05/22/24 - I’ve got two kids already, and my community office is still calling me and asking when I’m gonna have a third.
A compilation of China’s efforts to increase birth rates:
“The community office [basically Chinese social workers] called me this morning and asked if I was pregnant yet. I was like, “No?” And they were like, “Your kid’s about two, you can get pregnant again now. Remember to come collect your free folic acid from the office!” They’re trampling all over my face in their hurry to get me pregnant >: (“
“Same here. I’ve got two kids already, and my community office is still calling me and asking when I’m gonna have a third. I told them I was working and don’t have time, and she said I could get pregnant first and worry about it later. Even if the paternal grandma doesn’t have time, I can always get my mom to come over and baby sit. I was all like, “Why are you giving my mom work??””
“I’ve never heard of any of this as a single and child free person. So it’s not just your relatives? Complete strangers are urging you to have kids too? Lol, good luck to you guys. All around me, 2000’s kids are getting married and having kids. 80’s kids are having second and third kids. 90’s kids aren’t worried about any of that and just want to enjoy happy single life.”
“I’ve got to mention that my job every day is to call people up and ask if they’re pregnant, if they’ve collected their folic acid, if they’re taking it regularly, etc. The worst part is, a lot of women on my list are divorced or post-menopausal.”
“If this trend continues, are hospitals gonna stop doing abortions soon? Pharmacies will stop selling contraception? You gotta start buying your condoms from overseas?”
“I guess we’re past the days when they were delivering condoms door to door?”
“Now they need to confiscate condoms and hand out viagra door to door.”
“If someone was calling you up and asking if you were pregnant 30 years ago, it’s because they want to force you into an abortion.”
“Forget 30 years ago. I was born in 2001, and after I turned 1 month old, people from the community office showed up and asked my mom if she’d gotten her tubes tied yet.”
“Who’s deleting my comments? I was just asking why IVF isn’t covered by insurance. Why are they putting so much pressure on people who already have kids?”
“Ever since I got married, they’ve been calling every month to ask if I was pregnant. After I got pregnant, they somehow got the news, and called me every month to ask if my checkups are normal. I replied politely to all of it. But the most ridiculous part is that they texted and asked if my husband was home. I felt like something was wrong and asked why they wanted to know. They kept asking where I was right now, so I stopped replying. The best part is, a couple of nights later, they came calling at my door, and said that I didn’t get any marital checkups [usually for heritable conditions and STDs] and I needed to go do them now, when I’m 6 months pregnant. I told her that I got all kinds of checkups done before getting pregnant at a top hospital, and I checked a lot more things than just the marital checkup mandates. I don’t get what the hell they were doing earlier. I said there was no way I was doing all those tests now. Can they take responsibility if something went wrong? And they had nothing to say to that.”
“The worst part is, a lot of dads are zombie dads. Normally, he lays around and plays on his phone until 2-3AM, and only ever gets up to poop. But as soon as your kids bring back bad grades or start misbehaving, he’ll jump up and start flipping out, “I’ll fucking beat you!”
Dads need the most education in China, not kids. A dad who’s willing to praise his wife and take care of his wife will show their kids what a good husband looks like. Girls will think, “I need to marry a man like that when I grow up.” And boys will think, “I want to be a husband like that when I grow up.”
The words “father” are very heavy. An emotionally-stable father will show kids what a man is like.”
Comments say, “Every time I see this, I want to repost it to my husband.”
“A father’s love is like a mountain. Either he sits there like nothing, or rocks fall everyone dies.”
“Never did shit for Fat Cat while he was little, and once he’s grown up, Fat Cat’s dad showed up wanting him to be the guarantor on a bunch of loans. Made him bankrupt at a young age, and then turned around to demand money from his girlfriend. Lol.”
“Turns out, there’s actually history so ridiculous that it’s almost unbelievable. In 1974, a Chinese teacher in Wei’an City’s Madian Middle School had just finished teaching Journey to the West to his students. He told them, “Wu Cheng’en [author to Journey to the West] is from Wei’an and he was buried in his hometown after he died, but nobody’s ever found the grave. You guys can go looking for clues.”
I think he just wanted to leave an impression on his student, but a couple of days ago, a student came up to him happily and said that he’d found Wu Cheng’en’s grave in his pig pen. The teacher went to check it out doubtfully, and found a gravestone engraved with “Wu Juweng” and “Wu Cheng’en”. Wu Juwent was Wu Cheng’en’s dad. At this point, the teacher felt like he couldn’t delay any longer, and called up archeology experts.
After a whole bunch of digging, everyone learned that Wu Cheng’en’s grave was robbed once. Since there was nothing particularly valuable in it, the grave robber was very upset, so he sold the coffin to Madian Middle School, and that wood was used to make chairs and windows in the classrooms. Yes, the very middle school this student was studying at.
And the carpenter who worked on the school also had the surname Wu. Even while he was working, he got suspicious that this coffin wood was from his ancestors, so he secretly took any pieces of wood engraved with “Jishan” with him back home, since “Jishan” was Wu Cheng’en’s official title when he died.
After doing some restoration on the bones inside the grave, the experts were able to reconstruct Wu Cheng’en’s statue. Wu Cheng’en probably never imagined that one day, a bunch of kids would be leaning over his coffin as they listened to Journey to the West.”
Comments say, “Some studies show that Journey to the West might not even be written by Wu Cheng’en, though.”
“Of the four great works, aside from Dreams of the Red Chamber, the other three’s authors were just names added on by book merchants. There’s no solid evidence whatsoever.”
“The coffin wasn’t rotten after being buried for that many years? Wow, that’s some quality.”
“You have 8 bucks. What do you spend it on?
Japan loses 60 years in life expectancy. ($1)
You can transform into 72 different forms [see Sun Wukong]. ($3)
Aunt Mei gets arrested [famous human trafficker] ($2)
More money than you can ever spend. ($4)
You and your mom will always be 18. ($4)
Kids in the mountains can go to school. ($1)”
Comments say, “4, 5. Don’t even have to think about it.”
“2, 4, 6 is always the best.”
“Get 1 eight times, and I’ll go over there and become a governor.”
A video of a little boy going to daycare, being stopped by a bunch of classmates at the top of the stairs. Two girls have their arms out, stopping him from coming up the final step, and then one of them reaches out and shoves him, causing him to tumble down the stairs. The daycare has responded that they are actively participating in this investigation.
Comments say, “If the daycare won’t do anything about it, can the parents not figure out how to call the police and file complaints on their own?”
“What awful brats. They should get shoved off the stairs too.”
“A lot of little girls are real “hardcore” these days, but you gotta have a sense of right and wrong, right? Isn’t this just bullying?”
“My son in 4th grade is getting short-sighted. The doctor suggested Ortho-K, saying we can control his degree. And it costs about 10K.
The problem is, I’ve got a daughter in 9th grade who’s also short-sighted. I didn’t know about Ortho-K before, so she’s always been wearing glasses.
Now I’m wondering if I should get Ortho-K for my daughter too, but she’s already got 600 degrees. Is it even gonna work? And two pairs of Ortho-K is a big much for my family. But if I don’t get them for her, I’m worried my daughter will feel bad.
I’m not playing favourites at all. I spent 2K on her glasses. Does anyone have any suggestions?”
Comments say, “You’re asking this because you don’t want to get a pair for your oldest, and you’re hoping other people will tell you that this is caused by external circumstances, and you’re not playing favourites at all.”
“Ortho-K only works if you sleep 8-9 hours at night. She’s about to get into high school, and she won’t have that much time to sleep. You’re better off saving the money and getting her LASIK once she’s done with her college entrance exams.”
“This isn’t favouritism at all. If she has 600 degrees already and she’s still in middle school, it’s not gonna help. Just wait until she’s grown up and get surgery.”
Another video I can’t post, of a dog [I think a labrador?] with his teeth clamped around another dog, who’s laying on the ground motionless, possibly dead? The owner of the labrador is holding onto him, somewhat helplessly soothing the labrador, not really doing anything else. The injured dog is laying with its face away from the camera and I can’t tell what breed he is.
Comments say, “If you’re not capable of holding them back, then don’t keep big dogs, especially if you’re a girl.”
“This kind of dog owner are murderers. What if this had been a kid?”
“They’ll work it out, since they’re both dog lovers. They can probably understand each other.”
“A lot of news of suicides lately, like Fat Cat who threw himself off of a bridge, the girl who tried to jump off a building at a shopping mall to punish bad guys, the girl who threw herself into a river because she couldn’t stand the family her mom married her off to…
My biggest thought is, don’t commit suicide! Don’t destroy yourself!
Live! Even if you can’t change your current circumstances, you can still cut everything off and run away. Get away from your societal relationships and your living environment, and maybe you’ll stop pushing yourself into a corner!
Stay alive to create an opportunity, or wait for opportunities. Maybe one day, justice will come?
Look at these three victims. Have their deaths really solved anything?
They have no dignity. Anyone can come and feed off of their flesh and blood.
Fat Cat was a grown ass 21-year-old man, and billions of people think that they can decide on his behalf. “I don’t care what you think, I care what I think!” You don’t deserve to split your money however you want!
The girl who committed suicide to prove herself. She thought her life was very important, that she was splashing a bucket of red blood. But everyone else just thought she was a pain, and the bad guys just got ever more arrogant. And now nobody is questioning anything or trying to make anyone take responsibility. [I think this is the girl who was PUA’d into suicide, shortly after Fat Cat, whose case never got any attention. She committed suicide to try to draw attention to her case.]
(Hot fact: All the laws in the world protect a living criminal more than a dead victim, because dead people are dead, but they won’t give up on any chance to save the living.)
The girl who threw herself into a river, after she died, all anyone cared about was “money”. Her parents lost the hundreds of thousands they took in bride price. The matchmaker lost her tip. Her buyer is stressed out about how to get their bride price back…
What’s her death got to do with any of them?
Even the news. They could’ve chosen a hashtag like #19-year-old girl forced into marriage by family chooses to commit suicide.
But Weibo deliberately pushed the hashtag “#19-year-old girl takes 270K in bride price then commits suicide after failing to annul marriage” onto the trending pages, so they can get more clicks off of her death.
Time is always moving on, and everywhere is peaceful. Your life is as light as a feather in other people’s eyes. You’re the only one who thinks it’s important.
The stories of painful regret and crying and guilt only happens in romantic, naive novels. In reality, it’s always, “Your family may still be weeping, but others are already singing!””
Comments say, “My parents are pressing me into having a baby lately, and I want to kill myself. I’m not trying to prove anything. I just think it’s painful to have a baby, and it’s painful to die, but having a baby is much worse than dying.”
“Yeah, don’t let anyone who hurt you have an easy time. If you can’t change them, then you can cut them off. Be cold to everyone else and only good to yourself. No one can live for you, and your pain can’t be transferred onto anyone else. Rather than continue to suffer endlessly, just pull out in time. Love yourself first, and then others. Life isn’t hopeless. Remember to breath, and see who lives longer. Never give up.”
“I just want to ask women, you’re brave enough to kill yourself. Why can’t you brave enough to take someone with you when you go?”
Is it tragic that I and most of my generation diaspora Chinese in Southeast Asia identify acutely with the comments about dads? 🥹