09/28/23 - If he’s a 996 salaryman and has a love life, wouldn’t he die of a heart attack?
A screenshot of a poll that asks, “What do you think a perfect life looks like?”
The options are:
A. Be financially free.
B. The world is so big, I want to see all of it.
C. Four generations under one roof, the pitter patter of little feet.
D. Sleep until you naturally wake up, and watch the mountains outside your window.
E. Other, see comment section.
The answers are more or less evenly split between A, B, and D, with a small number choosing E. Not a single vote for C.
Comments say, “Four generations under one roof, pitter patter of little feet, how is that a good life at all? Just thinking about it makes me depressed. Whole hordes of people in my house, everything’s messy, all your children fighting each other all the time if you’re not rich.”
“If I’m already that old, and I’m still surrounded by hordes of children screaming and running, I might keel over right away even if I was supposed to live to 100. What a scary thought.”
“Hahaha, my grandpa, grandpa, and great-grandma hangout at my maternal garndma’s all the time. It’s pretty easy to have four generations under one roof if you marry early, but you still gotta cook for all of them. Is that happiness? I don’t think so. She can’t even eat the food she cooked because she has no teeth.”
“”After Marriage” (婚后) has to be the most ridiculous webnovel I’ve read in a while, and yet, it’s still so cathartic the way it tortures its male lead. Like, the male lead is the kind that’s really earnest, really awkward, really numbly accepting this marriage, because he’s really marrying up, he’s sank so much into the female lead that he can’t pull back anymore. It’s great because sunk cost fallacy means that he can never leave her.
And the female lead feels like she has no idea what love is, and is just with him for sex and money. And the male lead is just clinging onto her and never letting go because he keeps feeling like the tighter he holds on, the further she drifts away.
The female lead cheated on the male lead and then came back to him, and he didn’t even refuse her and took her back right away. Even the female lead was in disbelief that he’s still willing to be her ATM and was watching out for him to take revenge on her once they got married. But he’s so busy working that he doesn’t even have time to deal with her. He really lives like a donkey.
Actually, he’s, like, super in love with her. He can accept that she cheated before. He can accept that she’s still not so sure about him now. He can accept that she doesn’t love him at all, so long as she still stays by his side.
But every man that appears around her makes him super alarmed, because the female lead really doesn’t have any willpower hahahaha.”
Comments say, “If he’s a 996 salaryman and has a love life, wouldn’t he die of a heart attack?”
“I don’t recommend people who put themselves into stories too much to read this one, because the female lead really is just a cheater. The guy did nothing wrong, she just doesn’t like him. If the female lead’s attitude about marriage bothers you, then stay away.”
“If he’s a 996 salaryman in the IT industry, then I can’t read this. My head is filled with images of all my male coworkers who look like they’ve been drained by a vampire or something. Even their hairline’s thinning.”
Last year, when Ms. Liu went to get a marriage certificate, she found out that she was “already married”, and her boyfriend broke up with her over this. Her supposed “husband” was 24 years older than her. After investigation by state authorities, it was discovered that an ID-less Mrs. Wang stole and used Ms. Liu’s identity in 2011 to get married.
Comments say, “What an idiot. Divorce him and take half his stuff. [Doge]”
“He didn’t even wait until the truth surfaced before he broke up with her? How ridiculous.”
“What the hell kind of news is this?”
“I know a parent who’s on her second marriage with her husband, who also had a previous marriage. They both have a son from their earlier marriage, and then gave birth to another son after they got together. When their youngest was 3 and going to daycare, he got food poisoning at daycare and ended up permanently retarded. Every time she talks with he, she cries about it. Later on, she said that she’d made the following plans for his son’s future: Buy a house under his name, then save a million RMB in the bank. Whichever son she and her husband has who’s willing to take care of their youngest can inherit these assets. What do people think about these plans?”
Comments say, “Where is she and her husband going to get a house and a million RMB from? Even if they had it to begin with, that doesn’t seem fair to their other sons. What did they do wrong, that all of their parent’s assets are going to their younger brother? And if remarried parents have a retarded kid, then the marriage is probably not going to last anyways.”
“Just buy plenty of insurance for the youngest, the kind that pays out money to you every month so long as you stay alive. It’s the only way the people taking care of him will actually try to make him live as long as possible. Houses and assets can’t do that. Don’t test people’s humanity.”
“After 50 years, the money won’t be worth anything because of inflation, and the house won’t be worth anything either. Who’s gonna take care of him then? It’s just a matter of which brother likes him better.”
“About 7-8 years ago, I toured a pre-cooked food factory that made high-end food like Buddha’s Temptation.
First, the owner was a famous cook himself, over 70 years old, used to own a super famous retaurant.
Second, the owner cared a lot about ingredients, water, heat. He had the same kind of OCD all famous chefs had. The first thing he did to build this factory was invest 30 million RMB (10 years ago) to build a water purification system for the whole factory.
They make quite a lot of products, the most famous of which is Buddha’s Temptation. They sell it to five-star restaurants and Michelin Star restaurants. They wanted to start selling to families too.
I was super interested.
You don’t even have to turn on the stove. Just pop it in the microwave and open it up, 88 RMB a pack. Do you want it? At least, I really want it.
Just tear open a package and apply a bit of heat, and I can eat the best braised pork belly in the world? I want it so much.
But that factory never went anywhere. Even if they had top-end food processing technology, market psychology and existing habits still separated the masses from high-end pre-cooked food.
I’ll repeat what I’ve said before—there’s nothing wrong with precooked food, so long as it fits food safety standards and the market accepts it.”
Comments say, “I used to have a lot of hope in pre-cooked food, but after I bought it two or three times, I was really disappointed. You really can’t have your hopes up too high. Pre-cooked food just can’t compare to fresh-cooked food. Its colour and presentation is never gonna stand up to fresh-cooked food.”
“I bought pre-cooked eel filets before, and it tastes exactly the same as what I get in Japanese restaurants!”
“I think you can buy pre-cooked meat, but it’s better if you get your veggies fresh. Even frozen veggies have to be cooked fresh.”
Lately, an 8-year-old girl in Jiangsu, Jing, was taken to the hospital for stomach pain and feeling ill. The doctors first began treating her for a stomach bug, but Jing’s condition never improved, and her stomach pain never lessoned. The doctors asked for her health history, and that’s when he family revealed the truth. Jing accidentally slipped and fell in the shower, causing a 6cm plastic handle above her bathtub to insert into her anus. The doctors immediately scheduled exploratory surgery for Jing, where they found large amounts of faeces in Jing’s stomach cavity, damage to her intestines, an inflamed appendix, and a 1cm diameter hole between her uterus and intestines. Thankfully, the surgery went well, and Jing has been removed from the ICU and transferred to a normal hospital room.
Comments say, “?? That’s something inside the little girl and causing her extreme injury, and the family knew and never said anything about it? And only reluctantly admitted when they were directly questioned by doctors? Why didn’t the doctors call the cops?”
“Human anuses aren’t a constantly open space. It’s normally tightened and closed off. How does something accidentally slip into her anus? Chances are, she was sexually assaulted and her parents know about it.”
“And it was done by someone they know, someone in the family. That’s why they’re trying to hide it so hard. God, I feel bad for her having to live in that environment when she’s so young.”
“Even if it accidentally slipped in, it wouldn’t leave a whole through her stomach. Even if she was playing and put it in herself, she wouldn’t have fucked herself up so badly.”
“Just saw some hospital records—10 year old little girl suffered some kind of accident, maybe a car crash, had a shattered pelvis. After she recovered, her private area still had hyperplasia, causing her urinary tract and vagina to form into one hole.
She married at 24, and spent 2 years not having any intercourse. Then, I don’t know if she wanted it herself or her family forced her into it, but she went and did vaginal reconstructive surgery. This is an extremely painful surgery. They have to cut into you to retrieve tissue that they can plant in to replace lost tissue down there. In order to make sure it heals right, you have to wear dilators the day of surgery and change it out every day to prevent infection. Usually, it’s coming out while tearing out flesh and blood every time.
Then two years later, she still never got pregnant. Went into the hospital to check, and it turned out her tubes were blocked, and they started trying IVF.
First round, it didn’t take. Second round, she got pregnant. Everyone was super happy. But then it turned out to be an ectopic pregnancy. She had to get surgery again, and had her tubes cut off on one side.
Then they went right back to trying, and two more rounds didn’t result in anything.
There are no other records after that in the hospital system. I don’t know if she went somewhere else for treatment, if she ever got pregnant, if she had a baby, whether she’s still married. Did she ever let go? Reconcile with herself? Find freedom? Find peace?
Everything stopped when she was 30 years old.
I only saw black and white hospital records, very short, just a couple of lines. There’s no descriptions of the blood and pain whenever she had to change her dressing. There’s no descriptions of her hanging onto life. There’s no description of her hesitation and her difficult choices. There are no videos of her staying up and crying at night.
But I can see how painful the last 30 years of her life have been.”