03/06/25 - Gambling is gambling, don’t whitewash it!
[A post from CCTV News] “Repost this with me! This is the only proper title for Taiwan! #Taiwan Province of China! Taiwan has never been a country. It wasn’t in the past. And it’s not going to be in the future.”
Comments under official government posts are all going to be copy-pasted agreements and slogans.
#Hamas refuse Trump’s final warning. “According to Reuters’ report on the 6th of March, Hamas has refused the “final warning” American President Trump issued. According to the report, Trump demanded on the 5th, “Release all the hostages now or you’ll be done.” Hamas responded on the 6th, “The best way to get the rest of the Israeli hostages released is for the settler army to enter the second stage of cease fires.” The report claims that the Gaza ceasefire agreement requires release of all hostages in the second stage, and to negotiate for the final plan to end the war in the meantime.”
“The husband suddenly said nervously, “I owe some debt outside.” The wife startled. “How much?” The husband, “200.” The wife sighed in relief, “I thought it’d be tens of thousands!” The husband, “With you in charge, who would dare loan me that much money?”
The wife rolled her eyes at the husband and went, “This is all you’re capable of. Look how scared you are of just 200 bucks in debts. How did you end up owing it?” The husband lowered his head like a kid in trouble and mumbled quietly, “A couple of days ago, I went out with my friend and we played some cards, and I got unlucky…”
The wife heard and instantly became furious. “How many times have I told you? Don’t pick up those bad habits! But you won’t listen! 200 bucks might not be much but this is a bad indicator!” The husband hurried to smile, “I know I’m in the wrong, wife. I’ll never do it again. Look, I told you about it right away, didn’t I?”
The wife looked a little mollified. She sighed, “Fine, I’ll pay back the money for you, but this better never happen again. We may not be wealthy, but so long as we go about life steadily, we can have peace and happiness. If you keep acting so recklessly, you’re going to ruin this family.” The husband quickly nodded and swore he’d never do it again.
A couple of days later, the husband returned home from work and pulled a mysterious package from his pocket to give to his wife. The wife opened it in confusion and inside laid a beautiful necklace. The husband smiled, “I bought this for you with this month’s bonus. You had to clean up my mess last time, so this is a little something from me as an apology.” The wife was so moved she teared up, but she still said, “What a waste of money! Why would you buy such a thing?” But her face was covered with a happy smile.
Ever since then, the husband has never made a similar mistake. The couple’s life may be unremarkable, but it’s full of warmth and happiness. They learned to understand each other and forgive each other, and work hard for their small family and dream of a better future.”
Comments say, “He means 2 million, right?”
“Are AI stories this flat and boring these days?”
“There’s no logic in this story at all! Gambling is gambling, don’t whitewash it! There are four things you have to divorce a man for if he does it, domestic violence, cheating, gambling, and doing drugs.”
“This is ridiculous. This is a divorce case in Heze, Shandong, I dunno if you guys have been paying attention or not.
This girl got engaged with a guy and asked for 340K in bride price, plus various gold and silver jewellery. After their engagement, they went travelling together, and when they returned, the girl asked the guy’s family to buy a 200K car. The guy couldn’t afford it so they started fighting all the time.
The guy thought he might as well just end the engagement and he asked the girl to return the 340K in bride price. The girl won’t do it, so the guy sued her in court.
The court ruled that she had to give back the bride price in its entirety, plus the jewellery. The girl said she’d lost all the jewellery and she wanted to pay the 340K back in instalments over the next three years.
But she refused to pay back the 100K for the first year. The guy was so angry, he filed for garnishment and I hear the girl got arrested.
I just thought it was utterly ridiculous. Truly, people are invincible if they are sufficiently shameless!
And this is another proof that you can never pay too much in bride price! Especially if you’re from a normal family. Because there’s way too high of a chance that this is just a bride price scam. The worst case scenario is if you ended up losing both your money and your heart.
What do you think?”
Comments say, “It’s not that you can’t pay too much in bride price, it’s that if you’re a guy from a normal family, you shouldn’t be trying to get married to begin with.”
“You can’t blame women for high bride price [doge] [doge]”
“My coworker is from Heze and they really do have high bride price over there. Everyone who married in his hometown generally got 300K, plus a house and a car, and they get served hand and food once they marry over because nobody can afford to get married again. But my coworker’s escaped through work and she didn’t ask for any bride price.”
Question: “Why does the 8th line on the Chengdu subway have an announcement reminding people to not bite fellow passengers?” [撕咬—siyao, to bite.]
A response from Chengdu Subway’s official account, “Uh! Sweetie. The subway is saying, “Do not broadcast noise from electronic devices to annoy fellow passengers.” [滋扰—zirao, to annoy. In local dialect, it might be pronounced very similarly, I have no idea.] Create a civilised city, be a civilised citizen. The subway invites you to travel in a civilised way.”
“Not only are you not allowed to bite fellow passengers, you also have to be careful of the spy between the train and the platform.” [“Spy” 奸细” here sounds like gap “间隙”]
“I’ve also wondered forever why Chengdu’s East Station bans Cadillacs. [凯迪拉克—kai di la ke] Does it actually mean something?”
“Are you sure it’s not, “No solicitations?“” [喊客拉客—han ke la ke]
“Shanghai buses play announcements, “Please dance when the door opens.” It’s very confusing.”
“Please be careful as the doors open. They should also broadcast the same thing in Shanghaiese.”
“I came to Shenzhen for uni and heard the subway broadcast, “Watch out for kasayas.” [袈裟—jia sha] And thought it meant to watch out for scammer monks or something.”
“So what was it actually?”
“To avoid getting pinched? [夹伤—jia shang] Probably?”
“It’s okay, at least it’s better than the Shanghai subway. The announcement there is, “No bathing, performing, social, San Francisco.””
“Huh? So what the hell is it talking about?”
“No begging, performing, selling, or passing out ads.”
“So what does, “Please go through the fried chicken passage.” mean?” [炸鸡—zha ji]
“Go through the turnstiles.” [闸机—zha ji]
“There’s a minnan dialect announcement that just goes Lou Cha Lou Cha endlessly…”
“Lou Cha means depart hahahahahaha”
“Our maths teacher: Do not bite the classroom.” [干咬—gan yao. I’m pretty sure it was supposed to be 干扰—gan rao, disrupt the classroom.”
“So what about the “cha cha cha” on the Xiamen subway?”
“So what does, “Do not stand near dresses.” mean in Qingdao?”
“Do not crowd the passengers in the front?”
“Remember those ancient legends about zombies in Chengdu? Maybe their lair is in the 8th subway line.”
“The Beijing subway told me to not use yellow corpses.”
“Then I figured out it meant, “Do not use child leashes.””
“One time, I was passing by an intersection and heard someone calling out, “Crazy~ Bread rolls~ Crazy~ Bread rolls~” And I was like, “Just how crazy can bread rolls get?” I gotta check it out! So I turned the corner to see the sign on the car, “Honey bread rolls.” Someone was just calling out “Honey~ Bread rolls~” With a dialect.”
“I’m the only one here with a straight answer. Biting is too cruel. We don’t engage in such inhumane methods. We usually prefer to swallow whole.”
[A post explaining how to get more tax refunds when filing your taxes for 2024. My head hurts looking at this so I don’t want to translate it, but just know that this is something that Chinese people are worrying about in tax season too.]
“America usually hands out pay checks once every two weeks, twice a month. But you can tell from the latest China-America factchecking that they have a lot of fixed expenses, so it’s normal to live pay check to pay check. For example, I get paid on the 1st and 16th. So if I have a big expense on the 14th, like car repairs or a medical bill, what do I do?
In capitalist society, borrowing money is easy. There are tons of companies that’ll hurry over and offer you something called a payday loan. You can tell from the name that it’s something you use to tide yourself over between two pay checks, a typical small “bridge loan” for emergencies.
At this point, nobody cares if you’re borrowing money to deal with an emergency. These types of loans are short and quick, and the amount can range from 50 to 50,000USD, but most people borrow less than 1000.
Of course, they’re not lending you money for free. There’s obviously interest, and it’ll compound into your capital. So how much is the interest rate?
On the face of it, if you borrow the money for a year, it’s about 40%. Although this is illegal in China, it’s a capitalist society. It’s all written up in the contract. You’re the one who wanted the loan. You signed the papers. It’s your freedom. What’s illegal about what happens between two consenting adults?
And if it was just that, I wouldn’t bother writing about this. After all, 40% interest on a small, short-term loan isn’t that big of a deal in America. But there’s also a hidden aspect to payday loans which Americans usually can’t understand with their weak grasp of maths.
Fees.
Feeds means that every time you pay back money, they’re going to charge you a fee. For example, 20 bucks. If you don’t make a payment, then they’ll charge you a “management fee” every month, maybe 30 bucks. This number might vary, but it’s in that ballpark. There ar etons of other fees too, I won’t bother listing them.
These fees aren’t a part of your interest, so it doesn’t get counted towards the interest rate. But you still have to pay it, so it’s the same in the end, right?
If you count all of that towards the interest, then the annual interest rate becomes very scary…
How scary? For a small loan under 1000 bucks, if you procrastinate for two years to pay it off (which is fairly common), the annual interest rate can reach as high as 400%…
This number literally made my vision go black…”
Comments say, “It’s like how banks keep offering you a payment plan on this or a payment plan on that, and they’ll do giveaways too. They’re not gonna be that nice. How are they making their money? Look closely, and you see that although it’s interest-free, they want a fee with every instalment paid. Yeah, no. No payment plans.”
“Short-term bridge loans are really expensive in China too. Nobody is going to sit on a bridge loan for that long.”
“So just…delay for two days before paying your bills.”