An askreddit, “Do people support making both Chinese and English official languages of China?” The top voted reply is, “Listen, we’ve got a super well-developed high-speed rail system now. Go get a taxi, go to the nearest rail station, and get a ticket to Hangzhou. Once you’re at Hangzhou, walk a couple steps over to the city train station, and get on the 7th line, going to Linying. Spend 2 RMB, go 9 stops, and get off at Yuefen. Spend 60 RMB and get a ticket, and go find the grave of Yue Fei (war hero during the Jin invasion of China in 1100s). Right in the middle of the entrance is the kneeling statues of Qin Hui and his wife (Chinese Quisling, basically). Ask them to move aside a little and take a knee between them.”
Comments add, “Contents include medical advice.”
An early education blogger writes, “I’ve mentioned before that I used to teach middle school maths. Why did I go teach primary school maths instead? Because of despair. Because you find that you are almost totally helpless.”
“I’d often feel like I’d given a great lecture, I’ve explained every point of logic. I didn’t just teach the test, I taught the underlying proof and principles. So long as you have a brain, there’s no way you can’t learn maths when it’s broken down this clearly.”
“And then I found that I was way too naive. This isn’t a problem of math. This is a whole systemic problem. And the system is so vast and so complex that there’s nothing a single teacher can do.”
“So I had to turn to primary school maths and try to intervene before things become set in stone, so I feel like I’m actually making a difference. Maybe I’m changing the system.”
“But after a couple of years, I found that I’m more or less useless after third grade. But at least I’m still helping some portion of students. It’s not as despairing as middle school.”
“Then I went to early childhood education, and I’m delighted. I feel like I’m contributing so much in preschool and first or second grade. Parents actually listen to you and do what you demand. They still have a concept of family and personal growth. The system is alive. And so long as the system is living, everything is possible.”
“Maths is simple. So long as you fix all the other problems, maths fixes itself. This is why a lot of primary schools emphasise parent participation. Because so long as you keep this back and forth alive, primary school education can massively improve. The only reason the system is so clogged up and dead right now is because we’re just not there economically as a nation.”
“I’ve been pretty stressed out since I’ve went into the maths industry for the past decade or so. Maybe because this job trains you to think too hard, to think about everything, and once you see certain things, it gets very tiring. Hopefully, my blogs are useful to some families.”
Comments say, “My kid’s in high school now, and all of his steps are correct, and at the end, he writes 12-9=4. Nearly gave his maths teacher a stroke. I figure that it must be a problem with his roots.”
Someone posts a middle school maths problem. A’s coordinates are (0,2), C’s coordinates are (m,3), AB = AC, and the angle between AB is 30 degrees. Find m.
Is it possible to solve this problem using only middle school maths?
Someone posts a text conversation with their mother, asking how to persuade their mom to let them go travelling when their family isn’t particularly well off.
OP: “Mom, I want to go with Lulu to Chongqing for our May holiday. Can I? We’ve wanted to this for a long time. We can take the train.”
Mom: “Why would you keep bringing up these topics that make me embarrassed? Can’t you go in the future? I want to travel too. Poor families have to live poor lifestyles. Why do you keep wanting to show off?”
OP: “I’m not showing off. I said I didn’t have any money, and she offered to take the train. It’s just 105 RMB, 10 hours.”
Mom: “Don’t say these things to me. If she has the money, she can go. She passed her English level 6 exams in one try, never drinks bubble tea, delivers breakfast for 1 RMB per customer every morning, spends less than 1200 RMB a month. I’m not asking you to do the same, but we just can’t afford this. When you make your own money, you can enjoy your own life. I won’t say a word otherwise.”
OP: “But now that covid restrictions are lifted, a lot of students are going on weekend trips. They don’t usually have money either—they just ride the train for super cheap. I want to go see the world too. T_T”
Comments say, “So just make your own money and go? There are tons of legal ways to make money once you’re over 18. Worst case scenario, even scholarships are several thousand a year.”
A video of a man who took too long getting out of the door, and it becomes the straw that breaks the camel’s back and his wife has a breakdown by the door, sitting on the floor and crying. The man says that they both work full-time, and she has to take care of the kids. In the video, she repeatedly asks, “Why did you make me have two kids?”
Comments say, “I bet he does this all the time. If he’s usually always on time and has everything ready, she wouldn’t be so upset this one time.”
Conan kissed! Yes, from Detective Conan. Apparently, Conan’s oxygen equipment was swept away, and Ai found Conan. At that point, he’d already lost consciousness, so she did underwater mouth-to-mouth on him, Conan woke up, and they floated up to the surface hand in hand, taking turns using Ai’s oxygen equipment. Ran came over at that time, and Ai kissed Ran, saying that she’s returning the kiss. Yes, it was mouth-to-mouth.
An anime blogger writes, “As a long time Detective Conan fan, my jaw hit the floor. I never thought, for the entire two decades that I have read this manga, that the author would do something this bullshit. Not even fanfiction would dare write something so trashy. How the hell has Aoyama Gosho managed to offend absolutely everyone, creating a world in which only he is happy?”
Comment say, “Even reading this abridged description of it feels like being forced to eat shit.”
Someone posts a text conversation with their friend, asking if they’re the asshole. “I was talking with a friend today. Well, not friend, really. Just acquaintance maybe. We often eat out together and chat almost every day. We were going to make a remodelling blog together, because she’s going to remodel her house. This is the second house she’s remodelled, so she has a lot of experience from the first house, so she was thinking about sharing it. She brought up how she wanted arched doorways, she hadn’t actually gotten it installed yet, and I said that that’s bad for fengshui. It’s not like she’d already invested or anything, she’d just read up on it. But she got super angry for no reason and told me I shouldn’t curse her like that and deleted me. So, I guess some people only want agreement, they don’t want real advice?”
In the text conversation, the friend posts a couple of pictures of arches and says, “I’m going to make a 7 square metre walk-in closet.”
OP: “Arches are a bad idea, right?”
Friend: “I want it to look French.”
OP: “I’ve heard people say that arched doorways are like coffins, it’s really bad fengshui. The foreclosed house in Hangzhou, the one that had a murder happen in it? It was because they had a ton of arches. I’m not an expert or anything, I just follow a lot of fengshui bloggers. If you don’t believe this kind of thing, go ahead and make the arches. Nobody’s gonna say anything.”
Friend: “I think I’ll risk it lol. I’ve decided on the style for a long time, and without arched doorways, it just doesn’t look right.”
OP: “If I didn’t know anything I wouldn’t bring it up, but I’ve seen a lot of articles lately about this, so I feel like I have to advise you to go for good fengshui. You can ask actual experts too, if they think arched doorways would affect your fengshui.”
Friend: “I just know that I like them.”
OP: “You might not anymore once it starts bringing bad luck.”
Friend: “I’ve gotta live in a house I like though. I want a house I love, you know?”
OP: “A lot of women with abusive partners say they’re in love too.”
Friend: “Jesus, would you drop it already? It’s my own house. I’m gonna live in it everyday. I don’t want to live in a house I hate.”
OP: “I don’t care how you remodel, dude. So long as you like it.”
Friend: “I shouldn’t have even told you. I was really looking forward to this remodelling, and you’ve completely ruined my mood. Honestly, do you know how upsetting you’re being?”
OP: “I don’t mean to offend or anything. But I just happened to know this piece of info, and it’s not like it’ll stop being true just because you stayed ignorant about it.”
Friend: “The way you keep driving this home, it’s like you’re actively wishing me ill or something.”
OP: “It’s not like you’ve started work on it, right?”
Friend: “If you go to someone’s house and they have arched doorways, would you just stand around and loudly declare how much their doorway looks like a coffin? Look, my mind’s made up about this. I’ve set aside six figures for this remodelling project. I’m not changing my mind.”
OP: “I would never tell someone their house looks like a coffin, because it’s already done. So there’s no point in bring it up. Not like it’s my house, right? But you haven’t started work on it yet. I’m just saying that the last murder house I saw had arched doorways. It was trending on the internet and everything, and I saw a fengshui expert post about it, and it left an impression. It’s not like I made this up, you can google it. It’s all over weibo and instagram.”
Friend: “Nothing is ever good on the internet. Oh my god, I don’t even know why I’m still wasting my time talking to you.”
OP: “If you’re gonna make a remodelling blog and people see your doorways, someone’s bound to say something eventually.”
Friend: “And? Square doorways look like ash urns, don’t they? I’ve done a lot of research into this. I stay up until 4, 5am reading about remodelling options and different styles. You think this is just a random whim?”
OP: “Jeez, why are you getting mad at me? Chinese people all care a lot about fengshui. This is close to common sense knowledge.”
Friend: “Look, I live on the top floor and it leaks when it rains sometimes. One of my friends bought a house lately, and she told me she wants to buy a top floor unit. I asked her why, and she said it’s because they’re cheaper and easier on the budget. All I said to her was that she needs to look into the condition of the roof and whether there’s been any waterproofing done. That’s all I said. I would never tell her, ‘Oh my god, you should never buy a top-floor unit because it’ll leak and the water is going to ruin everything you own.’ No one would say something like that. Other friends of mine have mentioned around her too that they live on the top floor and it leaks sometimes. But if she ended up choosing a top-floor unit anyways, we’d just be happy for her and congratulate her. We’d never bombard her with messages about how her life is ruined because she made a bad choice. Even if I think it, in fact, is a bad choice.”
“I’ve honestly never seen anyone so autistic as you, to go around talking endless about murders and coffins and foreclosed houses around someone who’s remodelling. I’ve been researching this remodelling for a year or two now, and literally no one else has said anything about arches resembling coffins. I wish I could just not care about your bullshit, but I’m honestly super upset. Honest, I don’t understand why people like you exist.”
OP: “So it’s my fault for telling you about your bad fengshui then?”
Friend: “If you research things, then there’s someone saying literally anything under the sun is unlucky. Like people say that you shouldn’t keep figurines in your house, because ghosts will possess them or some shit, and I’ve never cared about that sort of thing. Have you perfected your own fengshui? Have you changed your name? Have you changed your house? Have you made millions of dollars off of that fengshui? Even if you became a billionaire thanks to fengshui, no one would start believing in it anyways. It’s not like I can just scratch my remodelling plans. At that point, I might as well just give up on my house. Is it wrong that I want to have a style, unlike you?”
OP: “Lol, I asked the internet for advice and everyone’s telling me I’m an asshole. But even if I didn’t tell you, eventually, other people would. God, you’re so funny. It doesn’t matter whether it brings success or not, fengshui exists. Fate exists. You don’t have to believe in it, but you don’t have to attack me over it either. Do you ask fortunetellers why they don’t use their powers to get rich either? It’s just cause it’s not their time yet.”
Friend: “I would never rain one people’s parade on something as important as buying a house or remodelling. God, why do people like you exist.”
OP: “Lol u mad.”
“What, you want me to just not tell you the truth?”
Friend: “You’re fucking disgusting.”
Comments say, “I don’t understand. So did he post these screenshots because he just wants to experience some internet bullying and see what it’s like?”
A childcare blogger writes, “I know a kid who’s currently about eight years old. According to his parents, for the first 6 months of his life, everything was totally normal. Then he got sick for a long time and stayed in the hospital a lot, after which they noticed a change. When he was three or four years old, they felt like something was wrong with him and took him to the hospital, and he was diagnosed as autistic. After that, the whole family revolved around taking him to rehab centre to do coping training.
The dad works a blue collar job, the mom is a full-time mom, mostly taking the kid to all of his different intervention classes. They’re spending easily six figures a year on this. During this period, they had a second kid, and that second kid is now also three or four years old.
A couple of days ago, I brought up this kid, and my brother told me, “Don’t bring him up anymore, he’s went crazy.”
I asked, “Why? What happened?”
My brother said, “His mom’s super borderline and beats him all the time. Now every time he sees his mom, he starts shaking uncontrollably.”
My brother brought up a bunch of other examples too, to prove that this kid was really ruined beyond repair. Maybe he was exaggerating a little, but my brother was right. I’m not super close to this family, they’re the neighbour of my relatives. My brother went over to this relative’s place a lot, so he knows more than me.
I’ve only been around this family briefly, when I noticed that the kid really liked to spin in circles, and his mom kept trying to stop him, because the intervention therapists said not to encourage autistic behaviour. I told this mom some of my advice, and while she appeared to agree with me, it’s pretty clear she didn’t take any of it to heart. From that one conversation with her, I got the impression that she was someone who felt deeply powerless and sad, and I could predict what was going to happen later.
It’s because of these people and these stories that made me see what I wanted to do in the future: I want to work on family healing, focusing on autistic families.
But CBT as a predominant treatment for autism is a very mainstream thing that’s going to be hard to turn around. There’s a lot of studies proving that it helps with restoring normal capabilities. But honestly, I think that this kind of help is only achieved through ruining the kid’s close relationships, like burning your clothes to keep warm.
So parents really need to think carefully about whether or not they want to take their kids to intervention therapy, and if they decide on going, I have some advice. Never put your entire family’s resources on taking your kid to these classes. If you’re putting in way too much, your expectations will also become unrealistically high. This includes both financial and emotional investment.
There are a lot of families which abandon normal family life entirely, to have one parent go out of state with the child to some famous organisation to treat autism. Some families throw their entire savings at it. And when the child’s recovery doesn’t reach their expectations, you can imagine how sharp the disappointment would be. And that disappointment is going to become frustration, which is going to become anger, and where is that anger going to be vented? It’s going to naturally fall on the weakest person, least capable of resistance—the child. And at the end of the day, it’ll be the child that pays for the parent’s emotions. How is he going to grow up like that?
It’s also important that parents don’t take part in the training and exercises. A lot of these organisations and therapists will ask the parents to do activities with the kid at home. But a parent is not a teacher, a parent is not a therapist. A parent is supposed to bring a child love and care. It’s very easy to become anxious while teaching a child. It can get difficult to maintain steady emotions. And the worst problem with autism is exactly weak emotional ties and weak reactions to people anyways. If you want to make them more interested in people and social interaction, you need to have a good parent-child relationship. You need to step back to the caregiver role, and let someone else do the teaching and training. Focus on the child’s feelings about the training, don’t focus on the results of the training.
At the end of the day, the biggest contribution to the child’s outcome is going to be the emotional state of the parents and how they treat their kid.
Comments say: “Even if that kid wasn’t autistic, that mother is the type of parent to beat their kid when they don’t live up to expectations. This has nothing to do with autism, this has to do with shitty parenting.
You nerd-sniped me into trying to solve this math problem - what counts as middle school math in China? I've been attempting it without trigonometry and not getting anywhere so far