“A lot of people asked me, “What would civil servants do if their wife cheated on them?” I’ve got a story I can tell about this. This happened about two years ago. There was a couple—both of them were children of state government workers, so of course, they all worked in state government once they grew up too. They’re basically coworkers.
They grew up together, went to the same daycare, the same primary school, the same middle school…both their parents are civil servants in the system. So naturally, they got married. To make the story easier to tell, we’ll call them A and B.
After they were married, they couldn’t get pregnant for a couple of years. Ran some tests, and it turned out, A had bad sperm. They had a great relationship, so A was like, “Then we’ll just be childfree.”
But B wouldn’t agree to it, and neither side of the family would agree to it.
So they tried all kinds of fertility treatments at all kinds of hospitals, took all kinds of medicine, calculated intercourse times, visited famous doctors—they took seven separate trips to Beijing alone. Of course, throughout this process, obviously, blame got slung every which way, and they fought a lot. Their relationship took a down turn.
A state government is a very small circle. Slowly, everyone began to know that A had bad sperm. With most people’s level of medical common sense back then, they basically thought it meant he couldn’t get it up. A is from something of an influential family in the local area. Of course he couldn’t stand that. So he started cheating, to prove that he was fine. He could get it up just perfectly.
Soon enough, he got sick and tired of the fertility treatments too, and refused to take any more medicine or go along with anything. Any time B brought up any complaints, he’d say, “Then divorce me and go have kids with someone else.”
In the process, A met his “true love”. He brought up divorce, and B wouldn’t agree to it. She even went and complained to his boss. Back then, bosses really got involved in this sort of thing, and told A off. So A quit his job, went into business, left the house, and started living with his mistress. He sued for divorce, and failed the first time, so he settled in for the long haul, just waiting until they’ve been separated for two years before suing again.
At the time, in the local state government, this couple became a well-known joke. He’s out of there now, but B still worked there. Once two years was almost up, B couldn’t take it anymore and attempted suicide, and got saved just in time. Everyone said it was A’s fault, and A blamed himself too. Although they fought a lot later on, they did grow up together, and they still had feelings for each other. So after thinking about it long and hard, A decided to come back to his family.
And his true love mistress had to go marry someone else. A always felt like he’d wronged her.
Although A and B never divorced, they never really had a sexual life again. A spent his days happily sleeping around outside. He was pretty good-looking, wealthy, generous, and he never cared what B was doing. Until one day, B told him, “Let’s get divorced. I’m pregnant.”
Of course, the kid isn’t his.
A was like, “Tell your boyfriend to come meet me, we’ll talk it out over dinner. I want to hand you over to him myself.”
B was like, “I’m having this kid on my own. It’s got nothing to do with anyone else.”
A had been sleeping around everywhere himself, he knew exactly what men are like. As soon as he heard that, he knew the guy was already married and had no plans to divorce and marry B.
A laughed, “Breaking the One-Child Policy gets both parents fired. You’ve been working in the government your whole life, you don’t even know how to work as a nanny. You want to have the kid on your own? How are you going to take care of it? You’ll both starve to death.”
And B burst out in tears.
It didn’t take A long to figure out who B’s lover was, and A went and found him and gave him two conditions:
The lover divorces and marries B
The lover lets A sleep with his wife.
A said, “You can’t expect to just sleep with my wife and get away with it, right?”
The lover wouldn’t agree to either option, so A took some people to his house, to his workplace, to everywhere he hung out to harass him every day. Basically, he would never get a day of peace in his life. The lover called the police, and they did nothing. (For anyone who says they’re going to harass someone into giving in, you need to understand something first—for some people, causing a public disturbance is just fine, and for some people, it’s not. You need to realise which kind you are.)
The lover and his whole family had their lives in a total mess under all this harassment, so he ended up getting a divorce. A watched him turn in his divorce papers before he got a divorce with B, and told B, “Since you cheated, you’re not taking a cent away from this marriage.”
The day his wife left his house, he didn’t let her take anything. He watched her leave from upstairs, and as soon as she got out the door, he began throwing her makeup out the window. Make his wife and his wife’s family scream and run, and he laughed at them from upstairs.
After a while, he stopped being so angry, and took B out again, and gave her 100K, and said, “Look, you’re in a second marriage now, don’t tell him about this money. Save it yourself, for an emergency. If anything happens, don’t hesitate to tell me. Think of me as family now.”
Now that he’s divorced, A can play around even more now. He can’t have kids either way, so he never bothered with birth control, and often told people, “If you got pregnant, I’ll marry you. If you get pregnant, I’ll take it as mine.” But for several years, nothing ever happened.
Until one day, he met a lady who’s divorced with a child, and fell in love at first sight. The woman was like, “I’m not looking for a one night stand. I want marriage.”
He’s like, “Then let’s get married.”
And the woman was like, “I already have a kid. I don’t want anymore.”
And he’s like, “Great! I can’t have kids anyways!”
And so they got married. And something miraculous happened: this woman got pregnant almost immediately after they got married. He has a kid of his own now.
A told me this story himself, multiple times. Every time, he had a different conclusion to the story. The first time, he said, “Once there’s a problem with your marriage, you need to leave early. Don’t drag it out. Nothing good ever results from dragging it out. If I had left earlier, I could have had one more kid with my current wife.” Another time, he was like, “Everything is about destiny. My fate with my ex-wife wasn’t finished yet, so we couldn’t get divorced. Even if we did, I wouldn’t have met my current wife. So, there’s a plan for everything.”
As for what you’re conclusion is…decide on that yourself.”
Comments say, “I can only say that A was a decent guy, so he earned good karma for himself.”
“I’ve heard of a lot of stories where there’s nothing wrong with either party in a marriage, but they just couldn’t have kids. But as soon as they marry someone else, they get a kid right away.”
“A is a great ex-husband.”
A blogger shows screenshots of a couple of instagram posts, saying, “”People are waking up to their brainwashing now and not nearly so blindly worshipping Japan. They all know Japan is the origin of food additives now.”
The instagram posts read:
“I’ve gotta say, all Japanese food is made of technology and black magic. A simple ingredients list has dozens of additives in it. Even pure 100% milk has a big long ingredient list. It’s like a whole different world from Germany, where it’s organic everything.”
“They’re the OG of food additives—look at their bread and cakes. They all have plant fat in them. All kinds of stuff banned in China is everywhere in Japan.”
“Japan legally allows literally hundreds more types of additives than China.”
“It’s all pre-cooked food everywhere you go. Japanese people don’t know what to do if they don’t have pre-cooked food.”
“All restaurants in Japan use frozen meat, like in Hong Kong.”
“Why does Japanese medicine work so much better? Because they’re using illegal ingredients with severe side effects. I want all the weebs here to eat more, drink more nuclear waste water.”
“Japan created the technology for recycling gutter oil.”
Under the hashtag #Jay Chou holding hands with his daughter, a blogger writes, “I just watched a tiktokker post a video estimating that Jay Chou probably has over a million RMB in passive income every day. That is, even if he stopped working altogether and just sat at home, he’d make over 300 million a year. That’s not counting how much he makes from work at all.
No wonder he can invest in Hannah Quinlivan’s [his wife] movie and store and whatever else she had three minutes of interest in this week, and it doesn’t matter if he loses all his money. And he even gifted Karry Wang a luxury car.
I’ve thought about it, and Jay Chou really does have a lot of the best qualities for men, like he’s super artistic (created countless classic songs), really smart (he made a lot of money in business), pretty social (no one’s ever had any complaints after working together with him), steadfast (fought through all the obstacles he faced when he first started his career).
No one who’s rich got there by being lucky. They all have their own wisdom and talent. And even if a fool had all the money in the world, he’ll be quickly separated from it.
There’s probably only one man like that among 100,000 people. Hannah Quinlivan must’ve saved the whole galaxy in a past life to have met one.”
Comments say, “She’s super pretty too.”
“I’ve seen Hannah when she was young. I can only say, she’s really smart. She knows how to hold onto Jay Chou, how to stand out, how to put up with him.”
“Just remembered a true story I heard when I went back to my rural village hometown. Right now, there are tons of men in rural villages unable to get married. Any woman who’s divorced without kids are super sought after. They could pick whatever never-been-married man they want. So I’m confused where all this demand for virginal romances come from. I mean, even the lowest common denominator doesn’t demand women have to be virgins?”
Comments say, “My mom says that she’s seen a woman get divorced, and matchmakers show up at her door literally the very next day.”
“I’ve got a distant relative who had a girl chasing after him in middle school, went to find him in his village a couple of times. But his mom felt like he was too young to be dating, and he didn’t have to pick such a cheap and easy girl, so she beat the girl off. And now, it’s been a decade or two, and neither of her sons are married yet.”
“Readers who demand virginal romances are primary school to university girls who haven’t had any dating experience.”
“When I saw Xiucai [influencer popular with older women] get banned, I breathed a sigh of relief. Ever since I knew such a person existed on Tiktok, I’ve been worried about my mom. My mom was a very smart, competent, extroverted, beautiful woman back when she was young. I wasn’t the least bit concerned about her for the longest time, because I never thought anyone would be able to trick her.
But if you haven’t been through it, you really don’t understand how much aging completely changes a person. After 60, my mom constantly fell for all kinds of scams. She’d blow 150K on a beauty parlour one day, and 100K on a dentist the next.
What’s my job, guys? [an author] Plastic surgery clinics and dentists practically line up to work with me. I’ve spent so much money on plastic surgery, I know exactly which institutions are reliable and cost-effective, and my mom refuses to listen to me. She’d rather believe the beauty parlour down the street that doesn’t even have a legal license to operate.
Or rather, it’s not that she doesn’t believe me. The salespeople there gave her so much emotional companionship, that she just wanted to give them money in that moment.
My mom lives by herself in Beijing. Even though I call her and chat with her every day, there are certain things where I can’t be there for her, so fine. I’ll take this loss. But as soon as I think about the existence of Xiucai, I cannot sleep. At most, a beauty parlour might get 100K, 200K out of you. But if she ever fell for him, she might transfer millions over to him. Romance has a lot more influence over people than a salesperson at a beauty parlour.
Thankfully, even when she’s old, she’s maintained her pride as a beautiful woman. She’s used to getting money from men (my dad, that is), and never built up a habit of spending money on men, and has never been tricked by anything similar yet. She doesn’t even know who Xiucai is.
My mom knows she doesn’t have control over herself too. Last time I went back to Beijing, she took me to the bank and had me put all her money in a certified deposit account.
Even if Xiucai was banned, there are countless more Xiucais lurking in the corner. After all, there’s just too much money to be made in this market. And older women have such passionate desire for love. And most of them have a ton of money on hand. All I can do is get my mom to come live with me and five her more companionship.
When people are young, they alway assume that they’ll always be this level of rational and smart. They never understand the true extent of aging. Old people have a much higher demand for emotional companionship than young people.
I sincerely hope no parents will ever fall for scams again.
(I have no idea why Xiucai was banned. I’m just talking about my feelings here.”
Comments say, “My mom’s friend is like this—a super educated and talented auntie, and she’s absolutely fallen for a gay couple online (I have nothing against gay people). They flatter her a little, and she’ll tip them six-figures every time. It’s hard to imagine that’s something this auntie would do. A little while ago, they got married and invited her to come, and she even felt surprised they wanted her there. It’s fucking ridiculous.”
“All of a sudden, I feel a lot better about my mom spending 20-30K at the beauty parlour.”
The Japan hate is so easy to revive in China. Not that Japan has done much to quell the feeling of late
wive -> "wife" or "wives"
both sides of the family wouldn’t -> neither side of the family would
what men was like -> "what men were like" or "what men are like"
are everywhere -> is everywhere
of operate -> to operate