06/23/24 - Some times, they only offer one day off a month
[I’m staying in a hotel for the next two days with very unstable internet deep in the mountains of a very rural part of the world, so I can’t promise to have internet. Then, I’ll be taking an incredibly long and arduous trip back to the US, which will probably mean a day or two without updates, because of all the transfers I have to take. Sorry for the absences!]
“Never help out random strangers on the internet!! Just came upon this while surfing the internet, and at first, I was like, “I can get 100 bucks just for eating a meal?” And the comment section made me break out in a cold sweat…I guess you always have to keep some caution, all of these scenarios sound plausible! Everyone, be careful…”
OP screenshots a post, “Anyone in Shenzhen who can help you? Men and women are both okay. I need to run an errand, and you just need to sit next to me for an hour. I’ll pay you 100 RMB! And I’ll buy you dinner too!”
As well as screenshots of the comment section: “Really? Do I come back in one piece or piece by piece?”
“He obviously needs a witness to take out a loan. He’s top pinned post is still looking to borrow 4K. Guys, don’t get tricked!”
“It’s definitely not anything normal. If he needs someone to accompany him to the hospital, he could’ve just said that. Whenever someone is being secretive like this and trying to make things sound simple—“just sit there for an hour”—there’s definitely something shady up.”
“Sit for a while, eat a bit, and she’ll go to the bathroom and that’s when the waitress shows up with the bill.”
“Sit with him for a while, and someone hands him a bag, and he tells you to hold it for him, and that’s when a bunch of cops tackle you to the ground and find two pounds of drugs on you.”
“But just what are we gonna be doing? Also, can I bring my friends and coworkers? I’ll bring my own friends back, you can do whatever you want with my coworkers.”
Lately, in Henan, Langfang, Ms. Du claimed that a car she’d parked in a carpark was smashed. She then discovered three smoking middle school students inside her car. Their parents are only willing to pay her 10K in damages. After negotiations failed, Ms. Du chose to report the case to the police. Two days into the police investigation, Ms. Du’s car was burned down to the frame. Ms. Du claims, “The firefighters said it was deliberate arson, but because there’s no security cameras around when it happened, we can’t prove who burned my car.” Right now, Ms. Du just wants the truth to be revealed in investigation.
Comments say, “Arson is a criminal offense. This can go to the police too.”
“Wow. good job, Langfang. Didn’t know you had such badasses around.”
“Typical Hebei.”
“Arson is a pretty big crime, and the suspects are pretty clear here. If the cops take it seriously, there’s no reason they shouldn’t be successful.”
According to Fire News, noon, 20th of June, a student at Xiamen Donghai Technical School was accused of “thievery” by the cafeteria manager for taking 6 pairs of chopsticks after buying two meals. After negotiations with the school leaders, the manager has already apologised in private. Now, the cafeteria has hired staff to pass out chopsticks, one set per meal purchased. According to insiders, the girl in question refused to accept the private apology and demands a public one. Right now, the Student Affairs teachers is communicating with her parents. The Department of Education has already learned of the situation and will be ensuring that the school deals with this appropriately.”
Comments say, “Seems unnecessary to get six pairs of chopsticks for two meals, but also seems unnecessary to accuse people of theft.”
“A lot of chopsticks have shit quality, though. Getting a few extra pairs is pretty normal, especially in a cafeteria. Don’t make a big deal out of nothing! Theft is just ridiculous!”
“Closed my friend circle for a year [the page on weibo that shows you what your friends posted to their wall lately], and I’m starting to realise that I don’t have any friends anymore??
Last year, I was taking my second attempt at the postgrad degree exam, and realised that constantly scrolling my friend’s circle was giving me a lot of anxiety, so I just closed it off entirely.
When I stop reading people’s complaints and bragging, stop getting caught up in my emotions, whether good or bad, I feel like the world’s become so much cleaner and quieter.
I know most people’s lives are just ordinary or even kinda sucky, and people only post about the parts they want other people to see, and maybe even get a sense of achievement out of it. But it still gets to me every time, so I shut off my friend circle. If I want to check up on a friend in particular, I just click into his icon.
After a while, I stopped even wanting to look at my friend’s circle, and I’ve become so much more focus, and my world seemed so much more real.
Until I failed my exams for the second time and I opened my friend circle back up, and I tried to upvote and comment and get back in touch with old friend,s and I suddenly found that…I don’t have any friends anymore?”
Comments say, “I still don’t understand how someone gets anxious just looking at their friend circle. What’s there to be anxious about.”
“I also haven’t opened my friend circle for a year or two, but I haven’t saved any time, because I’m over here on weibo XD”
“There are lots of ways to take in information. If you get anxious just looking at the information that others put out, you really gotta rethink yourself. Humans are social animals. You need to find a way of living that’s suitable to you. Maybe social media isn’t the only reason you’re failing your postgrad entrance exams?”
“Getting 4 days off a month is even worse than just single-day off. Getting 4 days off a month means that every 2 months, you have to work 15 days in a row. It’s exhausting. In a 30-day-month, you’re getting one day off every 7.5 days. In a 31-day-month, you’re getting one day off every 7.75 days. You’re only getting 1 day off every 7 days in February.
This is against labour laws. Labour laws require that you get at least one day off every week. Getting 4 days off a month looks the same as getting one day off every week, but you actually only get a day off almost once every 7 days! Or you work 15 days in a row every 2 months. It’s! Exhausting! Pay attention to your contracts!”
Comments say, “Goddammit, when can we live like normal people?”
“Oh, there’s even worse. There’s also 7:30AM to 10PM, two days working, one day off. It’s like not getting any time off all year round.”
“I can tell you something worse. Some times, they only offer one day off a month and call it single day off. And two days off a month is called two days off.”
“If you’ve seen the Alibaba International Math Competition finalist list, you’ll find that almost all of them are from top universities in China and abroad, and a couple of students from incredibly famous high schools. You’ll almost never find the words “technical college” anywhere on it.
The last four years, Guan Xie was an exception on that list. He comes from the Jiangxi Institute of Applied Sciences and Technology [a vocational school, basically the same as a technical college], and transferred from a technical school to a university, becoming a non-maths-major in an ordinary state university. Even during his days in technical college, he’s been entering all kinds of maths competitions. The first time he won an award at one of these competitions, his identity came into question too. Even after competing in so many competitions, there are still people who doubt his proficiency. As a student from a technical college, he knows well how the stress you face in your studies differs as your diploma and background differs. This is what he told us:
“I knew about the very first competition Ali ever held back in 2018. At the time, I was in a vocational school, in my second year, studying urban rail transit mechanical and electrical technology. When I saw the news, the first round had already finished, and I remember that for the first year, they had all English exam papers, using math notations to write out the question. These last couple of years, the first round’s questions have been in Chinese and English both, so it might look easier, like people who don’t know maths has some idea of what’s being asked. But actually, the questions have only gotten more open and difficult.
You can figure this out yourself. The competition takes course over 48 hours, open book, allowing you to research into whatever you want. Out of a total score of 120 and the most forgiving of rules, the score for making it into the competition is nonetheless extremely low, about 30-40 points. You can tell how hard the questions must be then, that most people don’t even complete all of them.
In 2020, when this competition was held the second time, I didn’t do any preparations and competed, and I only got 70 points out of 200. I needed at least 100 to make it in. The next couple of years, I’ve been able to make it into the competition every year, but the highest I ever got in the final round was 24 points. It’s just too hard. The finals nothing like the first round of competition. It’s much more professional, like the microcosm of research. I had a friend who was a maths major, and he bragged to me after one year’s competition that he only answered 4 questions but he might still get an award. Then, when the scores came out, he only got 3 points. That sounds unbelievable, but the finals are like this. Even if you’re academically trained, you did the questions, you still might not even realise where you got it wrong.
Among maths lovers, Ali’s competition is well-known to be incredibly prestigious, in all kinds of respects. Their questions are hard, their prizes are high, and there’s even an award’s ceremony. Another competition considered to be in the same tier is the IMO, which gets held in a different country every year and has been running for over 60 years. It’s closed-book and only allows uni students to participate. But Ali’s math competition has no restrictions on contestants. A lot of students from all kinds of schools have been signing up, but the requirements for getting in is getting stricter too.
When I saw a 17-year-old technical college student had gotten 93 points in her first round, my first reaction was that she was kickass. Although there’s been a lot of doubts over her score, and a lot of math professors have been giving their own takes on the issue, I don’t want to jump to any conclusions yet. I also self-taught myself maths. I think the biggest problem with self-teaching is that without someone to supervise you and point out your mistakes, you might just keep making that mistake, like using the wrong notation, or writing down notation in the wrong way. I don’t know that I’m wrong until I look up certain material and realise that I’ve been writing it all wrong. Self-teaching is like this, you pick up a lot of bad habits.
I also know Wang Runqiu [Jiang Ping’s maths teacher] through the internet. In my impression, he’s someone who’s playing with maths questions every day. One time, he asked me a question and I couldn’t answer it either, so he spent all afternoon working at it with me. So, I’m still on the fence about all this.
My mindset has been pretty good the last couple of years in the Ali finals. I know my grades aren’t gonna be pretty any time son, but I’ll still keep participating. After all, once I graduate, I’m no longer a student, and I can’t sign up for a lot of competitions anymore. This competition is like a way to test myself. I’m studying English too, slowly improving. I hope to get a postgrad degree in maths someday. My dream as a kid was to become a scientist, and that’s still my dream now.”
Comments say, “A lot of people like to pay a lot of attention to writing errors, but they don’t have any hard proof at all.”
“They don’t care about how many noodles are in your stomach. They just think that someone of your class doesn’t deserve to eat noodles.” [A reference to a famous movie scene where a character was accused of eating two bowls of noodles and only paying for one—unable to provide any proof of his innocence, he decided to cut his stomach open as proof, but nobody cared how much noodles he ate at all. They just wanted to see him cut himself open. An incredible classic scene that satirises how often people are falsely accused just out of fun.]
“Don’t throw around doubts randomly, but don’t idolise people randomly either. The rankings of an open-book online competition hardly says anything about her strength. If she’s gold, she’ll keep glowing.”
“Got fired for slacking. HR told me it was because I’m always playing on my phone, but I only do it once I’ve finished all my work. I didn’t know they watched the security cameras all day. I want my severance pay, but they told me to go talk to my boss, and my boss said that it was because my work wasn’t up to standards. Fine. I don’t even want my money anymore. It’s too much trouble. Just gotta find new work again.”
Comments say, “Why do people think it’s okay to slack on pay?”
“People in this comment section are way too young. They haven’t learned yet. The correct way is to play games on your computer, with the webpage shrunken down and tucked in the corner, and once in a while, pull up your work documents and pretend to some work.”
“Isn’t it normal to play on your phone once you’re done with all your work?”
#Liang Shi gets 446 points [out of 750] in his 28th Gaokao. And comes under fire for attempting to gain likes and subscribes through his stunt of continuing to retake the Gaokao. Liang Shi responds that, “Retaking the Gaokao is legal and hurts nobody. The people doubting me are the true clowns.”
Comments say, “You can’t redo life, but you can stand back up no matter where you fell.”
“The fact that he can spend over 20 years in a row taking the Gaokao is determination that I have to be envious of. We shouldn’t make fun of people who are determined to keep at a task.”
“Maybe he should try the student athlete route next year? [doge]”