A compilation of footage after Taiwan’s 7.4 earthquake. There’s a lot of videos here, and it’s kind of a pain in the ass to download them all, so I’ll just show a select few:
Comments say, “Wow, this is really bad. We should send over the PLA to help.”
“Earthquakes are so scary. You have to experience it for yourself to know how helpless you feel. As soon as the earthquake warning came out on my phone, less a second passed before the whole building was shaking. The chandelier is like a swing, all my doors and windows are creaking. I stood up and grabbed my sister and tried to stay steady, but my whole body was leaning. If my building really collapsed, there’s no way I’d have time to run.”
“I mean, their buildings sure are pretty high quality.”
“Why is no one panicking? People are just buying breakfast like it’s normal.”
“I see a lot of people talking about cherry blossoms, about how it’s fulfilling Japan’s dreams to have such a species bloom on Chinese soil.
You’ve fallen into a fallacy here as a result of Japanese cultural invasion, because cherry blossoms actually came from the Himalayas. It spread to Japan through China. China has native cherry blossoms too, especially in our mountainous regions in the south west. They bloom every year and look gorgeous.
Japanese people love cherry blossoms and made it their national flower, and used their cultural invasion to make everyone in the world think that cherry blossoms are a Japanese species, instead of coming from the Himalayas. This is a form of cultural appropriation not that different from what Korea is doing.
And as for Japan’s cultural invasion, it happens in a lot of aspects, like through anime, or TV shows, or the internet. After a while, people get brainwashed and think that something that didn’t come from Japan at all belongs to Japan. This is falling for the Japanese’s tricks. Please defend against this.”
Comments say, “You’re right, but Japanese people have been working hard at claiming that their beloved Yoshino cherries didn’t come from North Korea.”
“Sure, cherry blossoms don’t belong to Japan and didn’t come from Japan, but cherry blossom culture sure does. Maybe I just don’t know enough about history, but which of our dynasties had a cherry blossom culture?”
“I honestly think that the blue jacaranda flowers in Kunming are gorgeous. Shanghai’s white magnolia is pretty too. And there’s peach blossoms and plum blossoms. Seems a bit unnecessary to have all of this promotion online about cherry blossoms.”
Again, on the news story of the two children being tossed out a window, under the hashtag #insider claims mother specifically avoided the safety mattress, a blogger writes, “In the news report, it says very clearly that the mother has been having mental health issues lately. So the question is:
If before she ever got married, she was mentally ill, why did she get married? If she only got mentally ill after getting married, then what exactly caused her mental state to deteriorate that badly as to cause today’s tragedy?
Considering the two kid’s age, she must’ve been married at least 5-6 years, so it seems a bit unlikely she was mentally ill before she got married, or else there would’ve been domestic conflicts before this. It wouldn’t have exploded all at once right now. So most likely, it’s because of a buildup of resentment after marriage plus not getting treatment, that pushed her to this extreme.
This is undoubtedly a tragedy, but it’s also a warning for some people:
When a woman falls silent in her marriage, it might not be that she’s consigned herself to bearing with it. It might be a sign instead that she’s gone crazy. If she grit her teeth and beared with it, your family might continue. But if she went crazy, then it would be a lose-lose for everyone all around.
Look, I’m not victim blaming. I’m just repeating what a lot of male influencers say, “If a couple gets divorced, the wife should return all of her bride price. If she pushes the man too far, then she’s not innocent either if something happened.”
See, what I’m saying uses the exact same logic. To be specific:
If you agree, “If a mother kills her children, she should be punished even if she was mentally ill, and her MIL is entirely innocent,” then you should also agree, “If a husband kills his wife, he should be punished even if she’s withholding bride price, she’s completely innocent.” “No matter the reason, people should get punished for murder.”
If you agree, “If a husband murders his wife because of bride price disputes, then he’s not really all that bad,” then you have to agree, “If a mother kills her children, but she’s mentally ill, then she’s not really all that bad.” “Everyone involved bears some responsibility.”
I’m obviously on the side that people should get punished for murder, no matter the reason. I think most netizens agree too. But a lot of male influencers seem to lean towards, “Everyone’s responsible” when women get murdered, and yet in this case, they’re all calling for punishment.
This sort of double standard is what I’m trying to highlight with this blog post.”
Comments say, “You gotta find a way to aggravate the gender war no matter what issue it is, huh?”
“It’s like this when you push meek people too far. This husband definitely cheated on her and probably brought back an STD or two. I bet he doesn’t do any housework or take care of the kids either. Who wouldn’t go crazy being married to that?”
“Having children can worsen mental illnesses.”
“My son is in second grade. He’s working on maths problems one day, and I was watching him. He’s mumbling to himself as he goes, “33 minus 7. You can’t take away 7 from three, but if you take away 3 from 7, you get…”
And I couldn’t help but be like, “Did your teacher teach you to do this? If you can’t take away 7 from 3, then you need to [insert rant here about subtractions].”
And my son just ignored me and carried on, “…if you take away 3 from 7, you get 4. 30 minus 4 is 26.” And then he wrote down neatly, “33 - 7 = 26.”
Comments say, “33 - 7 = 30 + 3 - 7 = 30 - (7-3) = 30 - 4 = 24.”
“The hell? Are they already learning negative numbers?”
“You gotta put down 3 bucks in down payment first, got it.”
Question: “How the hell are all of you people so calm about getting covid 2-3 times a year plus the regular flu?”
Answer: “If you learn anything about entry-level anti-AIDS Chinese CDC workers, you’d know this is just human nature.
Nowadays, if you take your meds for the rest of your life, your AIDS won’t act up at all. If you’re lucky, you can live to the end of your natural life. It’s practically cured.
But as soon as all the infected people get past the first symptomatic stage and become symptom free, they stop coming by to pick up their drugs, even if it’s free.
The workers will spam them with phone calls telling them to come pick up their meds, and they’ll even change their number to avoid you.
By the next time the workers see them, they’re bedridden in the terminal stages where the meds don’t work anymore. No matter how much they want to live, all they can do is to wait for death.
See? Even people with genuine terminal illnesses are this chill. Who cares about getting covid and the flu a couple of times a year?”
Comments say, “What does this mean? I don’t get it. Is covid worse than AIDs or something?”
“The main purpose of the HIV drugs is to keep the amount of virus in your body below a detectable level. That way, even if you have sex, you won’t pass it on. So not taking your drugs is basically just getting revenge on society.”
“What this answerer is trying to say is that people get to make their own decisions about their own bodies, and it doesn’t matter what anyone else says. Like how a lot of people are taking blood pressure medicine, but they won’t actually quit smoking or drinking.”
“Chinese people have a very common misconception about America, which is that America isn’t a connections-based society. China is the one that cares about connections.
Reality is actually the opposite.
No society cares more about connections than America. And most people in China doesn’t care about connections.
Why would they get this misconception that America isn’t a connections society? It’s mainly two points:
1. The racial divide means that Chinese people can never really blend into American mainstream society. White communities will never accept black people. Black communities will never accept white people. And neither communities will ever accept Asians.
If a black guy got into an all-white university or corporation, they might be kept around like some sort of mascot and seemingly get a lot of benefits, so long as he’s willing to talk on behalf of the white people and praise them for being respectful and friendly and equal and whatever.
If a white person got into an all-black university or corporation, they won’t get any benefits. They’ll never see any success.
The Wire has a white guy running for the mayor of Baltimore, someone said that as a traditional black people city, a white person would never get into positions of power like mayor or sheriff in Baltimore (though he succeeded in the end, he still had to jump through a lot of hoops and he’s clearly the exception and not the rule).
A Chinese person by themselves will never blend into black or white communities, and will never have any opportunities for promotions.
If you’re not even a part of the community, then of course socialisation and connections never work for you, and you start to think that Americans don’t care about connections.
2. Popular opinion is very different here. In China, everyone knows that connections are important. But at the same time, when you bring up “favour-currying”, it’s a very negative, derogatory word. It brings to mind something very greasy, dark, rotten, and dirty.
But American public opinion is very different.
Chinese people take exams from childhood. Your score, your ranking, is accomplished by stepping on top of other people. You become number one by defeating everyone else. Taking exams, personal ability is what’s important.
Making friends, socialising, forming cliques is lazying around, is bully behaviour, is something you get told off for.
Americans go to school, and most of the bottom class don’t care about grades at all. They only care about being popular—everyone is busy socialising. If you don’t participate, you’ll get singled out and bullied.
Elite education does care about grades, but it cares about socialising even more. But they’re not so stupid as to care about popularity like bottom class schools. They care about “leadership” and “teamwork” and “spirit”, and personal charisma.
You’ll almost never see terminology like this in Chinese elite education. China’s elite education is still fundamentally about tests, scores, rankings, and defeating everyone else.
But in business and personal career, we know that your grades don’t actually matter. Your ability to make connections is what’s important. But Chinese people have been taught growing up that socialisation is a bad thing. You need to focus on your personal ability first. So in China, people who are especially good at socialising stands out a lot and rubs people the wrong way. They’re brown nosers, calculating, gross.
But in America, everyone values socialisation, everyone cares about making connections, people who don’t make friends are weirdos and stand out. When everyone cares about making connections and are eagerly honing their socialisation skills, then nobody talks about how connections are important.
It’s just like how even in short stories, China and America have completely different mindsets.
When you try to get a superstar to sign a contract in America, the first step is to bribe their family, and all of society thinks this is normal. There’s nothing wrong with it. When Nike signed Jordan, they gifted his mom all kinds of luxury products, and took his dad out on vacation and got the deal.
In Forrest Gump too, Nike got Gump by bribing Gump’s mom with money and gifts.
Americans think this is normal, and Chinese people do this in their daily lives too, but Chinese people don’t think this is normal. This would be considered a scandal for a celebrity.
Like, a big scandal about Sun Yang was about how his mom was like a Dowager Empress, she was so picky and fussy. She has all kinds of ridiculous demands, was extremely frustrating to work with, etc, etc.
But you don’t see Americans thinking the same thing. Even if you brought it up openly, people would be like, “How does that count as a scandal?”
Celebrities are money trees. You’ve got to please their parents to get access to the tree. This is common sense. If you don’t like it, then give this opportunity to someone else.
But Chinese people don’t think like this.
Chinese people think even if someone is a pain to work with, you gotta hold your head down and make connections with them. But it’s one thing to kiss up to celebrities. Kissing up to their moms? Why? Who the hell is she?
So when everyone in a society cares about connections, then it doesn’t feel like they care about connections. If everyone is currying favours, then favours hardly exists. It’s just a normal part of life. Common sense.
But when a society only cares about defeating everyone else and hates currying favours, then favour-currying stands out and pisses people off.”
Comments say, “Has anyone organised this blogger’s posts into a book? I want to buy it.”
“It’s true. It wasn’t so bad in school, but now that I’ve been working in America for 2 years, I’ve found that making friends is super important. I can’t say that I’ve really blended in, but a super friendly white lady has been taking me to all kinds of events and holidays, and she’s an influential figure at my workplace too. I’ve gotten a lot out of following her around. But it helps that I’m an enthusiast for hiking and sports anyways, so I can chat people up that way.”
“American shows are all about recommendations and joining fraternities. Do you really think people join fraternities out of fun?”
Is there somehow a trend of high brow bloggers writing long form explanatory posts about cultural differences between the US and China? This last one reads quite similar to the post about tradwifes a couple of days ago.
I love that last one, that sort of "everything you think you know is exactly backwards" moment. They can be really helpful in looking past existing stereotypes.