08/06/23 - We usually get paid 2 RMB for every 10,000 bags.

Aug 07, 2023

“So what if I’m graduated from a 211 University [one tier below Ivy League]. I still gotta stay home and take care of the baby. 11 months after giving birth—I’d planned to go back to work this summer to start saving up for him to get a wife, but he’s so goddamn clingy. Ended up stuck chasing cats and dogs with him all over the Tong’an countryside. Do you have any idea how valuable your mommy’s time is? I’m an English tutor with 6 years of experience under my belt.”

Comments say, “Who the hell would let their baby play with their graduation certificate? That’s something you save in a safe, isn’t it? I mean, unless the only thing you’ve got to be proud about is having a baby and your diploma. XD”

“You could’ve just not had any kids, though. If you’re gonna have a kid, then you’ve got to be prepared for what happens next. That’s just being responsible to yourself and your child.”

“You’re going to make people who think there’s no point in women getting diplomas feel like they’re right. A lot more underclass girls aren’t gonna get to go to school as a result.”

A compilation of people turning traditional Chinese motivational sayings into demotivational sayings:

“Plum flowers are fragrant because plum flowers are fucking always fragrant, not because of the cold.” [The saying is, “the fragrance of plum flowers come from the freezing cold”—a saying to the effect that success only comes after a lot of hard struggling.]

“Gold will always glow in the end. But first, it needs to be actual gold.”

“We need to praise unbending willpower in the face of suffering, and not suffering in and of itself.”

“Yeah, I always thought that was a shitty saying. Plum flowers only bloom in winter because they’re adapted that way, just like how polar bears can only survive when it’s cold. It’s only humans who feel like it’s so hard to survive in winter and project all these honourable values onto plum flowers. But when it’s summer, it’s too hot for plum flowers to bloom anyways.”

“Girls who like to smile tend to be lucky. Because unlucky girls have nothing to smile about.”

“If you work yourself the hardest, you can serve the highest.” [Original saying is “If you work yourself the hardest, you can become the highest.”]

“What about the saying that the sharpness of a blade comes from the grindstone?”

“Blades still have to be made from steel. Nobody tries to make a blade out of glass or plastic or paper or wood.”

“The ugly duckling became a swan because it was hatched out of a swan egg, not because it worked hard or anything.”

“Give up. Chinese people have loved praising hardship from the dawn of time. Any pursuit of individuality and happiness should be criticised. So, fuck hardship. I’m just gonna enjoy life. Life is short—even if I’m entirely insignificant, I’m still gonna make sure I live the comfiest life I can.”

Due to the influence of Typhoon Doksuri, there has been continuous days of over 100mm rainfall in Heilongjiang, Wuchang City. According to Wuchang City’s Anti-Flood Command Centre, the recent downpour has caused multiple large-scale dams and mid-scale dams and rivers to overflow, causing several towns and counties to become flooded. Currently, over 30,000 people have been evacuated out of Wuchang City. On the 6th, reporters from Chao News visited Wuchang City.

Wuchang City is in the southern most part of Heilongjiang province, and is a well-known producer of high-quality rice in China. As of 5pm on the 4th, 2731 hectares of farm land has been flooded in Wuchang, of which 2437 hectares were rice farms. Currently, resources in Wuchang are still more than sufficient, and disaster relief work is focused on evacuation and resettlement. The total damages to housing, roads, and crops is still being calculated.

Wuchang is one of the most important producers of China’s commercial crops, and is one of the top ten producers of grain, the top 3 counties for rice production. Wuchang’s rice farms account for 10% of total farm land in Heilongjiang, and the famous “Wuchang Rice” is produced here. Local farmer Wang Shouzhu tells Chao News reporters that many towns have had their rice farms ruined by multiple days of pouring rain.

The road to Wang Shouzhu’s house had finally been cleared today, and he immediately rushed home. But the five hectares of rice farm that he was worried about still wasn’t saved—2/3rds of it had been completely flooded.

“Right now, rice crops are in the flowering stage. They can’t take any flooding at all,” Wang Shouzhu explained. This period of rice can’t suffer any flooding—if it was a couple of weeks ago, or a couple of weeks later, then rain wouldn’t have mattered at all. “Right now, all we can do is try to salvage as much as we can. If the rice keeps sitting in the water, no grains will be produced. We’d get nothing all year.”

“Look over at all that water. That was my rice field. What we’re standing on is alright, the crops still poke above the water a little,” Wang Shouzhu said. He wasn’t a large scale farmer in his village. He knows neighbours who have hundreds of hectares of land, who’ve lost heavily. Wang Shouzhu showed the reporters the math. On average, every 6.6 hectares of land can produce around 30,000 kilograms of rice. In a normal year, that would make about 200,000 RMB in profit. But a lot of the more severely affected farmers will probably lose money this year.

Longfengshan Town had also been flooded, but farmer Wang Yuling is relatively optimistic. “A lot of rice got flooded. Everything we planted near the river is gone. But most of our rice survived.” Wang Yuling says that you should still be able to buy Wuchang rice this year.”

Comments say, “Farmers have it so hard! How many people are going to lose hair over this!?”

“Better buy a couple bags and stock up. The prices are gonna go up soon.”

“We need more realistic, down to earth news reports like this.”

“The winter break between middle school and high school, my mom needed to constantly help my cousin babysit his kid. It was, like, every day, and the kid never shut up. He kept crying from morning to night. I already didn’t like that cousin’s wife. Then, October of the second year of high school, my sister got married. She was already five months along in her pregnancy when she got married, so in my second semester that year, she gave birth. Then summer break of the third year of high school, she kept asking me to babysit her kid. I was so annoyed. I was already on the end of my ropes with all my studies and falling behind, and she wants me to watch a kid??

Both winter and summer break of freshman year of college, I watched my sister’s kid. Winter break of sophomore year, I got a temp job and didn’t go back home. Summer break of sophomore year, I watched the kid all summer. Junior year, I went and did my internships. I worked night shifts at the hospital and barely got any rest. Once my internship was over, she wanted me to come home and baby sit her kid again.

Half a year later, I started working. I had a lot of overtime at night, and my rental apartment had no sound insulation at all. I was barely getting any sleep. So I quit my job to stay home and rest, and she’s demanding I babysit for her again.

So I got mad. I refused to do it. I told her her kid was too loud and too annoying. And she held a grudge, saying that I didn’t help her when she needed it. I told her to just pretend like I’m dead. I don’t have any responsibility to her kid. God, I hate it. It’s been three years since I graduated. I’m married now. But I still hate kids. It’s to the point where I honestly feel disgusted by them. Does anyone know how I feel? My family all say I’m selfish, but what’s wrong with being selfish?”

Comments say, “WTF. Who makes someone in their final year of high school babysit? Does she not know college entrance exams exist? Who’s actually being selfish here?”

“OP did nothing wrong. Next.”

“I think it’s selfish to give birth to a baby that you don’t like or feel like you can’t take responsibility for.”

“Just did the monthly budget with my husband last night, and found that ever since we hired a maid, we’re actually spending less money per month now.

We used to order out all the time, and kept getting suckered into getting boba tea or coffee or fruit. It was like 100–200 RMB per day. But since we got a maid, she cooks three meals a day. 150 RMB’s worth of groceries at the store can feed us for half a week. Our food expenses went from 5-6K a month to 2-3K a month.

She’s great with the kid too. Other people just have one kid for the maid to manage, and we’ve got three. And she sweeps and mops and does laundry and tidies. Once you add it all up, it’s like, man, maids are such a great investment.

This is the diet food our maid made us today: boiled broccoli and shrimp, homemade chili oil. It’s so tasty.”

Comments say, “150RMB for half a week? How many dishes do you make per meal? I’ve got a family of five, and when I go get groceries, it’s over 200 RMB per day!”

“I cook my own meals. If my girlfriend eats with me, then it’s only about 20-30 RMB per day. I occasionally buy some chicken to make broth for her, and that can be expensive. But for two people, it’s usually two vegetable dishes and one meat dish, or one vegetable dish and one meat dish. She doesn’t have a big appetites. Normally, if we made soup for lunch, we can keep eating it for dinner too.”

“I want to hire a maid to cook for me too T_T I spend over 100 RMB on take out every day.”

A blogger reposts a very long article going into the reason that China’s birth rate is so low, which can be summarised as, “It’s because having kids is too big of an investment these days, between the time you have to give them and the money you have to invest in their education just for them to end up with an ordinary job. Also, houses are too expensive.”

The blogger notes that they really like the final paragraph, which reads, “A lot of things feel apocalyptic right now, but once you draw out the time line, and put our current problems into the long river of history, there’s nothing we can’t get past. When Liu Bang and Xiang Yu were fighting in the chaos of the Chu-Han War, China’s population fell to under 20 million, but we’re still at 1.4 billion today. What are we so afraid of?”

Comments say, “So why do Scandinavian countries with all kinds of benefits and social safety nets also have low birth rates?”

“It’s just cause having kids is a bad investment. Just like you wrote, back in the day, a five year old child can be free labour. Nowadays? There are plenty of people in their forties and fifties who are still living off their parents. Not that they’re just staying at home and mooching, but their wages are way too low. They still need their parents to subsidise their lifestyle. It’s a negative feedback loop. Once you see how our society’s structured, you just don’t want to have kids. How are kids gonna take care of you when you’re old? The money you spend on one kid could take care of three old people.”

“I mean, nature documentaries have already told us why: when the environment is not conducive to survival, then animals will stop reproducing.”

“Got my pay cheque today, and HR demanded I say thank you??? What the hell do I even say here. Why do I have to thank them for getting money that I earned? Do I need to kneel down and bow to them too??”

OP shows screenshots of their texts with HR:

OP: “Got it.”

HR: “Do you not say thanks when you get paid? It’s basic manners.”

OP: “??? I worked all day, why don’t you thank me? That’s basic manners too. Even the clock-in machine knows to say thanks.”

HR: “Working all day is your job?”

OP: “And jobs are supposed to come with pay?”

HR: “You’re a part of society now. Act like an adult. Use your EQ.”

OP: “Sure, fine. I was wrong for not thanking you for paying me. I should go kill myself. I’m gonna go kill myself right now. I’m gonna head to the roof right now and jump.”

HR: “[Calls OP but is hung up on]”

Comments say, “Work is exhausting. So what if you flip out once in a while.”

“What a beautiful mental state, my queen.”

“Did HR transfer you the money over wechat privately? You should report them for tax evasion.”

Screenshot of a consult question sent to a lawyer, using animal codenames to hide identities, “So, Elephant (17-years-old) had sex with Swan, and Swan said she was 17. Swan’s parents come in on them having sex at home, and call the police. Swan now says she was raped. They met each other on the internet and have been chatting for a month. It’s their first time having a relationship. Swan is actually underaged. She’s 12.”

Comments say, “Do kids really grow up that quickly these days? You can’t tell the difference between 12 and 17?”

“I have the authority to speak on this. I was on summer break from college, hanging out with my friends. A girl I knew on the internet joined us. She had black stockings and a super short skirt and was 180cm tall. We all thought she was the same age as us. We went out to the movies, and then karaoke, and hung out until early morning hours. And then my friend volunteered to drive her home (she was super hot). And as soon as his car pulled onto her street, her dad came out of the house with a meat cleaver and jumped in my friend’s car. My friend had to abandon his car to run away. Later, the police came and that’s how we found out the girl was only 14. The cops spent all night interrogating everyone before they confirmed that nothing happened. The two female classmates we had with us that night were so scared they cried.”

“This is why you demand to see their National ID first.”

“It’s kind of shameful to think about it now, but I’ve been to a small sweatshop in Hebei, where workers fold plastic bags. Like single-use disposable plastic bags. They count 100 of them out, and tie them up. I went over to ask, “Hey, sister, how much do you make a day doing this?”

She said, “We usually go by the number of bags.”

I asked, “How much do you get per bag then?”

And she said, “That’s too little, I don’t know how to calculate it.”

I asked, “So how much per 100 bags?”

She said, “We usually get paid 2 RMB for every 10,000 bags.”

I didn’t know what to say after that. I felt like I’d been asking really stupid questions. I always say to myself, “Worst case scenario, I’ll just get some factory work.” But actually, factory work is beyond my imagination. I can’t imagine getting paid 2 RMB to count out 10,000 bags. The whole factory is super dusty, the chairs are really uncomfortable. This is the life of most blue-collar workers.”

Comments say, “Why do we call capitalists alligators? Because they eat people up, bone and all.”

“That’s not blue-collar. That’s human-shaped machinery.”

“Some places are even worse. We had a factory nearby that folded instruction pamphlets for products. The whole thing is about twice the size of an A4 sheet of paper. 5 cents per sheet you fold. A lot of old people actually had a lot of fun folding them. But now, they’ve switched over to an automatic folding machine. It goes through 10,000 sheets in the blink of an eye, and just takes a couple kW of electricity. It’s neat, it’s fast, and it doesn’t make mistakes.”

Refer a friend