09/13/23 - All those experts were paid off by westerners, so they can sell more chicken essence.
“After four years of university, three years of a Master’s Degree, and my first year in a doctorate degree this year, it’s been seven and a half years. Every day, I have woken up at 8AM to apply full make up—false lashes, false lenses, everything. The guys in my class has never, ever seen me without make up. I’m 176cm and maintain my weight at around 50kg. Even if I’m shitfaced, I insist on removing make up, washing, and applying skincare before I go to bed. Even if I’m just ducking out to the cafeteria, I’ll carefully select out an outfit.
Got a crush on a guy in the neighbouring battalion during military training [a mandatory part of university], so I’d wake up at 6AM every day to do full make up. I wash my hair every day and do my make up twice every day. I shower before evening free periods and change my outfit and apply make up. I’m a true symbol of discipline.”
Comments say, “I’ve been putting together my outfits every day since first grade, put on sunscreen every day, and never eat junk food or spicy food or drink boba tea.”
“Wow, this is like the disciplined and refined me that only lives in my imagination hahahahaha.”
“I can’t even criticise this. This is just truly impressive. It’s the ultimate degree of self-discipline. You’re like the Seal Team Six of women.”
“The most disciplined thing I did in all of college was charge my phone and iPad every day.”
“If you’re so strong-willed, you’re gonna make it look like Nvwa [Chinese goddess who created humanity] made me out of tofu >: (“
“You guys know about Xiucai? [Influencer popular among older women] After he got banned, I went and watched some of his stuff. At first glance, I got super grossed out. But after I looked again, I kind of saw the logic in what he was doing.
Both Yixiao Qingcheng and Xiucai, who are super popular among middle-aged and old people, have something in common—they’ve super country-vibes and really like to smile. Country-vibes are what makes you feel friendly and close to people. And smiling a lot is a super important quality too. If you don’t believe me, just go out and ride the subway—everyone you see if expressionless or look like they’re exhausted.
Many years ago, I saw this in the Beijing subway and was shocked, because my mom had always taught me from a young age that when you see people outside, you need to smile and greet them. Even if you’re just walking down the street by yourself, you should be smiling. I’ve never asked why, but I’ve always listened. Sometimes, I’ll smile at the subway windows, and see someone startle in the window’s reflection and then smile back.
Smiling is really great. It’s just like how humour is my favourite quality in a person. I like [long list of influencers here] mainly because they’re all really funny. It’s ahrd not to be attracted to them.
And middle-aged and old people who’ve worked all their life just to survive—who would smile at them? Who cares how they feel? The fact that Xiucai can get so popular is very reflective of the problems in our society.
PS: But there’s downsides to smiling too much too. There’s wrinkles all around my eyes! Nothing helps!”
Comments say, “Don’t smile at other people randomly. They’ll think you want something from them.”
“Every stranger who’s ever smiled at me has passed me a pamphlet afterwards, “Hey, check out our gym.””
“I used to like to smile when I was young…not anymore. I’ve become one of the expressionless crowd.”
“I really don’t recommend having daughters. Every time I chat with my friends and the topic turns to kids, I always sincerely hope that they don’t have daughters. After all, genetics is a big issue, and daughters are more likely to inherit their dad’s DNA, and appearance is so important to girls in life. Like I didn’t get any of my mom’s tall nose bridge genes, and just got the exact same garlic nose as my dad. I hope every beautiful woman out there can find a handsome man.”
An instagram post by the same OP: “Life advice: You need to have a son. The best part to having a son is that every time you fight with your husband, a little boy’s gonna stand in front of you and be all like, “Touch my mom and see!””
Comments say, “Why don’t you marry someone good looking then? Do you have to marry a kappa?”
“You’re lucky the little boy doesn’t beat you too.”
“The reality is, only daughters can empathise with your suffering (of course, not marrying and not having kids will take away 99% of your suffering).”
A tiktok video of a clothing store in Shanghai who had disagreements with their landlord about their rent doubling in price. The landlord went into the store to smash everything, there’s broken glass all over the floor. The store owner claims that, “Our rent agreement ends on the 31st of August, and when we went to renew the contract, the landlord wanted to double the price. We couldn’t reach an agreement about price, so we got a mediator to help. But while this was going on, the landlord just came in and started smashing stuff. I’ve already called the police and intend to press charges.”
Comments say, “Wow, what a crazy bitch. What’s the actual address? Post it so no one else ever rents from her again.”
“Let her smash—you’ll make her pay later.”
“If you disagree with the price, then move away? What do you intend to achieve with a mediator when she wants to double the rent?? Just move somewhere cheaper.”
“I can’t believe some people are still dreaming that we can get a new baby boom in 2024 lasting 2-3 years. The most optimistic estimation for births in 2024 is only 6 million. The pessimistic estimates are 5 million. There’s not going to be any baby boom. But there might be a boom in the number of old people dying.
The main consequences are that due to the large amounts of old people dying every year, a lot of old, shabby, tiny houses are going to appear on the market in most cities. More and more of them are going to be on sale, so the price is going to get lower and lower, but there won’t be anyone around to buy them.
Or rather, there’s just not a lot of people who absolutely need a house in society anymore. Even brand new houses are having a hard time selling, much less second-hand shabby old places. There are very, very few customers for such a place.
Why? Because the only people who are still willing and able to get married and have kids are government employees, including civil servants, military, police, and tenured positioned in government-funded corporations. And the only other demographic is wealthy elites, and some upper middle class people.
Most rich people get married, or at least have children with a partner. After all, they’ve actually got an estate to pass down.
As for middle class people, because of all the layoffs happening in big businesses, and unemployment rates skyrocketing, a lot of middle-class people have started laying flat too, choosing to stay single and child-free.
There’s a lot of men in the under class who are very eager to get married and have children, but they can’t afford a house in the city anyways or the high bride prices. And women would rather stay single in a big city than marry these underclass men. So these underclass men are more or less forced to be single and child-free.
If you’re not gonna get married and you’re not gonna have kids, you don’t really need to buy a house. And if you don’t have money, you can’t afford a house anyways. These two scenarios combined means that as birth rates and marriage rates fall, there are going to be less and less customers on the housing market.
So people are starting to see a strange phenomenon. After Beijing started the policy of “Recognising houses and not mortgages”, the amount of housing sales only went up for 4 days before dying down again. It’s only a little better than the stock market.
Is this situation going to improve in the future? I don’t think so. I think it’ll only get worse. Because the more shabby, old, second-hand houses are on the market, the less people are looking to buy.
Most ob/gyn departments in hospitals are gonna have a hard time too. And a lot of childcare brands are going to be going bankrupt. And daycares are closing left and right.
It’s all beyond the point of no return.”
Comments say, “My only question is, why are there still 5 million couples willing to have kids?”
“It’s so weird. On the internet, it’s like nobody wants kids. But in real life, it’s like nobody doesn’t want to have kids.”
“I can tell you why—because people with kids never join discussions like this. Just like how everyone on the internet makes fun of apple and thinks Huawei si great. But in reality, people who buy apples never post comments on those threads. Get me?”
“Chinese brand Lotus MSG completely disappeared from Chinese people’s homes because of a single claim from an expert that eating MSG causes cancer. Although Lotus MSG had tried their hardest to run awareness campaigns, and although plenty of studies have come out that MSG doesn’t cause any harm to the human body, and although the WHO has said that there’s no limit to how much MSG you can consume, the rumour that MSG is bad for you has only become more and more commonplace.
And the greatest benefactor, chicken essence, is 40% MSG by ingredient list, and it had a ton of food additives too. And yet, there’s only one ingredient in the despised Lotus MSG: wheat.”
Comments say, “Most foods now don’t even dare to list “MSG” in their ingredients. They write it out like Monosodium glutamate so people don’t know what it is. (Check your food packaging if you don’t believe me.”
“Don’t experts need to take legal responsibility for the shit they say?”
“All those experts were paid off by westerners, so they can sell more chicken essence.”
A education blogger writes, “Question: first grade student, completely off in his own world during class, can’t sit still at all, runs around all over the classroom and screams at the top of his lungs for no reason. He’s severely impacting the other kids’ ability to focus on their lessons. Both the teacher and the specialists at the special ed centre can tell at a glance that he has autism and ADD, but his parent is only willing to provide an ADD diagnosis from the hospital and won’t show us the autism diagnosis. They just feel that if they put him with other normal kids, he’s going to become normal. How can we stop this selfish behaviour and make them produce the other diagnosis?”
Comments say, “I’ve had kids like this, and there’s nothing you can do. We’ve had an autistic kid in class (who wasn’t loud at all, wasn’t a danger or anything), and I didn’t know how to demand proof from the parents either. Even if he’s getting 0s on all his tests, we still have to keep him in class. It’s completely damaged my enthusiasm for my work T_T”
“Tell your boss about the situation and make a note of it in your records. This kind of kid can be a danger to himself and others, whether he has ADD or autism. Make the parents sit in in class and manage their kid. Safety is more important compared to grades.”
“Most special needs students’ parents won’t acknowledge there’s something wrong with their kid at all. That’s why they don’t send the kid to special ed schools to begin with. It’s not so bad if they’re reasonable people. But some are stubborn as fuck and super sensitive and always trying to get the teachers in trouble, so no one dares to ask for proof from them. It’s all anyone can do just to keep the kids safe. You just have to take the hit on your classroom performance and your work evaluation. There’s plenty of people who get complaints from other parents for their kids not being able to concentrate in class either, and get accused of favouritism or incompetence. You won’t come out on top no matter what you do.”
“If I leave Shanghai, what’s going to happen to my Shanghai hukou? What’s the use of a Shanghai hukou if I don’t want to buy a car or buy a house or have kids?”
Comments say, “If you need to go to jail, you usually go where your hukou is registered, and Shanghai jails are a lot more chill.”
“I hear they have a lot of cool classes in Shanghai jails, including some historical skills, and all for free too. What major did you study? Shanghai jail is split into sections, like the famous Accounting Unit.”
“Cool fact: They don’t sent you to jail in your hukou district. I’ve arrested a lot of people from Shanghai, Guangzhou, Guizhou, Sichuan, and all of them went to our Hubei prison. It depends on where the jurisdiction of hte case is.”
“I remember that if you have a Shanghai hukou and choose to be buried at sea, you’ll get a couple thousand from the government. Or rather, your family will.”
Why does it matter so much that the kid has autism in addition to ADD? Is there, like, some policy that makes it easier to get rid of him if he had both diagnoses?
What is the policy of recognising houses and not mortgages? Why is it supposed to increase house sales?
Also, when you say "house" do you mean a standard standalone unattached house? Or, do you include condos and townhouses?