09/02/24 - Anyone who wants to climb to the top has to eat people.
“Qingdao Land Rover lady “Wang Hui” has been officially jailed for 10 days, never paid recompense, never apologised. 1.4 billion people are waiting for a proper punishment from the police.
We’ll never compromise. Protect veteran’s rights! High standards, harsh punishments. If there’s a war, is she gonna fight it? 57 million retired vets are watching this case!
Driving down the wrong side of the road is a 6 point deduction and 200 RMB fine. If you run from police, you lose your driver’s license and get fined 200-2000 RMB, and cannot reapply for a driver’s license within three years. You’re criminally responsible for beating or swearing at others in road rage incidents. You can be sentenced to up to 3 years and fined 2000-5000 RMB. That’s all in the driver’s license exam. Why is Qingdao different?”
Comments say, “All these monsters have backgrounds. [Doge]”
“Hahahahaha, yeah, if there’s a war, we should make her go!”
“@Qingdao Traffic Police Is this right or not? Running from an accident is okay? You don’t care about driving in flip flops and not wearing a seatbelt?”
A compilation of why you should never praise a merchant’s goods:
“Last time, I told this grandpa his plums were really tasty. Now they’ve gone from 5 RMB to 8 RMB. The market is about to close. Help, what do I say to make him sell it to me for cheap?”
“Just ask him how much, and if he says 8 RMB, tell him that you just bought this from him for 5 RMB and ask if he’s willing to sell it to you.If he agrees, good. If not, just buy something from the next stall over. He’ll be furious.”
“This is why you never say something is cheap or tasty in front of the owner, especially if you’re in Guangxi!! Everything’s went up in price!”
“I’ve seen a lot of bloggers cover a restaurant and go on and on about how cheap and tasty it is, and it always goes up in price afterwards. I’ve went out of my way to visit a place before, and it was so, so damn expensive.”
“The first time I ordered, I specifically left a 5-star review about how much meat this place gives you. And the second time I ordered, this is what it looks like now. See, you can never praise them.”
“Just leave a bad review this time about how they’re shorting you on food.”
“Last time I got Bingfen [jello dessert], it was 10 RMB a bowl, and the box it came in was pretty big. I mentioned something about how they have great portion sizes, and the next time, their boxes halved in height.”
“Reading these comments, I suddenly understand why my stuff is always more expensive even though I’m buying the same things at the same store as other people.”
“I’ve met even worse. I asked this lady selling cucumbers how much they were, and she said 2.5 RMB. I walked around the market, and when I circled back and wanted some, she told me it was 3 RMB. I was like, “Wow, your prices go up fast.” And she was like, “I watched you walk all around and I know I’m the only one with anything you want.” And I was like, “You can keep your own fucking cucumbers.””
“This is why I like supermarkets and fruit stores. The price is labelled right there. They have some measure of morality when it comes to selling fruit.”
“That’s because they’re overpriced to begin with XD”
“It’s like the convenience store next to my work. A customer was like, “You sell these cigarettes for 25 RMB? Most other places sell them for 26!” And the owner immediately changed the price to 26.”
“Damn, that customer must’ve been so mad the next time he came back.”
“The auntie in front of me bought a watermelon for 90 cent a pound. When I asked, I was quoted 1.5 RMB. I was dumbfounded.”
“I’ve known this since I was a little kid. When I was little, I found out that buying snacks from the convenience store was a lot cheaper than buying them at the school’s gate. And I couldn’t stop myself and said to the convenience store people, “Your place is so cheap. You’re so much cheaper than our school.” They asked me how much the school people were selling stuff for, and I answered honestly, and the next time I came, everything was the same price as the school now.
”Maybe they’re only charging you those prices.”
“At 7:27AM, 3rd of September, in Shandong, Dongping County, there was a traffic accident where a bus full of students lost control as it passed by a T intersection on Xuchang Road, causing 24 parents and students on the side of the street to become injured. Dongping County immediately began rescue work. So far, there has been 11 deaths (6 parents, 5 students), 1 severe injury, and 12 people who are in stable condition. The offending driver has been arrested by law enforcement, and the cause of the accident is under investigation.”
Comments say, “That’s horrible! I can’t imagine how sad those parents must feel! The school semester’s just started!”
“Oh my god, RIP. They need to look into how the bus lost control.”
“This is going to kill those kids’ parents. This is only the second day of school!!”
“That woman in Qingdao [who beat up the vet] probably has some background. Or else all the social media people in Shandong would’ve dug up who her ancestors are going back eight generations.”
Comments say, “It must be nice to have connections. There’s nothing 1.4 billion people can do about her.”
“She’s a eminent domain benefactor in Qingdao [where you house is demolished by the government and you’re paid a lot of money for it, one of the ways to get rich quick in China back in the day]. My classmate in Qingdao government told me yesterday.”
“Qingdao government is sure patient on this case.”
A compilation of why you shouldn’t fangirl academics [couldn’t find a gender neutral term, but “fangirl” here is a gender neutral term in Chinese]:
“When I was doing my bachelor’s degree, some really big researcher came to lecture at our school. At the time, a senior posted to her friend’s circle, “This is the kind of celebrity we should be fangirling.” When I went onto my doctorate degree, I heard a lot of dirt on this guy. And I was like, guess people are all the same.”
“All the top researchers have gone through several divorces.”
“Our rector had 5 wives (four divorces).”
“Every time I hear someone saying we shouldn’t pay so much attention to entertainment celebrities and instead follow scientific celebrities, I feel really complicated. Like, you might not be able to really fangirl academics. Not many of them are totally clean. The reason celebrities make so much money is because they don’t get any privacy.”
“The shit that happens in academic circles is enough to ruin 100 careers in the entertainment industry.”
“The longer you stay in academic circles, the more you realise top scientists are actually the same as capitalists. If they can’t exploit others, if they don’t have countless livestock, and all they had was their own genius and hard work, they can work until the day they die without producing any results. (I only know biology and I’m only talking about biology circles).”
“You more or less have to burn other people to climb up.”
“I’ve bought a book on the dirty gossip on a top researcher before, super accomplished. It was written by his student.”
“Anyone who wants to climb to the top has to eat people. After all, you are what you eat.”
“At least entertainment celebrities really have the face that they do. Academics might not have written the papers they’ve published XD”
“Isn’t that the same as an actor using a stunt double? But the former only violates moral codes, whereas the latter might be straight up illegal?”
“Only people with no degree and no research experience has rose-coloured glasses for academic circles.”
“It’s pretty common among Bachelor students. You don’t really see how things are until you’re in a postgrad degree.”
“Fangirls chasing after celebrities and atheletes are a lot more normal then the people obsessed with academics.”
“At least celebrities are hot.”
“We look over every celebrity with a magnifying glass. If we really applied the same moral standards to academic circles or athletes, everyone would be done.”
“This has to do with the nature of their jobs. Celebrities make money from being closely followed by the public. The more exposed they are, the more attention they get. They rely on their persona and looks and other visible things to make money, so there’s a lot of demand on surface level things like that. But athletes and academics rely on medals and research results to draw people’s attention, so they don’t focus nearly as much on personal charisma as celebrities, so people don’t pay as much attention to their personal morality as celebrities either. So their gossip gets exposed less.”
“Let’s forget about morality for a while. How the hell do you fangirl an academic? Do you try to get into their research team? And anyone who isn’t skilled enough to qualify can make promotional posters all like, “XXX is China’s Top Whatever!!! Posted 200 SCI papers! Held 100 international research funding talks! First and only winning of the XXX awards! Holds 10 copyrights!” And since you’re fangirling anyways, do you have to also file complaints against his research rival? And do social media lottery draws for people reposting your content??”
“Academic circles are still circles. Anything that’s a circle is a cesspool.”
“On the subject of surrogacy, I’m not optimistic at all. Although there’s a ton of discussion on Weibo right now, and everyone seems to agree that surrogacy is exploitation of women, in actual real life, people with this viewpoint are in the minority. Rich people (honestly, you don’t even have to be that rich, so long as you’re a normal citizen) doesn’t care about any of that. They’re still quietly surrogating it all up on the side—because they don’t have to go to jail or get fined. The price is reasonable enough, and normal people don’t rely on their reputation like celebrities. Even if they’re exposed for surrogacy, their life wouldn’t change much. The influence of public discourse is very negligible.
Qingdao is not a unique case here. Their scale isn’t even among the biggest facilities in China, to be honest. From what I know, there’s a ton of very mature underground industries, and some of them are barely underground anymore. There’s billboards all over the place for “fertility treatments”, “reproductive health”, “assisted conception”, like they’re worried people don’t know that they do surrogacies. One time, I was travelling somewhere, and their local Women and Children’s Hospital had a store right outside doing IVF and surrogacy, genetic testing, processing birth certificates, and applying for hukou. They practically had, “we do surrogacies” on their sign.
There’s too much market demand, and it doesn’t take that much skill. There’s too much of a wealth gap, and with so much profit, so little oversight, so many legal loopholes, and such light punishment or even no punishment at all, forget solving the problem. I’d be grateful so long as it doesn’t continue to worsen.”
Comments say, “All the ads are posted inside the hospital’s bathroom stalls.”
“Even people making 5-6K a month want to find a surrogate. Honestly, they just don’t get it. They don’t understand what it would mean for women to legalise surrogacy.”
“Just the government’s attitude makes me pretty pessimistic about this…”