“China is the cheapest country to have kids in, in the whole world. Public hospitals are cheap and offer great service. After insurance, it’s nearly free. Formula is cheap, we’ve got the world’s cheapest baby clothes, and there are flat price daycares all over the place.
You get free education in primary and middle school, and high school is 1K to 2K RMB per year. University is 4K to 10K per year, and there’s all kinds of scholarships and subsidies you can apply for. If you’re poor, you can definitely go to uni for free. They’ll even give you a stipend for living expenses.
How is it too expensive to have kids these days? All the young people claiming this are spending plenty on your vacations to Tibet or Yunnan or Xinjiang or Malayxia or Thailand. All of that money can easily pay for a child, and get them a stroller too. Why do you have to blow a bunch of money on your kids for them to grow up? That’s what a normal person should be asking themselves.
All the people talking about how it’s too expensive to have kids are just too young and ignorant. Basically, they’re stupid. They believe all the evil influencers who make money by scamming people. But hey, stupid people can learn. They don’t have to stay stupid forever.
It was a popular saying a few years back that people don’t want to bring children into this world to suffer. And a lot of people fell for this saying. This kind of thinking is foolish because it means you don’t understand the world at all. In particular, you don’t understand China at all, even though you’re in China.
So long as you’re not in the elite upperclass, normal people all around the world have hard lives. Sure, there were maybe four decades in the west where it was pretty sweet being middle class. But as China industrialised, their society had to fall. From the point of view of history, it was just a brief anomaly. If all of humanity has it hard, why should you have it easy? The CCP’s spoiled you beyond reason.
Acknowledge that you’re objectively just a normal person, then go to Africa or Latin America or South-East Asia to look at how normal people there live. You don’t have to look at the very bottom of society. Or go to the west. Most normal people there are living pay check to pay check. In England, the family of soldiers are lining up to get welfare checks. And it’s only going to get worse for western middle class people.
In the future, it might be hard for Chinese people to find a target to compare themselves to.”
Comments say, “I mean, if you’re comparing to the west, then although public hospitals are cheap (but they’re not expensive in the west either?) but the environment is horrible, and the standards for getting an epidural are way too high. There’s almost no public daycares for kids from 0 to 3 years old. Our formula isn’t actually cheaper than the west. Clothing and goods are cheap, but that’s not a necessary expense. It’s painful to give birth, maternity leaves are short, and there’s no help with daycare. Just these three is enough to turn most people away from kids.”
“But isn’t it more fun to spend this money on vacations than getting a kid?”
“If you like kids, then have kids yourself. No one would say anything even if you were pregnant every year from now to eighty. But you can’t tell people off for not having kids. What business is it of yours? Do you think you’re cool for putting others down and calling them name? Do you know you’ve got the full context every time and you’re always correct? What’s wrong with wanting to give your kids a better life and feeling too much pressure right now, and thus putting off having kids? What’s wrong with feeling like there’s nothing in particular you need to pass down, so you just want to focus on having a good life for yourself?”
“Everyone thinks I should have a second kid. My mom is the only one against the idea. My mom said:
You’ve already given your in-laws one child. You’ve already paid your respect to them. You can’t have a second one.
Because you’ve already sacrificed three years of your time. Now you need to focus on yourself. Don’t let yourself fall behind of society. If you want another three years before going back to the work place, you’re gonna have a hell of a time fitting back in again!
I didn’t spend two decades raising you just for you to take care of someone else’s kids. If a woman has no job or income, then she has no rights or choices. Nothing compares to having the freedom and leverage to choose for yourself.
If your daughter was raised with all care by you, taught dance and violin and Chinese and maths and English, and spent tons of money and time on tutoring, wouldn’t you feel bad if she spent the rest of her life staying busy in the kitchen? What’s the point of teaching her all that then?
Finally, my mom just wanted me to have my own career after marriage. To not restrict my life just to pots and pans and my husband and my children. She absolutely won’t allow me to have a second baby. Having too many babies is bad for your body, and she doesn’t want to watch me suffer.
Do you think she’s right on this?”
Comments say, “I told me daughter not to have a second kid too. I told my son-in-law that if he wants another kid, he needs to take care of the baby on his own. If he feels like he can handle two of them around, then we can discuss it. After just a couple of days, my son-in-law told me he didn’t want another kid.”
“You really do need to be careful having a second kid! You can’t be going into this thinking that you’re doing this for your husband or your in-laws. You have to follow your heart. You have to do it because you want to. Once they’re born, they’re your kid. They’re not anyone else’s.”
“No, this is completely unreasonable. There’s no reason having a kid is mutually exclusive with having a career. The baby belongs to you and your husband. What is this conservative nonsense that you had a baby for your in-laws? I’ve got plenty of coworkers who take a 6-month long maternity leave, and then come right back to work. You just gotta make sure your other half shoulders the responsibility of childcare.”
A compilation of horrific food combinations:
“Lychees with soy sauce!!! It’s super delicious!”
“Guys, calm down and respect other people’s dietary preferences.”
[Photo of strawberries with stir-fried celery.]
“Holy shit, this food combination is pretty explosive too. Do all Guangdong people eat like this? What does it taste like?”
“I need to eat a couple of Fukienese to calm down a bit.”
“This is how we eat in Guangdong”
[Photo of lychee stuffed with meat, cooked in broth]
“I’ve taken my cucumber stir-fried with walnuts to every comment section about weird foods.”
“Go live in the same province as OP. I’m not even joking.”
“I’ve had lychee fried eggs. They’re not bad stir-fried with pork either.”
“Garlic with milk, it’s really good.”
“This is like how I felt when I first heard about pork stir-fried with strawberries.”
“My grandma made me plums stir-fried with pork intestine today. I have no idea what to say to her.”
“Huge news! The Wagner Mercenary Group has pulled a coup! They are advancing on Moscow right now!
The Russian General Sergey Surovikin is calling to the commander of the Wagner Mercenary Unit and reminding them the importance of following Russian command’s orders. Surovikin emphasises, “I strongly suggest you stop. The enemy is just waiting for our internal politics to worsen. When this country is facing its darkest moment, you cannot hand it over to its enemies.””
Comments say, “Everyone celebrating in this thread is either stupid and completely lacking common sense, or American spies.”
“Hahahahahaha, what great news!”
“All those people celebrating—have you heard of the story of the domino effect?”
“My boyfriend gifted my grandparents with individually packaged zongzi, but he bought his boss properly gift-wrapped zongzi. I feel like we’ve been treated with double standards. I used his phone to buy stuff for 18th of June, and I saw him ordering zongzi. I thought they were for my grandparents at the time, but when I came home, I saw these cheap, individual zongzi laying on my grandparent’s table. I asked, and they said my boyfriend drove over and gave it to them, and he hadn’t brought anything else.
My parents are both working out of state, so my grandparents are the only ones who got zonzi. They’re almost 80 and have no idea what the difference in quality is.”
She shows screenshots of her texts with her boyfriend.
OP: “Who did you gift the zongzi you bought online?”
[The other party has declined your call]
BF: “What zongzi?”
OP: “The ones you bought on your phone. I saw the order when I shopped on your phone the other day. Those are the ones you gifted my grandparents today.”
BF: “Which ones?”
OP: “Oh my god, stop pretending. You bought the individual zongzi at the supermarket for my grandparents. You ordered gift-wrapped zongzi online. But you didn’t give those to my grandparents.”
BF: “What, they can’t eat it?”
OP: “Dogs will eat shit too. Why don’t you go eat some.”
BF: “[Sweat drop]”
OP: “You’re not treating my family like human beings at all. You give other people good zongzi, and just get individual zongzi for my family. Is it that hard to treat people equally? Are you just taking advantage of them because they’re old and they don’t know any better? If I hadn’t visited today, I wouldn’t have found out. Do you have a heart at all? You think it’s easy to fuck with old people?”
BF: “Dude, chill before we talk.”
OP: “Who did you gift the ones you bought on your phone?”
BF: “My boss.”
OP: “So what, my grandparents aren’t good enough for proper zongzi?”
BF: “Can you talk like a normal person or not? If you can calm down, I’ll explain.”
OP: “Then explain.”
BF: “What’s the difference between the two types of zongzi except for the packaging? If I took the gift-wrapped ones out and lined it up with the individual zongzi, would they be able to tell the difference? Is there’s no difference, what’s wrong with gifting individual zongzi?”
OP: “There’s a big difference. If you’re gonna get people gifts, you have to get everyone the same gifts. Getting different gifts for different people means you’re looking down on them.”
BF: “Then there’s nothing to talk about here. I guess it’s however you think it is.”
OP: “The gift-wrapped zongzi are only a hundred RMB or so. Do you really not have a hundred bucks to spare?”
BF: “I told you, old people can’t tell the difference anyways. They’re all zongzi. They’re not different except for the packaging.”
OP: “They can’t tell the difference, but you can? If there’s no difference, why don’t you buy your boss individual zongzi?”
BF: “Cause it’s different. The person receiving them is different. The context is difference. If I gave your grandparents gift-wrapped ones, what would they do with it? They’d still just take it apart and eat it.”
OP: “Exactly. So you’re just taking advantage of them because they’re old and don’t know better.”
BF: “My family eats the individual zongzi at the supermarket too.”
OP: “Lol. You make me laugh. You gift other people what you eat at home? You know to get the good stuff for your boss, but you get my grandparents the cheap stuff? Who acts like this?”
BF: “I gave your grandparents individual zongzi because I thought they were family, not people I needed to suck up to. You don’t need to think that hard about getting stuff for family.”
OP: “I’m so angry I’m laughing. I’m not married to you yet. We are not family. You just don’t respect them. That’s a fact.”
BF: “Again, I eat the individual zongzi at home too. They’re not bad at all.”
OP: “Fine. You’re not wrong. I’m wrong. Fuck off.”
Comments say, “When I was young, I focused on the packaging too. But now, when it’s my family, I’d rather spend money on getting tastier zongzi that aren’t packed up so pretty.”
“My parents have been married for decades, and my dad still gifts my maternal grandparents properly gift-wrapped zongzi he gets from work.”
“If you were married, then there’s not really a problem here at all. You’re all one family. He’s treating your family like his family. But you’re not married yet! I think he might not want to get married to you to begin with. That’s why he doesn’t take you seriously.”
A tiktok video of a fight on a plane.
“I got a window seat. In the video, this old lady was supposed to sit in the middle seat next to me. When I got on the plane, she was sitting in my seat. The flight stewardess negotiated for me, saying that I’ve got the window seat, and asking the old lady to move back to her own seat. The old lady asked if I could switch seats with her, and I told her no. And she very reluctantly moved back to her own seat. Then she told me that she’s got airsickness and high blood pressure and heart problems, and if I don’t switch seats with her, then she’d throw up all over me. And if she gets sick, she’ll hold me responsible. And basically just spouted off a bunch of bullshit trying to take my morality hostage. And I told her if she threw up on me, then she can pay me back, it’s fine. That’s when she flipped out and started screaming abuse at me.”
Comments say, “See, this is all the fault of social security.”
“Honestly, I get scared every time I see an old man or old lady.”
“Can’t we blacklist her from flying? So she doesn’t do this shit to other people?”
Now I'm curious about Chinese attitudes about Russia in general.
“All those people celebrating—have you heard of the story of the domino effect?” - that's why they are celebrating.