“After seeing the movie Barbie, I just want to ask women one question. How many women are willing to do the same work as men? If you can earn 30K RMB a month, but you have to haul bricks all day long on a construction site, how many girls would agree?”
Comments say, “Why do men feel such pride about low-skill menial labour jobs? I don’t discriminate against blue-collar workers, but you’re not a construction worker either. It’s not like you’ve ever hauled bricks.”
“I’ve worked on a construction site before. There are men and women there. Most often, it’s husband and wife duos. And there are no construction jobs that make 30K a month. None. Don’t doubt me. My whole family works in construction. Secondly, there are lots of different specialised jobs in construction, from concrete workers to electricians to remodellers. Women’s work aren’t that different from men. It’s just as exhausting. Maybe the amount of physical labour is a little different, but that’s based on natural differences in strength.”
“If you actually enforce equal work for equal pay and actually hand out 30K a month every month, not only would aunties in construction celebrate, I would celebrate as a tiny weakling girl too.”
“But even 3K a month jobs like nursing and teaching prefer to hire men.”
A undercover journalist responds to Henan City Channel’s decision to delete their video in exchange for Myanmar releasing hostages. “I’m one of the members who participated in Henan City Channel’s report on Myanmar-based scams.
In the first half of 2023, we spent half a year going undercover in North Myanmar scam organisations. In this process, we saw a lot of the bloody behind the scenes of scamming, as well as cruel abuse.
At the time, we got in contact through the internet with some buyers advertising high-salary jobs in Myanmar. After confirming, they passed our information to smugglers on the border. The smuggler got in touch with us, and got us tickets to the border. Then, he took us through mountain paths to the border checkpoint. Then, he took us to a “safe house” on the border. They take people out of the country through the safe house. From the moment we met with the smuggler, we became controlled by him. He watched us for every step of the journey. At this point, you have no chance to run anymore. We had to rely on others’ help in order to get away at the end.
In our undercover experience, we find that there’s two people who end up getting tricked out of the country to get forced into scamming. The first type is seduced by the promise of high pay, who want to make a fortune overseas. But as soon as they leave, they’ll get controlled, forced, beaten, and all kinds of cruel punishments. The second type is getting tricked by their own friends or family. After they become controlled in the scamming area, they’re forced to help their friends and family make money. If they can’t make money, they have to trick more people into coming. That way, the people who are already there get beaten let, don’t get sold off, and might even have a chance at freedom.
At the end of June, the program “Snakes at the Border” aired on our city channel. Starting from the 3rd of July, we started airing, “Returning from Myanmar”, interviewing survivors in Henan, Shanxi, Sha’anxi, Sichuan, Guizhou, Guangxi, Hunan, Hubei, Anhui, and so on. We’ve even had a victim’s mom contact the program for help. She explains that her son, Xiao Peng (false name), got tricked over to Myanmar. Because our program became very popular on the internet, the phone scamming company saw it, and contacted her. They demanded that we delete the video, and they’d release Xiao Peng. We deleted the video, and within an hour, Xiao Peng was at China’s border. With the help of a lot of different agencies, we were able to get Xiao Peng properly processed and returned to China.
Aside from Xiao Peng, in the last month, we were able to directly or indirectly save about five people through our program. They’re two people from Zhoukou, Hainan, 1 person from Beihai, Guangxi, 1 person from Fuzhou, Fujian, and 1 person from Wenshou, Zhejiang. They’re mostly teenagers or in their twenties. They’ve all safely returned home.
We learned from the captured Myanmar people that the scam companies monitor our program every hour of every day. They fear the pressure of PR too, so these news reports are very helpful. Currently, we’ve received thousands of appeals for help, interviewed hundreds of families. A lot of families have become broken because of scams. We’ve seen cases of severe depression, of terminal illness, even people who weren’t able to see their beloved family members one last time before they passed away.
This process has strengthened our resolved to use our media influence to save more people. Those who can help, will help. Those who can talk, will talk. We’ll keep promoting and reporting on this. And a lot of relevant authorities are making a lot of proactive moves too. I hope people are stay alert, don’t believe in things that are too good to be true, and don’t trust in others blindly. There are no free lunches in the world.”
Comments say, “Unbelievable! That was so dangerous! I’ve gotta pay my respects to Henan City Channel and all their brave journalists! Take my upvote.”
“I’ve watched this channel from childbirth. Since I came to Hubei, I rarely watch TV anymore. But what a good job. Good luck, Henan. Good luck, city channel!”
“This is a proper good journalist. This is the power of media. I hope more and more people can come back, and more and more families can be reunited.”
“Real story, looking for everyone’s opinion. A girl married the wrong person, and had two kids. And she had two kids back to back, without any preparation at all. (A lot of people think it’s funny, but it’s not. She’s a girl in her early twenties. A lot of young girls don’t have a clue and accidentally get pregnant, and then have a rushed shotgun wedding, and get pregnant again three months after their first baby…and as soon as the man sees that she can’t get away now, they show their true form.) When her kids were very small, her husband’s domestic violence got worse and worse. She found out that both of her husband’s brothers have a history of mental illness. One of them is a diagnosed schizophrenic.
She’s tried to take the kids and flee and sue for divorce. But everyone got together to talk her down, her husband promised to never beat her again, and she relented.
After she got back together with him, he seemingly stopped beating her, but he keeps fucking with the kids, beating the kids. (Not to the point that you can call the police, and not anything you can get evidence of. He just casually slaps them here, kicks them there.)
(You don’t have to tell her to get a nanny cam. Her husband never leaves the house, and knows that she might put up nanny cams for evidence. He’s found it before and beat the shit out of her.)
She usually puts up with it, but now that the kids are going to school—that crucial moment when they’re going to first grade—her husband is trying to keep them out of school like he’s crazy. He refuses to let the kids to go public school. He refuses to sign them up for duolingual private school. They’re only allowed to study ancient texts. He wants to find a school that just teaches them Confucius and Warring States Era philosophy, and it has to be a boarding school. He wants his seven year olds to only come home once a week.
Obviously, no such school exists. So then he said he wants to send his kids to a boarding Martial Arts school. He’s not just saying this. He’s going about doing it. They’re supposed to start attending in September.
She’s told him that it’s extremely not healthy for kids this small to be separated from their families, to a boarding school that doesn’t actually teach any literacy, maths, or science. And his kids don’t have any prior training in martial arts or even basic fitness. But he refuses to listen.
She’s tried telling him the kids might get beaten up, and he doesn’t care either.
I have no idea what to tell her now.
If she sues for divorce, it’s very unlikely she’ll succeed. They’ll most likely have to split the kids.”
Comments say, “I mean, there’s a good side to everything, right? Martial Arts school isn’t that bad. If they get used to it, at least they’ll get a healthy body.”
“If he hides severe illnesses from you, you can sue for a divorce.”
“If he never leaves the house, what does he live on? I’m just curious.”
“I was standing in line this morning, getting a national ID for my kid. The tiny hall was absolutely crammed with parents and kids.
A dad had obviously become impatient with the long wait. His four or five year old daughter was getting restless and loud too. The dad got more and more frustrated, until he suddenly turned with no warning and slapped the shit out of his daughter, and told her to shut up. The little girl immediately began wailing. It looked like this slap was something very ordinary and normal for this dad, but I was totally shocked. In my house, no matter how naughty our kid got, no matter how mad we were, we would never hit our kid this way.
Another mom was carrying a canvas bag filled with picture books. She was probably worried her kid would get bored and made preparations beforehand. In the noisy hall, as they stood in line, she gently read the picture books to her four or five year old son, and the kid was totally absorbed in it. What a good mom!”
Comments say, “Little kids can get national IDs too? We have to take our hukou everywhere with us when we travel.”
“Thank god I got it done in March. Nobody was getting IDs for their kids back then. I guess there’s a big wave with the new regulations?” (kids now have to show ID to ride trains)
“We’ve went twice. The first time, we don’t have proof of his blood type. The second time, they couldn’t get a sample of his finger print. We failed both times.”
A blogger reposts an article about how the first batch of life-long bachelors in Japan are regretting their decision to never get married now, featuring interviews with a 72-year-old Japanese man whose wish is that he can get married before 80, because he’s afraid of dying alone.
Comments say, “Ohh, I understand now. If you don’t get married, you’ll regret it after 72. But if you do get married, you’ll regret it from the day you got married.”
“The only reason he wants a wife is he wants a free nursemaid because he’s old.”
“I mean, seems like a pretty good set up. Everyone has fun while they’re young, and get together for companionship when they’re old (if old ladies also want this. But my guess is they don’t.)”
A tiktok video observing sand from all over the world.
Comments say, “Every pile of sand is its own world. It’s so pretty <3”
“I didn’t know sand was rainbow-coloured.”
“They look like little gems!”
“Back when we had too few newborns, just by allowing second children, we were able to pull the numbers back up. Now we’re allowing third children, and the number of newborns is still decreasing. This is to the point that it’s illogical.
Although population decline is not something that can be solved, I thought at least there’d be a little bounce back in the middle. Having this kind of curve over the long term is just unnatural. It’s already set in stone now that we’ll have less newborns this year. Even if you got pregnant now, you’re not going to give birth until next year.
Based on these numbers, from 2016 to 2022, newborn numbers have been decreasing for seven years. If it keeps dropping this year, it’ll be eight years. If it doesn’t bounce back in 2024, it’ll be nine years.
The real estate industry has been so much more effective than the one child policy. If only we could’ve predicted rising real estate costs would be this powerful…Thanos should come over to China and learn some lessons. He doesn’t even need to snap his fingers. He just has to raise housing prices, and population would naturally go down.”
Comments say, “The main issue is that the wage slaves are waking up. They don’t want their descendants to keep being slaves.”
“Fun fact: More newborns were born per year during the second Sino-Japanese war than currently.”
“So what if people aren’t having babies? The people staying childfree are just leaving their resources to those who have more babies. It’s fine. We need to naturally eliminate a part of our population anyways. America has 400 million people. We’ll be fine even if we fall to 800 million.”
“A really popular question has been trending on tiktok, “What’re the benefits of getting married?”
Basically, men immediately start in with, “There are tons of benefits!” If you ask them to elaborate, they’ll usually start with something like, “Having kids, carrying on my legacy, continuing my bloodline,” blah blah blah. If you ask in even more detail, they’ll finally say something like, “I’d have a home, warm dinner when I get back, someone to clean up around the place.”
The sharp contrast is, at least for 85% of women, they answer this question with silence…”
Comments say, “You can wear the wedding dress you dreamed about when you were a little kid, you can take pretty pictures together, you can get together with all your friends. Aside from all that, it’s not that different from just dating. At least right now, the law won’t give us a marriage certificate, so whether or not we even hold a wedding is just up to us.”
“Because women don’t get any benefits.”
“A wedding certificate is a license to beat your wife, after all.”
“I got a hell of a consultation on Friday. A man (30+ years old) came in with two women (21 and 23 years old) to ask about our paternity test service. Both women came in with ultrasound pictures. They both got checkups this Wednesday at our hospital. They’re both 8 weeks along in their pregnancy. If it weren’t for the fact that they had different names and ages and a little bit of a difference in their stats, their reports looked almost identical.
I asked what his relation to them was.
He replied, “They’re both my girlfriends. (Both women next to him nodded along to this) I’ll marry the one whose kid is mine.”
Oh my god, the amount of information in that line…
And now I’m desperately curious, what if they both turn out to be his kid?”
Comments say, “I mean, aren’t they worried he’ll cheat on them in the future?”
“I guess if it’s both his, then he’d have to marry one, then get a divorce, then marry the other one?”
“I don’t understand why anyone would want this kind of man.”
A tiktok video where a tourist in Dalian couldn’t finish the food she had ordered at a restaurant, so she asked to take it away in a bag. The restaurant refused, scolding her for wasting food, and they get into a heated argument. She explains later that she had gotten a set menu deal. She’s from a rural family, she precisely didn’t want to waste food, which is why she asked to take it away. She’s reported this incident to 12345, who says they’ll report it to the relevant authorities.
Comments say, “Why wouldn’t they let her take it away? Is there poison in their food and they’re afraid she’ll test it at a lab?”
“I want to eat just about everything I see, and I can never finish my food. I always take it home to finish the next day.”
“The only way to not waste your food is to leave it for the next customer. [Doge]”
What is a [Doge]?
aired no our city -> aired on our city
who’s wish -> whose wish
What’s the benefits -> What're the benefits