11/23/23 - The interrogation rooms aren’t in the actual police station here.
“Two months ago, we arrested an auntie, who used a forged disability card to try to ride the bus for free. She was suspected of forging government identification, and she knew she was guilty too, so after she was summoned to the police station, she was super cooperative. I asked her for her family’s contact info, because the law required that we had to tell her family about what she’s being arrested for and where she’s going to be. And I found that the contact info she left was her adult daughter’s.
After a while, we got a call from a man, who claimed he was the arrested auntie’s ex-husband, and wanted to come and see her, give her some food. I told the phone operator to let him know that she’s doing just fine here, we’re feeding her and giving her whatever she needs, it’s not necessary for him to come.
Halfway through interrogation, I have to go back to my office to pick up some stuff (the interrogation rooms aren’t in the actual police station here), so I had to drive back to my office, and I found a thin, tan dude squatting outside the police station. When he saw me drive over, he immediately hopped up and asked me when I got out of the car, “Are you Officer Ma? I’m XX’s ex-husband.”
XX was the auntie that used a fake ID. He’d actually come over. Even at the time, I remember thinking, “This guy’s pretty responsible towards his ex-wife.
I asked him what he wanted, and he asked me how the auntie was doing, what’s going to happen next, and so on and so forth.
I told him the truth, “She’ll have to go to jail.”
He immediately started freaking out. “Really? She used a piece of paper and she has to go to jail?”
“Yes.”
“Could we just pay a fine? I brought money.”
“This isn’t about fines or not. The lowest punishment for using a fake ID is going to jail.”
The guy didn’t know what to say to that, and just as I was about to leave, he asked me, “But she’s got a bad health. Does she really have to go to jail? Isn’t there any wiggle room on this? I promise she won’t do it again.”
And I said, “If she’s too unwell to be put in jail, then they’ll release her after running a checkup, and we’ll drive her back here.”
Like he was grasping onto a shred of hope, he smiled and said, “Okay, I’ll just wait here for her to come back then!”
I thought he might have misunderstood, “I’m not saying she’s definitely going to come back. It’s a matter of just how unwell she is.”
“Yeah, I know.” He lifted his wrist to look at his watch, “It’s almost 8PM now. It’ll be even later when you drive her back. I’m worried there won’t be buses anymore and she won’t be able to get home.”
I thought about it, and figured I better prepare him for the worst case scenario, to prevent him from wastin g a bunch of time and getting his hopes up. “You shouldn’t bother waiting here. We have super strict standards on who’s not well enough to go to jail. There’s strict requirements for blood pressure and blood sugar. And we’ve got medicine in jail. So unless it’s a super severe situation, they usually don’t release people.”
His eyes dimmed again, but he still insisted, “But it’s still possible, right?”
“If they release her, I’ll drive her home myself, how about that? Stop waiting around here.” I told him that and headed in.
Not long afterwards, I left the station again, and found that although the guy had left our doorsteps, he was sitting outside of the subway station now, on the stone balls that separate the sidewalk from the road. The ball is super smooth and slippery, and it looked like he was having a hard time staying stable, he was holding tension in his whole body to stay sitting, and he was rubbing at his face with a hand.
He was crying.
I felt kind of bad, and went over to give him a little more comfort, but didn’t know what to say that wouldn’t make the situation worse. So I sneakily drove away.
Later, while I was driving the auntie to jail, I told her about how her ex-husband was waiting for her outside our door. She shook her head and sighed and told me to ask him to go home already.
I said, “He cares a lot about you.”
And the auntie casually said, “We still live together, after all.”
Surprised, I asked her, “Then why did you get divorced to begin with?”
“He’s sick, kidney failure. When he got diagnosed, my parents insisted that I had to get divorced from him. I did, and I came to Beijing to work, but he followed me. I couldn’t find anyone else to get with, and it was the same with him. Plus, we have a daughter together. So we just kinda stayed together.” She replied calmly, summarising half her life in the simplest of words.”
“Oh…” I’ve always been a chatty dude, but even I didn’t know what to say.
My coworker said, “Kidney failure’s a pain to deal with.”
“Right? He has to get dialysis all the time, several times a month. And it’s a couple of grand each time. But what can we do? He has to get dialysis or he dies.”
Once she got going, the auntie told us that although her ex-husband looks gaunt and sickly now, he was pretty good looking back when he was young. Twenty years ago, they met at a speed dating event at the county’s youth centre, and she thought he looked like Aaron Kwok [singer] at the time.
But fate likes to play tricks on people. Just a couple of years after marriage, the guy was diagnosed with his illness. The auntie’s parents were worried she’s waste her whole life on him, and threatened suicide to get her to divorce him. Then a couple of years later, they got sick too, so she made up an excuse that she had to work and make more money, to leave her hometown. And that’s how this couple ended up living together again in another city. They both work oddjobs for a living, and sometimes depend on their daughter for financial support. A couple of years ago, the guy sold his house in his hometown. Without that money, they might not have made it to today.
As I drove, I listened to her. The fog outside of Beijing’s southern district made her story sound ever more tragic. The flash of light as cars and buildings streamed by made it feel like we’d journeyed through her whole life with her.
But the auntie didn’t sound very sad at all. She talked like she was an experienced and calm old sage, that all her happiness and sadness had been ground down by age into a kind of peace. She doesn’t blame anyone, just like how she’s calmly accepting her punishment now. She’s almost abnormally calm about life. The fact that she can face anything head on like this might be the most important quality she’s picked up from her lifetime of hard work.
I understood now why the man was crying at the subway station. Maybe he felt like he had been a burden on her all these years, made her pick up frugal habits, made her feel like she had to get a fake disability ID. He was so worried nad concerned because he doesn’t know what else he can do. Once people recognise their place in the world, they might face a hollow kind of defeat. At this point, you can look at all the other people walking around and feel kind of wronged.
Is life shitty? Of course it is. But at the same time, it was your choices that led you here, so there must be some sweetness in it too.
But after that point, I’ve picked up a bit of PTSD. Every time I pass by the big stone balls outside the subway station, I see a middle-aged man straddled on top like a little kid, wiping away his tears.”
Comments say, “He should’ve sat on the rail next time. The train will take full responsibility.”
“Isn’t dialysis free? This story is made up, right?”
“If it’s just a normal citizen using fake ID to save 2 bucks here and there and not hurting anyone, do we really have to throw them in jail? Isn’t a fine enough? They’ll stop doing it anyways. We don’t even throw people who beat people up or rob stores in jail sometimes.”
“Hey, guys, I’m a smoker. Every time I buy a carton of cigarettes, the owner always picks off a part of the packaging, and I’m really confused.
One time, while buying, I asked the owner what he picked off, and he explained that Chinese TFA [which also manufactures China’s cigarettes] doesn’t allow cigarettes to be sold by the carton, so they have to peel off the bar code on a carton so it couldn’t get traced back on them. If they’re found illegally selling cigarettes, they’d be punished severely.
I thought about that explanation for a long time, and I couldn’t figure out why it’s not allowed to sell cigarettes by the carton.
Like, there doesn’t seem to be much actual purpose to a rule like this. I tried to look up these regulations, but never found anything clear.
So I’m asking the all-knowing internet for help. Can anyone tell me what this rule is for?”
Comments say, “This is because his cigarettes are from out of state.”
“I’ve ran a supermarket, and I’ve sold cigarettes, and I’ve never heard of this rule.”
“You can’t sell cigarettes made by one state’s TFA to fill that state’s quota in a completely different state.”
Screenshots of an interview on a Korean reality TV show, “I’m a 28-year-old girl, and I’ve got a boyfriend of two years who’s 32-years-old. I’m always texting my boyfriend. We not only see each other every day, but we go out on dates. But from several months ago, he started saying that he’s too busy at work and often can’t meet up with me. At first, I felt really bad for how hard he was working, so I never complained and always supported him. Last weekend, we had an opportunity to hang out after the longest time, so we went to a cafe. And when he went to the bathroom, an alarm rang on his phone.
I put in his password and started looking, and found he’d installed a menstrual cycle tracking app, and he’s keeping detailed notes every month. But it wasn’t my menstrual cycle.
Actually, a year ago, well, he didn’t cheat…but he was talking to other girls and I found out, so as soon as he came back, I showed him his phone and started demanding answers. I was like, “What the fuck is this?”
And he was like, “Oh, you know my boss, Miss Pu? [No idea what this name is pronounced as in Korean, but the kanji is 朴.] She gets mad over nothing sometimes, and it took me a while to figure out that it’s always at that time of the month, so I started keeping track.”
He doesn’t just keep track of her menstrual cycle either. When the day comes, he’ll buy sweet snacks to put on his boss’s desk, and he’ll do all the chores around the office. He told me that it’s his “survival strategy”. And I demanded to know if he was cheating on me with this Miss Pu, and he was like, “Who the hell keeps track of their mistress’s menstrual cycle?? I’m really only keeping track because I want to survive.”
Like, he doesn’t even keep track of my cycle, why is he keeping track of someone else’s? It doesn’t matter how hysterical she gets, is it really necessary to track your boss’s menstrual cycle?? So I’m like, is she his office wife or something?
He keeps asking if I don’t trust him or something. And since something like this has happened before, I feel really suspicious.”
Comments say, “? But I remember reading a study that the menstrual cycle has nothing to do with mood changes. Is he just covering up for a crush with a shitty excuse, or is he prejudiced against women?”
“I mean, looking at his explanation, I just think that he’s a really creative person. Hahahaha I would never think of this.”
“See, it’s not that men can’t do certain things. It’s that they won’t do it for you.”
“I get it. With how the job market is right now, I would also keep track of my boss’s menstrual cycle, and her wife’s, and their kid’s birthdays. I’ll do anything to put food on the table.”
An askreddit question, “Why can’t parents understand how hard it is for young people these days?”
The top-reply is, “It’d be weirder if they could understand.
A little while ago, some auntie was coming to Hainan for the winter, doing a short-term rental. After about ten days, she heard some inner city slum is cheaper than her current place by like 100 RMB, because it doesn’t have a private bathroom and you have to use the public one. So she ended her contract, got friends to come help move her luggage, and took three trips to clear out. Then, panting, she said, “God, that was exhausting. I’ve never went through that much trouble in my life. What a hassle.” And at the same time, she looked so proud of herself for getting her deposit back from her first place.
I told her that I’ve lived out of state my whole life, and I’m used to moving. I’ve moved more than 10 times a year. I’ve moved across state lines. I’ve rode a scooter through 70km of unfamiliar mountain paths to move my furniture. And she was like, “Then you’re pretty badass too.” But she was still focused on what a great job she had done, like she’d achieved some legendary epic task. Like nobody could possibly understand how hard this was for her.
And it made me suddenly realise that two different generations have a completely different perception of the exact same thing. And you’ll find that old people are even worse at adapting and problem-solving than you.
This is the generation that’s looking down on young people these days for not being able to put up with hardship? They’ve never even left home. They’ve got parents when they’re young, friends when they’re grown, they depend on everyone else for everything, because they always have someone to call. But they have next to no independence or confidence, not to mention capabilities. Their “hardship” is nothing more than physical labour. If a meat bun costs 1 RMB and a bread roll costs 50 cents, then they would always buy two bread rolls, and think that they’re being frugal, they’re dealing with hardship. But if you actually calculate it, a meat bun with its fat and protein content is a lot more worthwhile nutrition than two bread rolls.
My grandpa’s told me off about spending a buck to ride the bus to his house, that kids these days are so spoiled. He walked that distance all his life. That he used to walk 20km at a time.
I was 11 years old that year. And he never considered how dangerous it would be for a kid to walk along a road for that long with how much traffic is around these days.
ETA: I’m not blaming old people for being bad at problem solving. But I really do feel like they’re not capable of taking care of themselves.
Like, the stove at our family broke a while ago and wouldn’t light anymore. I figured it was because we hadn’t changed the battery to the gas metre for a while. But my mom insisted that it was because the stove was broken, or I hadn’t paid for our gas that month.
I offered her a solution: when she takes the trash out, she can go by the convenience store right under our house and buy the right batteries back. But she insisted on her own opinion, and kept complaining about how she’d been looking after this family for decades, worrying about every little thing.
And then, she didn’t try to pay the gas bill or buy a battery. Even though we had an electric stove on standby that she could’ve used instead, she just kept sitting there and complaining about how she couldn’t cook, and kept throwing a tantrum. Thankfully, at least this time, she didn’t try to blame me for somehow breaking the stove.
Two days later, she went and bought some batteries, changed out the gas meter, and we finally got hot water again. She told me that she changed the battery, and the stove still won’t light, and therefore it’s clearly because we hadn’t paid the gas bill. She never realised that the fact that we had hot water meant the gas bill was paid.
Then, a couple more days later, she informed me that she’d even changed the batteries to the stovetop itself, and it still won’t light. We’re surely cut off from gas, or the stove itself is broken. And as a member of the family, I’m responsible for fixing this problem. This is my fault. From her point of view, I’ve been working against her this whole time, by ignoring all her attempts to get help for this disaster that’s keeping food off our table.
Two hours after she left my house, I opened up the battery box to the gas stove. There are two batteries in it. One of them had been changed, sure. But the other one? Not at all.
I switched the battery and cooked myself some porridge to eat in silence. This whole fiasco took over a month to resolve.
She lived like this her whole life, and likes to brag about how she’s even more capable than man. That she supported this family on her shoulders. I was carefully and painstakingly raised to adulthood by her.
So stop asking me why I don’t help out with a trivial thing, because there’s nothing I can do about a parent who’s always convinced they’re right.
My mom’s been like this her whole life. It has nothing to do with her age. When I was little, a lightbulb went out in our house, and we had spares around, and she knew how to change them. You just flip down the breaker, and climb on the stairs that she climbs on every day to wipe our glass, and do the thing. But she would always throw an absolute fit until everyone stopped doing what they’re doing, and all gather around the broken light bulb, while she rambles about what should we do about this? What should we do? When my dad was around, he’d just change the light bulb. But he’s not around anymore. So she’d call up some neighbours and ask them to help (note: multiple neighbours, not just one). She’d say that she can’t handle such a big problem by herself as a lone woman. And then cook all of them a feast for dinner as thanks. So everyone liked coming over to my house, because we’d feed them and give them alcohol. My mom thought this was an indication that she had connections. This resulted in me floating around by myself out of state for the longest time, and whenever anything trivial came up, and I couldn’t call up the whole neighbourhood to deal with it for me, I felt like I couldn’t handle like at all.
There’s a lot of people saying it’s not a big deal for an 11 year old kid to walk for a couple of kilometres. Maybe people born after ’95 don’t have this experience, but honestly, up until 2005, in more rural areas, traffic was kind of an awkward problem. We don’t really have traffic lights. People just have a Chinese-style crossing at any intersection, with all kinds of cars speeding, going down the wrong lane, parked illegally, driven by drunks, and driving around a train while it’s actively passing through town. A lot of people came up with their own unique routes through town making use of pedestrian sidewalks and bridges. You’d hear about cars being ran over by the train every year. Plus, the problem of public safety. I like how safe we are now, with Skynet, and having to buy train tickets and plane tickets with a national ID and going through TSA. But if you look at media stories of long-separated abducted family getting reunited, you’ll notice that a lot more young children were abducted back in those days.”
Comments say, “?? Yeah, what is the big deal about walking a couple of kilometres at 11? He really doesn’t walk enough.”
“What an annoying personality. I bet nobody likes this guy.”
“During your pregnancy, a German doctor would ask the expecting mother, “Do you want to know the child’s gender?” And if you say yes, the doctor would just tell you, because German’s don’t have a tradition of aborting girls to chase after boys, so the law never passed any policies banning doctors from telling the parents the child’s gender.
Before I found out my baby’s gender, I said that if it’s a boy, I’ll send him back to China, and if it’s a girl, she’ll stay with me in Germany. Because as an individual, I can’t fight against all the injustice in the world. Europe has a problem with racism, and Asia has a problem with sexism. And boys and girls face different problems in this world. If I had a boy, and he has Asian features, how is he supposed to survive in Germany? He’s always going to be disadvantaged. But if he goes back to China, with his western features and background, he’d gain a lot of value right off the bat.
If I had a daughter…well, she’d be popular in China too. I bet she’d turn a lot of heads when she walked down the street. But I know the trap that’s been laid there. I don’t even want to talk about it. So I never even bothered teaching my daughter Chinese. Don’t even try to look into the abyss. It looks pretty. Everyone smiles at you. But the values they all hold will grind you to a paste. Everyone’s carrying a back-breaking burden in China, even celebrities are forced to carry a chastity monument. Can my daughter compare to them? They’re famous celebrities, and my daughter is just a normal person. She’d be even more fucked in China. It’s a disaster to be a pretty woman in China. Burdens will be heaped on you until you break. The only reason I haven’t broken is because I’m ugly.
So the way I educate my daughter is that you’re a German girl, you have a German name, you speak German, you eat German food, you have a German dad. If a Chinese person tries to talk to you, just tell them that you don’t speak Chinese.”
Comments say, “It’s not true though. You can only get an abortion for the first 12 weeks in Germany, but the ultrasound is after that. If you did a blood test like us, we could’ve found out the gender at 9 weeks, but the doctor wouldn’t let us know the result until after 12 weeks. I asked him why, and he told me it’s to prevent people from ending pregnancies due to gender. So it definitely still happens.”
“Wow, you’re so lucid.”