A blogger shares a story from Chinese Instagram about why it’s so hard to end poverty. “We had a class today on reinforcing the work of ending poverty. A classmate of mine from a town in Mianyang said that she once gave three lambs to the destitute guy she was assigned. The intention is that he would raise them for a year until they’re grown, and she would work on getting him a buyer, so that he can make some income on his own.
Even as she was telling this story, I’d already guessed the ending. But all I had guessed was that the destitute guy would eat or sell his lambs. I was still too young and too naive back then.
The first month, the social workers returned to find that there were only two lambs left. They asked him, “Where’s the other one?”
He said he began dating someone and gave a lamb to his girlfriend.
The next month, only one lamb was left. The destitute guy said that one of them got lost in the mountains.
The third month, he had no lambs left. He said his alcoholism got the better of him, and he exchanged his lamb for a couple of pounds of marinaded meat and two bottles of soju.
A lot of the problem with poverty doesn’t lie in a government not doing enough. There’s really nothing anybody can do. These people are hopeless. They don’t want to work hard and improve their lives. No one can help. Internal motivation is really important.
That’s why we have the saying, “To raise people out of poverty, you must first lift their spirits. To end poverty, you must first end ignorance.”
The blogger also attached screenshots of the comments below.
“My mom works in ending poverty, and I went on some visits with her while I was on summer break. The guy was a total loser at thirty and didn’t have a wife, and he demanded my mom marry me to him. I was only 16 at the time. And he was totally the type who’d sell his lambs for money too. He insisted that he would only go along with their efforts to help him if he had a wife. He said that all the women in his village marry off as teenagers, why not me? My mom was so mad that she almost quit that day. My uncle, who worked Bureau of HR and Social Security, was also furious. He found a job that included room and board and tossed the guy in. That guy was a total coward too. As soon as he went to the sweatshop out of state, he became a perfect little goody two-shoes and showed up to work on time every day. We didn’t follow up on whether he used his paycheck on gambling or whoring. None of our business. He was out of poverty, by our standards.”
“There’s a reason some people are poor. I’ll tell a true story. I work at the biggest local business in town. A village mayor found us and demanded that we help his village end poverty. The original plan was just to give out money. When the plan was presented to the CEO, he suggested using the cash to buy bees and beehives, since we’re a business that works in importing honey products. So this way, destitute people can earn money with their own hands. We sent a couple of boxes of bees to every family. Each box of bees can become two boxes on the second year, and four boxes on the third year. They double every year. And we hired professional beekeepers to teach them hand-in-hand how to do everything. We would set out every morning before the sun had even shown up, and only went home at midnight every night, to help these people. And we promised to buy as much honey as they could produce with fair market prices. When the reporters went to interview them, they were all so pitiful that I wanted to donate my own money to them. And the reporter told me, “Don’t be stupid. They’re going to sell everything then ext day.”
And when the bees arrived, all the destitute people flipped out. They demanded why we didn’t just give them money. That it was a huge hassle to keep bees. They want money, not honey. They wanted a refund. It was so awkward. The mayor got two boxes of bees too, and we called him every day to see how the beekeeping was going. After a month, my coworkers went and checked, and aside from the village mayor, everyone had either sold their bees or killed them. The first year, the village mayor managed to produce honey, and he was delighted. And the destitute villagers still had nothing. So, there’s a reason poor people are poor.”
“My assigned person was super motivated. He and his wife were really hardworking. They often gave me little gifts. With their efforts, their lives were getting better every day. I thought all destitute people were like this. Until I got assigned another two households. One of them was a widower with a 30-year-old son with disabled legs. I asked him if he had any difficulties, and he either demanded money or demanded that I marry his won. Every time I went to visit him, he would look me up and down like he was sizing me up. He even tried to grab me once. I was terrified and begged my boss to switch me to someone different. My experience doing poverty work was horrible.”
“I’m from a rural village too, and I used to live in poverty too. My siblings and I got out of poverty once we got into a university. I hate poor people who are physically healthy in every way. This kind of retarded people just shouldn’t ever gets wives or have kids. Just let their shitty genes be eliminated.”
“I’ve seen a documentary in Chongqing, called “Mountain Porters”. The director joined the porter group, and found that these people only made 100 or 200 RMB max per month, because there wasn’t that much demand to get stuff hauled through the mountains. So he found some places that were hiring, like hanging up posters around schools. So he got the other porters to go with him. And! Even a super simple job like putting up posters, some people would put up the posters the wrong side up?? And then they got yelled at and lost that job. And it paid like 100 RMB per day…After a few days, he found a construction site that was hiring, so he got everyone to join him in hauling concrete. The managers there saw that he was smart and hardworking, so they made him supervisor, and it paid like a couple grand a month.”
“I’ll keep telling the story of my relatives. There’s a set of sisters who are like…half way in the entertainment industry? The older sister is prettier than the younger sister, so the younger sister was always a bit insecure.
After the older sister got done filming a movie, she hooked up with some trustfund brat in Beijing. The guy was super good to her. He was a uni student at the time too. Young, rich, and good-looking. And he gave her like five figures of spending money every month. (That’s a lot for a uni student!)
He even gave her money to open a dance studio and helped her hire dance teachers. But the older sister was super lazy, and never taught classes herself, and never went either. So the studio closed down after just a year.
Ever since she started dating the trustfund brat, she stopped acting. The younger sister was never as pretty as the older sister, so she’s insecure, so she stopped acting too. Later on, the younger sister married some super ordinary dude, who was good-looking but didn’t have any money.
The older sister just kept being a sugar baby, chilling at home, not acting, not trying to work on her dance studio. As soon as the guy graduated from uni, he broke up with her. He thought she was too lazy and unmotivated.
Supposedly, the reason he got a crush on her to begin with was because she looked really hard-working and ambitious and was pretty and was really good at dancing.
Such a pity.
People should never stop working on themselves.
The sister has yet to find a new boyfriend. She refuses to date down now. And she’s given up on her acting career. She never managed her social media accounts either, so she can’t even be an influencer.”
Comments say, “You’ll never keep anyone around long-term with looks alone. A long-term stable relationship requires two people who grow together.”
“Popularity makes you prettier. Money makes you prettier too.”
The blogger WritingPrompts posts, “You and your coworkers have been kidnapped by a vampire. Everyone is very scared and nervous, because the vampire can easily kill a full grown man like he was a chicken.
The vampire was very nervous too, because he’s being hunted by a werewolf and a vampire hunter at the same time. If he strengthened himself by drinking blood, he might be able to win against the werewolf, but at the same time, he needed hostages to use against the vampire hunter.
You’re very nervous too. Because if you’re wounded at all, the secret you carry in your blood will be revealed. And then, everyone here would have to die.”
Comments say, “Thankfully, the vampire’s teeth can only pierce weak human flesh. It can do nothing against your titanium alloy oil delivery system.”
“Thankfully, you work for the Avengers.”
“The bomb that the vampire hunter buried beforehand solved the problem once and for all—because everyone here was splattered in your blood and have become your most loyal followers. Can’t help it. Such is the power of a necromancer. That’s how you became the common enemy of every other race.”
A tiktok video of the birthrates of China (red), Japan (yellow), and Korea (green):
Comments say, “Starting from a certain year, pregnant women in India were forced to get abortions, forced to get IUDs. People who had two kids would have all their property confiscated. Even their houses would be torn apart. Pregnant women were forced to hide themselves in the mountains. A certain military branch in India was crucial in this war. It dropped India’s birthrate from 5.8 in 1975 to 1.8 now. Guess what happened to India’s pregnant women during this time? What happened to Indian families?”
“We’re all rotting together.”
“It’s like China’s performing an Olympic dive. It’s such a sharp drop straight down XD”
On the 6th of October 9:31AM, a 5.9 earthquake took place in the south-eastern sea near Honshu, Japan. The source of the earthquake is 10 kilometres deep.
Comments say, “5.9 is not enough. They need a proper 9.0.”
“Has anyone noticed? Every time the Japs start dumping shit, there’s an earthquake.”
“Looool it’s karma.”
“Once you’re middle-aged, you’ll find, that you’re already a winner in life if your kid can make it into an ordinary high school.
I went out to dinner with my old boss yesterday. After we’ve both had a couple of drinks, he cried while talking about his daughter. She failed the test to get into a normal, ordinary high school this year. He absolutely can’t accept his daughter going to a technical high school. Both him and his wife have a high diploma. He had a bachelors from The University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, and got a Master’s from Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Works in some foreign-funded company in Shanghai as the vice-president of R&D, and makes over 1.5 million RMB a year.
His wife went to Shanghai Jiao Tong University for Bachelors, Masters, and her Doctorate, and works in some research lab in Shanghai. Makes 650K a year.
Their daughter went to the best school district in Shanghai for middle school, and spends 150K on tutoring every year, and yet she’s always last in her class.
Now they argue every day. They’re getting to the point of calling each other names. The wife says it’s because his IQ is too low, and her daughter inherited his stupidity. He says It’s not any easier to get into the University of Electronic Science than to get into Shanghai Jiao Tong. How can you say I have low IQ? Just because people say daughters take after their fathers, everything is my fault? If only she was willing to have a son too, and they can see where the problem really is.
This girl’s English is only as good as kindergarten kids in Shanghai (Shanghai kindergarten kids usually have the same English level as Nanjing primary school kids). Her parents are worried that if she goes overseas, she might literally starve to death. And they’re worried that she’ll completely rot and pick up bad habits if she went overseas.
Right now, they’ve found an institute to train her in English every day, figuring that she can at least pick up a shitty Bachelor’s degree overseas. It’s been a month now, and she hasn’t made any improvements.
They can’t beat her, in case she jumps off a building. They can’t reason with her, because she’ll argue right back. And she’s stubborn enough to give you a heart attack.
He’s in the process of quitting his job now and taking the kid back to his hometown in Sichuan, and have her work in the fields for a while, so she knows what suffering is like. Maybe then she’ll be motivated to study hard.”
That beekeeping scheme seems like an incredibly stupid way to help people earn money.