A submission to a relationship blogger: “My dad bought my wedding gifts. I feel so bad for him. When my boyfriend proposed, he promised to exchange his mother’s gold for a bracelet for me. But later, he wouldn’t admit he’d ever said that. My wedding is coming up real soon and I have no gold pieces, no ring. My parents don’t want me to feel bad, so they bought a bracelet for me. I’m just so upset about all this. My future MIL didn’t give me any gifts on meeting me either. My parents said that once we’re engaged, it’s customary for the groom’s family to buy some new outfits for me, and my MIL hadn’t prepared any of that. I complained about it to my boyfriend, and my future MIL just said that she got too busy and forgot. What should I do?”
Attached is a photo of her bracelet:
Comments say, “He already has no respect for you. They’re just testing out to see where your boundaries are and how much you’ll put up with, to spend as little as possible. If you really did flip out, they can just shrug it off as forgetfulness and buy it. But at least they tried to save money.”
A anime blogger writes, “I just saw a post on Chinese Instagram raising awareness on postpartum depression, calling for people to give more care and understanding to postpartum mothers. The comment section is flipping the fuck out, people of all genders saying that it’s just special snowflakes pretending for attention. This whole entire post is just creating anxiety, selling stress, and not to blame other people for your emotions being whacked.
Particularly, there’s a lot of people who’ve never had postpartum depression, saying that this post is exaggerating, and to just be more optimistic and you can avoid it.
What does optimism have to do with hormones? If optimism alone can change what’s physically wrong with your body, then why do we even need doctors? Just get more optimistic if you get cancer.
Why would anyone think this is just bullshit? Women used to not be allowed to talk about this stuff, so they just assumed that everyone went through this and they just had to bear with it silently. Now that women are fighting for their rights as human beings, everyone thinks somehow that’s robbing rights from them. And they’re jumping around all over the internet, trying to stamp those attempts down.”
Comments say, “Meanwhile, men when they get a slight cold: oh my god i’m going to die.”
Chinese official news is also posting under the trending topic #postpartum depression is a real illness and not attention-seeking, saying, “Don’t be so harsh on new mothers. Postpartum depression is very common—happening in 50% to 80% of all cases. Depressed mothers could cry all day, have suicidal tendencies, or even think about harming their child. They need their family’s support and understanding. In fact, some fathers who take on the majority of responsibilities before and after childbirth can be at risk for postpartum depression. Doctors are suggesting that postpartum depression tests should be passed out to fathers too. Educate yourself so you can be better prepared.”
Beijing is experiencing the worst dust storm of the year so far, plus the massive amounts of pollen from willow trees, means that the capital is now nigh uninhabitable. Internet commenters say, “Willow pollen and dust storms is really the top two reasons young people don’t want to stay in Beijing.”
Comments ask, “They haven’t solved this yet?”
A mother posts a tiktok video, advising, “If you have a daughter, just raise her like a son! It’ll be like you have two children in one!”
The comment section is full of comments like, “Well, that’s a pretty way to dress up your sexism.”
“I hate parents like this. This is exactly how you give your kids insecurity and gender dysphoria. All the other girls her age are clean and neat with cute little dresses and pretty hair, and only she’s forced to act like a boy.”
“Why not raise your son like a daughter? Are you hoping to give her gender dysphoria?”
“Why not shave off your own hair and raise your son like a daughter? That way, it’ll be like having four children!”
“First time I’ve seen someone internet bully themselves.”
“I’m fine with this—raising a butch lesbian from birth.”
A submission to a real estate expert: “Hi, I’m a girl, came from out of state to work in Shanghai, no house, no car, no hukou. I work a super normal average job and make about 10K a month. I’m 27, been married for 2 years, no kids. My husband is a local Shanghai resident, 35 years old this year. He says he’s terrible with studying and couldn’t hope to make it to high school, so he went to high school in America. He got into a pretty good university. But after he came back, he didn’t get a proper job or anything and just games all day.
He’s not a bad guy. He’s very polite and gentlemanly, no temper at all, always has a smile, and is great at taking care of people. And he’s very generous to me. I always knew his family was comfortable, but only when we got married did I find out that his family is actually very wealthy. My in-laws don’t particularly like me, and it’s pretty obvious, but they accept me because my husband likes me. They’re pretty decent people too.
Our marital house is a big apartment unit in a very famous development in Shanghai. My husband used to drive a Porsche Cayenne, and after our marriage, my in-laws proposed gifting a Porsche 911 to me. I thought it was way too flashy, so they gifted me a Porsche Panamera. But both the house we live in and my car are all under my MIL’s name. I didn’t mind, but I didn’t get pregnant after a long time. I’m kind of panicking now. If I turn out to not be able to have kids or something, then I’ll be left with nothing.
I went to the hospital and did a bunch of tests, and it turns out, I’ve got very few eggs. I don’t understand all the professional medical terms, but I think the doctor said that it’s not that I can’t get pregnant, it’s just a lot harder. The doctor suggested that my husband get himself tested too. He didn’t want to at first, insisting that there’s no way anything was wrong with him, and it was silly to get tests for this kind of thing. I had to get mad at him and force him to go. The results are that he’s got weak sperm too, also hard to get conceive. That’s when I finally was able to breathe.
After this, I started thinking more about a house and a car. I’ve told my husband before we got married that when my in-laws ask me what I want, I want to add my name to things. My husband warned me to never bring that up, because he knows his parents. Even if I asked, they would never agree to it, and that would only make them hate me more. My husband said that this is all his parents’ property and have nothing to do with him, but he’d give all of his income to me to manage. And he has done that after marriage.
The doctor suggests we do in-vitro. My MIL said that since I don’t make much anyways, maybe I should just quit. They’ll give me the same amount of money to just sit at home and prepare to get pregnant. My parents say that this is the perfect opportunity to bring up adding my name. Although my income isn’t that high, it’s still a very stable government employed job. I feel like it’d be a shame to throw it away. Should I bring up adding my name or not? I’m very conflicted.”
The real estate blogger says, “Speaking as someone who’s probably very similar to your FIL, if I suggest you don’t bring it up, you might think I’m an idiot and not listen to me. So just look at your parents. If they’re fairly successful, then listen to them. If they’re not, don’t listen to them. People who are failures in life generally have really shitty ideas. Maybe you should listen to your husband.”
Comments say, “Yeah, she’s already climbed several status tiers just by marrying. She needs to hold onto this opportunity and don’t rock the boat.”
A fan of a celebrity, Yang Zi, took screenshots of an old TV show she acted in and said, “This looks like the sort of girl who’d be the queen bee in school.” Internet commenters make fun of this post by saying, “Lol where do you buy a VCD that can dance?”
Later, someone found the original screenshot that hasn’t been photoshopped:
More tabloid drama on the actress Yang Zi, where someone posts a group cast photo where she is forming a heart with a fellow actor. Comments all say that this doesn’t look like her:
A thread asking, “Have you ever made a huge mistake because you listened to your parents?”
A selection of replies: “I got accepted to my dream university. The acceptance letter came in the mail and needed to be paid on delivery. It was 100 RMB. My mom said it was too expensive and she refused to take it.”
“My grandma married my aunt to a guy with Downs Syndrome, because his family had a lot of land and a lot of food. My aunt had two kids, both with Downs, and now she has to take care of a whole family of Downs in her fifties.”
“Back in primary school, I complained about my knee hurting. My parents didn’t want to take me to the hospital and just insisting it was growing pains. I’m in my thirties now, and I walk with a permanent limp. My parents still insist that they did nothing wrong, and everyone around them said it was just growing pains.”
“I got into the best high school in the city, and they insisted of making me go to an average high school anyways. Now I’m having trouble qualifying for university. And they blamed me for the entirety of high school.”
“Two of my teeth completely rotted away. My dad insisted they’d grow out again. While I was writhing in agony from tooth pain, he took someone else’s son to the dentist.”
“I got into university, and he insisted that I go to community college.”
“Got an underbite as a kid and it never got fixed. I had a tooth that was growing completely horizontally inward, and I had to spend 40K on getting it fixed after I became an adult.”
“They wouldn’t let me get a Master’s Degree or study overseas. If only I was a son—then they would’ve done whatever I needed.”
“My classmate in primary school kept complaining of back pain. His parents just dismissed it because who’s ever heard of a little kid with chronic back pain? It wasn’t until he couldn’t stand anymore that they took him to the hospital. By that point, his bone cancer had spread everywhere. I’m 25 years old now. He’ll always be 11.”
“My dad complained about a headache, and my uncle said it’s just a spinal problem and he should go see a chiropractor. The next day, he had a stroke, missed the best opportunity to go to the ICU, and never woke up again. Day after tomorrow will be the third anniversary of my dad’s death.”
“My classmate in primary school complained about headaches too, and no one took her seriously. At its worst, she would slam her head against her desk to ease the pain. Later, we found out she had brain cancer. It was stage 4 by the time they’d discovered it. She was only in third grade.”
“Life advice: unless your seniors are super successful, don’t take their advice. After all, you can see what kind of a mess they’ve made of their own lives.”
[I’ve included some Chinese entertainment industry tabloid drama in today’s doom scroll—as you can see, the stuff that Chinese people care about are…deeply unremarkable and kind of boring. Let me know if you want to continue seeing these, or if I should skip them like how I skip ads!]
Even if it's uninteresting, I think tabloid drama helps to round out the picture about what Chinese social media is like.
The video about raising a daughter like a son really baffles me. I'm having a hard time mentally modelling what incentives or social norms could make this seem like a good idea to someone.