05/29/23 - A couple of villages in Minnan will even feed newborns live earthworms.

CCTV News reports on what the astronauts in Shenzhou 16 thought of going to space: “Super comfy!”

Comments are full of good-humoured jealousy. “It must be so cool to ride a rocket!”

“”Dude, where’s your professor?” “Oh, he’s overhead.””

“Our goal is the galaxy! Bless the Chinese Space Program! We wait for your triumphant return!”

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Another blogger covers the astronauts, saying, “A lot of people are commenting how they’ve got a chance, after seeing Astronaut Du Haichao wearing glasses. But once you see his resume, you’ll realise nah, it’s gotta be him. This is a top-tier researcher. Look at his fit body and dark skin and beastly figure. He is a representative of our civilisation. He is an archetypical elite human. Luckily, he’s one of ours.”

The blogger attaches a copy of his resume, where he graduated with a doctorate degree in designing rockets from Beihang University, and has written over 50 scientific papers and attended overseas conferences, and holds 2 national copyrights.

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“Uni students really can’t live on 1500 RMB a month. Every time my family gives money to me, they say I’m spending too much. I spent 8 RMB on breakfast today, 13 on lunch, 12 on dinner, and bought 20 RMB’s worth of fruit. I buy clothes occasionally, and nothing else. Some of my classmates apparently have 500 RMB left over by the end of the month. How are they budgeting?”

OP attaches a picture of their fruit.

Comments say, “Fruit really is insanely expensive these days. Every time I go buy fruits, it ends up costing 50, 60 bucks. Is there a cheaper option for buying fruits online? I need it.”

“After I read the comments, I’m even more determined to never have kids if I’m not rich. The kids will suffer, and I’ll suffer too.”

“You buy 20 bucks of fruits every day? What, you’re getting fruit for all your dormmates?”

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A blogger responds to the mother writing about her XYY baby and his development, by posting what Chinese Wikipedia has to say about the disorder.

“This abnormality is pretty common among chromosomal disorders. It happens in 1/500 to 1/1000 of male babies. It shows symptoms like height over 180cm, a longer torso and limbs, weak muscle strength, uncoordinated movement, lack of symmetry in the face, long ears, and skin lesions. Although patients typically have normal IQ development, most of them have below average IQ. Their personalities are often abnormal from childhood. They tend to be very unstable and prone to outbursts, cruel, impatient, unable to withstand frustration, quick to anger, and can often display impulsive violent behaviour. When they’re in non-ideal situations, they can often become anti-social and gain other mental disorders. Scientifically, they’re referred to as supermale, but actually 15-20% of patiences have medium level hormone deficiency, with few sperm or mutated sperm. They can have normal offspring, abnormal offspring, or not offspring.

According to statistics, XYY patients are more prone to being criminals than normal people, up to several times or a dozen times the norm. It’s also important to note that another chromosomal disorder, XXY patients, also have elevated crime rates, and is very similar to XYY patients. This means that the extra Y chromosome is not the deciding factor. The deciding factor is more probably the lowered IQ and central nervous system abnormalities.

Lately, scientists have pointed out that using “biological factors” to explain the source of crime is not accurate.”

Comments say, “Can you find out about this through normal checkups?”

“I’ve read the comments below this mother’s posts, and they’re all saying she’s lying to herself. You can’t tell anything about the temperament of a four-month-old baby. No doctor would say that her baby has no problems or risks or anything absolute like that.”

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“I wore a dress with spaghetti straps because it was too hot, and my teacher wouldn’t let me in the classroom? It’s like I woke up today and time-travelled to the goddamn Qing Dynasty. Honestly, it’s one of few days I actually woke up early in the morning and didn’t show up late. I even bought some red bean paste buns and soy milk to eat in the classroom before class got started. It was super hot this morning though, so I put on a dress with spaghetti straps. It’s a totally normal dress.

I got to class, and just as I was looking for my seat, my gastrointestinal professor yelled at me from the podium, gesturing around her shoulders, that my dress exposed my shoulders. It’s inappropriate. I can’t wear it to class. That I could go back and grab something that covered my shoulders, and she wouldn’t count me as late. But I can’t stay in the classroom.

Jesus, I was going to die of embarrassment.

She told the other students in the class not to wear this kind of clothing, and not to wear sandals to class.

I can’t actually go back, because I live super far away, so I messaged my friend to bring me a jacket. I mean, honestly…it’s not like I was showing cleavage. Why is she treating me like I’m a whore?”

Comments say, “Wow, people from the Qing Dynasty live a long time.”

“This is in a fucking university?”

“Yeah, a lot of universities these days explicitly ban girls from wearing spaghetti straps, and guys from wearing sandals. I guess they’re worried about it hurting the image of the school?”

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A tiktok video of a woman walking her dog around a children’s playground, and scaring one of the kid. A man (possibly the dad?) walks up and violently throws the dog into the ground.

Comments say, “She doesn’t even have a leash on her dog. She was totally asking for it.”

“Great job! Next time, she’ll learn where it’s appropriate to walk her dog.”

“Why would anyone walk their dog at a children’s playground?”

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“Every time I ask for living expenses from my dad at the end of the month, he tells me off. It’s not weird to put on makeup in university, right? I just want to look pretty and buy new clothes like my roommates. He wouldn’t give me an extra cent…”

She shows texts between her and her dad:

OP: “I’ve already bawled my eyes out. I’ve reflected on myself. Look, my eyes are so swollen that it looks like I have monolids now.”

Dad: “You’re young and still studying. Why would you wear makeup? That stuff is just a tax on low IQ, and it’s wasteful. I’ve never seen you have any living expenses left over in a month. [wires 1200 RMB]”

Comments say, “Well, nothing you can do about it. Your parents don’t have any obligation to you after you’re 18. If the condition of him giving money to you is telling you off, than you just have to put up with that. After all, you still need them to feed you. Once you can feed yourself, you can spend your money on whatever you want.”

“The hell is 1200 good for? Girls need more money than boys anyhow.”

“Even if you’re poor, there are ways to live poor. With the closest of your loved ones, why not talk to them reasonably? Why does there need to be a fight? Why do you need to tell them off? If you’re poor, just be like, “Look, we don’t have much money, let’s concentrate on studying first…””

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A childcare question: “You’re with your 4-5 year old kid at a tourist spot. He is demanding ice cream. You think it’s too cold out, and he didn’t eat any breakfast, so you refused him. You take him on the escalator at the tourist spot, and he starts twisting his body around, kicking and hitting you. “I want ice cream! I want ice cream! I want ice cream!”

You say, “Stop. You’ve got no right to hit me. You have to stop.”

But the kid has lost control over his emotions and continues to hit and kick you. The escalators are still moving and filled with people. The kid is still hitting you and if you lose your balance, you might knock an entire crowd of people over as you fall down.

What do you do?”

Comments say, “Daddy will beat him.”

“I’ll grab the railing to steady myself, grab the kid to stop him from falling, then wait until we’re off the elevator to calm him down, then explain my reasoning to him. If my kid is tantrumming, I usually just wait aside for her to be done crying before I try to talk to her. After a while, she understands that tantrumming doesn’t accomplish anything and she does it less.”

“If my kid is like this, I’ll just strangle them to death.”

“The first time he kicked or hit me, I’d have slapped him across the face. You can raise demands, but you can’t throw tantrums.”

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A video is posted of the process of the lady beating a hospital AI robot to death. …Does robot death count as death? Is it okay to post videos like this on the internet, or should we be respectful of digital life? …Sorry, my own thoughts snuck into the translations.

Comments say, “Oh no. I’m feeling sad for the AI robot. He just wanted to make her feel better.”

“Doesn’t she have to pay for destroying hospital equipment?”

“The rage of a helpless person.”

“Even bank robots are super gossipy and annoying, not to mention such a sensitive place of life and death like a hospital.”

“This thing is super fucking annoying—wants the centre spot in the elevator every time.”

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“I’ll point out a common misconception. In Chinese period dramas set in ancient times, they typically show women giving birth laying down on a bed. But in reality, giving birth laying down only became widespread shortly after the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, as that’s how midwives were trained by the state. And it only became widespread after ultrasound and medical checkup technology got to a point where we could identify women who would have trouble giving birth naturally beforehand.

Laying down helps the nurse observe what is going on to help you, but is actually extremely exhausting for the mother. So modern hospitals don’t use this, and encourage half-lying delivery. In ancient times, it was more common to deliver while squatting, standing, sitting, or even kneeling.

Comments say, “My MIL told me that in her village back in the day, people would put ash on the ground and squat to give birth. When she went to the hospital, a lot of people made fun of her. But I feel like if it’s just right over the floor, the baby would bonk its head on the floor?”

“In The Story of Minglan, they show Minglan delivering standing up!”

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A blogger posts an askreddit post seeking advice. The post reads, “I destroyed my brother’s engagement, but I don’t think I did anything wrong. How do I get my family to understand me?

My brother’s been dating this girl for half a year. They’ve met each other’s parents. A couple of days ago, they came over to my house, and my parents welcomed her warmly. We sang a bit of karaoke at home after dinner and lost track of time. It was super late when we got done, so my parents had her stay the night with me in my room.

We got along super well as we were talking in bed, and in our chats, I discovered that she was a virgin. I felt like my brother had shorted her, because he’s not a virgin. We started talking about novels we liked, and she said that she was reading a fantasy romance that I’d heard of. Now, when I read romances, I only read ones where both parties are virgins. I feel like if men don’t keep themselves pure, it’s super gross. So I asked her, the male lead of that novel isn’t a virgin, don’t you think that’s gross? She said that she doesn’t care that much about virginity, so long as he’s faithful once they get together. She’s also not reading the novel for the romance.

So I told her, if a man isn’t a virgin, no matter what the reason, it means that he doesn’t necessarily have to have you. He doesn’t only want you in his life. He would’ve been okay with his ex-girlfriend. He would’ve been okay with you. If one day, you stop being good enough, then the next girlfriend will also be okay. She went silent for a long time, and then said that what I said made sense. Then she asked if my brother was a virgin, and I felt like I couldn’t lie to her about that. We’re both girls, she has a right to know. So I told her my brother wasn’t a virgin. He had a girlfriend in highschool, and another girl friend in college. He had kissed and groped his highschool girlfriend, and gave his virginity to his college girlfriend.

They split up after a few days, and my brother came to me demanding to know why. He yelled at me for telling his fiancee about his ex-girlfriends. My parents also yelled at me for not minding my own business, for being crazy. But I feel like such a pure and clean girl is being tainted by my brother. If my brother’s girlfriend was also not a virgin, I wouldn’t have said anything. It’s fair enough for two non-virgins to be together. But she’s a virgin. Doesn’t she deserve an equally pure and clean virginal man? A lot of guys will look down on a girl for not being a virgin. Why can’t girls reject men for not being virgins?

Why is everyone so mad at me? Maybe I communicated badly, but her boyfriend was the one being slutty in highschool, only caring about his lower half. If he can do it, why can’t I say it?

I guess reddit really is a male-only website. People are even looking through all my previous posts. I’m just joking, guys. Can’t you joke when life is getting hard? It’s not like I did any of it myself.”

OP also shows screenshots of her previous posts, which talks about who is the best male character in otome dating games, and how she likes all of them equally.

OP then comments, “Maybe the reason the fiancee broke up with her brother isn’t because he isn’t a virgin, but because he’s got a psycho sister? Maybe she doesn’t want to deal with your craziness once you marry in.”

Comments say, “If it was me, I’d break up too. I don’t want a sister in law who has to get involved in everything like some sort of ticking time bomb.”

“She just doesn’t want her brother to have girlfriends.”

“She probably just got rejected the 10086th time at her dates, so she’s holding onto resentment at heart. Girls are like this—if their lives aren’t going well, they don’t want anyone else’s to either.”

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A tiktok video of a 7-8 year old girl comforting a crying baby while crying herself has gone viral, where you can hear her mother say, “What are you crying about? This is the little baby brother you wanted, isn’t it?” As the girl cries back, “Yeah, but I thought you can just pat them and be done. I didn’t know it would be this hard to comfort him!” as she holds and pats the baby with a lot of experience, like she’s done it a lot.

A blogger reposting this writes, “Some parents won’t buy their kids a lollipop or a toy. But as soon as they ask for a younger sibling, BOOM. There you go. And then they start holding their kid hostage—isn’t this the sibling you wanted? Now you go be responsible for them.”

Comments say, “They use all their manipulative logic on their own children.”

“If this was an older brother comforting a younger sister, people would be talking about it differently.”

“Kids are so easy to manipulate these days. When I was little and my parents asked me if I wanted a sibling, I told them that if they had one, I’d strangle that baby. And they never brought it up again.”

“She may not have even meant it when she said she wanted a brother. A lot of relatives will keep joking about it to you over and over and over again, trying to bait the right answer out of you. When they’re doing this, the mother is probably already pregnant.”

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There is a blogpost of someone showing their work cafeteria lunch, commenting, “Even pigs would die if you fed them nothing but this”, showing a picture of a box of boiled potato slices.

Underneath this post, someone has posted, “Anti-Corruption Bureau cafeteria has great lunches! Eight dishes a day. If it weren’t for the attached gym, I’d gain ten pounds a month!”

Comments say, “Surely, not all of our civil servants are scumbags like this. :P”

“No wonder why government workers are always such obese men.”

“This matches up to my model of government workers lacking any capacity for empathy.”

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There’s a video of Shenzhou 16 launching, but for some reason, none of the websites or software I’ve found will let me download it, a problem I often have with videos posted by CCTV’s weibo account itself. Not sure what’s going on. The comment section is filled with well wishes for the crew.

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A blogger reposts a picture posted by Korean news media, showing each nation which has made it to space, and the rockets they used.

Comments say, “But that’s a silhouette of Changzheng 2F, not Changzheng 1. Also, they shrank Changzheng 2F to be the same size as Changzheng 1, even though it’s 150% bigger?”

“I mean, although I expect arrogance from Korea by now, but did they seriously post this?”

“Both the Chinese and Indian rockets were shrank down.”

“Wow, that’s some overcompensating.”

“Korea is truly a superpower, engineering a rocket in 2021 that matches up to other people’s rockets in the 70s.”

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“A couple of days after our wedding, my husband is yelling at me for no reason again. We would have a perfectly normal conversation, and out of nowhere, he’d just start flipping out. And he blocks me every time we fight. I understand that his work is stressful, and I try to give him a lot of slack, but he gets this way every time he gets angry. And I don’t even know what there is to get angry over.

I’m so envious of him, that he can vent like this whenever he wants and never fear losing anything. I hope he can hold onto this pure heart. I don’t know how long he’s going to take to cool down now, but I’m honestly done with him. We were chatting so happily just a moment ago…”

She shows screenshots of texts from her husband, reading, “Don’t come over. I don’t like people being around when I’m sick. Next to me. Or else I’ll block you. Don’t fuck with me when I’m not feeling well. Did you hear me? Oh, also, from Monday to Friday, don’t bother me with random bullshit and interrupt my rest. You’re taking over my relaxation time. I’m exhausted having to keep up with you after I’m done with work.”

OP texts, “Okay, get some rest. Mmhmm, I’ll come over tonight.”

Husband, “Fuck off. Don’t interrupt my rest. I want to sleep by myself in bed. It’s much comfier. Do not come over. I beg you.”

Comments say, “Yeah, this is what happens if you marry a homo.”

“Does he have some kind of blackmail on you?”

“You’re husband’s weird. You need to pay attention and see if he isn’t gay. I’m not joking.”

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“The ob/gyn department in the hospital can barely stay open anymore, there are less and less pregnant women. Anyone who comes by to have babies will get kept in the hospital for longer and longer. We could’ve checked out by day 6, and they kept us until day 8. The completely empty hospital rooms made me really sad. I hear that marriage numbers this year made another record low again. That means next year, newborn rates are gonna make another historical low. While I was in the hospital, I heard other mothers say that just their checkups during pregnancy was 20K, not to mention the cost of delivery and staying in the hospital. And this money is just the start. People on the internet are talking about how a normal cold for a baby is half a month’s salary for people, and you can never predict when they’re gonna get their next cold. It’s terrifying. I can barely keep one baby alive, much less three or four. That’s really a privilege only available to rich people.”

Comments say, “I’m at Shenyang Chengjing hospital, and our ob/gyn department is absolutely filled, not a single bed available. Where do they have free beds?”

“I can talk about this. My checkups added up to about 20K too, and insurance would only cover 1000 of it. Honestly, this is so sad. And the most annoying thing is that hospitals won’t acknowledge another hospital’s results, so after you’ve done one set of tests, you have to repeat them again. I don’t know why. Honestly, I got pregnant by accident and I don’t want to keep it anymore.”

“I guess she’s not a nurse. You can just judge yourself when kids have a cold. How would it cost half a month’s salary?” Replies below this comment say, “My kid had skin rashes and got a fever for four days. Went to the hospital for a checkup and some skin cream, and the whole thing cost me 2000 RMB.” “In March, my whole family of four came down with the flu, and between all of us, it cost 3000 RMB.”

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“A lot of places still have the tradition of feeding babies “mouth-opening tea”. My dad told me that when I have a baby, I need to feed them a mouthful of goldthread water right away (extremely bitter herb), that this means bitterness first, sweetness later. I honestly couldn’t believe this came out of an educated man’s mouth. And then he told me that that’s what I drank when I was born, that I was too young to tell the difference between bitterness and sweetness, and had a lot of fun drinking it. (thanks a fucking lot, asshole)

Due to regional differences, “mouth-opening tea” varies by region too. In the Minnan region, a lot of people feed newborns bear gallbladder powder, saying that it’ll reduces rashes and ensure fair skin. Some places feed babies pearl powder, saying not only will it make babies brave, it’ll make their eyes big. Some old people feed babies ginseng water. Some places feed kids bitter tea. Some places do a mix of everything.

A couple of villages in the Minnan area will even feed babies live earthworms, believing it’ll make kids taller. This not only carries suffocating and infection risks, sometimes, the earthworms will crawl back out through the newborn’s nose.

Every year, newborns are put in danger because of “mouth-opening tea”. In the best case, they fall sick for a while. In the worst case, they end up in the ICU or even dead. Guys, please be careful. We might have survived as babies, but that’s survivorship bias. The best mouth-opening tea for babies is breastmilk, or formula, and nothing else.

Comments say, “Last time I saw news about this, it was a father feeding his newborn water and they choked to death on it, and the father tried to blame the hospital.”

“Every time I think back to my family forcing my daughter’s mouth open to feed her bitter tea, I feel sorry for her. I was useless as a mother, I couldn’t fight back. T_T”

“I don’t know where my dad heard the myth that newborns can only drink water for 3 days and not milk. It was by pure luck that I didn’t starve to death. But I’ve always been sickly. and weak.”