02/17/24 - Fortune tellers are the therapists of Chinese people.
“Holy shit. Just saw a lawyer’s consulting livestream, and he is so awesome!
So a girl was dating a guy, and he ended up raping her during her period. She didn’t call the police until a week later, and before he was arrested, he had plenty of time to destroy evidence or whatever, so the victim is really worried that there won’t be enough evidence for the prosecutors to press charges or something.
Now, the guy’s dad’s come over to ask for forgiveness, and said that he can give her money. The girl’s family wanted 200K, but the dad said he can give 120K at most.
So her family is consulting now, whether they should insist on pressing charges or taking the money.
And the lawyer was like, “Take the money for now. That money can serve as evidence to put the guy in jail.”
I was just amazed. I would never think of this in a million years!
The lawyer pointed out that if a guy is innocent, then he wouldn’t ask for forgiveness. The only reason they’d offer to pay recompense is if they knew they were guilty. So this 120K counts as evidence and might influence sentencing too. If she can get the guy to write an apology letter, then they definitely have enough to go on to push this case to court.
Like, as someone who knows nothing about the law, I was just like, wow. Professionals really have a completely different perspective on the world.”
Comments say, “But can the guy sue her for extortion in this case?”
“I’m so scared that bad men will see this and learn a new trick.”
“But wouldn’t they have to give back the money in that case? Like if you settle a traffic accident in private, then can you still change your mind on it later?”
A tiktok video turning soft drinks into ice cream:
“If he just poured the soft drinks out at the beginning and let it sit until it froze, wouldn’t he save himself a lot of trouble?”
“Is this red bull + yogurt!??”
“That looks so sugary!”
Question: “What made you want a divorce?”
Answer: “Because of spiritual differences. I know if I wrote this out, a lot of people would get mad at me. But I just couldn’t stand it anymore. After all, I’m not a saint.
Both my husband and I are government employees, making about 7K a month. We need to support both our parents and our kids. He’s an only child, and his parents are retired teachers. My parents are businessmen, but they’re also retired from civil servant jobs. They’re a little better off and don’t need as much help, but our kids are still small and right at that stage where they’re the most expensive. Our income is already too low to maintain our expenses. No matter how much we save, we’re basically pay check to pay check. After all, our parents are getting old, and our kids need education investments. I want to save up our money for emergencies.
But my husband thinks completely differently from me. He’s also super frugal. Never spends much on food or clothes. He’s only bought two new outfits after he got a job (aside from the uniform his workplace gave out). Not only does he not spend any money, but he won’t let me spend any either. He strictly requires that our household income cannot exceed 2000 RMB a month (including food, clothing, transportation, formula, etc). We can only very occasionally splurge on food. Forget supermarkets. I can’t even get everything I want at a farmer’s market. Sometimes, I’ll dream about eating fish and literally wake up crying, and when I told him, he accused me of being spoiled. Oh my god, if I was spoiled, I would never have gotten together with him!
The next day, I ate with my parents, and they happened to cook fish, and at least solved that craving. But the more I thought about it, the more upset I got. I was raised with love by my parents, and yet after marrying him, even dreaming about eating fish is too much? Because I was trying to be thoughtful about our financial difficulties, I’ve never helped my parents out with anything after getting married. I’m really failing my filial duties.
My husband and I were college classmates. I married him because he had every quality I admired—responsible, upbeat, has integrity, is filially pious.
But I never thought that these qualities would also become what defeated me. Like, we don’t have to live as tight as we do now. A lot of my coworkers are from the countryside too, and they live very colourful lives. They go vacationing, take their family out to restaurants. I’m so envious. But after I told my husband about this, he’s decided that I’m a textbook example of someone who’s “corrupt”, who has “problems with integrity”. Every time there’s a propaganda article about frugality, he’d send it to me and tell me to learn from it. I’m so frustrated. Like, what else does he want from me? Do I not live frugally enough? If I kill myself, would I save him a bit of grocery money every month? When I express that I don’t want to read these, he’ll rant on and on, trying to “correct my morality“. Yeah, he genuinely thinks I’m evil or something, that I’m a traitor to the party and to the people.
Today, we were watching an episode of Moving China, about a lady and her husband who donated nine figures to their hometown to improve the local education system. We were both touched by the episode, of course, and then he told me that he wants to donate all the money we’ve worked so hard to save. And when we die, he wants to sign an agreement to donate our bodies too. He wants to donate everything we have to improving education, and just leave our children a legacy of charity.
He’s said this to me before too, and I asked him if we could only focus on helping people once we’ve guaranteed our own livelihoods. And he called me selfish, that I’ll never save much money to pay back society in my lifetime. And I told him that we have young children who need education, and old parents who need healthcare. And he refused to listen. He said that it’s the same thing to send our kids to local community college, and our parents can use ordinary medicine that’s cheap.
I asked him why our parents should provide us with great education and pay for our house and car, just for us to abandon them as soon as we’re grown, and do nothing when they’re sick? And he got really upset at me, and started screaming that I was being narrow-minded. That he was leaving them an example of morality. That he was paying them back in his exemplary conduct.
And in the end, he donated everything. All our savings. And our house. I’m not young anymore. I’ve got nothing in the bank and nowhere to live. And he said he wanted to donate my parent’s real estate and company and commercial plots too. I never once thought about his parents’ estate, so there was no way I was going to let him take my parents’ estate to make himself look better. We’re done now.
The baby is still small right now. When he grows up, I won’t tell him anything about you. I’m just not upstanding enough to be with you. The amount of poverty I can withstand is built on a foundation that my own life can still improve, not to come with nothing and die with nothing.
My tears have already tried. No one can persuade me to turn back.”
Comments say, “He’s goddamn crazy.”
“This man… I mean, I guess I got to praise him from a societal point of view. But from a personal point of view, he is so cold and heartless.”
“You should check to see if he has bipolar disorder or something—there’s a symptom that’s like donating to charity without thinking about consequences or something.”
A doctor writing the followup of a story of a mother who had a miscarriage, but is resistant about the idea of taking the dead infant out: ”Every industry has its reasons for existing.
Had a pregnant lady look into finding a fortune teller yesterday, and that fortune teller said he couldn’t help, so they had to find a different guy, who was booked out to two days later. They spent 500 RMB cutting in line, changing their spots with another guy who wasn’t in a hurry.
Spent another 500 RMB to get their fortune told, and the fortune teller suggested to them to let it go and preserve the baby’s body. So they decided to go for a C-section and take the baby out.
A lot of people from their family saw the dead baby, and I guess it was a shocking sight to everyone, so they went back to the fortune teller to ask what caused this, and spent another 500 RMB.
And I don’t know the precise words the fortune teller used, but it was something about how the young couple don’t have enough luck, and couldn’t keep the fortune of getting a baby.
The expecting mother was 23, and her boyfriend was 21, and they weren’t even married yet. And it’s true they don’t have stable jobs, the boyfriend’s working as a delivery driver with his uncle, and the expecting mother was a waitress.
They spent another 500 RMB on what they should do.
And the fortune teller told them to focus on making money and saving up money. He suggested that the next time it’s the boyfriend’s zodiac year, that is, when he’s 24, they can try for a baby again, but they can’t have any more miscarriages or abortions before that.
He suggested that they save up 2000 a month, about 20K a year, and by the time they’ve got 100K saved up, it’ll be enough to raise their fortune, and once they have fortune, they have luck, and with luck, life will come.
Quit smoking, quit drinking, and he even suggested the boyfriend’s parents to let him shoulder more responsibility. You can only make more money once you have more responsibilities. Don’t be too blunt about everything you do, stay flexible, stay observant.
They spent 2000 RMB in a single day, and everyone in their family feels it was worth every cent. The fortune teller was pretty clear about everything.”
Comments say, “If anyone else had said the same thing, they’d never listen. But they’ll believe it from a fortune teller.”
“Fortune tellers are the therapists of Chinese people.”
“Hahahahaha, the only way to make people listen is to make them pay out the ass first, and then tell them normal, everyday advice as a fortune teller.”
Lately, there’s been a sudden spike in plane tickets leaving Sanya, Hainan [basically Chinese Hawaii], with prices jumping from about 5K a ticket to just about 20K per ticket. A blogger writes in response, “There’s only two types of people flying out to Sanya to spend their Chinese New Year in a hotel. One is the super rich, who don’t really notice the price of plane tickets no matter how expensive they get anyways. And another is the middle class, who know how to plan ahead and buy return tickets and get hotels way beforehand. Sure, it’ll still be expensive, but it won’t be five-figures per ticket.
A lot of people who are spending Chinese New Year in Sanya went there a long time before the holidays even began, and stay in a house they bought years ago or rented a place way ahead of time. They don’t need to come in and out during peak days. It’s just like old grandmas going grocery shopping—they don’t need to ride the subway during morning rush hour with all the salarymen either.
The main people impacted by the rise in plane ticket prices are probably rich people who don’t care how much their planet tickets cost anyways. For them, freedom of time is more important. Or they have sudden business coming up that they have to get back for, where they’re making more money than they’re spending on the ticket anyways.
And maybe there’s a small minority of middle class people who forgot to get a return ticket, in which case they kind of deserve to learn a lesson. I’m sure they won’t forget again next time.”
Comments say, “The people coming over to Sanya during Chinese New Year are just normal 996 salaryman. Why do they only travel during Golden Week, Independence Day, and Chinese New Year? Because that’s all the pitiful few public holidays we have, and they can’t get time off of work any other time. Why are return tickets so goddamn high right now? Because these pitiful salarymen have to go back to work no matter how high tickets get. If they don’t, they’ll lose their job and immediately go bankrupt. What else are they supposed to do? Rich people don’t come during Chinese New Year, because they have plenty of free time.”
“It’s mostly the last kind kicking up a fuss on the internet.”
“If you open your own store and raise prices, the Bureau of Prices crack down on you with lightning speed. But when plane tickets skyrocket in price, it’s like the Bureau of Prices doesn’t even exist.”
Someone asks, “Can we make a law where if a doctor makes a mistake treating a patient and misdiagnose them or something, and made the patients waste their time and money, then there should be some kind of compensation? This way, doctors will actually pay attention to their patients, and not just dismiss them after a 3 minute visit after the patients and their family traveled thousands of miles to come to the hospital.”
And a blogger responds, “All this will do is that each doctor will only see a handful of patients every day and take their time, and all the people in line can wait until they die before they ever see a doctor.”
Comments say, “Just leave it to the free market. I’m sure hospitals would love that. A state expert’s fee is only 22.5 RMB? Forget it. It’s now 225 RMB, and it’s not even available on the market. You have to get it from a scalper. He only sees 10 patients a day, but he sure does careful work.”
“Are some of these people just overstuffed or something? They’re not thinking about their own job, and worry all day about how other people can do better all day?”
“Send them to a capitalist country to teach them a lesson. They’re just a waste of resources in China.”
A tiktok video of an absolutely amazing cosplay dressing up as Jack Sparrow:
Comments say, “Her eyes are still a little off. She needs to squint a bit more, look a little pissed off, and maybe a little more lecherous.”
“What’s that thing she glued to her nose? I wanna buy it too!”
Under the hashtag #woman on her third marriage receives 400K in bride price, a blogger writes, “My 34-year-old niece finally got engaged. The guy paid 280K in bride price, but my niece’s family only really got 50K of it. Almost all of it went into the wedding ceremony and banquet and all that.
I’ve discussed this last night, but in my small town, women pretty much always lose money getting married.
Since the man’s parents will have bought him a house beforehand, it’s all his pre-marital property.
The woman comes with a dowry of a car and some cash, and usually buys an assortment of appliances and electronics too. Although all of that is also pre-marital property, but the guy has real estate, and the woman’s bringing a bunch of consumer items that lose half their value as soon as you open the packaging.
The news always goes on and on about women getting bride prices, but honestly, women aren’t taking advantage of anybody. They’re the ones losing out. And if they get divorced after a kid, then really, marriage is a super risky venture.”
Comments say, “Men don’t think this way though. If women are upset, they’ll start slinging accusations around, like women are vain or calculating.”
There's been some drama in Western SF/F circles over the 2023 Hugo awards, held in Chengdu. It looks like the organisers censored some of the contenders for fear of controversy with the government, potentially with the involvement or knowledge of the Sichuan government. Have you seen any of this show up on Chinese social media, or is this sort of thing likely to be itself censored?