The afternoon of the 20th, three dead bodies were found in a forest in Sichuan. After investigation, it was determined that they were three people (23 to 30 years of age) who had arranged to meet up in the forest and take poison to commit suicide together.
Comments ask, “Why are there so many group suicides? What’s the societal cause behind it?”
Someone posts pictures of the lunch that their nanny had cooked and asks if she’s slacking on the job.
“I pay my nanny 7000 a month, plus a fee to her agency, it adds up to almost 8K a month. She doesn’t look after the baby at night, but does cook three meals a day. I wash the dishes myself. This is her first day at work, and she spent an entire hour making this. Picture two is what the kitchen looked like 44 minutes into her cooking. Just now, the baby woke up in the middle of the night to cry, and she didn’t even come over to ask about it. Honestly, I’m kind of angry.”
Comments say, “I can cook exactly those three dishes in ten minutes.”
Someone shows texts from their best friend, asking, “Can I stay at your place for May golden week? My whole family is in Changsha, and hotels here are expensive as shit.”
OP asks, “I’ve already arranged with friends to go travelling for May golden week, and got this text today. I’m only 2 km away from her house, and I live alone. We’ve known each other for a decade, and we get along pretty well, but that is a big ask. It’s not about her. I would feel uncomfortable about anyone living in my house while I’m not there. It feels like a huge invasion of privacy. And I’m a bit of a neat freak too.
I live in a pretty expensive area of Changsha though, hotels around here are 500-800 RMB a night. It is pretty ridiculous. I understand why she doesn’t want to pay. How should I deal with this?”
Commenters reply, “Dude, it’s way too much to let her entire family stay at your place too!”
A childcare blogger writes, “I think making kids quit their pacifiers is absolutely horrifying. Especially the way people go about doing it.
A pacifier is something that brings comfort to a kid. Of course they’re going to be upset about stopping it. There are plenty of scientific papers about the benefits of pacifiers—they reduce the rate of SIDS, prevent babies from sucking on their thumbs, satisfy their sucking instincts. Honestly, sooner or later, the kid is going to quit it on their own anyways. There’s no need at all to force them to quit when they’re still babies.
Even if you heard from god-knows-who on the internet that pacifiers can change their mouth and teeth structure, that’s something that only happens with excessive use. And not being able to use it with an ear infection means exactly that—that you can’t use it literally during an ear infection. You can easily just control how much your kid uses their pacifier without having to make them quit entirely.
But even if you had to make them quit, surely, you can use a gentler method?
Do you know how people make their kids quit? There are videos all over instagram of parents who cut up the pacifier right in front of their kid, despite protests, and then tell their kid that it’s broken, it’s gone, it’s never coming back again.
And then, of course, the kid freaks the fuck out, because this is something that’s always been there beside them, giving them comfort. They almost always end up crying inconsolably, crying more than they’ve ever have. Some even cry for several days in a row. Cry to the point of getting a fever. To the point of having a seizure.
Cutting pacifiers up is like a ritual. A lot of parents do it without even thinking it. There’s literally tons of videos like this. And they all insist on filming the whole process, including their child’s screams and wails, and post it on the internet trying to call others to do the same thing.
It gives me a headache. There are tons of gentle, slow ways of doing this, why would people choose the most traumatic option? The scariest part is that I can’t see any attempt at all on these parents’ parts to avoid emotional damage. None at all. They just say that they can’t help it either, as though they have no agency in this at all.
It’s not just pacifiers—there are plenty of people throwing away comfort blankets or beloved stuffed animals. If you ask, they always claim they’re doing it for the kid’s own good. Even if it’s clearly very damaging and traumatic to the kid, even if the kid is too upset to sleep, crying to the point of throwing up, the parents continue to insist that it’s not like this is easy for them either.
This is all so suffocating and terrifying.”
A tiktok video of people dressed in traditional Chinese clothes at an intersection in Luoyang. OP wishes, “I hope we can see more of our traditional clothing all around the country. It’s so beautiful.”
Comments ask, “Do they not have to go to work?”
Someone asks a relationship blogger, “Hey, I’m going to my long-distance boyfriend’s city to see him, how should we split the costs?”
Comments reply, “If you are seriously considering this question, then just don’t go. No matter how you split the costs, nobody is going to be happy about it.”
“You pay for travel expenses, he pays for your stay there.”
“Fun fact: most phones come with calculators these days.”
“When it comes to delivering sex cross-country, I usually pay for everything myself and pay him 200 RMB when I’m done.”
“It’s up to how much you make, isn’t it? If you make more than him, you pay for a bigger portion. If he makes more than you, he pays a bigger portion. If it’s the same, you split everything evenly. If you really have to calculate every dime and penny, maybe you should focus on your career instead of dating.”
Someone posts their outfit saying, “I’m in 9th grade and wore this to school one day, and my classmate said it was too slutty??”
Comments concur, “I wore some slightly tighter jeans one day that hugged my ass, and my female classmates wouldn’t stop commenting all day how big my ass is. They even gossiped to the boys about who would dare to wear pants like that with such thick thighs. I never wore those pants again.”
“I wore shorts one day during the summer in 9th grade, and everyone started telling their friends that I was the cheapest, sluttiest girl in class.”
“Are we really this conservative these days? Really feels like society was a lot more open and liberal just ten, twenty years ago.”
A childcare blogger writes, “I feel like I’m some kind of perv, walking around the park, staring at everyone else’s kid. Every single one of them has hair. There are at least twenty kids at this park, and only mine is completely bald. Worse than that, everyone has to come up to me and tell me off.
Oh my god, it’s not even summer yet, why would you shave off all his hair?
Why do you keep your kid so bald?
You should leave him a little hair—the top of his head isn’t even fully grown yet.
What the fuck am I supposed to say?”
A submission to a relationship blogger, “Help—my girlfriend is over 30 in her BMI. She’s solidly obese. What’s a quick and easy way to lose weight? She’s 158cm tall and over 65 kilos now. Her stomach is covered with purple stretch marks. She’s gained 10 kilos in the 9 months we’ve been together. She works in takeout delivery, basically has to run around all day, so she’s often exhausted after a day. Because it takes so much stamina, she’s got a bigger and bigger appetite. Her mealtimes are super random, and she loves to eat late at night. She drinks boba tea just about every two or three days. She’s definitely the type who can’t eat less or move more, and doesn’t have the willpower to diet.
But she’s got decent health. Her weight isn’t making a health impact so far. But I feel like eventually, this is bound to start affecting her health. I understand that she works very hard all day and it’s understandable that she wants to eat a lot. But with her weight as it is, I’m just worried about her future health is all.”
Comments ask, “But her BMI is only 26 though???”
The leader of the Chinese Nutrition Committee writes a PSA on what you should feed your kids to prevent early puberty, educating that, “According to research, early puberty is tied with a raised risk of chronic illnesses later in life. Eating soy-based products and whole grains is effective in delaying puberty. Of course, you shouldn’t eat as much as possible. Experts suggest about 10 to 25 grams of soy beans every day is the most effective.
Eating too much meat or fats is bad for prevention. Even vegetable oil can be risky.
Study also shows that 6-8 years old is the best window for preventing early puberty. You are still in time if you adjust their diet.”
A doctor writes, “Are you scared of getting covid for the second time?
Lately, people have been posting positive tests to their social media, saying that they’ve been infected again—or even that their whole family is showing positive again. I’ve written before that immunity will continue for 3 to 6 months after recovery from covid. After that, your antibody count will decrease and the chances of re-infection will increase. A lot of people are wondering whether or not a peak of second-time infections is going to arrive and whether it would be safe to travel during May golden week.
So what is the situation in China? Chinese CDC shows that from the 14th to the 20th of April, there has been 275 different mutations of covid found in China. According to the stats posted on the 15th of April, the 15 initial cases of the XBB.1.16 variant has increased to 42 cases. It’s easy to tell then that covid is definitely not going to disappear. It will continue to exist beside us, and it will continue to mutate.
But looking at the statistics, it seems that most people who are positive are still getting covid for the first time. The ratio of second time patients are very low, but still worrying.
The XBB variant has continued to mutate so that it is more infectious. But 80% of covid patients are first time patients, and for most people with a normal immune system, they are still immune to covid after recovery. People who have received the vaccine, especially, show plentiful antibodies. We are far from having so few antibodies that they are entirely ineffective. Considering that there hasn’t been a major mutation to the virus, I believe that this virus isn’t going to break herd immunity any time soon.
But as we get into the latter half of the year, and the average amount of antibodies continues to fall, if a new mutant variant began spreading, it can cause a large number of patients. And the ratio of second-time patients is going to rise. For people who are at high risk, they should consider getting a booster shot strongly.
A lot of people are worried that a second-time infection will bring with it worse symptoms. Just looking at patients of the Omicron variant, covid symptoms haven’t changed much at all. Second-time patients are still complaining of respiratory symptoms, mostly fever, coughing, and sore throat. For people with normal immune function, because of the memories of your immune system, a second time infection should come with quicker recovery times and lighter symptoms. There’s no need to worry. For old people, those with compromised immune systems, and people with pre-existing conditions, though, a second-time infection could still turn into major or severe illness. Therefore, it is important that we pay more attention to at-risk groups and protect them.
But even if another wave of infection comes, we have a higher vaccination rate now, more medicine in stock, and hospitals have more experience in dealing with covid. The pressure brought on by severe cases should be much milder than before, and even a peak of infection wouldn’t be as bad as the first time around.”
Comments say, “What is there to be scared of? It’s basically just the flu—it’s not going to kill you. Are we really still worried about this after three goddamn years of lockdowns?”
“Each round of infections has lowered the lethality rate of the virus—I’ve got to give my thanks to everyone who refused to wear a mask.”
“God, this is just funny. So what if we get positive again? It’s just a fever for a few days. Are people trying to make money off of this again?’
The group suicide in a forest story made me think of Japan — it's common enough of a problem there, I think. Has group suicide suddenly become more common in China now as well?
Just made an account to be able to comment on this substack! I really appreciate all the work you’re doing to make this (newsletter? do people call substacks “newsletters”?) possible. Translation can’t be easy, and this is exactly the sort of direct context and window-into-another-life that’s so difficult to find when you don’t know anything about the culture to begin with. There’s western media coverage, sure, but that’s a totally different beast with a totally different lens. Thank you!