09/06/24 - That was the policy back then. Only bad families could adopt kids.
“Just saw a news story that China is no longer going to allow foreigners to adopt kids. I guess this is just moving with the times, since China lacks kids too these days.
This reminds me of a story that happened in the late 90’s. I’d went to Shanghai, Hongkou to visit a friend over there. There were a lot of slums there that were really broken down. My friend pointed to a family and said, “It’s horrible. The disabled couple there adopted a kid. That kid’s in for a hell of a lifetime.” The two disabled people got together pretty late in life and couldn’t have their own kids anymore, so they adopted one. Once the kid grows up, he can take care of them and they won’t be society’s problem anymore. Doesn’t that sound perfect?
But is it really perfect from the point of view of the child?
But that was the policy back then. Only bad families could adopt kids.
If we cared about the welfare of the child at all, it should be that the better off your family is, the better your chances at adoption. These kids should’ve been going to well-off families with childcare experience. But that’s not what happened in reality. At the time, children were considered a bonus, a privilege for the adults. The welfare of the child was not in consideration.
Then later, around the 2000’s, a classmate of mine already had her own son and one day, she saw a girl in the hospital. Her mom had ran off after giving birth, and my classmate really wanted to adopt the child, and she could not get approved no matter how hard she tried.
My classmate was pretty well off. She owned a factory that employed 2000-3000 people. Both her and her husband are college graduates. They’re the perfect family for a child. But they don’t fit the criteria for adoption.
At least this ended well. She pulled connections to solve the problem. But later, she got reported for doing this, and lost her job as a political committee member. At least she got to keep her daughter though.
I don’t know if adoption policy has changed or not. Since the One Child Policy has ended, I’m guessing that children are no longer a privilege and adoption probably cares more about the welfare of the child now?
Speaking of the rights and welfare of children, sometimes, I really can’t stand it. Like the biking kid [fell across the road while cycling and got ran over by a car]. He lost his life, so someone has to bear responsibility, but usually speaking, it’s never the parents. I guess people figure that the parents already lost their child which is punishment enough. But it’s not like children are the property of their parents. How is it really a loss? Some parents should be punished for their children’s lives.
In the end, we just don’t consider children human lives. You don’t have to be responsible when they die.
If I think too much about things like this, a question inevitably occurs to me. Growing up in this society that doesn’t consider children human, at what point are we considered human? From what age?”
Comments say, “We ignore women to keep men stable. We ignore children to give adults weaknesses. We ignore the poor so the rich have sheep to fleece. It’s all the same law of the jungle, survival of the fittest.”
“When you’re little, you’re your parents’ property. When you’re older, you’re their retirement aid.”
“If they get adopted, the contrast would be too great. On one side, you’re chained up and forced to give birth endlessly. And on the other side, you’re a Olympic medalist. You gotta keep the sheep fenced.”
“It’s awful the way people try to fleece kids.
In this one middle school, one day, a parent went over around noon and happened to see four students sharing a single bowl of cabbage stir-fry.
The parent was furious. She asked the cafeteria worker right away whether this was the food she was paying 700 RMB a month for. The cafeteria worker argued that there was another stir-fried bell peppers and pork dish that hasn’t come out yet.
The response from school leaders is, “This is how we’ve always done things. They never finish their food.” Lol, I guess this school thinks that food is something to fill up on not something to enjoy.
So my question is, four kids a table, each paying 700 RMB a month. That’s 2800 RMB total. Take out weekends, and the budget for every meal should’ve been 100 RMB or more.
Four bowls of rice, one bowl of stir-fried cabbage, and an alleged bowl of green peppers and pork, plus labour cost, there’s no way that adds up to more than 40 RMB in cost. Where did the rest of the money go? Isn’t this a bit too evil?
No matter what, we can’t let the children suffer! That can’t just remain a slogan. We have to punish corrupt cafeterias harshly!”
Comments say, “This school is awful.”
“Sheep have to get fleeced their whole lives. You still have to get squeezed even in death. It’s just dog eat dog.”
“Remember what the official in Tiantong Yuan said? You gotta grab ‘em by the short hairs.”
A discussion on the difference between Chinese horror and western horror:
“Western horror: You come home to see that your 3-year-old son is dead, his guts are all over the floor, and your cat is licking up the blood. Chinese horror: You come home to find your cat is dead, its guts are all over the floor, and your 3-year-old son is meowing.”
“When you mention Chinese horror, the first thought that comes to mind is Grave Robbers’ Chronicles, where Wu Xie was in the cave, and he found Lao Yang’s corpse and photo ID. But Lao Yang is outside the cave staring at him.”
“One is a sensory shock, one is a psychological shock. Chinese horror is better at leaving you with PTSD. Here’s an example. Western horror is like you walk into a pizza store in a bad part of town, and just as you’re about to pay, you find the owner has a knife in hand, with a bloody piece of pizza in his mouth, staring at you with a furious expression before he leaps at you. You run and hide and finally manage to escape from him. Are you going to be scared of pizza stores from now on? Sure. But you’ll stop and check outside the store to see if the owner is a tiny, cute girl or a muscular guy before you decide whether or not you go in.
Chinese horror is more like you go buy bread, and a kind old grandma hands you the bread and tells you with a smile, “Go on and eat it.”
You don’t think anything of it in the moment, but when you return to the street, everyone on the street turns to look at you with the exact same smile and tells you, “Go on and eat it.”
When you get home, your parents stare at you, smile, and say, “Go on and eat it.”
You’re freaked out and go to the bathroom to wash your face, and the you in the mirror smiles at you and says, “Go on and eat it.”
Even if nothing happens in the end, I think you’ll never go buy bread again, whether it’s a cute little girl selling it or an old grandma.”
“It’s really simple. Western horror makes sense, and Chinese horror is all about things not making sense. When things don’t make sense, you get a strong sense of dissonance and feel uneasy.
Here’s an example. Five people enter a haunted house and get attacked by a ghost. In the end, three people survive and get out, and two people die.
That’s very logical, because go into a haunted house -> get attacked -> two people die -> three people survive is a very complete line of logic. Everything makes sense, and it’s how western horror stories woork.
But if five people go into a haunted house and get attacked by a ghost, and six people walk out in the end, and everyone is really happy that they all survived and skip on towards home—that’s Chinese horror.
Right? Isn’t that freaky?
Because it doesn’t make sense.
It doesn’t make any sense that five people walked in and six people walked out.
Why does Chinese horror feel oppressive? Because your imagination goes wild when things don’t make sense. It’s basically you scaring yourself.
Does the movie director know what scares you? Probably not. But if you’re in charge of scaring yourself, of course you’re gonna get scared, because you know exactly what you’re afraid of.
Your imagination goes to your precise fears and you get freaked out.
Have you seen the classic horror movie Nightmare on Elm Street? Freddy kills people in their dreams and people die when they are killed.
That’s very logical. Whether you have money or not, you die if you’re cut into pieces with a chainsaw.
It’s very bloody, but it’s not that freaky.
But in the classic Chinese horror movie A Wicked Ghost, does Aunt Mei walk around with a chainsaw? Does she cackle in people’s ear?
No.
They even play a piece of Yue Opera at the end, and that high-pitched singing sets your hair on end.
But as a piece of traditional Chinese opera, why would Yue Opera make you feel so freaked out? Why would it cover you in goosebumps?
Because it doesn’t make any sense.
When a lot of things that don’t make any sense come together, the conflict in logic makes you doubt yourself. And when you start scaring yourself, Chinese horror has won.”
“I saw a ghost story once that there’s a superstition that you can’t leave your shoes pointing at the bed, or ghosts will crawl into bed using the shoes. One night, the wife couldn’t sleep late at night, and while the husband got up to go to the bathroom, she kicked his shoes all over the room and then waited to see how he would react. But after the husband was done, he came back and started wandering around the bed muttering, “Where did the bed go?” When I read that, I literally felt a chill go down my spine.”
“A single line in Chinese horror can give me goosebumps for half a month. I remember a short story where a girl came home to find the power was out and the elevator wasn’t working, so she called her mom to come downstairs with a flashlight and help her up the stairs. Along the way, she chatted with her mom about her day at school like normal, and when they reached her door, her mom suddenly smiled at her and asked, “Do I look that similar to your mom?””
A compilation of the ridiculous reasons people were given their names:
“My dad was in a hurry to get my birth certificate, so he just copied down the nurse’s name. Now, I’m also a nurse.”
“My name is Yili. My actual legal name. My cousin is named Meng Niu.” [Two biggest milk brands in China.”
“Everyone in my family of three was born in the year of the ox, so my name is Ben Ben [犇犇—a character made up three characters for “cow”.]
“Hello, my name is Chen Danan [陈大男—literally, “big man”]. I’m a girl.”
“My dad thought I was a one in a million unicorn, so he named me Unicorn. [凤毛麟角—欧阳风毛.} Thank God my grandpa was more rational and said it’s not going to be good when I go to school, so they changed it later.”
“Lol. I was over the quota [for the One Child Policy], so they named me “Over.””
“My aunt was over the quota too and they got fined for it, so they named her “Fine”.”
“My parents are businessmen and they wanted more customers, so they named me “Customer”.”
“When my mom was pregnant, a new neighbour moved in upstairs with a super cute daughter, and she said that if she had a daughter, she was going to use the same name. And when I was born and she had to fill out the forms, she didn’t bother thinking and just copied their name.”