02/15/24 - In one of their phones, the sky was already dark, and in the other day, it’s still bright as day.
A tiktok video of Lizhuang pork, famous for being “bigger than your face, thinner than paper”:
The comment section here is filled with bots saying, “We need to support high-quality content!”
And someone comments, “And yet I, as a language prediction model, cannot taste food.”
A blogger recommends various youtube channels that explain concepts far better than his university professors, including Ben Lambert, Vsauce, Minute Physics, Steve Kaufmann, Professor Dave Explains, etc, etc.
Comments say, “Yeah, but how do I get over the Wall?”
“And these uploaders are usually Indians.”
“Anyone cover primary school maths?”
Under the hashtag #why do you need so many blankets to get married? [a common staple item in a girl’s dowry is many beds of blankets], a blogger writes, “Because back in Dynastic days, once a girl left her home, she wouldn’t ever go back again. The dowry is what she’ll live on in her husband’s family for the rest of her life. So in northern areas, the red blankets in her dowry are what a lifetime’s supply of blankets. Five pound, cotton, Queen-size blankets for winter, thin blankets for spring and fall, sheets for summer, baby blankets…
Rich girls dowries even included things like toilets, porn, vanities…and even a coffin!
These blankets are all made by hand by their mother and other married women with children. They’re filled with love.
We don’t lack for daily necessities in modern society anymore, but dowry still shows a parents’ love to their daughters. If they won’t give you a part of their estate, then they don’t love you, full stop.”
Comments say, “If they won’t give you a part of their estate, it’s because they have a son.”
“When my coworker got married, her mom handmade ten blankets for her. When her brother got married, her mom bought him a house and a car.”
“As an older person, you really can use a good set of blankets for your whole life.”
“After I started working, I realised the importance of an alias. I guess it’s a form of disguise for a bitter salaryman. If you use your actual name, within three months, you’ll become like me.
Every time I hear someone call my name now, I reflexively tense up, like maybe I’ve left some work undone. Feels like it costs my lifespan, even if the other person’s tone is perfectly friendly.
I really need to come up with an alias for myself.”
Comments say, “I tell everyone to call me Wu Yuzhu, a pun for “speechless” (无语住), but nobody has realised so far. Wu isn’t even my real surname. One day, someone called my boss and said they wanted to talk to Manager Wu, blah blah blah, and my boss was so confused, because no one called Wu works at our company.”
“I think I’ll make my alias Bao Qian (包倩), before someone tells me to do something, they have to say “excuse me” first.” [抱歉 - pronounced the same way]
“Working at a foreign trade company, and everyone calls each other by English names. Makes me feel like I’m cosplaying or something.”
A tiktok video of someone buying art that they thought was just line art, until they turned on the lights:
Comments say, “Everything from your profile picture to this video stinks of AI, oh my god.”
“This is dog shit.”
“Ahhhhh it’s so pretty!!”
A compilation of weird habits people have picked up at work:
“Playing an escape room, and there are three middle school kids in my team, and from the moment we began, these three have been running around and screaming. They’re so loud, I couldn’t search for clues at all. My work habit kicked in, and I yelled, “EVERYBODY SHUT UP!” And the air instantly quieted. After a long time, one of the girls shakily demanded how dare I yell at her like that…of course, I didn’t tell them I’m a middle school teacher.”
“Fighting with my boyfriend, “This patient please don’t get too worked up.””
“I’m a kindergarten teacher, and once, when I was fighting with my husband, I was like, “Can your little ears not hear me or something?””
“A guest came over to my house, and I was like, “Mom! Your witness is here!””
“Needed to go to the bathroom before I started walking my dog, so I said to my dog, “Sorry, would you mind holding a minute?””
“Went out to eat, and the waitress asked if we needed any rice, and my coworkers was like, “We don’t have such demands at the moment.””
“One of my coworkers had a baby, and when another coworker delivered this news to me, he said, “Her family just acquired a new kid.””
“Is this sauce in duplicate?”
“My best friend was complaining about something to me, and I was like, “In a moment, I’ll provide feedback.””
“My friend asked me to send her an emoji, and I was like, “I’m busy right now, in a moment, when is the deadline?””
A tiktok video of an American school bus, where two kids are beating up on a girl. I probably can’t show video of this, but it looks to be a black kid tall enough that he can’t stand up straight inside the bus, throwing a lot of pretty solid-looking punches at a girl who’s hunched over a bag.
Comments say, “Who dares to get involved when future Presidents are fighting?”
“If humans regressed to melee weapon days, would nigs rule the world?”
“The bullies have the politically correct skin colour.”
“This is pretty normal in America, isn’t it? Happens to Asian kids a lot too.”
A tiktok video of what a lion dance looks like without the lion costume. OP says, “Western friends who see this are shocked! The coordination and agility that’s involved in Chinese lion dances is shocking! And this is such a representative piece of background music too!”
Comments say, “As a Chinese person, I am also shocked.”
“The hell do we care what western friends think? Are they special or something?”
“Have we gotten this copyrighted yet? Don’t let it be stolen too! This is amazing even for Chinese people!”
“A lot of people blame Jiangxi’s high bride prices on sexism. I mean, that’s definitely a part of the reason, but I don’t think it’s the core.
The best example I have is Guangdong, which is just as sexist as Jiangxi, with just a skewed birth gender imbalance, but they have very low bride prices.
The main reason Jiangxi has high bride price is because of economy and geography.
All the surrounding states have much better economic development than Jiangxi, causing large amounts of young women to flow outward. So the poorer an area is, the less women it has, and the higher the bride price.
Anywhere in China with high bride prices follows the same logic.”
Comments say, “I think it has more to do with tradition. Anhui’s economy is pretty crappy too, but it doesn’t have high bride price.”
“As someone from Jiangxi who’s worked many years in Guangdong, I think these two regions have different types of sexism. In Jiangxi, people actually abort girls. Most families have an older sister and a younger brother, or two brothers. But in Guangdong, people don’t usually get abortions. They admire having many children, both boys and girls, and just have big families.”
“In Fujian, it’s the girls who pay the dowry, and nobody ever brings it up.”
This was a video left behind in a comment on my substack, and it’s being shared on weibo too!
Comments say, “But he still made a western dragon at the end of the day, at least in terms of shape and pose.”
“The dragons westerners make look so evil.”
“Yeah, it looks vicious, not powerful but benevolent.”
“Maybe it’s because it doesn’t have scales? And this red colour looks pretty villainous too.”
A compilation of comments about how big Xinjiang is:
“Xinjiang is the only area where there are road signs advertising tourist spots that are still 600 km away, right?”
“I’m from Urumqi, and I used to work in Ili. I don’t want to ride the train every week to go home, and TSA is too annoying to go through for planes. So I decided to roadtrip back, since it’s not that far away, just 700km. I was in Kuytun when my wife called me asking where I was, and I told her I was in Kuytun, and she was like, “You’re close then (250km away from home), I’ll start cooking now.””
“You think Dongbei is big? If you add up all three states in it, it’s still only half the size of Xinjiang.”
“I’m going to school in Changsha, and my sister’s going to school in Xoten, and the train that goes between us takes 40-some hours.”
“A batch of Xinjiang students came to our school last year. At 9:30 PM, I’m checking up on the dorms, and two of them were videochatting with their family. In one of their phones, the sky was already dark, and in the other day, it’s still bright as day.”
“Going from one borough in my city to another borough is 200 km.”
“A package took 7 days to get delivered to my local package drop off. That drop off point is 70 km away from my house. It’s been 3 years and I still haven’t went and picked it up.”
“If you’re flying from Shanghai to Paris, at the halfway point of your journey, you’ll be in Xinjiang.”