11/17/23 - I was deeply touched by everyone’s determination leave our boss in the dark so he can die from cockroaches by himself.
A compilation of tragic posts on the internet:
“My period came, but I used my menstrual pad money to buy painkillers for my grandma. My grandma and I are the only two left in my family now, and she can’t go to sleep with how much pain she’s in. I just folded up the cheapest kind of tissue paper as a menstrual pad. It sucks, but I’m happy I can relieve some of my grandma’s pain :D”
“She died the day she turned 18. She called me a dozen times and I never picked up. I’m a night owl, but I went to bed early that very night, because I wanted to get up early to set up her birthday party.”
“When I was in primary school, the teacher would have us stand up and read passages from the book out loud. I’d count how many people were before me, to see which part I would have to read out loud, so I could practice before it got to my turn. I think that was the start of my life-long anxiety.”
Screenshot of tiktok captions: “16-year-old girl, 8-months pregnant, living by herself. She doesn’t have parents, doesn’t have money for a hotel, and her boyfriend doesn’t care. Dunno what she’s supposed to do at this age.”
“My first crush died. She said that, “If one day, you can’t find me anymore, then go to Spain. The Sagrada Família and he Arc de Triomf there are beautiful. You might find me there.” I’ve been living in Spain for 6 years now.”
“I went to the doctors and spent 500 RMB. My mom not only didn’t care that I was sick, she even said, “Wow, you’re rich.””
“I broke a bowl when I was a little kid and got yelled at by the whole family. I still don’t understand to this day. Bowls are like a buck each. Was it really necessary?”
“Every time they call me, they ask if I’m tired. Of course I am, but as soon as I admit to it, they’d follow up with, “You think you’re the only one who’s tired? Who isn’t tired out there?””
An askreddit question, “Why is the dropout rate so high this year in schools?”
And the answers below: “I’d rather suffer at work than continue to be humiliated by my teachers and classmates.”
“If studying was actually useful, why are teachers so poor?”
“In schools, you face the rumourmongering crowd, traitorous friends, teachers with favouritism, books you don’t understand, and verbal abuse from your parents. You tell me how I’m supposed to study.”
“2008, Sichuan Earthquake, a father found his son playing at an internet cafe having skipped class. He forced his son back to school. All the students in the school died from the earthquake, but the kids in the internet cafe were all fine, so the father always felt guilty about it. Honestly, he didn’t do anything wrong. He was just being a father. But he’s always going to feel like he fucked up, because he’s a father.”
“I’d rather starve than leave the big city. I promised myself I was going to make it big. I can’t back down now.”
“Girls are all making food blogs. Men are all documenting the pain of life. Girls are getting more and more confident. Men are getting more and more insecure.”
”Happened to listen to a bit of Chinese folk rap [I legit did not know this existed before today, but this is what it sounds like] today written in the 70s, called “Taking My Daughter to Uni”. Can’t say much about it, except that it was really progressive when it came to gender. Here’s an excerpt: [I’m not even going to try to make it sound like a rap]
The sun was just peeking over the hills.
Red clouds covered half the sky.
Two men came walking down the road,
an old man and a youth.
If a modern person was writing this, they’d probably have written, “a girl”, but “youth” already could refer to both boys and girls.
Old Man Zhang is 50-something this year
His daughter Zhang Guilan follows behind him
She’s wearing a pretty red flannel shirt
Her pants are the blue of student uniforms
Her black her done up in two braids
A green canvas bag slung over her shoulder
Old Man Zhang wore blue cloth pants and a white frock
Solid pair of sandals on his feet
His body was hardy, his face was tanned
He walks along carrying his pole
Old Man Zhang is taking his daughter to school
He’s carrying Guilan’s luggage
He’s walked 10 km in a row now
Guilan wants to take the pole
So he can take a break and have a smoke
“Daddy, you used to carry brother in this to beg for food
You suffered in the rain and the storm
So they have a son, but they’re still letting their daughter go to uni.
The old man said, “Something else I haven’t told you
This pole I’m using to take you along today
I’ve taken someone else to uni with it before
It was in 1943
I took the landlord’s son to school
He rode a horse in front
And had me carry luggage the size of a bull
And drag another basket of goods behind me
So in old China, landlords sent their sons to school, and in new China, average people send their daughter’s to school.
In this season, the bright red sun shone over them
Dying the earth and the mountains red
Dying the girl and the old man red
Father and child hurried onward.
This is my first time seeing “father and child” being used to describe a father and a daughter. That’s right, “儿” has always been a word that could apply to sons and daughter equally. [It’s default assumed to mean male child in China these days.]”
Comments say, “Honestly, whether from the political or creative standpoint, that was an excellent piece. It starts with an evocative image of daily life, and connect the past to the present, establish a contrast, and emphasise the equality of gender in New China. It makes it visible how much freedom the liberation of China has given women.”
“I read Ordinary World, and the Sun family was so poor, and yet both their sons dropped out of school to help out with the family, and their daughter finished her degree. Before, I didn’t think too much about it, but now, thinking back, I’m so impressed.”
“Back in those days, women carried half the sky T_T”
Someone asks, “Which people exist in China who can be called a role model for women?”
And someone replies with a long biography of Wei Huixiao, a woman who became secretary to a CEO at 23, Miss Universe at 27, a volunteer teacher in Tibet at 28, attended Sun Yat-sen University at 30, got a doctorate at 34, became China’s first female Navy Captain at 39, became a People’s Representative at 40.”
Comments say, “Lol, everyone knows how shady Captain Wei is XD”
“Jesus, Captain Wei’s even incompetent at propaganda too?”
“I used to believe this shit. Guess whether I do now?”
“She pretty much paid her way through a doctorate program, so of course she got to take all the results.”
“Sharing some gossip! I’ve got a friend who has five siblings, and his parents even adopted a sixth girl too. Life was great, until the dad ended up cheating with a woman who already had a daughter. I guess his dad was just super smitten with this woman or something, and insisted on getting divorced with his mom, and even took away three of the kids. Like, fucking horrible.
Although the mistress and his dad got richer and richer from their business, his dad only ever saw the woman’s pretty face. He never realised how much of a snake she was. The three kids he brought over, the woman would pretend to be all nice to them in front of people, but actually would spoil the shit out of them growing up so they became total losers. She got someone else to get the oldest kid into playing with stocks, to try to turn him into a gambling addict. And even though the youngest kid protested, she insisted on sending him overseas, and kept buying him too much toys so he couldn’t focus on studying. They go over to the mistress’ family’s house with all six kids for Full Moon Festival, but the kid’s actual grandparents don’t get to see them until the day after.
Like, she’s such a bitch!
Thankfully, slowly, his dad started to wise up to this woman’s tricks, and started to give the kids back to their biological mom. But at this point, the mistress got super ambitious too, and not only pushed his grandma down the stairs, she even sued his dad in court to take all his stuff.
But the most hilarious part is, my friend ended up getting a crush on the mistress’s daughter! Hahahaha, God sure works in mysterious ways.”
Comments say, “Holy fuck, is this a real story? Does this level of drama exist in real life?”
“I’m still waiting for that KFC ad.”
“As a lifelong fan, I only got to the part about the business getting better and better before I realised this was the plot to Heart of Greed.”
“Lately, I’ve discovered that more and more people around my office is hoarding water, buying pallets of bottled water themselves to put under their desk. It’s been going on for a week or two now, so I finally asked, “Did everyone win the lottery collectively and decide they’re too good for the free water at the office or something?”
And based on the intel I gathered, about two weeks ago, someone discovered cockroaches and cockroach eggs on the water machine, so everyone stopped drinking from it.
After I found out the truth, I was deeply touched by everyone’s determination to save money for the company and leave our boss in the dark so he can die from cockroaches by himself.”
Comments say, “Don’t worry, it just means your boss is drinking homeopathic amounts of rehabilitation liquid [a Chinese medicine where the active ingredient is ground up cockroach].”
“I honestly thought this was going to be a blog about Japanese nuclear waste water or something.”
“I’ve found wriggling bugs inside my water filter before, like a ton of them.”
“I read in a book that over 50% of women have trouble with leaking pee after menopause. I mean, I’d read internet PSAs before about how harmful giving birth is to your pelvic floor muscles. You’ll stay safe and healthy if you never have kids, right? Sex life, child birth, and childcare is the source of all illnesses in women.
But actually, that wasn’t the case at all.
The book said that, “Aside from oversize babies and delivery, occupational diseases is a much bigger cause for pelvic floor damage in working women. A woman who works all her life and never asks for help is at the greatest risk for pelvic floor muscle damage.”
I was shocked. But yeah, I mean, a couple months of being pregnant can’t possible compare to backbreaking labour for a life time.
No matter how hard delivery is, it’s still calculated in hours. If you’re a female physical labourer, you’re working yourself on the scale of decades.
Maybe hard labour is the biggest killer of women’s health.
And childbirth is only one form of labour, not the totality of it.”
Comments say, “Most people can’t choose whether or not they work their whole life. But people can choose whether they have kids or not.”
“I talked about a female friend of mine from Chaoshan the other day, who told me that she was washing squids someone gave her as a gift in the kitchen, and stood there for four hours, and ended up getting a cold from the wind. She suddenly started getting dizzy, throwing up, and pee leaked all over her leg. She got super scared, and went to bed and laid on her thermal blanket. Honestly, I comforted her at the time, but I was feeling pretty dismissive. Like, I would never stand for four hours straight. I know I can’t handle that.”
“And there’s no cure for it, right? Like, there’s magnet therapy for pelvic floor muscles, but you have to keep up with it forever. I think there’s surgery maybe? Is there a scientific way of fixing this that someone can share?”