07/05/24 - So delivery drivers can tell if you look at the delivery map too many times?
#Baotou City 12345 Hotline shows off ridiculous requests. “On the 3rd of July, Baotou City’s 12345 Hotline [basically sort of a non-emergency police hotline that people can call to report things like illegal parking, stores not honouring advertised deals, people playing music too loudly, etc, etc.] showed off a bunch of unreasonable demands it has received from various citizens:
Demand 1: “My kid’s Gaokao grade wasn’t as high as we wanted so he’s really depressed right now. Could Baotou City organise another round of Gaokao?”
12345: “Gaokao is a national college enrolment exam. This demand is clearly against the rules.”
Demand 2: “All of my bank cards have been frozen and I can’t get any money out. I want my bank and the Anti-Fraud Centre to immediately unfreeze them.”
12345: “After investigation, this person was involved in cyberfraud cases.”
Demand 3: “You shouldn’t let senior ride the bus for free.”
12345: “This is explicitly written into the “Inner Mongolia Senior Protection Policy”.”
This is the fourth time that Baotou has publicised unreasonable demands. In previous rounds, there were other ridiculous demands like wanting 12345 to look into their husband’s salary details. Or not being able to sell a unit on the 6th floor and wanting the government to purchase the unit instead so they can move to a lower floor. Or someone who has reached retirement age but never paid into social security, demanding the Social Security Office still give them a check every month. Or that they cannot manage their kids (who are smoking, drinking, dropping out of school, and running away from home, etc) and wants the government to take them in instead.
Netizens say, “This is 12345, not a wishing well.””
Comments say, “Why don’t they also publicise the reasonable demands that never got resolved?”
“They blame everyone but themselves.”
“Hahahahahaha I wanna see more of these.”
“Somewhere you gotta go in Hulun Buir: the Mo’ergele River.
The normal route is to go to the lowest point (the river bank) to enjoy the flocks of sheep and cattle, and then go to the highest point to get a view of the whole river.
My suggestion is to drive right to the “Muyun Peak”. According to local friends, this is the best high point to view scenery. It’s a lot better than most of the scenic stops, with fewer people. The only downside is that you have to pay money for some afternoon tea (185 RMB per person).
This is actually a hotel, with just 13 rooms. It costs 5-6K a night and is usually all booked out. My assistant says that it’s not really worth it, and I honestly could’ve guessed that myself just based on the quality of the afternoon tea and the service here.
And then finally, go to the plains and enjoy a whole lamb roast. I got to experience picking my own sheep today, and they slaughter it and cook it on the spot. It was so bloody! But the meat quality is amazing! They just boiled it in plain water, and it wasn’t gamy at all. It’s delicious with just a bit of chive flowers. My grandma said that after tasting this, it feels like all the lamb she’d eaten before were fake.”
Comments say, “I took my kids to Erdos and Hohhot last year for the summer. Ice-cooked sheep, roast whole sheep, and braised meat were all so delicious! No gamey-ness at all! I miss is so much once I came home! Enjoy it while you can!”
“We’re going to Hulun Buir in the middle of July too. I’m even more excited seeing what you wrote.”
“Once you get to Xinjiang, I’m sure your grandma will think all the fruit she’s been eating is fake too.”
“I came across a question a couple of days ago, asking, “If you could get a time machine back to meet your 20 or 25-year-old self, what would you say to her?” I thought about it and thought about it. What advice could I offer her? She still needs to make the mistakes she made. She’ll still insist on the decisions she made. I just want to hug her and cry. She’s already been through so much, experienced so much failure. It’s hard enough just for her to survive. She used to have so many naive dreams. She crawled her way out of such a small town, wanting to see the whole world. She’s already accomplished that, and it doesn’t really matter how hard the process was.
I want to tell her, “You’re exhausted, aren’t you? Just to make it to today, you must’ve been through so much. Let me hug you. You’re already good enough. You’re great. You didn’t turn into a bad person in the future. You’re still you. You still have your dreams. Sweetie, my dear sweetie, you have to believe there’s still tomorrow. After all, there’s still tomorrow. Thank god, there’s still tomorrow.””
Comments say, “Reminds me of how Amami Yuki said to her fans, “Please support yourselves the way you support me.””
“I’m just so tired right now. Life is just coming to one crossroads after another and having to make a decision. What should I do if I can’t decide?”
“I can already predict, I’d tell a 25-year-old me, “Don’t marry him. He’ll make your life hell-mode.” And my 25-year-old self would say, “No way, we love each other. You must not have treated him right. I’d do things right this time.” That’s why I don’t want to return to the past. I just want to keep moving forward.”
#So delivery drivers can tell if you look at the delivery map too many times? “This is making me think of how I check the map a dozen times every time I order takeout…”
[OP attaches screenshots of a text exchange with a delivery driver.]
Delivery Driver: “Hi. I’m on my way. I’m almost there. Sorry.”
OP: “I didn’t hurry you? I’m just checking where you’re at on the map. Did you receive some notification?”
DD: “The customer is viewing your progress. They’re hungry. I’m coming.”
OP: “What the hell is wrong with this app. I’m just making sure that when you’re almost here, I’ll go down to the fourth floor to get it from you.”
DD: “Nah. Let me exercise a bit.”
Comments say, “I check every minute. Wouldn’t that be super annoying? Why would they put such a socially awkward function on their app?”
“So the delivery driver knows? When I’m slacking off, I check every two minutes.”
“I’ve checked hundreds of times because I was in a hurry, but they’ve never hurried up for me.”
“According to Snow Leopard News, Chen Xi [false name]’s dream is “not going to work anymore.” Every time she quits her job, she’ll take three months to make an attempt at social media, but she’s never gained that much popularity. Until last year, she quit her job exactly when “quitting to become a blogger” was becoming a trend, and her very first video got a sponsorship offer.
At that moment, Chen Xi believed that her moment had finally arrived. Not only did she plan to become a blogger herself, she talked her boyfriend into quitting and joining her. Their goal was to make 30K a month.
But just recently, after achieving over 10K in income per month as a blogger, Chen Xi’s decided to go back to her old job in an IT company.
This isn’t a unique case. After the trend passed by, another subtle trend is settling in. A lot of bloggers who quit from their IT job has been returning to them, trying to escape the over-crowded influencer market in 2024. They tell Snow Leopard News, “I’ve never honestly felt like having a job was a great thing until now.””
Comments say, “People wanna watch influencers with interesting lives. You quit your job exactly because there was nothing going on in your life. Who’d watch you?”
“Everyone wants free money for nothing. It’s not gonna be so easy.”
#Life of the girl who fell off the China International Capital Corporation building. “Recently, a female employee at CICC passed away. And due to a lack of other news topics, this has become the biggest gossip among people.
“A talented student at school, graduated from a top university, found a great job in her industry, she seemed to be winning at life. And then suddenly, boom, everything fell apart.”
From the public point of view, this has the same sort of fragile, tragic pitifulness of a skyscraper rising out of the ground only to crumble in the middle and fall to dust.
It’s true that she represents a lot of topics people are concerned about. The CICC represents the declining financial industry. Her pay cut points to the economic regression we’re experiencing. Her great grades represents her hard work and diligence. Her middle-class background represents hundreds of millions of people who are in the same situation. And the double pressure of real estate and mortgages points to a certain lowest common denominator quickly becoming the new societal norm.
Below the news of her tragic passing, there are people blaming housing prices, or exploitative companies, or how hard it is to work in Shanghai, or ability to endure stress, or how the stock market is doing, or even people blaming her for not knowing when is good enough and having no concept of risk. Some have even tried to divine her fate, emphasising that you could tell her destiny from her fortunes.
But actually, most of the details about her death couldn’t be confirmed.
For example, as far as suicide is concerned, the pictures circulating the internet is from the China World Trade Centre and has nothing to do with her. The CICC has responded a long time ago that she did not die of suicide. But yet, the label of “jumped off the building” has spread like a wild fire. Or, as far as mortgage is concerned, all the pictures of that came from Zhihu, stolen by netizens from various sources and pieced together. In actuality, her house was recently bought and its price hasn’t changed too much. And even rumours of postpartum depression, pay cuts, or relationship troubles with her husband were all rumours with no solid evidence one way or the other.
But that hasn’t stopped people from flocking to her obituary like flies to meat. Supposed “text screenshots” are reposted over and over again as the truth. A lot of people are cutting and pasting various rumours together to stitch a story that they like. And so she’s been packaged up as a highly-educated elite finance employee with a high mortgage on her back, threatened with pay cuts, burdened with postpartum depression, who threw herself off a building when the stress got too much.
But a lot of points don’t stand up to scrutiny at all. The picture of the supposed suicide features a man. Finance people’s income has always risen and fallen with the market. Even a double pay cut wouldn’t have affected her and her husband’s basic standard of living. And even if Shanghai housing prices fell, based on their deposit ratio, it shouldn’t have been too much for their family to handle.
But the reality is, none of this is important. People are just taking advantage of this unfortunate death to split it into a thousand different stories. People annoyed at real estate prices falling, finance workers wanting to stop the trend of pay cuts, people who want to fan the flames of the gender war, people who hate middle class and rich people—they all want to suck this story dry and pin a flower on it to push their own agenda, or at least to bring a little bit of emotional comfort to themselves.
So I’m really curious. How many people actually care about or feel sorry for her death? How many people are actually analysing what information is true or false? How many people actually have respect for a beautiful life passing?
Our generation grew up in massive economic growth and plentiful resources. Involution is a normality in our life. And we unexpectedly came upon economic growth slamming on the brakes.
In this context, everyone has their own life and their own story, and they all want to hear their echo in other people’s stories to find resonance and empathy.
I understand all of that. And there’s nothing wrong with discussion. But can we not get down to the facts, look at the actual evidence, and talk about this in a reasonable way that respects boundaries?
She’s gone. She can’t get up and defend herself to this world.
The best way we can show respect to the dead is to not make up rumours.”
Comments say, “The most ridiculous guy is that fortune teller.”
“Everyone who’s speculating or analysing are all trying to push a narrative. They all have an ulterior motive. Everyone is just trying to make money these days. No one has the time to waste on genuinely trying to figure something out on the internet.”
“A lot of people are eating bloody bread.” [An expression meaning to make money off of a tragedy.]
According to Dimension News, on the 3rd of July, netizens posted videos showing garbage all over the streets of Dongwan in Guangdong. It stinks to high heaven, and OP questions whether this is caused by street sweepers going on strike to protest pay cuts. Dongwan City Management and Law Enforcement Bureau has responded, “This is a problem with work handover. We are already doing our best to solve it.”
OP claimed in the original video that no street sweepers are working in Dongwan right now. Trash has piled up on the streets and is stinking the whole town up. In the video, the trash cans were already full of trash, and there are bags strewn all around it. And this might have been caused by street sweepers going on strike in response to wage cuts.
A lot of netizens have left comments confirming the situation.
In response, Dimension News reporter contacted the Dongwan City Management spokesperson, Mrs. Cai, who claimed that they’ve already encouraged various villages to clean up the trash and will be proactively dealing with this case. “It’s not a strike. It’s a problem with the handover. There’s already a company in charge of this.” Mrs. Cai said, “But we can’t give a good estimate as to when this will get resolved. We’re doing our best.”
Afterwards, reporters noticed additional videos showing that the piled up trash has been getting cleaned up in the last couple of days.”
Comments say, “Street sweepers only get paid 2-3K, or even as low as 1800. How much more can you cut their wages??”
“They’re cutting janitorial wages? They only get paid 1300 RMB a month here! And they have to work all morning, and they’re not allowed to take any breaks!”
“Street sweepers work the hardest and stinkiest jobs in the hottest days, and you cut their wages? Do you have a heart at all!? “Most of the work is contracted out.” Can you even sleep at night making dirty money like this?”