[The Refer a Friend feature on substack has just come out, and I’d really appreciate it if you would refer a friend. Honestly, I want this substack to reach more people a lot more than I want to get paid. If you refer even one friend, you’ll get invited to the Doomscroll discord, where you’ll get to chat with me and other readers, and talk about all sorts of current events that may not make it onto the front pages of weibo. If you refer just three people, you’ll get to participate in polls deciding future content. And if you refer a whole ten people, I will watch Chinese TV shows with you episode by episode. It’ll be fun. I hope.
I appreciate all of you, though, and all your support. Every single view is exciting to see. Every comment lights up my day. So definitely don’t feel any pressure to.]
A barbecue place in Ningxia had a gas explosion which caused 31 deaths and seven injuries including one severe injury in the ICU, 2 second-degree burns, 2 minor injuries, and two minor cuts by glass shards. In the comments, people are expressing disbelief at the number of deaths, commenting, “This is the biggest accident this year, definitely.”
“They’re gonna be doing fire and safety inspections in night markets all over the country now.”
“Guess people should just eat barbecue at home. I bet people were thinking they could relax a bit tonight, since it’s the holidays, and then this happened. How many families does this devastate.”
“I cooked four dishes for my boyfriend after my night shift job. He complained that none of them had any meat, and didn’t want to eat any. Ended up ordering roast duck take out for himself.”
Someone replies to this post, “Guys need so much more energy than women. You really don’t have any energy if there’s no meat. It’s like, your stomach is full, but your mind isn’t. I don’t know if girls get what I’m talking about at all.”
Comments say, “You cook for other people after your night shift? What a good wife, lol. Enjoy your married life.”
“Yeah, I know exactly how you feel. You’re just his bitch.”
“What he doesn’t like is you as a person.”
A tiktok video of a dad leading a little kid along, saying, “Don’t cry yet. You gotta go outside to cry.” The kiddo replies, “Okay.” They walk just past the threshold, and the dad says, “Alright, we’re at the door. You can cry now.” The kiddo wails for a bit, and then the dad asks, “Are you done?” And the little kid comes back in, saying, “Yeah, I’m done.” And the dad tells him, “Once you’re inside, you can’t cry anymore, okay?”
The caption reads, “He’s holding in his emotions at an age where he can’t even hold in his pee.”
Comments say, “He needs a ritual even for crying. XD”
The story of the lady pregnant with quadruplets living in a pig sty with her husband is trending again, with people commenting, “Even pandas know not to have kids when they’re in a non-ideal environment.”
“Can they just not afford contraception?”
“Why are they showing people news like this? Do they really think women will read this and get super touched and moved and all want to get married and have four kids right away?”
“Father’s Day, such an insignificant holiday that not even stores want to bother. The rationality of fathers means that business owners know they can’t make any money off of them. Dads don’t say much, and mom is always complaining that he never chats or talks to her. But he used his lifetime of hard work to teach us the importance of pulling ourselves up by our boot straps, to eliminate greed, to treat others with tolerance, and hold high standards for ourselves. A father’s love is silent. I want to wish all the silent fathers out there Happy Father’s Day.”
A compilation of the shit you run into working customer service.
A ticket of a request for a refund. The reason stated is, “I didn’t know you had to pay real money when you shop on the internet.”
Customer: “My bowl broke.”
CS: “Take it apart and show me a picture.”
Customer: “[Bad photoshop]”
CS: “You call this broken?”
Customer: “Yeah.”
CS: “Do you think I can’t tell, dear?”
Customer: “Why. Is there an unpaid order? What did you do?”
CS: “You filled up your cart yourself. You can just cancel the order. I didn’t do anything.”
Customer: “All of it is rotten! How am I supposed to eat any of this? This is disgusting! They’re all rotten!”
CS: “Dear, can you take a photo or video of the products? We’ll resolve the situation based on the condition of our produce.”
Customer: “[Bad photoshop]”
CS: “Dear, you’ve had these clothes for half a year. How can you only be allergic to them now?”
Customer: “I only put them on just now.”
CS: “Why are you wearing winter coats in summer?”
Customer: “It’s winter where I live.”
CS: “It’s pretty hot over in Hunan where your IP is.”
A customer complaint which reads. “Your package is way too heavy. I got tired hauling it back to my apartment, and ordered myself a pig foot lunch and spent 18 RMB. And I bought a bubble tea for 9.8 RMB. Pay me back for them, or I’ll request a refund.”
Customer: “Hey, why haven’t you shipped my order yet?”
CS: “I can’t see any orders placed on your account, dear?”
Customer: “I haven’t actually ordered it?”
CS: “Yes.”
Customer: “I mean, even if I ordered it, I’d get a refund anyways. You might as well just mail me the shit.”
CS: “Wow.”
Another request for a refund for a ball cap, with the cited reason being, “Quality issues. Put on the hat in the morning, and died in the afternoon.”
A Chinese-medicine doctor writes, “I just saw a video of a little kid giving himself insulin shots, which he has to take for the rest of his life. This is basically cancer that doesn’t kill you. I saw the parent explaining that he wasn’t born with it. He just got diabetes one day. How do you just get diabetes? That’s a load of lies. The hospital’s test results are based on how much glucose is in your blood. Diabetes is a big problem for a lot of people.
What is diabetes?
One of the main symptoms of diabetes is a rise in blood sugar levels. That is, an increase in the amount of sugar in the blood, which causes the blood to thicken. But why does blood thicken because there’s more sugar in it? There’s several reasons: 1. The increase of sugar causes blood to thicken. 2. Although sugar hasn’t increased, you have less blood now, which causes blood sugar to go up. 3. You have normal levels of both sugar and blood, but parts of your blood isn’t flowing or is flowing too slowly, causing regional thickness to build up.
Sugar is sweet. Sweet things belong to the Earth element. And the blood flowing in people’s veins are like the water flowing in rivers. Blood sugar is the sand that’s carried by rivers. In normal circumstances, most water carries a small amount of sand. But it’s a small enough amount that it doesn’t turn the water brown. Just like how blood carries sugar, but not too much. Its thickness is controlled within certain normal parameters.
Basically, it’s what happens when your stomach, liver, and kidneys all have problems at the same time. Especially it means serious problems in your stomach and kidneys. But how many Chinese people have perfectly healthy stomachs and kidneys? What’s sad is that most people don’t know how diabetes comes about, and is scammed by people keeping them in the dark.”
Comments say, “A relative of mine has a little boy, who was clean and fair and really sweet before three years old, super good-looking kid. Then he got some kind of poisoning at 3 years old, and got diagnosed with severe diabetes. Now he’s 10 years old, and still taking insulin several times a day. He’s the same height as other 4 or 5 year old kids. It’s such a pity. I don’t know if he’s type 1 or type 2 though.” OP replies beneath, “Try giving him lard+soy sauce fried rice, and making stir-fry with lard.”
“I mean, what if you lack Earth in your elemental array, though? Do you need to replace Earth with Fire? Because I’m pretty sure the heart is represented by the Fire element.”
“Western medicine is all poison. It won’t cure you of anything. But it’ll get you addicted and make money off of you, and eventually take your life. Chinese medicine is the way of heaven.”
“I’ve just had a male coworker complain to me, “My friend, his wife took a year off of work for her pregnancy. Then stayed off of work for three years until the kid is old enough to go to kindergarten. She hasn’t worked in four years, and now she’s pregnant with the second kid. From the moment she got married, she hasn’t had any work for about ten years. My friend is paying back the mortgage all by himself and keeping four mouths fed. This type of woman is just a fucking obstacle in life.”
And it honestly chilled my heart.
He only thinks this way because his friend complains about it a lot in front of him. He thinks that his wife is resting for her pregnancy. That she’s enjoying life while she’s taking care of the kids. And my coworker agrees with this point of view.
The older I get, the more I understand that there’s no such thing as empathy between people, especially between different genders. If you haven’t experienced something, you can’t put yourself in someone else’s shoes.
When husband and wife establish a family together, it’s a cooperation from the start. They’re both shoring up each other’s ability to weather a storm. They’re supposed to understand and care for each other.
As a husband, if he cared the slightest, if he observed his wife’s average day with the kids, or if he ever took the kids himself, he’d realise how ridiculous he is being.
I’ve got a classmate in high school who was forced to quit her job and stay home after having kids, because there was no one to help with her. She graduated from a top university. She used to make over 8K a month. Her husband made 9K a month, not that much more than her. But after she stayed at home for a while, her husband also complains about how she slacks off all the time at home, and that he’s taking care of her.
So one day, she asked her husband to take care of their three-year-old daughter, and after just 2 hours, her husband fled back to work to do some overtime. He even said himself that work was easier. It’s too tiring taking care of kids. Because kids don’t listen to you. Her husband was supposed to stay home that day.
My classmate has never been apart from her daughter from the time she was born to now, when she’s five-years-old. She really raised her daughter by herself. And she did all the housework too, and cooked. Her husband hasn’t done any chores since he got married.
Sometimes, she cries to me that, “It’s fine if he wants to make money, and let me take care of the household. But he can’t talk to me this way. He can’t erase my hard work.”
But her husband doesn’t think it’s a big deal. Even if he’s actually experienced how hard it is to take care of a kid, he still thinks she’s slacking off all day.
Now she’s despaired. As soon as the kid started going to kindergarten, she found herself a job. And as to her marriage, her attitude is, “All that matters is I have money. If I can’t stand it anymore, I’ll just get divorced. It’s not like I have any expectations of him anymore.”
Comments say, “If your husband doesn’t take care of the kid, you shouldn’t take care of the kid either. I’m not saying to abandon the kid. But you have to let the kid know that they can’t just complain about the one parent who happens to be around all the time.”
“If you make 8K a month, you’re honestly much better off hiring a nanny for 8K a month.”
“Because women don’t have the same heartlessness as men do. I’ve been to a lot of parent gatherings, and every time, people complain about how men never take care of the kids. They don’t do even the smallest things. And the grandparents don’t want to help. So they have to work a full time job, and take care of the kid. I tell them that they should not care for the kid either then, because it’s not like he’s going to let the kid starve to death. But then they’ll worry the man won’t do as good of a job. Well, of course they’re not. That doesn’t mean you should keep taking 100% of the work.”
An askreddit, “What is a job that you won’t do again even if you would starve to death otherwise?”
There’s a compilation of replies.
“Telemarketing. Out of like 100 calls, I’ll speak more than 2 sentences to less than 3 people. That feeling of failure and helplessness will really make you depressed over time.”
“Photographer who take baby photos. Unless you absolutely love kids, and you absolutely love other people’s kids, and you’ve got saint-like patience. Some photographers have to be responsible for make up and costuming too, and change clothes for month-old babies. You spend the entire time on your knees. And a lot of the time, the parents and all of their relatives are watching you like a hawk. If the kid whines even a little, they’ll get mad and think you’ve hurt their baby. 3-year-olds are the most troublesome. They don’t go along with photoshoots at all. You’re just taking opportunistic shots the whole time. And you’re responsible for catching their attention, so you’re like some crazy person, jumping around and yelling to draw their attention. When I did this, my knees would be bruised all day, my joints ache, and my throat was always raw. I only lasted a month before I quit. People who do this long-term are truly talented. I’m in awe of them. I can’t do it.”
“Art teacher. Also, any job that brings you in contact with kids. I’d rather deal with unscrupulous adults than deal with naive children. You’ve got to turn normal kids into masters of art, or else you’re a shit teacher who has a bad curriculum. You’ve got to know every style of art, and can clean, and can telemarket, and can babysit, and you only make 4K a month. This is the bottom tier of service industry jobs.”
“Auditing.”
“Background extra. I only did it to get a glimpse of Liu Yifei. I had to get up at 4:30AM, and got home at midnight. They took away my phone all day. I only earned 100 RMB, and it took them 2 days to actually pay me. But I did see her. She was beautiful. Like the best photoshops of her. I couldn’t stop staring at her face.”
“Photographer in general.”
“Daycare teacher. I interned as a daycare teacher for a week when I was 16, and I experienced what it’s like to have my temple pulsing with pain all day at a tender young age.”
“Waitress. I just got the job to experience life, and quit after 3 weeks. I didn’t even want my money. I just wanted to get out of there.”
“Apartment manager.”
“Customer service for online stores. I’ve only worked this job for 3 months, and I feel like all my politeness has gone out the window.”
“I feel like every job has been mentioned. Is there any jobs that hasn’t made the list?” Someone replies to this one, “No one’s said anything about being a civil servant yet.”
“Primary school teacher. I’m getting ready to quit. These last two years has shattered every preconception I had about kids. They’re capable of far more evil than I ever imagined.”
“Insurance salesman. I don’t think my morality will allow me to keep doing this job.”
“Me too. The biggest regret of my life is that I sold insurance for a couple of years.”
“Bank counter agent and customer manager.”
“No one mentions design? Every single client I have had felt like they were going to give me a stroke.”
”Waitress at Haidilao (hotpot restaurant). I worked two and a half months and dropped 5kg in weight. The last two weeks, I walked an average of 40K steps per day. I honestly couldn’t keep up anymore.”
“HR. My dream used to be working in HR, and it actually came true. I had a lot of fun in my interview, but then, I actually had to deal with people all day as HR. I had to be careful of everything I said. I had to keep evidence of everything that happened, because people who try bullshit all the time. Four years of HR has killed my passion and made me see through humanity. I’ve been fucked way too many times. But if I had to choose again, I’d still work HR. It’s fun. I majored in accounting, and got the certificates to do HR on my own.”
“Going to school. I hate going to school.”
“Social media. It’s so tiring. And all I have to work with is myself and my phone. The entirety of the budget is just my salary. I have to film things on my phone, edit footage with my own computer, do all the scripting and filming and editing and marketing by myself. And when I ask my coworker to help out, he just bullshits his way through. Since it’s just one person and one camera, all the shots look boring. And then my boss gets mad at me that it doesn’t look as good as other people’s. Duh. Look how much effort they put into it versus us. I even use my own sound card. I’m not a God.”
“Fee collector on toll roads. I’ve worked so many night shifts, I feel like I’m going to die.”
“Kindergarten teacher. But honestly, if I’m super poor, I’d still do it, because the pay isn’t bad.”
“Management in an insurance company. Not only is the pay super low, they’ll try to trick you into doing sales yourself, and even try to trick you into buying insurance yourself.”
“Accounting. I don’t want to work accounting again in this life or my next one.”
Wanted to repeat how much I enjoy this blog, it's really interesting and fun to read! Really looking forward to dig into one of the TV shows you recommended. :D
What the Chinese medicine guys say sounds a lot like Western medicine. By Western medicine I mean medicine that was based on the humoral theory and was practiced between greek classical antiquity and the advent of evidence-based medicine in the second half of the 19th C.
What we have now is just medicine.