10/05/24 -
“My mom watches my kid, and we pay her 5K a month for her troubles, and another 2K a month as her living expenses. We go to work early and don’t come home until late, so we don’t eat at home. My son is already in kindergarten, and we don’t need her to buy groceries for the weekend. That is to say, she eats lunch by herself from Monday to Friday, and eats dinner with just my son.
And she dared to demand money from me today. What the hell? She’s forcing me to go die.”
OP attaches text exchanges:
Mom: “47.5 RMB for books, 30 RMB for blocks, 25 RMB for two different flavours of yogurt, 21 RMB for cake + candy, and another 45 RMB for more blocks today and 5 RMB for a whistle and 2.5 RMB for pumpkin soup. Please send it.”
Mom: “Please send a total of 171 RMB. I’m doing my best to raise him. You guys don’t have to worry about anything at all. To be honest, if you’d been doing everything yourself, he might not be nearly as well off as now, because in his mind, houses feel more homely if they’re messy. That’s something he was constantly saying a year or two ago. So I can’t keep spending money on you. Please send it to me.”
OP: “Did I not already give you 2000 RMB in grocery money? And you’re the only one who eats from that fund. Can’t you just count this 171 as a part of the grocery money? We need some money ourselves for living expenses and savings too, right?”
Mom: “K, forget about the 171 then. I’ll keep that in mind in the future. You’ll buy stuff yourself so I won’t worry about it. The more I care, the more hassle I get.”
Comments say, “Why don’t you look up how much it costs to hire a nanny every month?”
“She just doesn’t want to spend her own money.”
“That’s pretty normal. True story, before my kid was born, my mom came over and told my wife that there’s no way she’d help out with the baby. My wife complained to me and I was torn between them too. But my mom sure kept her word. And from that point on, our familial bonds have been fainter and fainter.”
“Famous crab yolk noodles in Suzhou, 888 RMB per bowl. It looks great! I’ll try making it in my noodle shop tomorrow. How much do you guys think is appropriate? Can I sell this for 666 RMB in Shanghai?”
Comments say, “If the stocks keep rising like this until next year, I’ll go eat a bowl and show my support.”
“If the stocks keep rising like this until the year after next year, I’ll go get a bowl too!”
“I’ve had this in Shanghai once. It was really good. I remember they had to use 3 crabs in mine, and it was 98 or 88 RMB, I forget.”
“If you take the median income of a lot of the developed world and convert it to RMB, you’ll find that it’s still only about 10K or so. You can go look this up yourself.
But there’s a big different between the purchasing power, infrastructure, and public services of different countries, resulting in a big difference in actual quality of life.
Money doesn’t just fall from the sky in Hong Kong either. A median income of 20K is plenty high already. Stories of restaurant waiters making 27K a month is just wild delusions.
But a lot of people keep making up lies that Hong Kong people make 40K a month on average. That’s why so many people complain about Hong Kong people discriminating against mainlanders—because they’re not making nearly as much as they imagined.
Reminds me of what I saw on Xiao Hong Shu the other day, that someone had gotten a 17K job offer as a fresh graduate, and felt like he could do better as a postgrad from the top three university in Hong Kong. But two years later, he couldn’t find a job at all…that’s too greedy, isn’t it?”
Comments say, “I used to be super anxious, because everyone on the internet seemed to be making a million a year easily. And look at my salary! Then I learned that you don’t have to pay taxes on lies. If you make five figures a month in a 3-4th line city, you’re already doing better than 70% of people.”
“I make 6K+ a month in a small town and a lot of people are envious of me.”
“Speaking of, how do you work long-term in Hong Kong as a mainlander? Get a work visa?”
“I always thought I ate healthy. I had carbs, protein, and fibre in every meal. But yesterday, I got really dizzy for some reason. Couldn’t even walk straight. Even when I lied down, I could feel the world spinning around me.
So I went to the hospital and they eventually concluded that it was because I hadn’t eaten salt in too long.
Aside from the occasional gathering where I’d eat some condiments in the last month, I don’t eat anything salty at all when cooking at home. Plus I hadn’t gotten enough rest lately, so this happened to me. The doctors gave me some medicine and a shot.
I went home and slept, figuring I’d feel better tomorrow, but when I sat up in the morning, the whole world started spinning against. Got so scared that I crammed down a bunch of stuff I’d never eat—instant noodles, fried chicken, la tiao [spicy gluten]. I think they were all pretty salty. It was actually kinda hard to get down after I’ve built up my eating habits. Hopefully, I’ll feel better after resting all day.
Dieting girls out there, don’t cut out condiments too hard! You gotta keep your diet diverse to stay healthy!”
Comments say, “Low fat and low salt doesn’t mean no fat and no salt! You can have too much of a good thing!”
“When I watched old war movies as a kid, they’d show Japs cutting off our salt. There are Chinese people who’d try to smuggle salt and get found out, and one little kid wet his winter coat in a river and soaked salt in it, and the Japs let him through not knowing it. Then he wrung his coat out and squeezed out all the salt water. I remember that little kid super clearly. That was also when I learned the importance of salt.”
“Have you never went to school? Sodium and potassium are essential to the human body. Without sodium, you don’t have any energy. And potassium helps your heart contract. And your body will keep excreting potassium even if you don’t consume any, so you have to get more from the food you eat.”
“My wife has been working all afternoon. She claims these are dumplings. I am confused.”
Comments say, “I wouldn’t eat it to save my life.”
“Are you sure???”
“Did you happen to eat some mushrooms?”
“Anyone else feel like the economy’s revitalised overnight?
The stock market is all red. Everything is rising. The bull market is back. [Chinese stocks are red when rising, green when falling, because red is lucky.]
The real estate market is warming back up too. Good news is endlessly rolling in and the number of sales is growing fast.
There are crowd everywhere during Independence Week, tourism industry is looking good. People don’t blink an eye when they spend money.
Lots of people going out to dinner, restaurants are full to exploding. People don’t hesitate to eat what they want and drink what they want.
I really feel like the economy’s taking an up turn, and it’s only gonna get better from here. Do you guys think so?”
Comments say, “How many days has it been, and you’ve already forgotten retirement age being delayed by three years…”
“Huh? I haven’t been paid in 6 months.”
“I haven’t felt it at all. This is nothing. These couple of days probably isn’t enough to get most people out of their traps.” [An expression for when you buy into a stock high, don’t want to sell it and take the loss, so you hold onto it in the desperate hope that you can sell it for a profit in the future.]
“People never understand how good they have it already.
My husband complains about his parents to me sometimes. He’s brought up the story of when he had a fever as a kid and his mom didn’t even notice at least 5-6 times. One time, he asked me, “Do you get ignored like this when you were sick as a kid too?”
And I said, “If I got sick as a kid, I’d get yelled at, because I’ve made trouble for my mom again. Every day that I’m sick, I get yelled at more.”
He went quiet.
After my daughter was born, she had jaundice and had to get the blue light for two days. He recalled getting shots when he was little and said something about how they didn’t have such nice healthcare options back then, there wasn’t a lot they could do for you even if you were sick. Then he asked me, “What did they do when you got XX (a common childhood illness)?”
And I was like, “We didn’t go to the hospital.”
He was shocked, “How could you not go?”
And I said, “Because adults would never even notice. Rural kids, so long as they can’t sick to the point of dying, never see the doctor. If you don’t die, you’ll live. Even if you went to the hospital, it’s just the nearby village clinic. They don’t have any diagnostic equipment there at all. Thirty some years ago, if we rural kids wanted to go to a proper hospital in the city, you’d have to spend a whole day on the road. You gotta ride the carriage, then the car, then another car…who would waste the effort on such a small illness?”
He went quiet again.
And one time, he said, that kids these days have it nice. He had nothing when he was growing up.
And I said, “But at least you grew up happier than me, right?”
And he was like, “Yeah, you’re right.”
But in actuality, he complains about his childhood a lot more than me. I don’t even want to talk about all my painful experiences growing up. What’s the point of talking about it? I just want to forget it all ASAP.”
Comments say, “You started out in a rural village? Respect!”
“A little bit like how when people have too much, they end up putting all their attention in what they don’t have yet. But the people who only have a little would treasure what little they have.”
“Hahahahaha, it is like this. People who’ve actually been through painful events are pretty calm when they talk about it. Once you get through something unpleasant, you don’t tend to bring it up anymore.”
Looks like China is entering the WallStreetBets phase when ordinary people realize that stocks are a legal and socially acceptable form of betting.