04/12/24 - Or chocolate flavoured Xiao Long Bao.
“Why did everyone start saying rice and noodles and bread is “unhealthy carbs”? I was shopping with my kiddo, and they got interested in bagels and sourdough bread since it was cool and new. I bought it, and it wasn’t nearly as tasty as normal bread or cake.
It seems like starting from last year, all kinds of health bloggers are filming videos of these fancy breakfasts with bagels and sourdough, with cheese and jam and whatever. It all looks pretty high calorie to me. It’s all flour-based, why aren’t these considered carby?
But Chinese noodles, fermented tofu steamed meat in bread, or beef fried rice is super tasty, and yet it’s labelled “unhealthy carbs”?”
Comments say, “Why else would people buy shitty European bread?”
“They’re just being pretentious. They’re the same people who used to drink coffee by their window and eat avocado back in the day.”
“Because it’s too cheap and they can’t sell it for a good price otherwise.”
“East Asian kids seem really jealous of western kids, like they’re under so much less pressure, they get to be more independent and free, they don’t have to shoulder on all their parents’ expectations. But after living for many years in America and raising kids there, I’ve observed the parents around me, and they definitely have expectations in their kids, but it’s just a little deeper than the expectations East Asian parents might have in their kids. What American expect in their kids is that they can fly independently by themselves.
Chinese parents like to chew their kids out for, “Your wings have gotten stiff, huh!?” But western parents can’t wait for their kids wings to get stiff. Like, teaching kids to drive. You can talk to any parent of a high schooler, and they’ll enthusiastically tell you all about it—how they taught, how their kids learned, fun stories of what happened once their kids could drive. If their kid goes to university somewhere far away from home, they’re all very proud. They think it’s great their kids are going out to explore the world and not just staying home.
In this kind of environment, most American kids are pretty driven. They learn how to do things for themselves, and are proud of themselves for solving problems. Once they can drive, most kids will find some kind of a job, whether it’s for pay or volunteer work, working at a cafe or helping with local elections or babysitting for the neighbours or mowing the lawn. They want to be able to work, to be independent, to chase their dreams. My kid is getting anxious now because most of her classmates have a job, and she wants to work too to “keep up with society”. She’s starting going to a local non-profit to package food and vitamins to send to people who need it.
What I want to say is, growing up in American society isn’t necessarily super chill, and it’s not that parents don’t have any expectations for kids. But these expectations are broader and perhaps more challenging than the East Asian mindset of “only grades matter”. Because nobody is gonna plan your life out for you. They expect you to figure out for yourself what you’re supposed to be doing right now and what you’re going to do next. This isn’t easy, but it’s certainly more free, because parents won’t define their kids in too much specificity, like you have to be a doctor or a lawyer or whatever. But once you’ve grown up, you’ve gotta do something for yourself, you’ve gotta find your way of surviving. You can’t run away from that.”
Comments say, “I feel like a big pressure on American youths is that as soon as they get out of school, they have to start paying back their student debt.”
“I think parents are the same everywhere. They all want their kids to be this or that one day, but various factors in society means that parents in America can’t keep their kids in line or whatever. If they could, they absolutely would.”
“Broader expectations means letting kids make more mistakes. You gotta choose an environment that works for you (if you can).”
“A fan submitted a really visceral case for me that displayed really well how regional information gaps can bury people.
A company in Beijing has two French translators, a man and a woman. Since you have to do expat work to get hukou in Beijing, both got sent to Africa. You can imagine this sort of person—they don’t come from any kind of urban or middle-class family, they’re both very poor. Anyone else would’ve just paid the fines and quit, instead of accepting being exiled to Africa.
One day, their boss started urging them, buy a house! Buy a house! You gotta buy a house if you’re in Beijing! I guess their boss figured that once they have a mortgage, they wouldn’t dare to quit anymore, and he can keep these two useful donkeys hitched to his mill in African forever. The female translator got persuaded, but she didn’t have money and couldn’t get any decent house. At this time, there was an apartment project in Southern Second Ring [Beijing is built on concentric circles), cheap, low down payment. She’s not from Beijing, so she looked it up on Google Maps, and wow, it’s like right next to Tiananmen Square. It’s practically in the dead centre of Beijing! So she bought it.
She never wondered why it would be so cheap if it was really in such a golden spot.
So the female translator was always in Africa, so she’s never lived in this unit. She rented it out and paid her mortgage using her rent. That kind of went to shit during covid, so she had to lower her rent, and keep lowering it, until her rental income was so low that she couldn’t quit her job and go back to China, and she didn’t dare to lay flat at work. She had to stay in Africa to make money, or else she wouldn’t be able to keep up with her mortgage payments.
Not just that, this house was full of debuffs. It’s a 40 year apartment, and it’s not in any school district. And there’s no extra services or anything. It’s like the swamp of housing value, and it’s went down in price by half. And the worst is, she bought it in 2019, when housing prices were at their peak. And not just that, she’d chosen a mortgage plan that means she pays off interest first.
In the end, the female translator couldn’t take the pressure of her cash flow shortage and went over to a different company. She still had to stay in Africa, but she got sent to an even worse country.
The male translator didn’t listen to his boss’s bullshit and refused to buy anything, no matter what anyone said. After his service time was done, he didn’t go to a different company. Just went right back to Beijing and laid flat. He has no debt, so he’s free. No matter what you say, I’m not going back to Africa. Do what you want. Fire me, go ahead.
This boss has really achieved fucking people over with no benefit to himself.”
Comments say, “If you’re getting an apartment or a loft, you’ve got to check if it’s in a school district, whether you can use it to get a hukou, and whether you’re owning it for 40 years or 70 years.”
“What if she just didn’t pay back her mortgage and applied for bankruptcy?”
“Oh no, my kiddo’s been learning French as a second language from birth. What do I do?”
“While I was livestreaming yesterday, I talked about getting medicine at a pharmacy, and I mentioned an “Uncle Rule” off hand.
Rule 1: If the pharmacy prescribes you three or more medicines, there is a great chance that at least one medicine is completely useless and just there to get your money. Usually, this is the most expensive medicine.
Rule 2: If you look at the name of the medicine and you have no idea what the fuck it does, then there’s probably nothing wrong with it. But if you look at the name of a medicine and you know exactly what it’s supposed to help with, then that medicine is useless. It’s just there to get your money, or it’s a Traditional Chinese Medicine formula.
Coincidentally, the medicine you find through rule 1 and rule 2 is probably the same medicine. So even if you’re an idiot, you can probably figure it out for yourself.
For example, using rule one, the most expensive medicine might be called something like, “Healthy Veins Capsules”. Using rule two, Rosuvastatin and Flunarizine, no idea what the fuck htose are. But “healthy veins”—you know what this medicine does. It’s automatically got advertisement and SEO optimisation built into its name. This is the one that’s useless.
Got it? Remember the Uncle Rule, and you can save a lot of money.”
Comments say, “Lol, where did this idiot come from? What medicine you get prescribed is a very professional problem. Any “rule” you can name has exceptions, has circumstances where it’s wrong. What’s scary is this kind of anti-intellectual amateur making up rules for a very professional industry.”
“What about over the counter medicine like Pudilan, Six Emperor Pill, and Angong Niuhuang Pills?” [All Traditional Chinese Medicine.]
“We’re not doctors. We can’t tell what works or not. My girlfriend got pneumonia at the end of February and was hospitalised and on an IV and taking all kinds of drugs for half a month. She’s had to take cephalosporin, piperacilin sodium, and moxifloxacin, and everything. She got better, but she still kept coughing. We switched over to a different hospital at the end of March and got a second opinion, but the diagnosis was still pneumonia, and they prescribed her moxifloxacin again. Took it for a week and it didn’t get better, and now we’re on our third hospital—a traditional Chinese medicine one this time. What can we do? It’s all just trial and error.”
A tiktok video of how Chinese students take naps at school:
Comments say, “Are we sure this is not a torture implement? What idiot came up with this?”
“You can’t put books anywhere on tables like this. I feel like the only thing it’s useful for is filming videos.”
“We’re already assigning students to schools based on distance from home. Why not just let them go home for lunch break?”
An article trying to help Chinese people understand why Italians are so offended by pineapple on pizza, by saying, “Any Chinese person probably understands the same rage if you see the following Japanese take on Chinese cuisine—Xiao Long Bao soup. [Xiao Long Bao is a small bao just a mouthful in size, with extremely thin skin, creased on the top, with soupy filling inside.]
Soup inside a Xiao Long Bao—great.
Soup outside a Xiao Long Bao—absolutely not!
But if you learn about this topic, you’ll find that Japanese people are absolutely obsessed with Xiao Long Bao and put it everywhere.
Chinese people eat dumpling soup? They eat Bao soup.
Izakayas will cook rice cakes, cabbage, and Xiao Long Bao together to make soup, with some soy sauce to add flavour.
Or even worse, they’ll put Xiao Long Bao into taiyaki. Or make Xiao Long Bao flavoured Bao. [That is, a bao inside your bao, so you can eat bao while you eat bao.]
Or chocolate flavoured Xiao Long Bao.
You think that’s as bad as it gets? Here’s a Xiao Long Bao set menu in a Japanese restaurant, including soy milk, mango juice, matcha, oolong tea, boba tea, and mala flavours. Or the ice cream mango and coconut drink Xiao Long Bao.
If you want something else that makes your blood pressure rise, look into mapo tofu. When it was transported overseas, it stopped being just spicy, but sweet and spicy.
I’ll accept adding in a bit of noodle sauce. But they’ll even put boba tea boba into mapo tofu! Or even strawberries!
Strawberries!
STRAWBERRIES.”
Comments say, “It’s not the same. Italians are outraged. Chinese netizens are more just surprised and intrigued.”
“I’m from Guangdong, and I saw a video of rice noodle roll with yogurt sauce instead of soy sauce, and it made me uncomfortable. If you made white cut chicken and served it with pineapple instead of green onions, ginger, and minced garlic, I would be just as uncomfortable.”
“Wellington moon cake is not bad though. It sounds tasty.”