On the 28th of April, a father holding a sign looking for his missing child in Zibo, Shandong went viral after he was told by security guards to leave, and fell on his knees and cried and begged to be allowed to stay. He’s been looking for 14 years and 103 days on Crystal Street for his child, but the security guard glared at him and tried to chase him off, he claims. News reporters contacted Crystal Street Commercial District LLC, who told the reporter that he didn’t just hold up a sign, he was livestreaming in the middle of the street too. It had attracted a big crowd and blocked traffic for the narrow street. They said that they didn’t tell him to leave, they merely asked him to move to the other side of the street. They also said that they’ve since reached out to the father in question and helped him.
Many Zibo citizens have crowdfunded resources for the father, but he turned down the money. He says that, “My landlord in Zibo not only didn’t raise my rent for golden week, but actually gave me a discount. People brought me blankets, people helped me drive around. Some people even sat with me all day. After I had the sign made, the print shop owner didn’t even charge me. I feel really warm. Everyone here is super nice.”
As of the 29th of April, both the father and Crystal Street management have said to reporters that their dispute is now resolved.
Comments say, “Zibo is way too popular now, all kinds of assholes are jumping out. It’s like that guy who got the wrong order at the barbecue place and made a huge deal about it on the internet even though he got a full refund. We need to be nice to nice people, and stop giving leeway to assholes.”
“My wife is kinda cold blooded. Should I get a divorce? She doesn’t have any kindness, is super cold. Like, for example, she bought six huge jugs of water, five kilos each. The delivery guy would have a hell of a time carrying all of it up, so I told him to leave it by the door and I’ll bring it in with my wheelbarrow. But my wife refused. She said that he has to deliver it since she paid.
Someone scratched our car once and left their phone number. My wife went to a mechanic and used the best paint, got the best service. I said that since this guy was nice and actually left his phone number, and we’d gotten our car scratched before and no one had ever done that, we should also be nice and not get the most expensive option. My wife still insisted on it.
Whenever we fight, she’ll blacklist me on everything and I can’t contact her at all.
We haven’t been married long, and she never asks about me. She just orders me around like a tool. Should I get a divorce?”
Comments say, “Sounds like a sociopath.”
A blogger writes, “I’ve seen a lot of discussion lately on whether you need to have your baby at a public hospital. I feel like no one actually addressed the point of the issue. So I guess I have to.
As an older mother, I don’t know how to go about talking about this objectively and logically, and not make everyone think I’m just stingy or something. I’ll try to do my best.
So, basically, the process of giving birth is an entirely natural one. Yes, it’s very very painful. Yes, there’s a lot of suffering. But it’s a completely normal process for your body to go through, it’s not actually a sickness. This means that in the vast majority of cases, you’re gonna be alright. So how do private hospitals make money? It’s all based on statistics.
They offer better service and nicer environments, and 999 in 1000 people are gonna be fine. And in that one in a thousand chance, if something goes horribly wrong, they throw you on an ambulance and toss you at the public hospital. Even if you die, it’s none of their business. You’re not their patient anymore. They’ll always make money.
So you might ask, “So what’s the problem with that?”
Well, the problem is that the health department has insane standards for public hospitals. A woman dying during childbirth is a major medical incident.
If one mother dies, you might lose a rank as a hospital. If three mothers die, the entire hospital will get shut down and lose its license.
So, what’s going to happen? If a mother in labour gets sent over from a private hospital, and she’s obviously not doing well and not going to make it, that public hospital is going to freak the fuck out and not accept her. A mother dying in childbirth is a huge fucking deal for a hospital, especially a top-ranked hospital.
So, you’ll see two extremes. For mothers in the hospital currently, everyone is on full alert, they’ll stop at nothing to save her life if shit goes down. For mothers outside the hospital? Well, if she’s gonna die, she’d better not fucking die around here. That’s what everyone thinks.
I’m not saying that this is how all doctors are going to react, but a lot of people are going to just not want the trouble.
But for you, that’s your life. Do you want to run the risks?
Some girls say, but public hospitals don’t have epidurals. It’s too painful. Yeah, that’s very reasonable. So choose a public hospital that does offer epidurals. Epidurals isn’t just a shot in your arm like you’re imagining. They need to poke a needle in your spine. It takes an anaesthesiologist who’s pretty skilled.
If the anaesthesiologist doesn’t know what he’s doing, or if you’re flailing around too much because of pain, he could outright paralyse you.
Some people say, it’s hard enough giving birth already, why not do it in the best environment? I can tell you from experience, a good sitting the month centre matters a whole lot more than the couple of hours you spend giving birth. If you want a great environment, buy a suite at the most expensive sitting the month centre.
So, I think the best combination is go to an international public hospital, or a top-ranked hospital that offers epidurals. As soon as you leave the hospital, you go to a high end sitting the month centre.
That satisfies both comfort and safety.”
Comments agree, “Yeah, I had a risky pregnancy, and my ob/gyn at a private hospital told me that I needed to go to a public hospital. They could handle labour and delivery too, but they’re not set up for emergency situations the same way. If things start going bad, I’d have to be sent to the public hospital anyways, and by that point, they won’t take me anymore. Even if I had to sleep in the corridors of the hospital, I needed to make sure I’m accepted as a patient now, cause once I’m a patient, they’ll do their best to help me. Sounds like he gave me the exact right advice. At the time, I thought he just didn’t want to deal with me.”
“I reserved rooms at a hotel for golden week, and now I’ve been told that the hotel is on lockdown due to covid, so they have to refund my reservation? Are buildings still going under lockdown for covid? This is in Tianjin. The hotel won’t give me any proof or anything. I made this reservation in March and spent about 800 RMB on three nights. I looked today, and the prices have risen to 988 RMB per night.
When I used a different account to try to reserve rooms for the 28th, the same customer service agent told me that they had availability, and didn’t mention a thing about covid. What should I do? Do I just accept the refund?”
Comments reply, “Type this to him in reply: I’ve just sent screenshots of our texts and the address of your hotel to Tianjin Department of Health asking exactly what kind of contagious illness is going around. I’ve given them my suggestion that for the safety of tourists and staff, the entire hotel should be shut down for service during golden week, so a thorough investigation can be held.”
A online fashion store owner writes, “Every time I see this pile of clothes, I get mad. If you can’t afford it, don’t play the game. All of these clothes have been dragged around on the floor and are dirty as fuck. I have a seven day no questions asked refund policy so that you can try on clothes, not for you to wear my clothes for free. Have you no shame? Ripping off clothes that are just a couple hundred RMB like this? I shipped on the 5th, expedited shipping, and they waited until the last couple of seconds of the 7 day refund policy to ask for a refund. And then they didn’t actually send my clothes back for another two weeks. They’ve taken off all the tags and then shittily sewn it back on again. If you’re really too poor to afford clothes, then don’t come out and embarrass yourself. I’ve never encountered such shameless people in all the years that I’ve owned this store. I am going to demand video proof before allowing refunds now.”
A blogger reposts a father’s posts, saying, “This is a true dad.”
The father writes, “My son got obsessed with Honour of Kings lately (basically Chinese League of Legends), and at first, I was kinda worried that he was going to get addicted or something. I set down the rule that he’s only allowed to play for half an hour each on Fridays and Saturdays.
But he followed the rules well and stayed interested in this game for months, so I made him a couple of math quiz sheets that are Honour of Kings themed. He not only didn’t hate it, he actually looked like he was having fun doing it. The next day, he told me that his classmate wanted a copy of the quiz too, and that his classmate’s favourite character to use is Lubu. So, now I’m writing a Lubu themed quiz.”
He attaches a screenshot of the quiz, which contains questions like, “I got 27 kills in three rounds of the game. My friend got 32 kills in 4 rounds of the game. Which one of us has a higher average kill rate?”
“With his normal attack, Bianque was able to put five poison stacks on Luban before being killed. At this point, Luban has 400 health remaining. If each poison stack does 40 damage per second for 3 seconds, can Luban survive? What if Luban got a 200 HP heal pack?”
“Bianque grinded and saved up 1200 gold. If a magic tome costs 360 gold, how many tomes can Bianque buy, and how much gold will he have left over?”
“In a battle, Bianque faced off against three enemy heroes and put 3 poison stacks, 4 poison stacks, and 5 poison stacks on them respectively. If each poison stack causes 42 damage per second for 3 seconds, how much poison damage has Bianque done in this battle?”
“In a battle against Zhuge Liang, Bianque was able to land 5 normal attacks and put 5 poison stacks on him. If Bianque does 130 damage per attack, and each stack of poison does 36 damage per second for three seconds, and Zhuge Liang has 1000 HP, can Zhuge Liang survive?”
Comments say, “I never want to play this game again T_T”
“When I was five years old, my parents got divorced. Because my dad cheated, my mom kicked him out with nothing to his name in her anger and didn’t even want custody of me. Maybe my step mom and my dad were truly in love. They quickly formed a family together. And I got a new family too—my dad, my stepmom, me, and a little stepsister.
From childhood, my dad did whatever my stepmom said. So my stepmom had absolute authority in our house. Because she wanted to be fair, my sister and I got the exact same stuff growing up. But god only knows how much I hated wearing the same clothes as her, the same shoes as her, using the same book bag as her. Because she always got to pick the colour first, and whatever was left over was mine.
Every weekend, my sister’s dad would come and pick her up and take her back again the next day. When she came back, she was all cleaned up and pretty, with her book bag filled with snacks and toys. Since my parents’ divorce, my mom barely ever visited me. She’s never taken me for a weekend. In primary school, I saw my mom again, and she’d had a new baby.
My grades were good. I was always top of my class. Because I know that grades is the only way that I would get the teacher’s attention. My sister just plays all day, and my stepmom would frequently yell at her and beat her for not doing her homework. Later, my stepmom used her bad grades as a reason to sign her up for art classes, piano classes, calligraphy classes. And because my grades were good, that was a reason to never sign me up for any extracurriculars.
After uni graduation, because neither me nor my sister turned out to be geniuses, my dad and stepmom told us to come back to our hometown and they’d get us a job. After we returned home, I hunted for a job while preparing to take the exam to become a civil servant. Soon, they found me an office job, and I started working. Every moment I spent at home, I could feel the favouritism. Because we had a two bedroom house, I had to sleep in the living room, while my sister got her own room.
What about my sister? She said that she didn’t want to work. So she played around at home and prepared for her exams. After playing around for over a year, she finally passed the written test, and my dad and stepmom pulled every connection they had to get her a job in the government. Now that she’s finally working, my stepmom was overjoyed. She said that my sister had worked so hard, she’s going to buy my sister a house. My sister’s the only name on the deed.
After my sister started working, she started dating too. And my stepmom said that my sister’s going to be married soon, so she paid for my sister’s house to be furnished too.
I have nothing to my name. I don’t know what to do for my future.”
Comments say, “You’re very lucky already. At least you got fair treatment in childhood. Shouldn’t you be feeling grateful? After you’re grown, your parents’ money have nothing to do with you. Stop dreaming about getting money you don’t deserve and focus on yourself.”
Someone replies below, “You’re correct. My opinion is, you need to face reality. It’s not gonna be the same when one kid is your own, and the other one has no blood relation to you. You need to have a grateful heart. At least they treated you equally in childhood. Some stepmoms don’t even pretend to be fair. Don’t get so obsessed with fairness, nothing is fair in the world. You need to get stronger.”
“Just saw a post on the internet asking for advice, from a pair of very ordinary parents in their fifties. I think it’s precisely because they’re so ordinary that it’s shaken me so deeply.
This couple lived in a second line city (think Seattle, Miami, something like that). The mother is just 50 years old, near retirement. The father is an accountant. They have a son who just graduated from a famous university in Guangdong, finance major. This couple had live frugally their whole lives and pushed and pushed their son, just like tens of millions of parents around the nation. They’ve invested everything into tutoring, stretched every penny so they can push him through middle school and high school. And the result wasn’t bad—their son did well and got into a fairly decent university.
They never thought about him paying them back. They even pulled out their savings and paid a down payment on a house for him, for when he gets married. They’re paying his mortgage too. They’ve got health insurance, they’ve got a pension. They’re not worried about their retirement.
At this point, they thought their mission in life was done. Now they just have to wait for their son to find a decent job, meet a decent wife, and produce a grandchild for them. And they can live the rest of their days dancing in plazas with all the other old ladies and gents in town.
They never thought that their son graduating from uni was only the beginning of their nightmares.
First, their son attended the exams for becoming a bank employee and failed. He complained that the tests were way too hard. He needed extra tutoring. This tutoring program charged 20K for 3 months of classes. His parents have to pay it though. They’ve walked 99 steps, they’re not going to fail at the last one. They’ve already paid for all that tutoring for the last 10 years. Are they gonna refuse to pay for this one?
Three months later, he fails the exam again. He insists that the exam is rigged, he doesn’t have the connections. Nothing he can do.
He rested at home for half a year, sending out resumes and not hearing anything back. He blames all of this on covid. He says, “Finding a job is way too hard these days. Maybe I should just take the test and become a civil servant instead.”
His parents think it’s a shame to waste his major, but government jobs are super stable. He has a house anyways, he just needs some kind of steady work. It doesn’t matter how much he makes. So they agreed.
So their son buys a shitton of study materials for the civil servant exam, but his grades are pitifully low. So then, he tries to pass the exam to get into a Master’s Degree. Then he tries to get a teaching certificate. He even tried to study overseas. A ton of money flowed out, with no results to show for it.
Not just that, his living expenses are piling up too. He’s never ordered takeout below 50 RMB. When he goes out shopping and sees a pair of shoes for 1000 RMB, he buys it without blinking an eye. He even insists, “If I look smartly dressed, I’ll be able to pass interviews better.”
He always has a reason.
More and more time passes, and he has still yet to do anything for himself. His parents are anxious now. They’re just normal employees, no connections to speak of. They have to steel themselves and start begging around, and finally, they manage to get their son a job working the counter at a bank. But before they can breathe a sigh of relief, their son has quit after 3 days of work, claiming that the job is rote and unskilled and he doesn’t like it.
They’re worrying themselves sick. This is even worse than when he was in school. Although it was stressful then, they had hope. Now, they’re falling into despair. Their bottom line has lowered again and again. They don’t mind if he just does food delivery, so long as he’s supporting himself. But their son is unmoved.
They’ve even steeled their hearts and kicked him out for half a year, but they ended up taking him back.
The mother is fifty now. She’s already prepared to retire, and now she’s signed a continuing contract with her company. The dad started working jobs on the side, to make a little extra money.
I felt bad reading this. We often blame children’s failures on their family. Maybe their parents were too strict, or it was a single parent household and they lacked love, or it was a full-time housewife mother who was a bad role model. But maybe, some kids just don’t want to try.
This couple is no different than any other set of parents around the nation. They gave everything to their kid, they sacrificed everything to support him through school, to get him the best tutors, to prepare for him a marital house. It’s easy to tell that if he had a family, they’d continue giving everything to their grandson. They don’t even have high expectations for their son. They don’t expect him to make millions. They just want him to be independent.
Chinese people’s lives revolve around their child. Who isn’t devoting half their life to raising their children as high as possible? Who would have thought that their children would end up even worse off than them?
If you have to say that they did something wrong, then it might be that they thought the ultimate goal of their son’s life was to make it into university. That’s what they told him when he was growing up, and that’s what he believed himself. When he graduated, he never seriously thought about what he was going to do next. Compared to his parents, he was in much more of a retirement mindset himself. He’s like a beat up car that’s already ran for hundreds of thousands of miles. It doesn’t matter how hard you step on the gas pedal anymore.
He’s failed the very first step he took out of uni. He didn’t gather up enough strength to face the new challenges in his life. He’s a caterpillar who failed to break his cocoon. He’ll never become a beautiful and free butterfly.
This is something parents should take in caution. Getting to uni must be a mid-term goal. It can’t be your ultimate goal. You can’t tell your kids that while raising them.
There’s nothing wrong with sacrificing yourself for your kid. But don’t let your kids feel that they’re entitled to whatever you have. “Whatever is mine shall one day be yours” is a very dangerous mindset. Every Emperor who taught his crown prince this had to kill that crown prince eventually.
“One day”? How far is this one day? Everyone’s savings has a limit. If all your son is sitting around, waiting for that one day to take all that’s yours, what ambition does he have to fight for himself?
This son has another problem too, which might have been from childhood, that his parents missed because it had nothing to do with his grades. He’s very good at making excuses for himself. Everything goes badly because of outside reasons. It has nothing to do with him.
This isn’t the sort of thinking that forms overnight. When he failed an exam when he was little, he might have said that he wasn’t feeling well. If he got in trouble for talking during class, he might have said that they started talking to him first. If he got in a fight with another kid, he would insist that they threw the first punch.
And parents, of course, think their child can do no wrong. Of course it’s the other party’s fault. It’s society’s fault. It’s the bad influences in his life. And over time, the child learns it for himself and uses it against his parents when he grows up.
Lastly, let me talk about a consumerist trap. An expression has become very popular lately, “investing in yourself”, or “investing in your kids”. People think that investing in yourself is bound to produce returns. So parents throw everything they have on classes for their kids, and young people get all kinds of certificates.
It’s not that this line of thinking has no merit, but this is just the artificial sweetener that capitalists force down consumers’ throats. China’s had thousands of years of tradition where it’s always a good idea to study more. But investment cares about returns. You can’t actually master everything you learn, and not everything is actually useful to learn. But it gives you a false sense of accomplishment and satisfaction: I spent money, I put in effort, I got a certificate back.
Parents often have the same mindset when signing their kids up for classes, and kids can often end up thinking that so long as they claim they’re investing in themselves, they can spend however much money they want. It doesn’t matter the results, it doesn’t matter the efficiency. So a lot of young people hide from reality under the excuse of Master’s Degrees, civil servant exams, teaching certificates, etc.
And you’ve produced a child who doesn’t want to try, who becomes a NEET as soon as they graduate. And what can you do? As a parent, at this point, it’s not like you can beat them anymore. All you can do is cut them off.
And how many people can really make themselves do that?”
*Some people say, it’s hard enough giving birth already, why not do it in the best environment? I can tell you from experience, a good sitting the month centre matters a whole lot more than the couple of hours you spend giving birth. If you want a great environment, buy a suite at the most expensive sitting the month centre.*
I wanted to let you know that your translation here seems difficult to understand, at least from my prspective. the phrase that is difficult is a *sitting the month centre*, as if it were an idiom translated directly