09/14/23 - If you want to leave and work somewhere else, then your wife has to quit too.

Chinese Children’s Charity has had their Children’s Emergency Medical Fund embezzled by their Hebei Director, He —Xiao. The total amount involved is in the tens of millions. On the 14th, relevant personnel from Chinese Children’s Charity responded to reporters from Red Star News claiming that He —Xiao is not an employee of the Children’s Charity Fund. He was a brief volunteer in the Hebei region where the Children’s Emergency Medical Fund was actively fundraising. They claim that He —Xiao has been arrested recently by Hebei’s police and is currently under investigation, and the charity is doing its best to help with police investigation. A victim’s parent explains to Red Star New reporters that He —Xiao turned himself in last month.

Chinese Children’s Charity’s Marketing Director Sun Dandan was interviewed by Red Star News, and explained that the Emergency Medical Fund was being managed by Chen Shuangfei, and not He —Xiao. But previously, He —Xiao took on the false identity of the director of the Medical Fund fundraising campaign and got access to the campaign’s official social media account.

Sun Dandan acknowledges that the Children’s Charity management structure was lacking in some areas, and plans to work with local government and businesses on strengthening local aid station’s management and regulations.

Comments say, “So they don’t have to take any responsibility if they just handwave some bullshit about bad management? What a cool trick.”

“Don’t blame it all on some volunteer. A volunteer would never have access to all of these funds. Isn’t it obvious they embezzled it themselves?”

“If even a temporary volunteer can withdraw all the funds, wouldn’t it mean it’s even easier for managers to skim off the top?”

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“Let’s talk a bit about human nature. In Ancient China, grave robbers are usually father-son duos, or at least from the same family. When father and son go rob a grave together, usually, the father will crawl out of the grave first. Then he’ll lower the rope and get the son up too. This is a tradition established by grave robbers themselves.

Why does the father have to climb out first, and not the son?

Because if the son crawls out first, some sons will push their father back into the grave and not let him crawl out. Because the father’s estate is the son’s. They can get their hands on that money early this way.

But if the father crawls out first, he would never push his son back down. The father’s estate is definitely his son’s, but the son’s estate might not be his fathers. The father’s home is definitely the son’s home, but the son’s home isn’t necessarily his parent’s home.

This is true for all of human nature. You need to understand this after you start dating or get married too. Poor people don’t pick and choose when it comes to wives. Anyone who marries down—as soon as he climbs up in society, the first person he’s gonna push back down is going to be you. You don’t even have to look at history. Just look at reality and you’ll know.”

Comments, “Yeah, anyone who marries down—as soon as he climbs up, he’ll take revenge on you. He’s been putting up with you for years, and now he’s finally got the upper hand. Don’t imagine that you’ve married someone who loves you. No man likes to be looked down on. And don’t insist you don’t look down on him. That’s not a thing. Some privilege leaks out with every look, every action you take. For him, it’s like a thorn, poking him in the side again and again.”

“When a poor man becomes rich, every time he sees you, he sees the memories of his humiliating past. The first thing on his schedule would be to wipe away that past.”

“This is why any woman who’s rich enough to marry down won’t ever let her man get wealthy. She’s worried about being abandoned, so she has to keep putting him down.”

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“A lot of people have been asking me what “Ali P8 man” means as a meme. This is a very old story. I had to look it up on weibo myself. It was autumn in 2019, right around September, actually. Some guy made a post basically saying that he’s an IT guy, listing out his criteria for a wife. There were a whole bunch of requirements, and they’re all pretty high too. Basically, he was looking for a young, pretty, college graduate only daughter from a major city, who needs to be willing to have lots of children right away with him and stay home to take care of the kids.

The guy himself is from a rural area. His family is super poor. But he absolutely won’t consider a girl who’s also from a rural area. He won’t even marry girls from his own hometown.

The guy thinks that his criteria are more than reasonable, because he’s only in his early thirties, and he’s already P8-rank in Alibaba. His pre-tax income, counting his stocks and such, are 1.7 million RMB.

So he very confidently blew all his money and bought a big house in Beijing, and bought a Tesla. He even said that if a girl he’s satisfied with is willing to have kids with him and take care of them, he’s willing to buy another, even bigger house as marital assets with her.

So I said, “This guy’s salary is pretty high right now, sure, but his family is super poor and don’t have any savings at all. I don’t get why he’s so overconfident when he’s only been making 1.7 million for a single year. Seems a bit early to be picking and choosing.”

Although at the time, Alibaba was going exceedingly strong, but no company can guarantee that it won’t start slipping in a couple of years. And although he’d just gotten a promotion, nobody, especially not anybody in the IT industry, can guarantee they won’t get laid off by the time they’re middle age.

I even did the numbers for him. Even if his after-tax income was 1.7 million, and he can keep the same income for five years, that’s only 8.5 million RMB. He won’t even be done paying off his mortgage. Where does he get the confidence thinking he’s rich?

And I haven’t even considered any accidents. What if he got sick? Then all his money will vanish right away.

Wow, you had no idea how many guys were making fun of me at the time, saying I don’t understand IT, don’t understand how big of a company Alibaba is. How could Alibaba go under? Even if the British Empire collapsed, Alibaba wouldn’t collapse. And I don’t have any concept how high of a position P8 in Alibaba is. Anyone who can make it there will have companies lining up around the block to hire him with high wages even if he was laid off.

Even more funny was all the supposed housewives who married Ali employees, who came to post that their lives are so luxurious money is just a number to them. All of them have two kids, and two nannies. Buy all the luxury bags they want, go travel overseas. They’re so wealthy, they don’t dare to talk about it. They can only celebrate on the down-low themselves.

And then starting from last year, or maybe the year before last, a lot of people revisited the thread, and said that I was a prophet. I was one of the few people who predicted that tech companies would start falling under.

I really didn’t have any data to back me up or any understanding of the industry. I just knew that any industry might go under at any time. It’s happened tons of times in history. And any money that isn’t currently in your hands isn’t really your money. Anything could happen.

Isn’t this…common sense?

Now that I think about it, that initial post might’ve just been a trolling attempt, but this phenomenon is definitely real. Like, remember the supposed IT guy who got pushed to suicide by his bitch girlfriend? He was from a poor, rural village too, and make a couple dozen million by being at the right place at the right time, and started getting in over his head. Dumped his girlfriend of many years and started blowing all his money on pursuing his ideal crush.

Common sense sounds so…well, common sense. It’s a lot easier than getting into a top university or mastering programming.

But a lot of people can easily get admitted to a top university, but they can never learn common sense.”

Comments say, “Oh wow, I remember this! I think he even said specifically that he’ll only date only daughters from Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Shanghai. A lot of people made fun of him at the time, but a lot of guys were also jumping up and down being all like, “A lot of people don’t grasp what 1.7 million a year means.””

“That was around the time I realised only daughters from the east coast are considered a type of resource by men. Maybe I’m a pessimistic person, but at that time, I felt like anything that becomes too big is doomed to fail.”

“I remember one of the reasons he was being made fun of was that he’ll only take girls from Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Shanghai, but he requires that they move to Beijing with him. Any only daughter who fit his criteria wouldn’t marry so far away.”

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“Yesterday was Teacher’s Day, but every blessing felt like a knife in my heart, reminding me that I’m no longer a teacher. It’s been one year and 53 days since I’ve went from an Associate Professor to a NEET.

July of 2022, when covid and the economy were both at their worst, when all of society was calling for people to not leave their jobs, I was forced to “voluntarily resign“ from my tenured position as a middle aged Associate Professor.

I didn’t make any mistakes. It was only because my husband, my coworker who’s been working at this university for 17 years, got an offer from another top university in the same state. I’ve heard before that once you’re tenured, it’ll be super hard to change jobs, because your university will do everything in its power to hold onto you as a talent. I never thought that after jumping through a ton of obstacles and hoops, the week before he was officially set to leave, HR suddenly made their final demand of him, “If you want to leave and work somewhere else, then your wife has to quit too.”

For a year afterwards, every time someone’s asked why I resigned, they would be shocked by the reason. They would be in disbelief. Why? Why? 18 years ago, this university’s recruitment ad promised that this would be a job where you were free to come and go. They were already breaking their promise by trying to prevent him from leaving. Why would they come after his family too?

At the time, I’d just graduated from my Master’s Degree, and went through the process of headhunting to become an official Lecturer. I only married after I got my job. I didn’t get this job just because I’m family with a professor.

As an independently working professor, what does it have to do with me whether he stayed or left? Forcing him to give up on his job offer was violating their promise of freedom to come and go in this job. Forcing me to give up my job is trampling all over my rights as a professor.

Why?

It wasn’t until a couple of months later, while I was locked down at home due to covid, that I heard the word that shook all of China: “weak spot”.

Even more ridiculously, we weren’t the only victims. The university next door had a couple working there too. The man got an offer from a top teaching university. His wife was a doctorate graduate from China’s number one university, and she was ordered to quit too. Supposedly, when the guy heard this demand from HR, he angrily exclaimed, “If you’re going to treat us this way, then you’ve only made me more determined to leave! I have no choice now but to leave!”

Have they actually prevented a loss of talent? They would’ve only lost two professors. But now, after everything they’ve pulled, they’ve lost four. We’re not talent. We’re just all hostages. If both of us work for this university, we’ve simply sacrificed our whole family to be hostages for them.

But I didn’t have any leverage. I couldn’t fight back. I made the hardest decision of my life—I chose to voluntarily resign. After I signed my contract for ending my work, I feel into the darkest despair. I lost 6kg in one week. Every day, I would dream about being back in the classroom. I would dream about my students. I would wake up feeling like a knife was in my heart. My career came to a screeching stop. My life had been turned upside down.

I’d open my computer and see a half-finished application, a paper I’d sent out for review, summaries still waiting for review, curriculum that’s still half-finished, lesson plans for the next semester, a book I want to publish—all my hard work in my life so far has all went to zero. I’m like a machine that’s been running day and night for the last 17 years, that suddenly fell apart into a million pieces. I didn’t get any compensation. I couldn’t collect any unemployment. I can’t sue them in court. Because I’d resigned “voluntarily”.

Those days, I couldn’t take a single step onto campus. My husband processed all my paperwork for me. On a rainy day, he went to Accounting and got the last piece of paperwork stamped. When he came back, he laid in bed and zoned out for the longest time. Eventually, he said, “Guess who I met at Accounting.”

I didn’t say anything. At the time, I didn’t want to say anything. He continued.

“Nobody was there since it’s the holidays right now. Only one person was at Accounting. I took a peek at the paperwork in his hands, and it was the same as mine. So I was like, “Are you the guy leaving to go to the teaching university?” He startled and blurted out, “You’re the one going to [so-and-so] University!?” And we ended up clutching everyone’s hands.”

At that point, both of us couldn’t hold it in anymore. We were shocked, and wanted to bry, and wanted to laugh. My husband continued.

“He clutched my hand and said—my wife got hired a year earlier than me.”

At that moment, we laughed because of how ridiculous it was. I laughed until I was crying. All my self-doubt, all my confusion and frustration, went away at that moment. I knew there was no answers, only ludicrousness.

Later, some angry coworkers suggested that I make a big fuss at school. Some people suggested we just get a fake divorce. Honestly, I was breaking down so much that I was almost persuaded. But once I got my lucidity back, I didn’t do any of it. They might have trampled all over my identity as a professor, but I would always maintain the dignity of my position.

That’s what I went through in this year where I went from an Associate Professor to a NEET. I don’t regret anything. Faced with injustice, I had to make a choice whether to submit and go along with it or to maintain my dignity, and I would choose the same every time. It’s so that one day, if my students ask, “Professor, all the things you used to teach—do you believe them yourself?” I could answer them sincerely, “Yes.”

I’ve done my best to look for and try out new work in this past year, but my age, diploma, major, and past work combined to close door after door in front of me. I had no opportunities. The “stuffy academic” stereotype didn’t just hurt graduates. It hurt me too.

For me, it’s not just a label. It’s over a decade of hard studies. It’s being the first graduating class of Masters Degree students in my university. It’s being far away from home for most of my life as I worked. It’s getting 13 Excellent ratings in my 17 years of teaching. It’s what I’ve focused my life on. I’ve spent all my vitality on the podium, and then someone ripped it away from me violently. Bloodily.

Right now, I rely on my husband’s income to survive. It’s enough to get by. But after searching for work for half a year, I couldn’t stand not being able to be economically independent. Maybe I’m too old to find work at 44, but I can’t be afraid of new beginnings in life. I was forced to lose my identity as a teacher, but I still have the skill of painting. Last month, I opened up my own little store to take requests and sell art.

I want to see whether I could feed myself with my own skills, earn money standing up. If I can’t continue down this path either, I would look for job as a maid, as a janitor. I’ll work any job that’s willing to take me, and work hard, and work righteously, and finish this life with no stain on my character.”

Comments say, “What a snowflake. If she really was talented enough to become associate professor, then she easily could’ve found work at a different university. She doesn’t need to complain on the internet. She’s probably just a slacker who’s been coasting.”

“She gave up on her work so that her husband can pursue a better opportunity. If you’re a tenured employee, then you need permission from your workplace to transfer to work somewhere else. It’s just like being a civil servant. If your boss won’t let you go, then there’s nothing you can do.”

“If it was me, I’d have just gotten a divorce.”

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A compilation of business competition in real life:

“Real case: my dad took his partners out to dinner, and his competitor snuck into the kitchen of the restaurant to change their food order.”

“Businessmen in TV: scheming, manipulative, kill people without dirtying their hands. Businessmen in real life: go steal his stamp.”

“Business battles in books: cut off his cash supply. Business battles in real life: slash their bicycle seats in the middle of the night.”

“When I worked in Guangzhou, the competitor to our company snuck into our office and poured hot water on my boss’s money tree and burnt it to death. My boss was so mad that week.”

“The production team for [two Chinese TV shows] actually fist fought each other in the cafeteria.”

“I remember hearing about a company that bribed the janitor at their competitor’s to unplug their internet every half an hour.”