01/30/24 - The entirety of Ukraine, working its ass off in total war for over a year, cannot match up to even Evergrande as a single company.
A compilation of the employment situation of the latest batch of college grads:
“Graduated from Sichuan University of Art. I’m making rice balls at a rice ball restaurant now.”
“General surgeon, tattooing eyebrows now. At least I’ve never made any customers bleed.”
“Also graduated from art major, became a civil servant, and now I’m a maths teacher XD”
“Graduated with an English major, working as a janitor right now. I really love janitorial work though, even if I don’t even make 20K a month.”
“I’ve got a classmate who majored in calligraphy and now he engraves tombstones.”
“Art major, making cakes right now T_T”
“Majored in Chinese Language, and now I’m making milk tea.”
“Learned Industrial Planning. First year I graduated, I got an offer from a private company at 140K a year. My dad tricked me into going to a state-funded company instead, and after 7 years, I only make 80K a year right now.”
“I’ve got a friend who majored in art. She says that she’s got the highest income out of her graduating class, because she inherited her family’s fried skewers business.”
“Graduated from a top university, and now I do people’s nails every day, and I’m so happy~ This is so much better than back when I was a teacher. You really suffer a lot less wear and tear when you’re working a job you love.”
“Wait a minute, if you postgrads are making milk tea, then what the hell are we technical college grads supposed to do??”
“My aunt is a city librarian. She’s only got a middle school diploma and makes 6K a month. Right now, they only hire people with Master’s Degrees. My aunt is constantly telling me thank god she was born early.”
“Bachelor’s degree from a 985 university. Master’s Degree in England. Doctorate at a 211 university. Now I’m getting paid 4K a month working for the government.”
“985 university postgrad, oral surgeon, I want to quit my job to sell mala tang [like oden, but spicy]. I just really love cooking mala tang, and I invented a soup base that’s tasty as fuck. I feel like I might be the mother of future mala tangs.”
“Industrial planning, selling strawberries right now.”
“The taxi driver hanging out around my school’s gates is an alumni who majored in the same subject as me.”
“At least I got employed in my major’s field. I studied food safety, and now I’m baking cakes.”
“A little while back, I went downstairs to buy some milk tea, and the owner asked me if I was a college student, and then asked what major I picked. “I major in civil engineering.” “Me too.” And we stared at each other in silence.”
“My cousin graduated with an accounting degree from a 211 university, and now she scans incoming packages at her local supermarket.”
“Student in International Commerce, covered in cold sweat right now.”
“I’m female, technical college graduate, not pretty, not too smart, working in Shanghai. I was born in a tiny town in western China, my parents only have primary school diplomas and earn 2K in social security every month.
In Shanghai, there aren’t any man who would date me. People have introduced guys to me in my hometown before, who are more or less on the same tier as my family, and the only reason they want to marry me is to continue their family lineage and have me take care of his family.
But I don’t want to be together with someone I don’t love solely for the purpose of procreation. I’m still working hard, studying, trying for a Master’s Degree, creating a better life for myself, hoping to meet someone that I like.
If I succeed, that’s great. If I fail, then I don’t mind staying single for the rest of my life. I don’t want any children, because I don’t want to make another person suffer with me.
For someone who has nothing like me, marrying just means sticking two poor people together. Neither of us have anything, but now we have a pile of new responsibilities.
These are the reasons I don’t want to get married, just for your consideration.
Are you just being impulsive?
Answer: No. I can get paid 4K a month in Shanghai, and maybe I can find a husband who makes 5K a month, and as a family, we’ll have a monthly income of 9K a month. Take away rent, utilities, food, transportation, etc, at most, we’ll have 3K a month left over.
If I went back to my hometown, everything is cheaper, but my income will be less too. If I make 2K a month and my husband makes 3K a month, for a total of 5K, take away all the expenses and we’d only have 2K a month left at most.
Whether in Shanghai or my hometown, even if I was lucky enough to find the guy of my dreams, the result of our marriage is still that there’s no way we can afford to have kids (unless we raise them literally like livestock, but I refuse to do that). We’ll die from the pressure.
I’ve crunched the numbers countless times. I’ll omit all the maths for fear of getting too rambly right now.
2. You’ll regret it in the future.
Answer: Based on my income, if I marry and have children, I don’t have to wait for the future. I’ll regret it right now.
3. You’re being too calculating.
Answer: If you’re hovering on the line of survival, and you still stick your hand in the sand and refuse to count every cent and organise every thought, then you’re just creating suffering for both yourself and your next generation.
4. Isn’t love enough?
Answer: Love can’t generate light or heat or electricity or any money.”
Comments say, “It’s true, but I’m a pretty average girl too, and from my point of view, the economy’s bound to get better. Someone can’t be unlucky all the time. Difficulties are only temporary. So long as you choose someone who has integrity, then you’ve got hope for the future. You’ll make more money sooner or later. So the biggest problem is just choosing the right guy. But because I don’t have great conditions, I don’t have a lot to choose from, so it’s hard to find the right guy.”
“Why do you even need to find a man to marry anyways? Living by yourself is free and easy, especially if you’re not doing well to begin with. If you’re not even successful at work, why would you want to have kids with another man who’s also a failure at work, and live decades counting every cent, exhausted and burnt out? What’s the point?”
“Yeah, if you’re not doing well, then just don’t get married. When you’re single, you’ve got no responsibilities or restrictions. You’re free. You can spend your own money on whatever you want, play on your phone, and time passes in the blink of an eye.”
A tiktok video showing the Chinese version of Japanese natto, made with corn:
Comments say, “What the fuck is wrong with your brain.”
“Didn’t China invent natto to begin with anyways?”
“This reminds me of that one time I tried to make corn juice with white glutinous corn…”
A tiktok video displaying absolute top-tier knife skills with a liver. Blows my goddamn mind:
“I lived at Sanhe [large-scale work agency that kind of doubles as a homeless shelter near Shenzhen] for two years around 2018, 2019, and encountered all kinds of jobs. I’ve worked in probably 40-50 different fields myself. Based on my and my homeless brethren’s experiences, I’ve summed up some jobs you should never take, because not only will you not make any money, but it’ll ruin your life. A lot of homeless people end up homeless because they picked the wrong job. I’ll go through the jobs that I would rather starve to death before doing. This type of work will only waste your life, ruin your body, and leave you with nothing.
8. Sorting packages. 12 hours of back-breaking labour, with only 40 minutes to 1 hour for lunch. Whether you’re at Jingdong or Shunfeng or whatever [mail services], and whether you work on a daily basis or you’re a permanent employee, it’s all the same. The whole industry of sorting packages is very dark. The amount of work they make you do isn’t any less than a porter ont he docks in the old days. The night shift, especially, just drains the life out of you. There’s no skill required. If you don’t want to do it, plenty of people are waiting in line to replace you. Wages are low as shit too, usually just 200 RMB a day, no food covered. The amount of work you do and the amount of pay you get is completely disproportionate. If you’re really this healthy and strong, you’re better off working construction. It’s a lot more chill over there and they pay you a lot more. And if you’re not in top condition, definitely don’t work here. After a single day of work, you’ll need to lay in bed for three days to recover.
7. Subway Security. Super long hours. In some cities, a single shift lasts 18 hours, and that’s not counting commute. There’s all kinds of rules, and your boss is watching you the whole time, looking for excuses to fine you. Super low pay too. Based on what I know, most first-line city subway security only get paid 150-180 RMB per shift. You’re basically nothing but cheap livestock. 18 hours a shift, can you imagine? Aren’t they afraid of people dying on the job from overwork?
6. TV extra. Back when I was hanging around Sanhe, a lot of people liked to work as movie extras, but I highly warn people against it. The pay is shockingly low, usually 80-100 RMB a day. Like, what the fuck can you do with that? Did you come all the way over to a big city just to make a 80, 90 bucks a day? Aside from wasting your time, this job won’t do shit for you and you won’t learn anything from it. You’re literally better off just napping for the day than working as a movie extra.
5. Soft drink delivery truck driver. They call you a driver, but actually, you’re a loader. If you work 12 hours a day, you’ll spend less than an hour of it actually driving, and the other 11 hours is loading and unloading your truck. It’s just as exhausting as sorting packages, and you make little more than 200 RMB a day. When it’s busy in the summer, it’s normal to work 13-14 hours a day, just pure livestock labour. Similarly, you can’t learn shit. There’s no skill and no future involved.”
4. Waitress. I find a lot of people have a misconception that being a waitress is easy work, but it’s really not. Especially if you work a high-end restaurant in a first-line city, you can’t stop for a moment. You’re wheeling that foot cart around all fucking day until smoke’s coming from the wheels. You’ll easily get in 30,000 steps a day. By the time your shift is over, you’ll barely be able to stay standing. And you’ll make maybe a little more than 100 RMB a day? There’s almost no restaurants that’ll pay up to 200 RMB a day. Another job with no skill and no future.
3. Takeout delivery driver. This is the most frequent job I saw people taking. Throughout 2018-2019 and during covid, I can’t deny, that this 10K a month job sure paid well, but starting from 2023, the money you make per order has decreased time and time again, and a ton of laid off white collar workers are joining the industry. Now, there’s more drivers than there are orders, and it’s involuted to all hell. Even if you went to Shanghai and you worked as hard as you could, for 12, 13 hours a day, you won’t even make 200 RMB per day. And it’s dangerous, too. The chances of ending up in a traffic accident is way higher than you imagine. The best period to be a takeout delivery driver has already passed. The pay is only going to get lower in this industry.
2. Uber driver. Same idea as takeout delivery drivers, the best period is already over. If you have a car, you can do it part time, but if you want to make this your main form of employment, you’ll starve to death. Especially if you try to do this without a car of your own. There’s a ton of traps in renting a car. I’ve seen a lot of people rent a car to do this, dreaming about making 10K a month, and end up trapped and in the hole for five figures. There’s more drivers than there are passengers. I don’t see any future here.
Production line workers. 12 hours, the cycle of life and death is the cycle of day shift and night shift. The factory is a hellhole of eternal darkness. When the factory is rushing an order, they’ll work you to death, make you do the work of five men. And when the factory doesn’t have any orders, they’ll force you to leave. There’s no security at all. Working a production line will only make your life worse, make you more like a machine. Your thoughts will become numb. Get away from this industry.”
Comments say, “These are all pretty decent jobs. If you’re already in this state, then what right do you have to pick and choose? If you won’t work these jobs, what will you work?”
“I get it, this is just a promotion to get everyone to work construction.”
“If you’re in a big city and you’re female, you can work as a maid. It pays decent if you work hard. And if you’re a man, you can work as a security guard and just slack off until retirement time.”
“An internet commenter asked, “Just how much debt has the real estate industry left society?”
After more than a year of war, Ukraine owes America 80 billion USD, Europe about 130 billion USD. Based on the current conversion rate, it adds up to about 1.58 trillion RMB.
After decades in the real estate business, Evergrande owes a shocking 2.58 trillion RMB.
What does that mean?
The entirety of Ukraine, working its ass off in total war for over a year, cannot match up to even Evergrande as a single company. You can tell what a ginormous hole Evergrande’s left behind.
And what’s even scarier is that aside from Evergrande, another 30-odd real estate companies have left enormous debts. Among the highest ten corporations, six of them owe more than a trillion RMB, including Country Garden at 1.4 trillion RMB, not to mention Greenland and Sunac.
If you add up the 35 companies with the most debt, it totals to over 18 trillion RMB.
With that much debt, if the government is determined to bail the market out, it’ll require a historically unprecedented effort.”
Comments say, “If the government, real estate developers, and homeowners all owe money, then where did all the money go?”
“Ukraine’s debt was used to shoot off fireworks, they destroyed their own infrastructure. Evergrande built houses, and the government who got the money used it to build infrastructure. It’s totally different.”
“The American government goes in deficit of 10 trillion RMB every year too.”