10/07/23 - I hope the Middle East can unite together to help Israel and Palestine negotiate.
“An odd “stay at home” story for today, though the woman in this story is a bit of a cuck in my eyes.
This lady is an employee of one of the companies that’s a client of my company. She’s very honourable, straightforward, kind. The first time I interacted with her, I’ve thought she was a really decent person.
She’s been married twice. The first time, it was with the father of her son. Their life was going pretty well, but one day, the kid’s dad had a mid life crisis, and didn’t want to keep living this “predictable and boring” life anymore, and wanted to go join the punk scene in Beijing.
At the time, she begged for him to stay with her, to raise their son to adulthood at least. But he left without hesitation, and only left her a suburban house not worth much money.
She’d never experienced this kind of abandonment in life. Right after her divorce, she went through a hell of a withdrawal period, and quickly started dating a driver at her workplace. He was divorced with a kid and only made a quarter of her income, but she didn’t mind it at all.
In order to get both kids into a better school, she even sold the house her ex-husband left her and bought a new house in the city.
This time, she really wanted to prove that she was a good wife and a good mother. She practically dug her heart out and gave it to the driver and his son. But the driver hooked up with some rich lady and demanded a divorce too.
The second divorce was ugly. In order to take half of her house, the driver even ended up taking her to court. The judge was a woman too, though, and was very sympathetic to her, and helped arbitrate their conflicted, and only ended up ordering that she pay the driver 50K.
When I first met her, she was going through the hassle of divorcing the driver.
She said, “The moment I think about how all my effort over the last few years have been completely wasted, my heart breaks all over again.”
Then, her first ex-husband never managed to make it in Beijing and ended up losing all his money, and never even successfully became a part of the punk scene. His parents are passed away now, so he started hanging around her under the excuse of “visiting his son”.
She figured that her son hadn’t had a father figure in his life for the longest time, and her ex-husband does some housework and helps with tutoring her son, so she let him stay.
Of course, he never does as good a job at housework or tutoring as she does, so she often has to do them again after she gets home from work. For example, he can’t cook proper food, he only knows how to reheat stuff. He only helps the kid with his homework by making sure it’s done, he doesn’t actually do any teaching or revising.
And then, her ex-husband starting “staying at home” at her place. She pays for all of his daily expenses, and gives him 2000 a month in allowance and grocery money.
That’s even more hilarious is that the driver got dumped by the rich lady later and wanted to come back to her and stay with her too, but when he saw that her ex-husband was back, he gave up.
After her ex-husband returned, I talked with her once.
I told her straight up, “You’re getting taken advantage of.”
And she was like, “Even if I hired a maid or tutor, it would take 2-3K a month. As far as I’m concerned, he’s earned his keep.”
And I was like, ”I mean, let’s crunch some numbers. If he wasn’t living with you, he’d at least have to be paying 2500 a month in rent, right? And every month, you spend another grand on his food, his clothing, everything. Even from an economic point of view, you’re getting taken advantage of. He has no money to leave to your son, so obviously, the only contribution he can make is doing housework and tutoring. You shouldn’t have to pay for that labour. You shouldn’t have to take care of him. Looking at it long-term, sooner or later, your kid’s gonna grow up and not need the tutoring anymore. But by that point, he’ll have lived in your house so long that you’ll never be able to get rid of him. And when he gets old, your son might even have to pay for him. And if he get sick, I doubt you and your son could really just stand by and let him die either. That’s another astronomical amount of money. You’d be way better off if you just didn’t accept his help to begin with.”
And she was like, “Man, I don’t want to think about it too hard. Sometimes, you just gotta go with it.”
At the time, I wondered to myself whether this ex-husband was also providing her with decent sexual services or emotional companionship, and she just didn’t want to talk about it? I mean, otherwise, what would she be after?
Later on, she made a little bit more money and wanted to buy another house in Guangzhou. But she was divorced, so she’s only qualified to buy one house. So she asked me if she should marry her ex-husband again to buy a second house.
I immediately stopped her. I was like, “Don’t try to test humanity. Look up inheritance laws. If you marry him again and one day, you suddenly pass away, who does your property go to? How many people murder their wives just to get their hands on her assets? Your son’s about to come of age soon anyways. He’ll be qualified to own his own house. Just hold onto your money and buy it under your son’s name. No matter how vicious men are, they probably won’t murder their own son.”
Maybe I’m overthinking it, but I’m really hoping her life can get better.
I just really don’t believe that a man capable of abandoning his wife and children to go be a punk in Beijing, a man capable of squatting in his ex-wife’s house after years of not being able to make any money, can really actually turn things around and change himself and be a decent human being.”
Comments say, “Sigh, she just can’t live without a man.”
“It’s pretty generous to say that she’s “kind of” a cuck.”
“She really needs to thank that rich lady. Your spouse, children, and parents can all legally inherit your estate, and there’s no priority between them. They would all get an equal share. The most important part is, children include step-children.”
A tiktok video where a lady tells a story of what happened to her in Korea:
“Friends and family, I’ve just been utterly humiliated in Jeju-do, Korea. So, just now, we saw a store that sold Korean accessories, and all three of us went in all excited. But as I was getting rung up, I lifted my head and saw this huuuge sign on the wall that said in Chinese, and ONLY Chinese, “Cameras inside the store, please don’t steal.” I felt fury rise in me instantly. Dude, this is Korea. What the fuck do you mean, writing “don’t steal” in only Chinese!?
But I didn’t flip out right away. After all, we’re travelling internationally. We’re representing China. We need to mind our manners. So I very politely asked the cashier about the sign. And it turned out, the cashier was a Chinese person too. So I got even more angry. So I asked her, “Why do you write this in only Chinese? You’re Chinese yourself, don’t you think this is really prejudiced and really inappropriate?” But I never thought what the cashier told me made me speechless.”
She shows footage of her conversation with the cashier, where the cashier explains, “We get travel groups from China, with a lot of old people, who just take stuff sometimes. We’ve seen it happen a lot. I’ve got a friend who opened an all-you-can-eat cafe, and, I’m not saying all Chinese people are like this or anything, but Chinese ladies would take everything from the buffet. Even the napkins. So the cafe had to close down. People have no interest at all in Chinese customers. This was all during covid.”
The tiktokker continues, “Do you understand how ashamed I felt after she was done talking? I feel so embarrassed. And I never thought that I’d one day be ashamed of my own people. I mean, I know a lot of places are just indiscriminately prejudiced against Chinese people, and if I met people like that, I’d definitely fight them bro. But what happened today, I’m just all like….man, a couple rat turds ruin a whole pot of soup. Don’t you guys have enough social security checks? The hell are you stealing for? Don’t you want face? But in the end, I still insisted to the cashier that she needed to write the sign in all the languages, don’t only write it in Chinese. I still insisted on it.”
And she shows footage of her telling the cashier this. And says, “And she said she definitely will.”
Comments say, “The fact they have this sign is already pretty indicative of the problem, don’t waste everyone’s time by asking about it. Also, if Korea’s attitude is like this and people are still going there for tourism and contributing to their economy, then they deserve whatever shame is coming their way. Fucking sheep.”
“Some older ladies are like this. I can’t really argue back. Back during Shanghai’s Food Expo, I was working as a volunteer, greeting people coming in. A lot of old ladies were coming in with plastic bags, no invitation or anything, and will straight up snatch stuff out of people’s hands, and take display-only food. I don’t even know what to say about these grandmas and grandpas.”
“In a children’s playground in China, I’ve seen an old lady taking the toilet paper in the bathrooms. The thing is, the toilet paper dispenser doesn’t let you pull out a whole roll by itself. So she just sat on every toilet and patiently, slowly, rolled the paper out. She did this for all of the dozen cubicles there. I was pooping there and thank god I brought my own paper. This playground had toilet paper in their toilets to make it easier for the kids. I ended up going to a worker and telling them to restock the paper.”
China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs responds to the latest Israel-Palestine conflict by saying, “China is very concerned about the current tension in Israel and Palestine, and calls for all parties involved to calm down, cease fire, protect their citizens, and prevent the situation from continuing to worsen.
The fact that Israel and Palestine continues to have conflict means that long-term peace is not a realistic expectation. The only way to pacify the Israel-Palestine conflict is to actually enforce the “two nation solution” and build an independent Palestine. The international community needs to increase pressures and invest more on solving the Palestine problem, and push Palestine and Israel to resume peace talks. China will continue to work with the international community to make this a reality.
Comments say, “Great response. I hope the Middle East can unite together to help Israel and Palestine negotiate.”
“Listen to me. We’re all Earthlings. We need to stop fighting each other.”
“Keyword here: Independent Palestine.”
“America starts wars. China ends wars.”
“Let me tell you the gossip on one of my friends. In order to maintain anonymity, I’ve blurred out a lot of the details. Mainly, I just want to remark the wheels of fate are truly just turning randomly.
My friend is a girl. Her dad is the leader of a really important government department where I live. Her mom is a middle manager in the Tobacco Bureau. Her family’s socioeconomic class doesn’t need to be describe. It’s the sort of thing that would draw envy even in big cities. And her dad is super tall and handsome. He gets heads turning every time he goes to her parent-teacher conferences. He’s powerful and good looking and liked exercise and often took the whole family travelling and hiking. He’s never cheated as far as I know, and she’s an only daughter.
She’s a maybe 6 or 7 out of 10, got a Master’s from a good university, and got a tenured position as a teacher at a college in a second-line city. With her background and her looks, even I wouldn’t dare to try to pursue her. She’s really a top-quality date, and she’s a super meek and obedient good girl.
The turning point of her fate was marriage. While she was completing her Master’s Degree, she got pursued by an underclassmen in undergrad. This underclassman was from a rural village in Zhejiang. His parents are both farmers, but he has a super rich uncle. The uncle worked in the real estate industry, at first in interior decorating, and then he started doing real estate development with everyone in his family. After the underclassman graduated, he got a job in his uncle’s company, and started a small remodelling company himself. He makes a lot more money than salarymen like us.
They got married at a chain five-star hotel. It was in 2010, and it was 3000 RMB per table for the banquet. I gave a 600 RMB red pocket. Not long after marriage, they had two kids together. The husband’s parents took care of the kids. My friend never had to worry about money or childcare. Basically, she lived the dream life.
Her fate turned in 2016. Her husband’s uncle’s company’s cash supply broke, and he ended up owing hundreds of millions of RMB of debt. He fled overseas, and her husband ended up being the Juridical person for a lot of his uncle’s sub-companies. And he got sued for hundreds of millions in court, and went bankrupt and became blacklisted. My friend got an emergency divorce from her husband and managed to protect her assets and house at least.
But the enormous debt on her husband meant that he couldn’t find any work at all, and could only do oddjobs for friends under the table. He’s still really good to her. He never wronged her or anything. And although they’re divorced, they still live together. But she pays for all household expenses, and college teachers don’t really make a lot. Thankfully, her family really supported her so her life wasn’t too hard. You think she’s already unlucky enough? Fate gets even more merciless.
This year, around New Years, her dad got a headache and went to the hospital, and found a tumour in his brain. They did an emergency biopsy and he was diagnosed with Glioblastoma. He’s got maybe a year left to live. From the beginning of the year to now, he’s already been hospitalised multiple times. On a work day, her mom stays in the hospital to take care of him, and on the weekends, she goes instead. Although there are nurses, sick people need a lot of companionship. And they’re a family that really loved each other.
This isn’t over yet. Around summer break, her MIL who had been taking care of her kid went into the hospital for a stomachache, and got diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Right now, her husband’s helping his parents get treatment, and she’s helping her dad through his treatment, and no one has time for the kids. According to her, their grades are terrible because they’re not getting any help, because no one has time.
Probably a lot of my readers will say I just made this up. I mean, I thought her situation was unbelievable when I heard about it. I work as a neurosurgeon, so I could offer her some advice on her dad’s condition, and that’s why she told me about all this. I asked her what she plans to do now, and she said she had no idea.”
Comments say, “My friend’s older sister was the branch manager of a bank, and her husband is super successful too. They’d just finished remodelling their eight-figure mansion, and hadn’t even moved in yet, when she got diagnosed with Glioblastoma. She’s gotten surgery at Tiantan Hospital, and the doctors say she’s got six months to live. I’ve got another friend’s son who has medulloblastoma and also got surgery at Tiantan, and is sill alive right now.”
“My friend’s uncle’s son got Hantavirus, and they checked with a divinationist and he said it was because the kid’s dad took money he wasn’t supposed to. I don’t know what he ended up doing, but they stayed in Huaxi’s ICU for a couple of days and the kid got better. I’ve always thought it was pretty magical. If your friend’s dad’s not doing well, maybe he could consider it too?”
“Two incurable cancers in one family…at this point, you just need to offer comfort and let the old people spend what time they have left comfortable. I’ve seen a documentary about doctors working in the ICU, and they see so many deaths that they just become numb to it. Anyone who can’t don’t last.”
Regarding the four year old who went missing on a beach in Shanghai, a blogger writes, “With our generation of only children, even we’re at busy tourist spots, if a toddler was wandering around by themselves with no adults around, all the other adults around her would watch out for her. Who’s kid is this? Who’s missing their kid?
But now we’ve got so many families with multiple children, that a lone kid might end up mixed up in crowd full of families, and Family A will think it’s Family B’s kid and Family B will think it’s Family A’s kid and lost kids are hard to find.
So it’s just insane to criticise people who took photos of the kid at the beach for not helping her out. You’re just being a troll.
In our parent’s generation, most families had tons of kids, and you would constantly hear stories like, “Oh, so-and-so’s kid fell in the well and drowned.” Or “So-and-so’s kid got a fever and couldn’t get to a hospital in time and became retarded/deaf/dead etc.”
Another unfortunate fact is that even idiots can reproduce, and the children of idiots can only survive by being lucky, extra-cautious, and extra-smart. And even so, it’s pretty dangerous for them if their parents have a second kid.”
Comments say, “I still think her parents did it on purpose. My kid’s really big, and when I take her to the beach, I can’t swim, so I always put a life jacket on her and let her get a bucket of water from the sea and just play in the bucket. And I never take my eyes off of her.”
“The videos people took made me cry. The little girl was obediently waiting on the beach even until the sun went down. Before the investigation’s done, I don’t want to say too much, but if my kiddo was playing on the beach near the sea, I wouldn’t dare to take my eyes off of her for a second. But I wouldn’t even take my kid to play somewhere as dangerous as a beach.”
“Around August, I found a lost kid on the beach and helped him find his mommy too. The second his mom saw him, she sent him flying with a kick. I almost couldn’t hold back yelling at her. It was her fault he got lost to begin with.”
A tiktok video of someone making sausage, abalone, and mushroom rice, as well as grilled asparagus on the side. The blogger writes, “I love this tiktokker. Everything she makes looks so amazingly delicious. But I suggest people have a baseline grasp of cooking before watching her videos, because she doesn’t go into a lot of detail about how to make stuff. But she’s soooo good at pairing foods! I’m gonna make this dish tomorrow!”
Comments say, “Reminds me of yam rice. It’s so good.”
“Omg, I love her videos too!”
“I’ve never cooked, but I love watching cooking videos.”