The blogger yesterday who complained about trains forcing parents to stand in the section between train cars to avoid inconveniencing other passengers writes today “My friends are all telling me to stop arguing with people on the internet, to focus on my real life. I mean, I feel like what I'm doing here is meaningful too. But they're right, that there's other stuff I need to focus on.
Basically, the heat is dying down now, but I'll keep following these train policies. After dealing with all the controversy for the past couple of days, although I've gained a lot of haters, and I've been labelled a lot of things, it's really strengthened my critical thinking skills. If anyone tries to pick a fight with me in the future, I'll just pretend not to hear them.
If Troll Logic [a Chinese reality TV show about debaters arguing over various ridiculous questions] was still airing, I'd have signed myself up. (I've been invited a few times actually, but I ended up telling them no because I didn't think I could make it).
Walking around today, I recalled a news story about how a farmer got on the train, and felt like he was too dirty to sit in the seats, so he sat on the floor the whole way. A lot of commenters were praising his behaviour. Even a lot of news stories were praising him for being “polite” and “friendly” and “understanding”.
At the time, all of this made me really uncomfortable, because all of this praise is like people agree with him, that he is too dirty to deserve a seat on the train. He's not allowed to sit on the train. And that takes all other farmers hostage too—they can't sit down on trains now either. People will only praise them for sitting on the floor.
Compare this to families travelling with small kids—if our media is highly praising all the parents who take fussy kids to the section between train cars in order to maintain peace and quiet in the train cars, the direction of the whole discussion is wrong. That means that only this behaviour is correct, is praiseworthy. That's why there's so much involution under that weibo post, with people showing off how long they've stood there.
This is wrong.
A civilised, evolving society allows a farmer to sit down in the seat that he paid for with confidence no matter how dirty he is. They allow families with small children to sit in their seats that they paid for with no pressure, and take their time comforting their little ones.
It won't ceaselessly remind people that they need to leave, that they have no right to sit there, and they're only worthy of praise if they leave.”
Comments say, “I agree with you so hard. God only knows, I sat with my 16-month-old kid for two hours in the section between train cars, and when I complained about this, all the commenters were telling me that the next time I take a train, I can bring a little stool to sit on with the baby in that section. Just stop selling children's tickets then. What the fuck. Kicking people while they're down.”
“I support you. If this happens to me in the future, I would just straightup refuse. I have the right to sit in my seat and comfort my child. If you don't like it, call the cops.”
“We're not in a civilised society, though. There are too many narcissistic, selfish people.”
“Are watermelons in Britain normally like this? Thank you, Wu Mingzhu, Mother of Watermelons, and thank you all the generations of agricultural scientists in China!”
“I pray Britain will never have watermelons again. I can't even tell if these are watermelons or cucumbers.”
“I'm so done with British watermelons. Look at this, Sainsbury. Is this acceptable?”
“England's watermelons are so tasty! I've never seen anything like this in China. Chinese watermelons suck.”
“Studying abroad in Britain, got triggered by watermelons in Tesco. Do not buy them! Bought myself a 3 pound watermelon thinking it'd be sweet and tasty, but it was completely unripe.”
“I got mad at my mom because she steamed three pieces of yams. I don't even know what's wrong with me T_T Middle of the day today, my mom said she's gonna make me dinner after she gets off of work, and called me asking what I want for my main dish. I told her two slices of yams. When I got back to my place and saw my mom had steamed three slices of yams, I just suddenly had a break down. I couldn't control my temper at all. Started getting super emotional with my mom and looking upset at her. I'm just so anxious. It's not just that I'm not losing weight, I've lost all control over my emotions. Just thinking about how I have to go back to school in Switzerland in September is making me want to explode.
Sorry, sorry, sorry, I'm really sorry. God, please help me. I just want to be an emotionally stable, normal person.”
Comments say, “Yeah, that's what happens if you cut out carbs.”
“Don't forget to apologise to your mom.”
“It's okay, just find yourself a shitty job, earn the money you're spending on gilding your resume in Switzerland yourself, get off of work at 7pm and go buy potatoes by yourself at the supermarket to cook for yourself for dinner.”
“All these years of the one child policy, I think the only people who benefited are only daughters. I've observed a lot of multi-child households across different classes, and so long as they have a son, without exception, the son takes up and expends more resources than the daughter. No matter how talented the daughter is, she has to step aside for the son.
For poor families, when daughters marry off, they're doing it completely on their own. The family's house and land have nothing to do with you. Even your bride price will be intercepted and used to buy a house for your brother.
For middle class families, they'll at least support both kids through school, and probably won't intercept the bride price. But the core assets, such as the house or rental property and savings accounts are still for the son.
For rich families, education isn't a problem. When you marry, there's going to be a dowry and a marital house too. But the family's business and core assets are still the son's. Almost nobody actually splits it evenly.
This is just materially speaking. It's even worse when you look at emotional investment. Daughters are still important, but I still feel that it's their brothers who are truly dependable.
If all the children are daughters, then you see this phenomena a lot less.
If I had another son, I'd probably do the same thing. No matter how incompetent he is, I would still give him more resources than daughters. It's impossible to treat kids equally. Most of what parents call “fair” is just their concept of fair.
All the only daughters I've met feel that it's really great they're an only child. They got to enjoy all of their parents' love, and they're willing to take on all the responsibility of taking care of their parents by themselves too. That's all.”
“There won't be any more rich people with an only daughter. It'll even get rarer in middle class families. Having a large family is the base requirement of any rich person.”
“Around here (IP Zhejiang), there's a lot of only daughters, who live really happy lives. My maternal grandmother had two sons. Her older son had two grandsons, younger son had a granddaughter. And my grandma is way nicer to her granddaughter. Gives her everything. When her house in the village got eminent domain'd, she split the compensation evenly three ways too. It's just up to personal views, whether people have been raised sexist. In my area, from my grandma's time, you don't see a lot of sexism anymore.”
“It's really up to the individual parents and families. My peers are all only children, but my husband has a relative who has a son and a daughter. Right now, she's totally biased in favour of the daughter. She paid for her daughter's house's down payment, gave her a dowry, and is taking care of her children and giving her money for living expenses. Their son isn't married yet, but they've just paid off his down payment.”
“My former coworker's recommended me shitty movies twice in a row now. The first time, it was Full River Red, so I spent 80 RMB to go to the movie theatre to watch some Chinese New Year comedy that I didn't understand at all.
The second time is the recent Xiaoshi de Ta (She Who Disappeared), and I wasn't gonna go at first. But my coworker went to see it twice in theaters. I figured that if it was really bad, she wouldn't subject herself twice. So I chose to believe in her again.
I just got out of the movie theatre, and I'm honestly mourning the money I spent on this movie. I could've bought a double patty burger from Shake Shack with this money :( “
Comments say, “If you don't like it, you don't like it, but it's unnecessary to bring up your coworker, right? She liked it so she recommended it to people around her. You can choose to accept it or not. It was your own choice whether or not you went and watched, right?”
“Oh good, I haven't seen it yet.”
“If you're this sad over two figures of money, then don't enjoy life so much and focus on working harder. Stop reading weibo all day too, it's also a waste of time.”
A tiktok video of violent military recruiters in Ukraine, with a blogger writing “Ukraine is facing violent military recruitments again. This is how recruiters are “persuading” people to enlist. They have no choice but to use violence, because all the Ukrainians who firmly believe in defending their country have been expended already. What's left is either old and weak, or the only source of income in a family. These people have parents to take care of, wives and children to feed, even if they wanted to enlist, they probably can't.
Of course, where there's violent recruitment, there's corruption. If Ukrainians want to escape the draft for 3 months, they need to pay 12K USD. So now, “every military recruiter's a billionaire.””
Comments say, “If they don't use violence, nobody would go fight. Who would want to be cannon fodder for NATO?”
“From these reports, probably about 45% of soldiers in Ukraine comes from NATO countries and some mercenary companies.”
“All these violent recruiting videos have got to be fake, because if it was really this common, then their soldiers’ morale wouldn't be this high. Of course, the videos Ukraine posts of their old, weak, and child POWs is probably fake too. Russia hasn't been pushed to the point of a full war yet. Their soldiers aren't depleted to that point. This is just a PR battle between the two nations.”
gt -> got
has been expended -> have been expended
comes from -> come from
soldier's -> soldiers'
Is "Troll Logic" called that as a BtVS reference?