“Korea really is a magical place. I’ve got amnesia, so I’m going to answer a lot of questions I’ve gotten about it.
Koreans really do have americano in their veins instead of blood. 365 days of the year, no matter what season it is, they drink iced americano. There’s nothing more numerous in Korea than coffee shops. I’m not joking, there’s a coffee place every 50 steps.
Koreans “only” drink iced water no matter what season it is, whether they’re eating or at home. The most important function on their water dispenser or fridge is making ice. And they’ll go outside wearing skirts or dresses with bare legs even in the winter. And they head out of the door with wet hair after showering.
Koreans have a very strong sense of class structure. Feels like there’s an invisible net strictly separating people into different classes.
Koreans are really warm but also really distant. It’s kind of confusing. They’ll give kids they don’t know candy and change just because they think they’re cute, but society as a whole is super detached. Everyone is walking around like things they concern them and they don’t care.
Food is expensive in Korea, but it’s not really to the point that they can’t afford watermelons. But they do have a lot fewer options for fruits and vegetables and meat, and it doesn’t taste nearly as good as in China. But their clothing and housing is a lot cheaper.
Koreans really don’t sleep. They don’t go to bed until super late at night. 24 hour gyms and early morning tutoring classes are super popular. They’ll spend all night eating and having fun and trying to improve themselves outside of work hours.
More Koreans push around their dogs in baby strollers than actual babies.
Koreans and Korean society usually don’t like China, and they particularly don’t like Chinese people who are ethnic Koreans.
On the one hand, Korea is trying to improve its birth rates. On the other hand, tons of businesses have signs that ban babies from coming in.
Korean TV is always criticising their president. And it’s the same for every president. There are always debates and committees and livestreams talking about the president’s latest fuck up.
That’s all I can think of right now. If there’s anything else you want to know, let me know in the comments XD”
Comments say, “Why do they hate ethnic Korean Chinese? They speak the same language and they’re literally the same ethnicity??” OP replies, “Because we’re still Chinese, but we can understand what they’re saying.”
“Feels like our society is closer and closer to Japan and Korea, especially when it comes to iced drinks and hating babies.”
“Drink ice water, never go to bed, I used to live like that when I was young too, and then I found how bad it was for your body.”
“What do you guys feel about your boyfriend buying you knockoffs as a gift? My own experience is that I’d always felt pretty good about my boyfriend of three months. He’s a pretty understanding and tolerant guy, and his lifestyle matched mine quite well too. The restaurants we would eat at and the car he drives are all pretty high end. I was really thinking about going to the next step with him.
But my birthday had just come up, and he said he had put a lot of time and effort into picking out a gift. So I met up with him full of anticipation, and he gave me a bouquet of flowers, a book, and a bottle of face serum. It was from a high end brand, so I was still really touched. But when I got home and opened the package, it was so obviously a knock off! It was such bad quality! So I immediately sent him a photo and asked him.
OP: “This is so fake. Did you get lied to by an online merchant or something?”
Boyfriend: “Really? Wow, I’m mad.”
OP: “It’s fine. Take it.”
Boyfriend: “Yeah, let’s go to bed for now, it’s late. We can talk about it tomorrow. I can take you to their counter tomorrow. We can get other things too, if you want. Okay?”
OP: “[Sends 2000 RMB transfer] I’ll just round up. Thanks for dating me for such a long time.”
Boyfriend: “I don’t understand why you’re doing this. I don’t like it. I have a customer who works as a purchasing agent.”
OP: “I told you, I don’t like fake things.”
Boyfriend: “I don’t like it either?”
“My hand was shaking the whole time I was taking the pictures. I was so angry I felt like exploding. I sent him 2000, and just blacklisted him.
I couldn’t believe someone who acted so honest and consistent for three months would be so stingy that he’d buy a knock off. We’re both fairly well off. He works in sales. He deals with these brands all day. If he had cared at all, even if he didn’t go to a counter to buy it himself, if he had just found a reliable purchasing agent, he wouldn’t have bought such an obvious fake.
Then, I remembered how gropey he had gotten after giving me the gift that night, and just felt fucking ridiculous. He was probably acting the whole time we were together. Really makes my hair stand on end.”
Comments say, “Then why would you pay him full retail price?”
“Unless you’re long distance, if a man wanted to give you a real gift, he’d take you to the counter himself and swipe his card in front of you. Just so you know.”
“Now that you’ve let him profit off of you, he’ll only get worse next time.”
Screenshots of an interview with a Beijing University Professor, where he says, “I’m a pretty popular professor at Beijing University. All my lectures are always filled up. But when I lecture about anything that’s about women or feminism, or like when I teach Gender Studies, there’s just as many people, but they’re all girls. Then one time, two guys showed up, and they took a front row seat. So I was really happy, and asked then why they came to listen to a Feminism lecture. And one of the guys replied to me in a really hostile attitude that he was here to see how I was leading his girlfriend astray. I’m not exaggerating at all. He was a student and I’m a professor so I couldn’t yell at him. But if he had been my peer, I would’ve definitely told him off.”
Comments say, “Lead astray? God, that sounds so patriarchal. He never considered his girlfriend someone capable of independent thought.”
“Never new Beijing University was so conservative.”
“Wouldn’t your first reaction when seeing a man be disgust? Why would you be happy?”
In Henan, there is a mother-in-law who never babysits, but comes over every day around lunch times and takes the baby out to play despite the baby screaming and crying the whole time. The mother explains that the baby doesn’t want to go with her and is crying. But the mother in law defends herself by saying, “All babies cry though.” Internet comments say, “Can’t you just make your own share of lunch?”
Comments say, “90% of MILs in Henan don’t cook. Don’t ask me how I know.”
“Haha, my MIL’s version of baby sitting is just sitting to the side and playing on her phone. I cook every meal. Even if she wakes up first in the morning, she’ll just lay there and play on her phone until I’m done making breakfast. If I don’t cook, she’ll just wait. She’ll eat whenever I get up and eat.”
A housing blogger writes, “A coworker of mine took a renter to look at apartments, and he liked one of them. But the renter wanted to change the door from the first picture to something like in the second picture, the reason being that he didn’t want to carry a key, and wanted a password or fingerprint lock. And also that the door in the first picture is too ugly. This was the landlord’s first time dealing with a renter who wanted the door changed. He said that he wasn’t going to buy a new door. If the renter wanted to, he can pay money to get a new door himself.
My coworker complained about all of this to me, and I said that I would change the door too. Sure, it might be a rented place, but it’s still my life. I’ve got to live the way I want to.”
Comments say, “I never rent to picky renters.”
“If I was the landlord, I’d just tell him that if he doesn’t like the place, he can fuck off. If he wants a place with a password lock, he should’ve told that to his agent, and his agents should’ve selected for apartments with this requirements in mind.”
“It’s not like he’s gonna be looking at the outside of the door much though XD”
Someone’s wechat wall reads, “If marriage was so good, you wouldn’t have to urge people to get married. Who doesn’t know to pick money up off of the ground?”
And OP compiles a list of articles about how there are more women than men on the dating market. When searching on Baidu the ratio of men to women in matchmaking agencies, the result is 1:2. An article that reads, “A lot of matchmaking companies admit that in the dating market, there are a lot more women registered than men, and they’re usually older. The ratio is quite unbalanced, and it is clearly much harder for older women to find partners than men. “In our matchmaking agency, the ratio of men to women is 1:2, but in some places, it can get up to 1:7.””
“The 2018 census shows that there are 710 million men and 670 million women, and yet, in the Chengdu dating market, the men to women ratio is 1:4. On average, there are four women fighting over any man. In Shenzhen, it has reached 1:7. Why? First, there’s different barrier of entry into the dating market. For the most part, the barrier of entry for men is…”
“In the dating market around the country, the gender ratio has gotten to an astounding 20% to 80%. The gap is too great.”
So on and so forth.
Comments say, “They’re rather spend money on finding a tall, handsome, and rich partner, rather than marry down to some poor, short, ugly dude with a bride price. It’s harder for women to marry up, not to marry down. I don’t know what the comment section is going on about.”
“Matchmaking services are expensive. Any woman who can afford to register at one is going to be pretty well off. The comment section here is hilarious.”
“It’s only big cities that has a bigger ratio of women in the dating markets, because they don’t want to return to rural villages or tiny towns. It’s completely the opposite in small cities and rural areas. That’s how the gender imbalance actually looks like in real life. And also, I need to refuse some of the “high-quality men” talking here in the comment section, because high quality men and women aren’t on the dating market at all. They never stay single for long.”
Under the hashtag #government responds to hospitals refusing to allow pregnant woman to get abortion, a blogger writes, “Because there are way, way too many people who want an abortion as soon as they know they have a girl. That’s why checking the baby’s gender without a medical need is strictly banned. That’s why abortions without a medical need is strictly banned. We need to guard this bottom line with everything we have. Don’t use Pro-Choice arguments to white-wash gender selection.
As for what’s a medical need, for example, some genetic illnesses are associated with gender. But if a family really wants a child, then they can get tested. If the genetic illness only affects boys, then they can abort the baby if it’s a boy, and keep it if it’s a girl.”
Comments say, “So why don’t we actually address sexism at the root, and instead just ban finding out the baby’s gender? Guess?”
“But they’ll be even worse off once they’re born, because their family is still sexist. Sigh.”
“We’ve already got a gender imbalance, and people are still sexist. Now that they can’t find a wife, they’re all blaming high bride prices. How ridiculous.”
The abortion post is so depressing. What a lose-lose situation - either people abort children just because they're girls or you ban that and the girls are born into families that didn't want them just because of their gender.