A blog post reads, “A super mean but useful persona to put on at work: a witch. Just learn a little bit of horoscopes or Purple Star Astrology. You don’t have to be an expert. Just learn a couple of jargon-y terms, so you can trick people. You just have to be super confident when you talk, and no one will argue against you.
Client: Let’s talk more at 11pm.
Me: It’s the Ghost Month right now, better for everyone to go home early.
Boss: Why do you have to use yellow for the poster?
Me: Yellow is the earth element. Our company is wood-element. Earth helps wood grow, it’ll help our brand grow. I don’t recommend changing it.
Boss: You don’t look too well lately—you’ve been getting less efficient at work.
Me: Yeah, Pluto and Neptune are both in reverse orbit right now, the whole energy of the universe is off. You’re a Scorpio, your main star is in reverse, you should take off work early today too.
Boss: Why is the new employee under you quitting again?’
Me: He has a detrimental sun lately, he’s gonna get into misfortune soon. It’s better for the company if he leaves.”
Underneath is a big compilation of comments about faking being a witch at work.
“I see some people in the comments saying their boss is an expert in this area—that’s okay too. We can always go for competitive advantage. If your boss is an expert in Purple Star Astrology, talk to him about western zodiacs. If your boss studies turtle shells, you study tarot cards.”
“My boss is from Chaoshan. He listed a job for 10K a month, to find a girl to work at the front desk who has to be born on a precise day down to a precise hour, in the right year. She doesn’t have to do anything. She’s just there to bring luck to the company and the boss. She’s like a maneki-neko.”
“Wow, people will do literally anything to slack off at work these days.”
“I’ll even read my boss’s palm every day if I get to slack off at work.”
“My boss: Stop being so supertitious.”
“Me: You still don’t understand the truth of humanity.”
“It all sounds like a bunch of horseshit, but so long as you sound confident enough, some people will believe it.”
“I’ve studied astrology for years, but I can’t help it if my boss won’t believe any of it. He’s just like, “Stop worrying about bullshit and do more work.”
“Then threaten him. If he makes you work overtime, you’ll put a curse on him.”
“I learned how to divine people’s futures through their names, and after I did it for my boss a couple of times, HR is now no longer in charge of who gets fired, who gets promoted, and who gets hired.”
“Lol, water grows wood. Wood breaks earth. My company teaches people witchcraft. This will never work there.”
“Lol, I’ve been doing this for years. I just give my boss and coworkers a little hint, but I never say enough that they can figure out exactly how good I am. My boss asked me to tell his fortune, and I told him he has a lot of wealth but he needs to watch out for his health XD”
“This is so totally me. The very first company party we had after I got hired, the boss had everyone tell a cool fact about themselves, and I said that I have a third eye. At the time, all my coworkers were like O__O And then, later on, I happened to guess a couple of things correctly, and now everyone’s convinced I’m a witch. The good part is, no matter how mean the boss is, he never fucks with me. And my male coworkers never try anything with me. And even when I have to go to business dinners, everyone is super courteous and polite. The bad part is, people keep asking me to tell their fortune.”
“Some childcare advice, aimed at regular middle-class folks. Elites, don’t bother reading this.
Don’t go to international school. If it goes well, you’re just raising a brat for foreigners, they’ll never take care of you once they grow up. If it goes badly, then they’ll get taught to whore, gamble, and do drugs.
As soon as they’re in primary school, stop all art lessons. It’s all just a waste of money. From the point of view of genetics, if nobody in your family has touched art for generations, it’s pretty unlikely your child’s gonna have mutant talent for it. If you want to try, you can test them out in kindergarten, but most of the time, it’s a waste of your time.
Don’t go to duo-language kindergartens. That’s just a way to get money out of parents. Just go to your normal public kindergarten, and teach your children the rules of Chinese society.
Sign your kids up for tutoring that teaches them how things work in China, don’t bother getting them English tutoring. Kids can’t understand any of the English anyways, you’re just wasting their time.”
Comments say, “I can’t agree with stopping all art lessons. The point of art is to create interest. They don’t need to become an expert anything. It’s fine if it just teaches them to appreciate beauty.”
“Is it possible, maybe, perhaps, that people sign kids up for art lessons just to get them out of their hair for a few hours a week?”
“Agreed! You should go to public school if you’re in China. If you want to go to good public schools, then focus on your maths, physics, and chemistry, and earn the scores you need to get in. If you really don’t have the talent, then your parents should just consider free-ranging you.”
A tiktok video of a sting ray eating lunch, with the blogger commenting, “Hey, this sting ray is being a little mean! He’s eating his coworkers at work!”
Comments say, “It did what I wanted to do every day. [Doge]”
“It even knows to hold the fish down with its belly while it eats.”
“Look at how awed all the other fish are.”
“People really can’t have too strong of a sense of empathy. A lady holding an infant was applying for a membership card at my window, and as she’s filling out her information, she said she was a full-time housewife. The baby is screaming and crying and she’s trying to juggle it and the screen and her phone at the same time to get the confirmation code entered. And this whole time, her husband is sitting behind her, playing some phone game, not even glancing up once.
She was like, “Help me hold the baby,” And her husband yelled at her, “Fuck off, I’m in the middle of a game. You gave birth to it, you fucking hold onto it. You’re its mother anyways, it’s your job.”
And I just didn’t know how to feel watching all this. What did she even get out of this marriage?”
Comments say, “You gave birth to it, you hold onto it. I won’t take care of the baby or spend any money on the baby, but the baby has to take my surname, has to take care of me when I’m old, has to listen to what I say, has to be filially pious to me, and I get to vent my anger at it whenever I want.”
“I don’t feel any pity for the woman, but I feel sorry for the baby.”
“She got a baby son out of it, didn’t she? Don’t take it too seriously—maybe she’s enjoying herself just fine.”
A instagram post of a graduation party, captioned, “This photo was taken in May, 2023. At this moment, artists from the California Institute of the Arts are still happily taking their graduation photos, one week away from when he’d be making 2500 a month.”
Underneath, the comments say, “I knew a University of Sydney post-grad, who came back to work as a teacher making 4K a month. He’s got a University of Manchester postgrad under him making 5500 a month.”
“Learned movie production, valedictorian, full scholarship. Now I’m writing twitter posts on behalf of influencers for 4K a month.”
“When I was wearing a pretty little cocktail dress, enjoying my graduation party in Germany, I never thought I’d be crying over a project with all of 3K RMB of profit.”
“This is exactly the kind of post I like to see as a law graduate making 2K a month.”
Someone asks, “Why can’t romance novel female leads have proper jobs these days? They’re all celebrities or qipao models or opera sings. There’s a couple of your standard finance, lawyer, reporter, doctor types. But are there literally no other professions they can have? I just like romances where both the male and female lead have proper jobs, okay? Unless it’s a school romance or something.”
The compilation of answers is: “I think it’s because even the author knows only celebrities have time to maintain beauty and deal with an endless will-they-or-won’t-they romance with a rich CEO?”
“The female lead sits at a desk all day, goes to work and gets off on time, occasionally has to argue with grandpas and grandmas who come to her window, gets reported all the time by pissy young men, the lobby is filled with middle-aged aunties fighting over how to split an inheritance, while a couple getting divorced is fistfighting in front of me, and a nanny has dragged a 90-year-old grandpa in to change his will and I have to figure out how to stop him without getting a complaint filed by her, while siblings are putting voodoo curses on each other and hiding their mom from each other. What’s the point of writing shit like this. Who would read it?”
“Once I start working at a winery, I’ll write a female lead who works as an assistant brewer, spending her day testing sugar levels and acid levels, and checking machinery with the old master brewer. When they’re short on hands, she has to go out and harvest grapes with the manager too. Spend dozens of chapters on haggling with fruit farmers, “Uncle, your grapes are all rotten already. We can’t buy it.” “Auntie, we really can’t take giant wasps at our factory, you should ask someone else.” Really fuck with my readers.”
“Female lead works in civil engineering. Gets noticed by the male lead for how fast she is at mixing cement. Gets promoted to supervisor, and later successfully finds a job at a Party A company.” [A company who is Party A in contracts, usually the person providing the funds, instead of the people delivering work in exchange for the funds, known for almost always being in a better position of leverage in China and thus receiving a lot of asskissing.]
“A female beat cop in some small town, crawling out of bed to go to her night shifts every day, checking hotel rooms for people engaging in prostitution. Meanwhile, a wealthy CEO is visiting the countryside to nail down his order with a local supplier, and gets drugged by an evil, calculating female support trying to date him? At the very last moment, I angrily kick open the hotel door, and dash the evil female support’s hopes? I’ve saved the CEO. With that kick, not only did I kick an invoice from the hotel owner into my life, but I’ve kicked love into my life too?”
A tiktok video showing what a 5 million RMB house is like in Beijing:
Comments say, “It wouldn’t look bad once it’s been remodelled.”
“Jesus. Just come out to Guangxi. You can get a 120 square metre house for a million, and just retire on the other four.”
“It’s probably not in a good school district. You can’t get an house in a good school district for just 5 million.”
You can't remodel the ghetto balcony entry way. That apartment for over $600k?
"Me: It’s the Ghost Month right now, better for everyone to go home early."
Nice to know some things transcends immigration/borders. All the boomers say that here too!