“On the 25th of February, in Hangzhou, a netizen has posted a video of an assault case happening on a Hangzhou flyway, where the driver of a Bentley and the driver of a BMW engaged in a fight. The Bentley driver pulled the BMW driver out of his car and began beating him in the streets. Hangzhou police have responded that they have already received reports of this case and are investigating it right now.”
Comments say, “A fight? That BMW driver never fought back even once. It’s the Bentley driver that has a weapon in hand and robbed the victim of his phone too!”
“I can’t believe assault with a deadly weapon can be called “a fight” now.”
“The person trying to break it up is a cool guy.”
“A man who’s been to both North and South Korea says that when you mention North Korea in South Korea, you hear a lot of pity and sympathy. When you mention South Korea in North Korea, you hear a lot of hateful cursing.
Civilisation pities the savage, and savages hate civilisation.”
Comments say, “Wow, pretty hard to find a retarded blogger in 2024.”
“Korea is civilised? Lol, you’re gonna make the Korean chaebol laugh. You need to learn what’s civilisation and what’s savagery first. Is America civilised? How do you explain Epstein’s Island then?”
“Hmmmm, China pities South Korea a lot, and South Korea hates China. Now I see…”
“I’ve only got one child, so I have no personal experience in how much work is involved in taking care of two kids, but based on my limited observations, the amount of work isn’t just double, it’s closer to triple or so.
If the amount of work involved in raising a child is, say, 1, then in reality, a couple (mostly the mother, that’s just reality) does much less work than 1. If you have good grandparents or a nanny, you probably only put in 0.5 (as least for me). Since there’s lots of people, you lend a hand and I lend a hand, and the kid grows up. Even if you have shit grandparents who never help out, you’re never dealing with more work than 1.
But it all changes with two, especially when the kids are 2-5 years apart. Ideally, a lot of people imagine that the older kid can play with the younger kid and free up their own time. But in reality, I see more often that they’ll start fighting right away, and you have to go settle the argument. And anyone with kids know, kiddos only like to play with people who are older or the same age as themselves, so your first kid won’t like to play with the baby, especially if they’re different genders. So “letting the older raise the younger” is ideal, but I’ve never seen it in reality. In most two-children families I know, the kids just play by themselves.
The worst is when kids get sick. If you’ve only got the one kid, then going to the hospital and getting medicine and taking care of them is a pain, sure, but at least it’s over once they get better. But two kids is different. They’ll pass it back and forth between then, and the amount of time and energy you have to invest grows exponentially.
Not to mention, the two kids are at different stages of life. The older kid’s going to primary school, the younger kid’s going to kindergarten. On the weekends, the older wants to go to ballet class and the younger wants to go to the amusement part, and they both want mommy along.
Worst is, by the time you’re having a second kid, the grandparents are gonna be much older by now. Even if they helped out for the first, they might not be able to with the second even if they wanted to. So a lot of moms will work through their first kid, and the whole family gets involved to help, but they have to quit and become a full-time mom with a second kid, or they won’t be able to do it.
The cases where the amount of work merely doubles is usually when the first kid is much, much older, like in middle school or something. I’ve seen a couple of families like this, and it’s basically just like raising two only children. The older kid will just politely interact with the younger, and don’t have much of a sibling bond. If the older kid’s in a rebellious stage, you don’t dare to ask her to help out (yes, in every case, the older kid is a girl).
Basically, when it comes to the number of kids you have, I think two involves the most work per capita.
Of course, I don’t have two kids. All of these observations come from friends and coworkers. It’s certainly not representative. But I still think it’s an interesting look into urban middle-class child-rearing?”
“Met up with a really good friend of mine over Chinese New Year. We used to be classmates back in primary school. She’s got a 2-3 month old son, and I gave him a red pocket for New Years. Supposedly, he’s been a bit sickly ever since he was born, and was held for observation at the hospital, and only got to come home for Chinese New Year. I went to visit her kiddo, and she said I should become his godmother. I was really happy and was totally going to agree, but my mom refused to let me. She said that my classmate is evil. Then I came across this video on tiktok, saying that naming someone your kid’s godparent is to steal their luck or their lifespan. It really scared me, how smart algorithms are getting. What should I do? I’m kinda panicked right now. Should I turn her down after all?”
Comments say, “If that’s really how it works, why not name a tree the godparent? Just go to a really old, nationally protected tree, promise there’s more than enough lifespan to go around. Wait until rush hour and go conduct the ceremony, and all the morning rush crowd can be your witnesses.”
“My grandma got two godsons, and lost two of her actual sons. My grandpa chased her around the room beating her, saying she’s a people pleaser.”
“Why are people so confident in their superstitions nowadays? Are our 9 years of mandatory education going to waste?”
“I got pregnant after getting liposuction, plus I’d gotten some Oflaxin and dyed my hair, I wasn’t sure if this baby was healthy, so I thought I’d go get rid of it at the hospital. Just did some bloodwork yesterday, and got a call this morning that I had an abnormal result and they’d like a followup. At first, I thought it was something wrong with my liver, since my husband had hepatitis before and I thought he gave it to be, so I asked if that’s what it was. And the doctor said that wasn’t it, so I asked what was wrong. He was silent for a few seconds, and then said it was HIV. And I was like, “What’s HIV?” And the doctor was like, “It’s AIDS.” And I almost lost control of my car! I started screaming, “That’s impossible! How could I possibly have AIDS!” And the doctor just told me to come in for my follow up.
I immediately called my husband, and when he picked up, I started bawling. I demanded to know if he’s been screwing around, and he swore up and down that he hadn’t. And I was like, “What do I do? What do I do?” I really felt like my whole world was ending. I’ve never even heard of HIV before! How could I get it?
I went to the hospital, got another 4 vials of blood done, and now I have to wait 2 weeks for the result. I made my husband go get bloodwork too. And I called up my liposuction hospital, and they confirmed that they ran bloodwork before my procedure too, and I was normal then. So then I told the situation to my abortion doctor, and she was like, “Do you think it could’ve been a contaminated needle at the hospital?” And I don’t know if I buy it. They do tons of liposuctions every year, why would I be the only one stuck with AIDS?
Now I have to wait 2 more weeks for the results to come back, and I can’t wait too long for the abortion or it’ll get complicated. My ob/gyn told me to call her about 10 days in and she’ll go hurry the results. I just want to ask around, has anyone else ran into this problem? Did I catch it for real? I’m a full-time housewife and I don’t even go to bathhouses in the winter. I’ve never done anything risky. I’m honestly so terrified I want to die!”
Comments say, “There’s a lot of false positives, actually. So long as you know you haven’t been screwing around, you’re probably safe.”
“I’ve seen a lot of cases of pregnant women getting false positives for syphilis or HIV. Just relax for now. If your husband is negative, you’re probably safe.”
The follow up post reads, “Just got back the results for my husband’s HIV test, and he’s negative! I feel a lot better now. If he’s negative, then surely, I’ve got a false positive too, right? I can’t relax all the way yet, since my results still haven’t come out. After my post yesterday, I got a lot of people saying that my husband is sus, that he’s definitely sleeping around. To be honest, that made me kinda upset. I saw a really sweet post though, that said, “You shouldn’t doubt any of your loved ones with no evidence when it comes to this serious of an issue.” I’m not the only one anxious. He’s freaking out too. I think this commenter is absolutely right. As a family, we need to support and encourage each other through hard times. Now I’m just waiting on my results!”
Comments here say, “Hey, if your results really do come back positive, remember to go to your plastic surgery hospital. It’s almost certainly because of their contaminated needle. I’ve got a classmate working at these hospitals, and she says that a lot of people who go have AIDS or syphilis.”
“I mean, worst case scenario, with our current healthcare, so long as you obey the doctor and take your medicine on time, it’s basically just an annoyance. It’s not going to impact your lifespan too much, and it’s not that expensive to treat (the government takes care of most of it), and you can have normal sex life with your husband (you can’t pass it on as a carrier, and he can take medicine for it too). And the healthcare system won’t spread your information around. Relax (I read up on this topic a lot for work)!”
Does godparent mean the same thing in China that it does in the US? What's the Chinese word used? As far as I know, "godparent" here officially means someone who agrees to raise the child if literally everyone else dies, and unofficially means someone who agrees to take some responsibility /ownership for the child's moral education. Does it mean something different there?
Also, can we get an update on the lady with HIV if one comes out?? I hope she's okay, that's so awful :(
wow. I love this stack! Thanks Moly!