just a single item in her jewellery box.
Only girls from middle class salaryman families don’t ask for any bride price and bring a ton of dowry.”
Comments say, “And their dowry is a mansion and another Porsche?”
“Why is the comment section so obsessed about dowries?”
“I just want to say, bride price is absolutely necessary. Most men are getting married in order to have kids. If they didn’t get married, it would cost six figures to get a surrogate anyways. Getting to marry a woman for just five figures of bride price, where she has kids with you for free and cleans your house for free is an amazing deal for men.”
“Here’s a screenshot from a video I’m watching about Korean university cafeterias. I can’t believe they actually have alfalfa. Raw alfalfa! They just washed it, cut it up, and served it!
This stuff is literal pig feed! I’m not joking! I’ve organised people to plant alfalfa before when I was working to end poverty in China. This is literally what you feed to pigs and sheep.
What the fuck is Korea doing feeding alfalfa to students? I mean, China eats alfalfa sometimes too, as a part of a dish, but it’s always cooked, or at least blanched, right? Raw alfalfa is only for pigs.”
Comments say, “When Zhang Qian did his journey to the west, he brought back alfalfa as horse feed, and now people are eating that shit? I mean, I guess it makes sense for Korea. They can’t even afford watermelons. I’m sure veggies are even more expensive in winter.”
“On the one hand, at least it’s not kimchi. On the other hand, maybe kimchi is actually better. At least it’s human food.”
Under the hashtag #woman wants to remarry and son sues her in court using his dad’s will, a blogger writes, “Wow, what a brand new version of a chastity monument.
This is a bit of internet news. A woman wants to remarry, and her son brought out his dad’s will and sued his own mom, demanding that she give up her real estate. Her dad wrote in his will that she would inherit two pieces of real estate only if she never remarries.
But of course, the freedom of marriage is written into Chinese law. She’s widowed now and has every right to remarry again. It’s all up to her whether she remarries and with whom.
There might be restrictions on divorce in China’s laws, but there’s really no restrictions on marriages. So long as you’re not related to each other and no one’s underaged, you can marry anyone you want.
But this dead husband wants to use his will to limit her freedom to remarry, which is obviously against common societal values.
So obviously, no judge would uphold that part of the will.
But the saddest part of this case is that the son actually wanted to use the will to restrict his own mother from remarrying.
At first, I thought he sued because he wanted to divide the inheritance now, because if older people remarry, then a lot of disputes about inheritance could come up. If he wanted his share of his dad’s inheritance right now, that’s perfectly understandable.
First, you’d split his parents’ marital property, then take his dad’s portion of estate and divide it among his legal inheritors. Once his mom only has her own share of marital property and her portion of her husband’s estate under her name, then she can go get remarried. That way, there’s less confusion all around.
And if he’s really worried about the guy she’s marrying, he could have her write a will too, leaving all of her estate to him.
Of course, this is assuming that’s the last will she writes.
Honestly, old people remarrying is such a hassle. Both cases I dealt with lately have to do with old people remarrying.
I’m not even going to mention the family conflict that arises when two old people get together, like, “You spend my money on your grandchildren blah blah blah”, “Your kid was rude to me blah blah blah”, or “Do I have to pay for your kid’s wedding blah blah blah.”
After all, old people are old. The only reason they’re together is just to support each other in their final days, and one of them is bound to die before the other. And at that point, there’s not much likelihood that whoever is left alive can get along with their spouse’s kids peacefully.
And you really gotta be careful alienating your kids because of your marriage.
I’ve just dealt with an 80-something-year-old’s divorce case.
A woman insisted on remarrying when she was in her early sixties, and had a huge fight with her son and daughter over it. And just like the mother in the news, she said that she was going to go ahead with the marriage whether they liked it or not.
And in the end, of course she ended up divorcing.
Over twenty years after her second marriage, her current husband is paralysed in bed due to advanced age, and she constantly fights with him and eventually sues for divorce. She’s also well into her 80s at this point too.
But her children explicitly said that they wouldn’t accept her moving in with them.
Sure, the law might have mandated that they have an obligation to take care of her, but actually wanting to take care of her and doing their legal minimum is very different.
The old person might have been willing to throw everything away for love once, but when you want to return, you might find out that you’ve lost your spot entirely.
That’s just reality.
All the cases I’ve handled lately have to do with old people remarrying and their second spouses dying, and getting kicked out by their spouse’s children, and their own children not wanting to take them either.
So basically, while you’re free to remarry, you really got to be careful doing it.”
Comments say, “His dad left the will that his wife gets two floors of a building and she can date around as much as she wants. And his son gets two floors provided he takes care of his mother. The whole entire purpose was to bind them together through real estate, because he was worried that no one would take care of his son if his wife remarried, and he’s worried no one will take care of his wife after he’s gone. And now she wants to take his real estate and marry some other man. Who could put up with that? Why else would he sue his mom in court? Lawyers need to remember their humanity.”
“I just remembered the famous case of the woman who was dismembered and flushed down the sewers. What can I say. There’s buildings being eminent domained all the time in Hangzhou. If her new husband has kids, just wait and see. She’s bound to get murdered sooner or later.”
“It’s up to her whether she remarries, and it’s up to the dad whether he leaves his property to her. And the dad’s very explicitly said that if she remarries, then all of his estate goes to his son. That’s all.”
“My first time feeling how different me and my SO are when it comes to spending money.
My parents are both civil servants. His family is in business.
I wanted to take my parents on a road trip for 20 days or so this upcoming break, so I told him that since I’ll be staying in the same room as my parents sat night, I might not be available for video-chatting. He got all confused and asked me, “Why not get your own room? You’re grown up. It’s inappropriate to stay in the same room as your parents, right?”
And I was like, “But if I get my own room, assuming it’s 300 RMB a night, we’d have to pay a whole 6000 extra!”
And he was like, so what? You’ll be more comfortable that way, though.
And I just thought to myself, but that’s a lot of money, you know. I don’t want to spend that much money for a little bit of privacy.
And he said that I was the only person he knew who goes travelling as an adult with their parents and shares the same room. I’m honestly wondering now if we’re just too different for each other or something.”
Comments say, “The fact that you’re still willing to go on a 20 day long trip with them at this age means you must be a super happy family together. How sweet.”
“Honestly, sometimes, saving money is just one aspect of it. Another is that it’s not safe for girls to sleep in their own hotel room. I’m sure you guys got a proper licensed hotel, but a lot of parents would still be worried. So, it’s not a bad idea to just share a room.”
“Why not get a suite? You can still hang out with your parents and talk, but not have to sleep in the same bed that way.”