A blogger screenshots a conversation about HR: “I’ve interviewed at 10 different places, and there’s been no exceptions. Can anyone explain why all HR ask where you’re from when you call you first? Even after I say I’m not from Shanghai and I’ve worked in Shanghai for 3 years, they’ll still press the issue. Is this some kind of regional discrimination I’m unaware of?”
“It’s about job stability. If you’re from out of state, and you get married or something happens to your parents, there’s a big likelihood you’ll quit and go back to your hometown. This is a risk for businesses.“
”Some don’t like locals, because they’ve got a house and a car and don’t have a lot of stress. They’ll quit over anything. Some don’t like out-of-staters, because they like to quit and go back home. Some just don’t like people from a certain region. Like my manager at my previous company got splashed with gasoline by someone demanding wages, and got scared shitless. After that, we’ve got 20,000 employees in our company and no one is from that region.”
A video shared by an overseas netizen: “What’s it like to watch a dragon boat race in Manchester? Chinese culture really has entered the world. It’s acknowledged by a lot of foreigners.”
Comments say, “Stand up. Don’t keep kneeling. We don’t need foreigners’ acknowledgement.”
“Why do we keep seeking other people’s approval? Isn’t it enough to be happy with it ourselves? What’s anyone else got to do with it? Have some cultural confidence.”
Shanghai’s #Jingdong Giang Objects Show becomes newest phenomenon, redefining the charisma of “hugeness”. Are you attracted by huge things? Do you feel a trace of fear because of their size? If you come to Shanghai, you’ll find lots of giant monuments, including the 2m tall giant face on Weihai Zhong Road, the lying giant, Pudong’s giant Three Musketeers. Shanghai’s been at it again lately, as Jingdong [internet shopping platform] has been dropping giant projections on the Norther outer coast, using giant displays to bring tourists new thrills. Are you awed by huge things?”
Comments say, “It scared me T_T”
“Holy shit it’s so big.”
“Nowadays, no matter where you go, you’ll find that cities have become prettier. Not only are streets clean and tidy, but it’s all neatly decorated and covered with greenery. The only pity is that a lot of places hardly have any people at all. When I chat with locals, most are worried about work being hard to find and income stagnating or even lowering.
Prettying up cities is certainly important, but helping people make more money is clearly much more important. Our cities need to be totally reformed, opening up both internally and externally, and get rid of various restrictions and open up thoughts. We need to bring industries alive again, and fill cities with life. Making work easier to find draws more people to a city than any decorations. And cheaper goods makes people excited.
Not long ago, I was on a pedestrian street in a major city in the south, and I went into a coffee shop around 8:40PM, and the owner told me that they were closing in 20 minutes. I was shocked and left in disappointment. But I guess it’s understandable, since he only had two customers inside.
I’ve been to at least two different cities’ bar district. Revisiting them in a couple of years, everything’s closed down and changed to something else now. Bars are too expensive these days. They can’t survive unless they’re in a core city. A certain mountain region built a wooden hiking trail for some reason, and I’ve been more than once and have never seen anyone on it. Another path occasionally has visitors but it’s been closed down now. A certain street in a certain city might be filled with pretty lights, but there are hardly any pedestrians on the sides of the roads, and all the stores close early.
Maybe it’s because I’m getting up there in age, but I like crowds, I like people filling the streets. After the crack downs, everything’s died off, and I feel very disappointed.
You have to be careful with management. You have to make sure everyone can make more money, so they can be more reckless when it comes to spending their money. You need to raise people’s societal confidence in rising income, or else everyone just saves their money in the bank.
I just saw the tourism data for Midsummer Festival, and the number of people going out and the amount of money spent rose by 6.3% and 8.1% compared to last year. I’m really happy about this. Every holiday, tourism numbers have been doing better this year. I hope it keeps improving. The tourism industry is highly correlated with individual and family happiness, so the better it does, and the more people are flowing, the more alive places will feel.”
Comments say, “Some prettiness is a type of burden, because prettiness needs to be maintained, and maintenance costs money, and yet prettiness doesn’t generate any profits on its own.”
“The crack downs have been way too strict. It’s killed the life in a lot of places.”
“A lot of markets that have naturally formed in various communities have been shut down by city management. And the plazas that the government provided has no visitors at all.”
An interview with a young man who didn’t do well in his exams, “The whole exam, I knew for a fact I screwed up back. But what I want to say is, I always remember the saying that if life really was determined by the Gaokao, then life would be far too simple. My life is long yet. So, the people who did well, keep doing well! And the people who didn’t do well like me, we can keep working hard, because that’s what we’re gonna have to do throughout life anyways.”
Comments say, “There’s a lot of people like this in my hometown. They can’t learn anything, but they sure have a lot to ramble about. They’re always going on and on at home, every single day, even years afterwards, they’re still going on about the same bullshit.”
“We need more promotions like this. Not all students get great scores.”
“If you can’t even seize on the fairest and most just opportunity to change your life, how are you going to work hard to grasp at other opportunities? He’s saying a lot of pretty words, and theoretically, he’s not wrong, but can you be a bit more specific? How are you going to work hard? In what direction? You’ve got to at least have a goal you’re working towards, right? Or are you just taking it one step at a time?”
“I burned my postgrad thesis to the teacher who passed away one day before my Gaokao. Mrs. L, you never got to see me take my exams, but I’m telling you the ending now.
Graveyards these days are so environmentally friendly, I couldn’t even find where I was supposed to burn offerings. Had to hop through a bunch of hoops and shamelessly ask several different workers (they all went bizarrely silent when they heard what I wanted to burn (sorry, I guess I’m a weirdo)) before I finally found a row of crematorium chambers behind the farewell hall. There was a stove next to the coroner’s autopsy office that looked like it used to be used to burn people, and has now been retired to burning money (and maybe also burning whoever the coroner’s done autopsying??)
A coroner who passed by (after experiencing the same confusion) told me to throw my thesis in, but I needed to wait until the afternoon before a technician will come to burn everything together. So I gently pushed this piece of academic garbage in, and it immediately fell through to the floor under the stove. I had to double check that the stove will burn whatever’s underneath it too.
I hope whoever is responsible for burning offerings at the Changzhou Funeral Home actually lights this stove in the afternoon, so that Mrs. L can know I’m finally done with my education!
PS: Just wanted to add, my teacher is a woman, and so am I. I hope people can stop assuming a person in a story with an unknown gender is an automatic “he”. Women aren’t a secondary gender.
PPS: I thanked her in my thesis too.
PPPS: Everyone’s comments are so sweet and nice. It’s been 8 years, so a lot of my memories are quite blurry, and some of these comments really made her come alive in my heart. Thank you guys T_T”
Comments say, “I can’t imagine how happy she would be to receive this in the afterlife. She would surely shake her head with a chuckle and mutter to herself, “What a silly girl…” and then fish out her glasses to carefully read this thesis word by word.”
“Saw your thanks page and it really touched me. My teacher passed away from sudden illness when I was in 9th grade and never saw me take my high school entrance exam, not to mention Gaokao or college graduation. It’s been almost 8 years now, and although she was only with me for a short two years, she had a huge influence on me. She once said that I was the kid she was the least worried about. I also thanked her in my graduating thesis. I hope she has no more worries now that she’s resting in peace.”
“You’re so sweet. I burned my college grades in front of my grandpa and grandma’s grave. I deliberately printed everything out and brought it back to China to burn. I just want them to see that although their granddaughter dropped out in middle school to work, she never gave up on her education.”
“The minute I got my college acceptance, I went and photocopied it and put the photocopy next to my dad’s ashes. We were so poor that we couldn’t get a grave for my dad. I hope he can see my acceptance letter in heaven and he can know that I became the first college student in my generation.”
“Wow, your teacher would be so proud! Among a ton of spirits loaded with gold and silver, she’s got the most valuable gift of all—the thing she wants the most. It’s like idealists suddenly gained the light of realism.”
From the 7th to the 9th of June, Tang Shangjun welcomed his 16th attempt at the Gaokao in Guangxi. Before this, he became famous for repeating high school for a chance to get into Qinghua University. He has been extended an offer from Southwest Legal University, Jilin University, China University of Law and Politics, and Shanghai Jiaotong University, and various other famous institutions, and has not accepted any of these offers. In the evening of the 9th, he spoke to Jiupai News after his 16th Gaokao and said that his mood was very flat after leaving the exam location. He didn’t feel like he did particularly well this year. He says that he hasn’t checked his answers with anyone, but he feels he probably got a similar score to 2023. If he were to file applications again, he’d still aim towards getting a teaching degree. He told Jiupai News that all of his friend and family are telling him to just go to university. “They said that no matter how I did, it was time I started uni. Get out of high school and stop lingering here. Once I get to uni, it’s a whole new world.””
“After reading the Gaokao exam, I feel like I was such a badass back in the day. I could only figure out the very first maths multiple choice. Holy shit, how did I do this before? How many questions can you solve?”
[Look, I’m not going to translate any of this, because I have no idea what any of this means. This is maths beyond my understanding even when I was back in high school. But here are the questions.]
Coments say, “Why did they cancel the listening section for the English exam?”
“What does PBC=1 mean in the geometry section? Can I not even understand these questions anymore?”
“Only 19 questions? I remember I had to do 22 questions. And these feel pretty simple, honestly. As a 2023 graduating student, I feel heartbroken.” [A year that had infamously difficult maths.]
Under the hashtag #Chow Tai Fook factory in Shenzhen stops production, a blogger asks, “Even Chow Tai Fook is going under? In my impression, gold has a pretty high profit margin, doesn’t it? And Chow Tai Fook is such a well-known brand, they’re in every shopping mall. How are they going under too? What a shame.”
Comments say, “Yeah, what the hell is going on?”
“Gold prices are ridiculous these days. How are they not making any money?”
“Is it because gold prices have been too unstable lately?”
“Lately, a mother shared her experience hiring a uni student to carry her 3-year-old up Mount Tai for 518 RMB. Fu Linghai, who was responsible for carrying the baby up, is a student athlete in a Jinan college. Fu’s never done mountain climbing work before. He says his first job was carrying Er Ya up Mount Tai. We learned that after this went viral on the internet, dozens of netizens have been contacting Fu asking about his mountain climbing services, men and women, old and young. “A lot of people want me to carry a grown adult up the mountain, but there’s no way. They’re too big and too heavy, they’d affect my balance, and it wouldn’t be safe.” Fu says that from now on, whenever it’s the weekends or he doesn’t have classes, he’ll keep mountain climbing with people to earn tuition and living expenses while helping others.”
[Mountain climbing services is paying a guy to climb a mountain with you, so you’re not bored. And also, if you have low will power, he can cheer you on like some sort of gym coach.]
Comments say, “But if anything went wrong, he’d be fucked.”
“I don’t want to carry my own bags. If he can carry my bag for me and give me a hand every now and then, that’d be enough.”
“I’m kind of chubby. Anyone want to do this for 1000 RMB?”
Do the dragon boats in Manchester also crash into each other like they do in HK and Guangdong? Because watching both teams fight each other over that is the true tradition hahaha
I’m always amazed at how many forms of workplace discrimination are legal in China! I remember doing an interview prep workshop in uni, and the female Chinese students were amazed that employers weren’t allowed to ask when they planned to get pregnant.