A post by Coco Li Wen’s sister: “Warning! There are immoral businesses using Coco Li Wen’s fan’s love and remembrance of her to defraud them, using the excuse of charitable donations or organ donation to get funds out of Coco’s fans. In actuality, no memorabilia has been made in Coco’s name. We’re going to seek take legal measures.
By the way, we’re definitely going to arrange a fan meeting in both China and Hong Kong, probably in August. Please wait patiently for further details.”
Morning News writes, “Recently, an internet post of a mother directing the school crossing has touched a lot of people’s hearts. When I saw this one morning, I honestly got kind of mad. She stood outside the kindergarten for over an hour, with a one-year-old baby on her back. The sun is so hot these days, the baby was covered in sweat and falling asleep. The mom’s hair was completely wet and stuck to her head too. I can’t imagine she carried a baby and stood there for over an hour. Do we really need parents to direct school crossings?
My son’s class had a parent group chat too, which assigned various tasks to us on specific dates. It was split into morning and afternoon shifts, and each family had to take on two shifts. They even told people who have difficulties to just overcome it. So parents need to specifically take a day off of work for this? What about people with even smaller babies at home, who don’t have their elders to help with babysitting? The actual job of directing a school crossing is just standing there like a wooden post and not moving. They’ve got security guards and traffic police right there. What if you have an older kid who needs you to direct his school crossing, and a younger kid who needs it, and you need to take time off for PTA meetings, and all kinds of school events? No one has that many breaks in a year. Sigh, working class parents have it so hard.
A lot of people are suggesting that if you really can’t do it, you can ask the teacher for the day off. There’s no need to make a baby sit under the sun. Just looking at it feels awful.
But a lot of people point out that asking for the day off will never get approved. They’ll just switch your shift with someone else who has time. You still have to do the shift later. Sometimes, not only does this extend your volunteer hours, but your shift will come up more often.
A lot of parents say that they’re sick and tired of directing school crossings too. They’ve got security guards and traffic cops and actual teachers there. Why do they even need parents for this job?
But a lot of parents say that this is an important job. The kids all get out of school in a big mob, there’s a lot of traffic on the streets, there’s a lot of unsafe factors here. It’s not like it takes a long time every time, so it’s not that big a burden.
Searching on social media, I find that there are posts about directing school crossings in every region of China. Most of it is about how hard it is. A lot of parents say that summertime is the hardest of all. You’ll sweat to death in the mornings. Even their foundation will melt right off.
Some PTAs say that the higher the grade, the harder it is to get people to show up for the school crossing duty. But some people point out that they need to take time off of work in order to go direct school crossings, and they lose 500 RMB every time.
There are actual legal requirements for school crossings—a total of 18 lines. The 7th line says, “When school opens and lets out, if both people and cars enter or leave from the school gates, the school needs to have guards and security staff standing by, in order to maintain order for people and cars to come and go, and ensure safety; they need to organise teachers and parent volunteers to perform school safety tasks at the gates.”
The newest laws, which came into effect on the 1st of June, 2022, says, “Schools need to emphasise the safety of students coming to and from school, and ensure the proper umber of security personnel, teachers, or volunteers to stand by at the school gates where students gather.”
Whether from the POV of the current laws, or from the POV of the schools, the safety of the students is the most important. But based on the opinions and suggestions from parents, sometimes, volunteer work has become a work obligation, and parents haven’t been shown the importance of directing school crossings. And if proper measures aren’t taken, then dual-income families are not going to understand and are going to have a lot of complaints. There seems to be a lot of room for discussion and adjustments on how to do this better.”
Comments say, “A lot of schools use the excuse of “volunteering” to order parents around. A lot of schools are exploiting the shit out of parents.”
“And they still want people to have kids??”
“We didn’t have school crossings when we were going to school. Now that we’re parents and working, we’re still being forced to go to school? What is wrong with society these days. When we were going to school, our parents just need to make sure our homework was completed and sign off on it. Now that we’re parents, we need to do our kids’ homework all the time. Sigh.”
Under the hashtag of the #288K bride price, where a man wrote to his governor after being asked for 288K in bride price, a blogger writes, “The woman here doesn’t want a bride price anymore. She’s called off the engagement. And the man still looks totally lost. Like, well, this situation is solved, but why do I still not have a wife? There are comment sections saying that you shouldn’t ask for a bride price, just split the bill on everything after marrying and take care of each of your own parents. Have two kids, and have one take on each of your surnames. All I want to say is, all the costs incurred during the girl’s pregnancy has to be on the man. After all, the girl is already putting in a uterus, 10 months of being pregnant, morning sickness, stretch marks, weight gain, loosening skin, drooping breasts, pelvic bone splitting, abdominal muscle splitting, etc, etc.”
Comments say, “I hear that the latest update on this case is that the woman had prepared a 380K dowry, plus a house. Now she’s returned the bride price, but they don’t want to return her dowry to her. The man claims that it was a gift.”
“It’s ridiculous to demand two kids. The woman has to give birth to both of them, and needs to suffer for almost two years through all of it, and men think this is fair? They can just each take one kid?”
“Yeah, so the man just gets a kid for free then?”
“I got my house remodelled a few years back and never watched the progress. I wanted to make a Japanese-style house, but I’ve just gotten a poverty-style house instead. My friends who came over says my place looks like an old, beat down apartment. I honestly…desperately want to change things, but don’t know where to start. Could I get some ideas from people? And the wall colour too. It’s so ugly, I want to cry.”
Comments say, “Hahahahaha, it looks like inner city slums.”
“Switch your floor to wooden flooring.”
“You need unifying colours. You’ve got different colours for your couch, coffee table, TV cabinet, and dinner table. It looks super uncoordinated.”
A tiktok video, where, “A man from Henan, Luoyang gets involved in a conflict while he’s eating out, and was punched in the chest three times. He then picked up a pair of scissors and fought back, causing one assailant to be injured, and another one to be killed. Does this count as self defense?”
Unfortunately, I don’t think I can show the video, because uh, someone definitely gets stabbed in it, but the description is very accurate. It is a group of 7-8 men who surround the victim here, and the group of men throw the first three punches.
Comments say, “Seems like excessive self defense. Not like his assailants used a weapon.”
“I can’t believe some people are saying this is excessive self defense. Fists can be lethal too. You have to be able to protect yourself when facing a threat against your life.”
“I mean, it’s gonna be up to which of them has more money.”
“This isn’t the whole video. In the complete video, the first time they have a conflict, they get pulled apart by bystanders. Then the man from Luoyang hides a pair of scissors on himself and comes back to pick another fight with the other guy. There’s no sound on the video, so no one can be sure if he goaded the other guy into attacking him. So I don’t think this counts as self-defense.”
“Because Han Xin (famous early Han Dynasty general) didn’t have a source of income, he spent several months eating for free at the police chief’s house. The police chief’s wife was sick and tired of him, and stopped giving him food. Han Xin didn’t have anything to eat, so he had to go fish by the river. An old woman doing laundry felt bad for him, and gave him a bowl of rice. After Han Xin made a name for himself, he gave this old lady 1000 taels of gold (each tael is roughly 13 grams of gold), but he only gave 100 bronze coins to the police chief who put up with him for several months.
Small gestures of kindness produce grateful patrons. Big gestures of kindness produce great enemies.”
Comments say, “Yup, a litre of rice is a gift. Ten litres of rice is an insult.”
“When Liu Bang (founding Emperor of Han Dynasty) was young, he was a total chav, did nothing all day, just ate other people’s food for free. His SIL got sick and tired of him, and every time he’s come over to her house, she’d indicate they didn’t have any food left by scraping the bottom of her wok with her spatula. When Liu Bang founded Han Dynasty, he gave his brother the title, “Wok-Scraping Baron.”
“I mean, not really. Han Xin is just weird like that.”
A relationship blogger writes, “The reason Li Wen committed suicide isn’t just because her husband was cheating on her, she had no children, and she got backstabbed by her stepdaughters. She’s a female warrior, but she was injured. She can no longer go to her battlefield. That’s the most painful factor for her. Of course, if she had a happy marriage, with loving friends, then she would’ve felt a lot better about it. But not only did her husband not become a safe harbour for her, he pushed her even further into the abyss. All of these factors added up to cause her to have no desire for living anymore. Saying that she had love brain and killed herself for a man who cheated on her is just insulting to her.”
Comments agree, “Yeah, the huge trauma to her family, plus depression, there’s no way she could pull through. She’s a warrior!!”
“I don’t know what to say. When someone gets way too successful, they get surrounded by vampires. I was surprised that Li Wen fell victim despite so much societal support and rich resources. “Spouse” and “family” are really ironic terms sometimes.”
“One time, I suddenly got super dizzy, felt like the whole world was spinning, and would throw up every time I tried to stand up. At that moment, I thought, man, no wonder people who are sick commit suicide. This is awful. People who are healthy can never get it. (Though yeah, there were a lot of factors involved in Li Wen’s case, or else she wouldn’t have made the choices she did.)”
“The first step for women to get out of their comfort zone is to stop wearing crocs. Try some heels, and you’ll find to your surprise that your legs can be long and thin too! Really makes your whole vibe upgrade!”
Comments say, “But my comfort zone is so comfy. Why would I want to leave?”
“Don’t put on beauty torture devices for yourself.”
“Don’t wear it all the time. You’ll get calluses in the middle of your feet.”
“Me too! I gave up on crocs. I feel like heels are actually my comfort zone. If you get a thick heel, it’s not tiring at all, and it makes me super happy and extra confident. All girls are like this. Who doesn’t love pretty dresses and heels? But we’re just worried other people will think we’re trying too hard. I used to be ashamed of my vanity too, felt like any outfit I wore was too attention-grabbing, like I needed to hide myself, whether it’s my waist or my legs or even my neck. Now I don’t think that way anymore. Occasionally, I still get hostile or shocked looks from fat people, but I feel like, since I was born in this age of freedom to dress, and I’m a young girl, then I need to wear pretty clothes. It’s not against the law. It’s not affecting anybody else.”
“Heels are so much prettier. I never wear crocs.”
“A man in Hangzhou sold three apartment units to buy one stand-alone house, and immediately regretted it. Chinese people have a weird sentimentality towards stand-alone houses, because it means “safety”, and it signifies a certain level of status and class, and you never have to worry about grabbing carpark spots, squeezing in elevators. You’ve even got your own yard and high-class neighbours. But in reality, most people regret their purchases soon after making it.
An internet commenter Little D (user ID) posted that he was a landlord. One of his renters sold his own house, his parent’s house, and his wife’s house, and his whole family lived in Little D’s apartment for rent. They had more than 10 million RMB on hand, hoping to buy a three-story mansion. After a year of renting, he successfully got his dream house. According to Little D, it was at a remote location, but at least it was affordable. It was the cheapest house in the development, 3 million RMB cheaper than the next cheapest house.
But after the excitement passed, his renter said he was beginning to regret it. For someone who’s newly middle-class, mansions are often something they can afford, but can’t keep up with. If your total assets are only a little bit more than the total price of the mansion, would you buy a mansion? Leave your thoughts in the comment section.”
Comments say, “Honestly, you can sell 3 units to buy a mansion, but it’s gonna be pretty hard to sell a mansion to afford three units.”
“If you’re gonna buy a 10 million RMB mansion, you’d better have 10 million RMB’s worth of real estate in the city centre, plus 3 million of cash flow.”
“Ignoring how much it’s gonna cost just to furnish the thing, once you move in, utilities + maintenance + HOA fees are gonna be sky-high every month. If you added it all up, it wouldn’t be much cheaper than rent.”
Just found this substack and am really enjoying it! I got into bootleg danmei translations a few years ago, and there are so many times when I've asked myself, "is this a creative choice? or is it a Chinese Thing(tm)?" so it's nice to have a less... biased... view of Chinese culture to compare to.
So far I have deduced that the fictional comment sections are more realistic than I had previously believed...