[End of the month, so I suppose once again, it’s FAQ time! If there’s anything you’ve always wanted to know about China, or any context you feel like you’re missing, go ahead and submit them! I’ll answer them to the best of my ability! Like always, thank you guys so much for all of your support! Love you all!]
It’s Independence Day in China today, and the pinned top post in Weibo is from the People’s News, asking for everyone to leave a message about how much they love China.
“In Chinese history, there’s been countless local histories that record a lot of feudal landlords who were eventually screwed over by their butlers and servants, and had their wealth taken from them. There were even cases of poisonings to make the landlord’s children few in numbers and dividing and conquering from within. So from about the Ming Dynasty, Shaoxing Butlers began to become very popular, because they were smart and competent and known for their loyalty towards the Masters. They became popular all over the country. This is basically the same concept for why Anglo-Saxons like to use Indian CEOs. It speaks to the reality that the Anglo-Saxon capitalist elites have no trust in the over-inflated Anglo-Saxon intellectual class who used to be their enforcers. And this lack of trust comes from all the betrayals they’ve faced.
The Anglo-Saxons are facing a situation where their previous servants have used various sutras to restrict their Master’s actions, and even to punish and order around their Masters and cause them losses. That’s not something you can put up with. Trump was an experiment for the Anglo-Saxon capitalist elites to take power themselves, and he ended up ganged up on and bullied by all their supposed “servants”. This is not something the ruling class can bear with either. Musk is one of the few who’s willing to come out and say it. Most of the capitalist elites just quietly switched to Indian CEOs and are waiting for the right time.
This is why Trump never gets knocked down, because not only is he not alone, but he has a massive support system behind him. If Biden or Blinken or Sullivan or other servants dare to physically deal with him in anyway, then the elites will make sure it costs. In Chinese history, any butlers or servants found to have turned on their masters have always been sentenced to death, even if it was only discovered several generations after the fact.
Anglo-Saxons are facing a different situation, because there’s no higher power to enforce consequences. So whatever the result of their struggle will be the final result. Are Biden going to pull something sneaky? That’s a question that can only be answered by time.”
Comments say, “And the Shaoxing Butlers ended up especially good at turning on the masters in the end.”
“I think that’s an unnecessarily complicated take on the issue. To put it simply, Trump is conservative, and most capitalists are consevative. That’s all there is to it.”
“Your angle is all wrong. The Shaoxing Butlers weren’t loyal, they just had common interests, and that meant there was no need to work against their masters. Shaoxing Butlers were never after the assets of their owners. They wanted influence over the whole country.”
“I’ve just got to say something about this. I bought a compilation of sci-fi short stories a while before and opened it up to read yesterday. It had the works of three authors, Liu Cixin, Wang Jinkang, and He Xi, all male.
First, Liu Cixin, in his whole story, every time a female character opened her mouth, they’re talking in a baby voice. It’s like he doesn’t know how else to write women. Next is He Xi, the best compared to the other two. His female character just try way to hard to get with male characters, and the romance plot line is super stiff and out of nowhere.
And then there’s the heavyweight, Wang Jinkang. This is a sci-fi short story. It’s only about a couple dozen pages. And there were three shitty lewd jokes in it. I want to fucking cry.
Are there no female sci-fi authors in China? This is so gross to read. I ended up only reading He Xi’s stories. So long as he stays away from romance subplots, his stories are just fine. But as soon as he touches on romance, it’s all, “But a woman’s love can never match up to a man’s ideals.” Blurgh, makes me want to throw up. I want someone to write about how a man’s love can never match up to a woman’s ideals.”
Comments say, “That’s easy. Here, pick up a pen and start writing. You can be the next female sci-fi writers. You can write about whatever you want. Or can you not actually write? [Doge]”
“Can’t blame anyone but themselves. What, do you think publishers are deliberately turning away talented female authors? Readers have eyes too. Or do you want to do that politically correct affirmative action shit and forcibly push a female writer to the readers?”
“Is it possible, just maybe, that women are even more professional when it comes to writing lewd stories?”
A tiktok video where people in an office buy each other silly costumes to wear to Haidilao [chain hotpot restaurant]:
Comments say, “My favourite is the watermelon costume—you don’t have to actually show your face and you can still eat normally.”
“You’re social terrorists.”
“How’s the donkey supposed to eat? (Also, don’t you need to show ID to get a birthday song at Haidilao? Do they do it for everyone who claims it’s their birthday? Or is it just anyone who pays?)”
“Fishing at night is super dangerous. My coworker almost got dragged into the lake and died. He just wanted to take advantage of the last day of his break to go fishing by himself on the dam all the way out in the countryside. Late at night, something got caught on his hook and yanked it down super hard, and he got pulled into the water by the sheer force of it. It was totally dark and he struggled as hard as he could, but he didn’t even know which direction was shore, and there was no one around to help. Almost drowned. He finally made it up, and accidentally knocked over his bucket of fish, and all his previous catches all escaped. He was totally soaked and was angry and exhausted and his phone’s totally ruined. He went home and immediately started burning up with a fever, and is still unconscious in the hospital right now. We heard this from his wife.
Do you think he ran into a drowned ghost out there?”
Comments say, “Nah, that’s just his excuse for not catching any fish.”
“The other fisherman’s thinking the same thing right now.”
“Amateur fishers are glad they’re not dead. Professional fishers are mad that big fish got away.”
A tiktok video of a chef making traditional French-style roast beef with a little Chinese inspiration. Apparently, it’s very popular among his French coworker friends.
The recipe is to put salt, pepper and oil into a tray. Then grill the beef on all sides until it takes on colour. Put the beef in the tray with the salt, pepper, and oil, and put it in an oven at 200C for 10 minutes. Don’t put any vegetables or spices in the baking tray, or their juices will cook out and it’ll turn into boiled beef instead of roast beef. Don’t put aluminium foil on the tray either, or the beef won’t get heated directly. After ten minutes, flip it and bake for another 10 minutes.
Add water to the baking tray to get au jus, add in garlic, thyme, minced ginger, and green onions. Add in Liaojiu (料酒, Chinese cooking wine) and soy sauce, then briefly heat the au jus. Slice up the beef, which should be medium rare to medium, and lay it on top of the au jus, and sprinkle garlic and green onions on top.
Comments say, “You’re not gonna add any sugar to bring out the flavour?”
“You don’t even wash the beef off when you take it out of the oven??”
“This type of food creates way too much wet heat! Beef already makes your spleen hot, and ginger, garlic, and green onions all add to heat. It’s super unhealthy.”
“Everything that’s free is actually super expensive. I remember reading a story once, that went something like this:
One time, I was moving, and all my friends volunteered to come help. I thought that hiring a moving company is going to be over 500 RMB. I could save that money. But my friends weren’t professional at all, and broke my 5000+ RMB couch. And all I could do was laugh and say, “It’s fine, it’s fine.” And in the end, I ended up taking all of them out to dinner. Cost 1200 RMB between 8 people, and they insisted they’re happy to help any time.
When I got home, the longer I thought about it, the weirder it seemed to me. This was something that could’ve been professionally solved with 500 RMB, and now it’s going to cost me well over a thousand just to fix my couch. And not long afterwards, two of those friends came and asked to borrow money from me. One of them said it’s for his wedding, and the other one had parents who were sick.
I had to pay back the favour, and they never ended up paying back the money I lent out. My favourite saying is that “nothing is as simple as it looks”. Nothing is ever really free. Anything that’s labelled free is always very expensive.”
Comments say, “The only time I’ve ever asked anyone to help me move (without paying them), he ended up becoming my boyfriend, and now he’s my husband. Free things are always super expensive. It’s so true T_T”
“It’s the same when you’re buying clothes. You think you’re saving money by buying cheap clothes, but the cut and the quality all end up terrible and you don’t want to wear it a second time. And now you have to spend more money on better clothes.”
“Reminds me of something interesting. I had a friend in Wuhan, whose wife just gave birth and he wanted to drive her home. My husband’s from Wuhan, so he asked me if I knew anybody in Wuhan who could lend him a car. I was like, “But Wuhan is a big city. Even if they had a car, they might not have time to lend it to you. You can just rent a car for like 300 RMB a day.” But then he was like, “But I don’t have my driver’s license on me.” And I was like, “So what, you’re not just borrowing a car, you’re borrowing a driver too? You want them to come over and drive your whole family home?” I honestly don’t understand how people like this exist. It’d be one thing if he ended up owing me a favour, but he’s expecting me to owe other people a favour for his sake? I went to his wedding and gave him 800 RMB, and he not only didn’t come to my wedding, but he never gave me a red pocket either. And yet he kept joking that when he came over to visit, I still owe him a wedding dinner, like he felt like he missed out on the free food??”
“The whole deal about Lisa and Crazy Horse? At first, I thought both sides had their point.
One side is like, burlesque is a form of art too, just like how pole dancing is a form of art. You can’t look down on them just because they’re doing it naked. That’s bigotry. And I mean, yeah, Dita Von Teese’s videos have been super popular on weibo, and everyone’s praising her and enjoying the show. There’s a lot of borderline lewd pictures being shared around too. It doesn’t seem particularly fair to be so mean to Lisa now that she wants to do burlesque too.
But the other side is like, Crazy Horse is just a sexual venue. All the patrons are men. It’s in the red light district. They may be trying to whitewash themselves as art, but their true nature haven’t changed. If you’re pole dancing on a proper stage, it may be art, but if you’re doing it in a brothel, then you’re oppressing women. That makes sense too.
The two sides have been arguing for weeks. And based on my long-term observation, it’s really not that big a deal if you don’t make that big a deal out of it.
At first, Crazy Horse and Lisa’s fans were trying to promote it like, “Now Crazy Horse is a symbol of proud and free women.” “Stripping is freedom, it’s true feminism.” And then everyone start arguing about how, “the right to give up your rights is not a true right.” “How dare you say stripping is not a true right? Is wearing black robes a right?” “What’s true feminism” blah blah blah.
I mean, is no one questioning what this even has to do with “true feminism”? Is someone trying to equivocate? Change the topic? Are we being led by our noses?
The pro camp are using Dita Von Teese as an example, and pole dancing, and influencers showing off their curves, and saying that this is just another job. They’ve spent years and training and hard work to turn something sexual into an art form of beauty.
Okay, so if it’s a job, then let’s talk about it in the context of a job. Is this beauty? Is this art? Is it work? It is the oppression of women? Where do we draw the line between oppression and art?
But they just skipped all of those topics, and turned all the potential discussion for what is work and what is art and what is oppression into, “what is true feminism.” And this type of topic jump seems really sus to me.
Look at what’s happened lately, that Takurazuka Musical performers in Japan graduate from their roles to go film AVs. Does anyone care about that on weibo?
It’s totally legal in Japan. A lot of very famous celebrities have filmed AVs. It’s a not uncommon tactic for Japanese women who want to get famous to go film AVs.
But everyone more or less mutually agreed that this is a form of oppression against women in Japanese society. No AV company is trying to promote that “AVs promote true feminism.” And there aren’t any fans insisting that their AV actors are doing it for feminism, and trying to mix up the concepts.
This is like how a lot of big male bloggers like to slap a “feminism” label on everything to try to stop women from campaigning for equal rights, to twist the discussion all around.
I’m really annoyed any time anyone calls something “feminism”, and I try to avoid this type of argument whenever possible. All of society still needs to figure out, “What is oppression against women”. We’re not at the stage where we need to worry about “what is true feminism.” But a lot of people with ulterior motives are trying to jump ahead to talking about “true feminism” to distract from the issues that matter.
Promise me, stop talking about “true feminism”, and just talk about whether something is oppressing women. “True feminism” is being abused by people with ulterior motives. Watch out for their dirty tricks.”
Comments say, “Even Dita von Teese talked in interviews about how burlesque is not a great industry. She’s famous, so she’s not too bad off, but her backup dancers are often bullied and harassed off stage. Dita’s heard of her backup dancers who are only here because they can’t pay for college. She’s even sponsored a lot of girls. It’s like, beauty is in the eye of the lover. Something might not be your cup of tea. But if you insist on your cup of tea being everyone’s cup of tea, then that’s wrong.”
“All the controversy’s only ever been on Lisa, while Crazy Horse promotes itself like crazy. Even if Lisa’s career is ruined by this, Crazy Horse still got all the exposure they want and brought themselves back to life.”
“Dita’s put on performances with Chinese makeup and stage setting where she mimicked smoking opium too. I don’t know how to feel about it. It’s not art at all. It’s just entertainment for old white men.”
From what you write, and the few Chinese people I've known, it sounds like in China people don't use polite social fictions as much, and are more willing to be blunt and practical. I'm thinking of things like romance, marriage, divorce, child-rearing, and so on. It's not an all-or-nothing effect, but there seems to be a definite trend.
Am I imagining this? Is this a online-only thing? Is this a general trend where Chinese culture is more willing to cut to the chase than American culture? Or does Chinese culture just have polite social fictions in different areas than American culture, and I haven't noticed them?
Are there any big divergences between China as seen on Weibo, vs. your personal experience? For example, in one of your posts, someone mentioned that all they see on social media is how people don't want to have kids. But in real life, hardly anybody DOESN'T want kids. I suppose that's true of social media everywhere. Are there any glaring differences?