“I just took a look around, and found the mainstream opinion about pre-cooked food has completely turned around in China, and now their reputation is in the gutters.
I still vaguely remember, not so long ago, pre-cooked food was being predicted as the Next Big Thing. A lot of investment firms were filling up livestream channels and promoting it everywhere, like it’s some sort of groundbreaking concept.
And it wasn’t until pre-cooked food started appearing in school cafeterias that it’s received massive backlash from parents and society.
Why is there such a big difference in opinion? This actually reflects a unique aspect of Chinese culture.
You can never know what Chinese people truly think about something until it’s used on their children.”
This blogger attaches screenshots of a tiktok video, where the caption reads, “Parents investigate pre-cooked food company supplying elementary school lunches, and found mould growing on the machines, and meat dropped over the floor. Now parents are lining up to deliver lunches to school. The school has responded that they’ll change which company they contract with.”
Comments say, “How can you say pre-cooked food is none of your business? Every restaurant that charges less than 300 RMB per person is selling you pre-cooked food.”
“Adults don’t eat pre-cooked food every day. If they go to a restaurant, it’s fresh-cooked food. But if you’re at school, you’re eating it five days a week. That’s different.”
“They made a mistake pushing pre-cooked food into schools as the testing location. They should’ve started with distributing them in government cafeterias.”
“When I went jogging this morning, I found a 60-year-old grandpa who lived in my building was out there with a young woman. They had a matching couples’ outfit on and were jogging along as they chatted. They were drawing a lot of attention, but no one dared to go up and ask anything.
Because he was fairly famous in our development. I hear that his son owns a company, and his wife had just died for less than a year. He’s really started dating already? I couldn’t hold down my curiosity, and went up and asked, “Gramps, good morning! Is this lady a relative of yours or something?” He turned to give me a look, and asked the lady to go home first and make lunch. She even asked what he wanted to eat. He told her and watched her leave before telling me, “I’ve remarried! This is my new wife. She’s 15 years younger than me. My son introduced her to me!” That answer completely dumbfounded me.
I praised his son for being filially pious, and he laughed and said, “Originally, I didn’t agree to it. After my wife died, I had no plans to marry again. But I learned that she’d been working as a janitor in my son’s company for several years now and is a pretty sweet person. She’d been married back when she was young too, and got divorced because she couldn’t have any kids. Now her parents are both gone, and it’s just her in the world. My son thought that since we were both living alone, we should get together and take care of each other. I’ve passed out once at home after my wife died, so my son’s really worried about my health!”
Watching the happy smile on his face, I felt like his son’s plans made quite a lot of sense. What do you think?”
Comments say, “Compared to having dozens of mistresses, having a legal, above-the-table marriage is something to be praised.”
“None of your business.”
“Three days ago, I felt like the hot water from my electric kettle tasted kind of sour. A friend happened to be at my house, and he took a taste and said the water was fine. Maybe I just had a cold and my sense of taste was off. I believed him and kept drinking water like always. And I thought to myself, since everything tastes sour anyways, why not put some lemon in the water and get a little Vitamin C?
But then I brewed some chrysanthemum tea today, and it still tasted sour. I panicked. I started experimenting.
I washed my cup again. Still sour.
I scrubbed my tea kettle. Sour.
I boiled new water. Sour.
I drank some cold water from the fridge. Sour.
Milk. Nor sour.
Water straight from the tap. Not sour.
I ended up taking a sip of water as it’s being poured out of my water filter, and it was hideously sour and bitter. That’s when I discovered that I’d been using the same filter for so long that something in it started leaking.
That moment, I just about had a breakdown. Ended up throwing up into the toilet for ages. I drank at least 3 litres of water over the past two days, and they were all bad. And I kept believing that it was my sense of taste that was off, and even tried to keep up my lie with lemons. How terrifying. This really feels like the gaslight effect or something.”
Comments say, “Then why did your friend say the water was fine? O.O”
“Our water filter is attached to our faucet. There’s a switch, and if you flip it, you can filtered water from one opening, and if you flip it back, you just get tap water from the other opening. I ended up mixing up how the switch worked and drank an entire week of tap water [splitting apart emoji].”
“You might want to check with the water filter customer service or a doctor, in case there’s some kind of health risk.”
A tiktok video imported from America is getting a lot of attention:
Comments say, “I thought it was some childish highschool drama. And then Sarah turned out to be a vet.”
“How could people believe she actually had her coochie out in public!? Sarah probably just wears kinda hot clothes, and this girl’s just exaggerating to slander her.”
“Back in highschool, my desk mate was walking along while gossiping about me to other girls, and I just followed behind them and listened in. Just as they were really getting into it, they turned and saw me. I still remember the look on their faces to this day. [Doge]”
“Jesus, the economy is doing so fucking bad right now, it’s like my whole world’s sinking down. Back in 2019, when I flew over to Korea for some plastic surgery, the girls living in the same hostel as me were all daughters of Beijing politicians or international students at top universities, or at least top-tier dealers in Macau casinos. But going again in 2023, it’s filled with South East Asian night market whores, illiterate chicks graduated from community college and don’t want to work on a production line and wants to become an influencer instead, scammers freshly returning from trafficking people to manila, etc, etc. Save me. I don’t want to go anymore. I feel like all of these people have suppressed HIV.
Back in 2019, the wealthy housewives around me get 500K from their husbands every month. The strippers can go to any random night club and dance for a year and make 2 million+. When their boyfriend’s in a good mood, he gifts them a Bently.
Now, I’m seeing uni students with a sugar daddy posting 3 selfies a week of them just sitting in the passenger side of a Benz. (If they got to sit in a Rolls Royce and see the starry roof, they might die from a stroke in excitement.) People actually bother to take photos of starbucks drinks.
Maybe I’m just in an echo chamber.
Watching kids born in 2005 now, is kind of like how people born in 1985 used to look at us, “…That’s it?” Money went from being hot as fuck, to being easy to make, to being hard to make, to falling into an ice cave.
Back in 2019, my friends were spending 1.5 million on full-body liposuction. Wow. Now people’s beauty routine is spending 3.5 RMB on generic brand lotion. The market’s sank so much, I need to drink some Mixue [extremely cheap bubble tea] to calm down.
Back in the day, climbing up socioeconomic classes was so easy. Now, everyone’s been caught in the wheels of fate.”
An askreddit question: “Is Korea hell for normal families?”
The top-voted reply is, “From 2013 to 2017, I went to university in Gwangju, a medium-sized city in Korea. At the time, I worked part time at a barbecue place near the university as a waiter. It paid 8800 won per hour. It doesn’t look like a lot of money, so let me go into prices in Gwangju a bit. Currently, the exchange rate is 1000 won for 5.6 RMB.
Fried rice cakes and blood sausages from a roadside stall, big portions, 2000 won. You can eat a plate if you work for 13.6 minutes.
A set meal at a small diner, a couple of kimchi plates with a stone bowl of rice and veggies, and a bowl of soup, 4000 won, 27.3 minutes of work.
A Japanese set meal at a small diner, one pork chop, one bowl of rice, one serving of veggies, one bowl of noodles, and one bowl of steamed eggs, 5500 won, 37.5 minutes of work.
A meal at my school cafeteria, two veggies, one meat, one rice, one soup, 3000 won, 20.5 minutes of work.
Dinner at my barbecue buffet restaurant on a weekday, 7500 won, 51.1 minutes of work.
A carton of milk from the supermarket, 1L, 1600 won, 10.9 minutes of work.
One bottle of coke from the supermarket, 2L, 1800 won, 12.3 minutes of work.
A bag of sliced bread from the supermarket, 8 slices, 1400 won, 9.5 minutes of work.
One pound of pork, 3500 won, 23.9 minutes of work.
One pound of beef, 10,000 won, 1.1 hours of work.
One pound of Korean beef, 40,000 won, 4.5 hours of work.
One bokchoy from the supermarket, 3500 won, 23.9 minutes of work.
One turnip from the supermarket, 800, 5.5 minutes of work.
One bag of cucumbers, containing 4 cucumbers, 800 won, 5.5 minutes of work.
One apple from the supermarket, 800 won, 5.5 minutes of work.
One watermelon from the supermarket, about the size of a child’s toy ball, 5500 won, 37.5 minutes of work.
One bag of oranges, roughly 1kg, 2200 won, 15 minutes of work.
Renting an apartment, 20 minutes walk from my school, one bed one bath, 200,000K won per month, 22.7 hours of work.
Uni tuition, 4.8 million per year, 545 hours of work.
Uni dorm, four-person room with bathroom attached, 1.3 million per year, 147.7 hours of work.
A three-bedroom apartment on the edge of town, 86 square metres, 110 million won, 12,500 hours of work. If you work 20 days per month, 8 hours a day, then you can buy it in 78 months.
That’s the cost of living in Gwangju around 2016 to 2017, based on the pay of a waiter at a barbecue restaurant. I was making just slightly more than minimum wage in Korea. I was only part time, so I wasn’t making enough money for taxes to really play into it. If I wasn’t a student and worked full time, then about 10% of my wage would go to insurance and taxes, so I’d only be making 90% if I worked full-time.
When I went to university, my parents paid for my tuition. I just had to work two days a week to sustain my normal living expenses and rent. Normal students can live very comfortably in Gwangju on 500-600K a month (including rent).
Just a little while ago, I revisited Gwangju, and prices have risen about 10% since 2017. I assume wages have gone up 10% too. But based on information posted by realtors, real estate prices in the area has risen 25%.
I live in Incheon now, where prices are about 130-150% what they are in Gwangju. Now I live much more luxuriously than when I did in college, but I still only spend about 1.2 million won per month.
Incheon’s houses are twice as expensive as Gwangju’s, but it’s still only 60% what you’d have to pay in Seoul. There’s a 90 square metre three-bedroom apartment near where I live being sold for 280 million won. If I didn’t eat and didn’t drink, it would take me 116 months to save up enough money to buy it in cash. If I had to account for my normal expenses, it would take me 232 months to buy it outright. But that’s too big of a house for just me anyways. I’d rather get a one-bedroom, 45 square metre house as a bachelor. That way, even with existing expenses accounted for, it would only take me 116 months to save up for it. If I only had to pay a 40% down payment, I could get it in just 46 months. A 10 year mortgage only has monthly payments of 800K won, about 33% of my monthly income. It’s not so hard to afford a house.
So is life hell for a normal person in Korea?”
Comments say, “So we’re even worse off, but we’re just too oppressed and cowardly to create the same phenomena as Korea’s experiencing. I want a hug.”
“I make 12K a month, and the real estate prices where I live are 17K per square metre.”
“Seoul still has super expensive housing, but we are more and more similar to them. It’s impossible to jump socioeconomic classes now.”
“Do women prefer young hotties or old billionaires?
Just heard two pieces of gossip at dinner last night.
In social media circles, there’s a top-tier influencer making content for women, who just got a new boyfriend who’s 19 years younger than her. She says that her inspiration for content every day comes from this relationship spanning a 20 year age gap. Thinking about that little boyfriend’s full head of hair, solid abdominal muscles, and endless sources of emotional value every day, I had to sigh to myself, “She sure knows how to live life.
There’s another influencer who got tipped 200 million by some God-level billionaire. Yes, you read that right. 200 million RMB. For some special reasons, this billionaire can’t actually come back to China at the moment, so the influencer has to keep a locator device on her. If she sneaks out at night to have fun, he would know about it, and he’d pull connections to make sure she was buried. But like most influencers, she’s actually really annoyed by her biggest tippers, but they’re giving her so much money, that she has to chat with them, meet up with them, have fun with them etc. Most of them take money from their top tippers, and secretly spend it on young hotties.
The two stories above tells us that women are only into old billionaires by rationally weighing their options. It’s a sort of “hypergamy” encouraged by societal culture and traditions. But women love young hotties on a fundamental, biological level.
A lot of men think that so long as they were rich, they could have whatever kind of woman they want. But actually, he can get their bodies, but he can’t get their hearts. If you really want the full experience of romance, then you still need to involute on your face and your body. The richer you are, the more you have to work on your looks.”
Comments say, “I love watching young hotties! Anyone who’s good-looking, I give them all my upvotes <3”
“I mean, old billionaires, young hot guys, and beautiful women are all rare resources. They’re all less than one in one thousand in the total population.”
“Men and women are the exact same. Who doesn’t like young hotties?”
It's a valid question