12/03/25 - Parents don’t want much. They just want you to live in guilt.
Question: “When did you feel you were growing ever more distant to your rural parents?”
Answer: “Just yesterday.
I was videochatting with my mom and saw she had a medicinal strip pasted to one side of her face. I asked and she said she had a toothache. It’s been going on for a while, a few of her teeth were getting loose, and the painful part is swollen this time. As soon as I heard, I told her that she needed to go to a doctor for that tooth and I would take care of it for her.
I’ve brought up this problem many times. Every time she complains. Every time I offer to take her to the doctor, she refuses.
Last night, I told her that I’ve bought her train tickets for tomorrow. She can go to the train station first thing tomorrow morning. I’ve got tomorrow afternoon off so I can go pick her up. My kid (11-years-old) is on summer break so they can hang out for a bit.
She complained and refused.
I was angry, so I hung up. The reason I videochatted her this time was because she didn’t accept the money I send her every month, so I wanted to ask her why.
I have to send her money multiple times every month before she’ll finally accept. Today, I suddenly had a realisation.
I know what she wants now.
She’s waiting for me to beg her.
Not casually arrange everything for her, but to beg her like my life depends on it. Call every family and friend we know to ask them to persuade her. To beg and plead and finally get her permission, then go back to my hometown in person to escort her. And she’ll reluctantly, half-heartedly come out of the door surrounded by her family and friends and say something that’s half-complaining and half-gloating.
This is how you correctly get a rural old woman to go to the hospital.
If I needed filial piety for promotions, I would do all I could to satisfy her.
But I’m just a workhorse who needs to go to work on time every day.”
Comments say, “Parents don’t want much. They just want you to live in guilt.”
“Because they don’t actually love their kids. They need to use “raising you” as a debt to extort you into taking care of them. If they can clearly make a demand to their children and then quickly accept the help their children offer, then that debt of “raising you” has been paid back. What else can they hold over your head then? That’s why they make you beg and plead with them, to prove, “She begged me to do this. I didn’t even want it. I’m doing this for her sake.” That way, their children are always in their debt.”
“My mom is like this too. When I send her birthday money, she won’t say anything in return. You have to call her and talk to her, and once you hang up, she still won’t accept the money. You have to send her another text asking her to take the money, and then she’ll do it.”
#Liu Qiangdong’s parents appear as cooks in Jingdong’s cafeteria. “Lately, netizens caught Liu Qiangdong’s [founder of Jingdong, an online shopping platform] parents cooking for employees in the Jingdong cafeteria.
The photos show that they are wearing plain clothes. Liu Qiangdong’s mother is wearing an apron, a face mask, and sleeve covers in the kitchen. His father is sitting on a stool picking chives.
Liu Qiangdong’s mother will take photos with Jingdong employees with a smile on her face. She’s very kind and personable.
Previously, Liu Qiangdong’s mother has been caught helping out in the Jingdong cafeteria multiple times.
Liu Qiangdong is a billionaire CEO now, but his parents are still low-key and down to earth.”
Comments say, “Old people get bored and want to help out with food, and the internet is mad at them? I’m speechless.”
“Billionaire? Who are you trying to insult?”
“Boba tea goes viral, parents go viral. Liu Qiangdong likes to be on the trending hashtags. His whole family is taking turns faking posts.”
#First place in civil servant exam fails background check because of redundant degree. “TL;DR version, simply put:
A girl took the civil servant exam and got first place for her posting. Passed the written exam and the interview, but failed at the background check round. They said that she went to junior technical school and adult technical college at the same time, which is a violation of academic qualifications.
But the problem is, both her junior technical school and her adult technical college issued a statement clarifying that the policy at the time allowed students in junior tech school to attend adult tech college in their spare time, and her acceptance to Wuhan Teaching College and graduation is all in accordance with policy.
The trouble:
The local Health Department believes that it’s a violation of policy to attend two schools at the same time, but the school proved that her attendance was legal. The standards for background checks is conflicting with policy from the Department of Education, and that’s what’s causing all the debate.”
Comments say, “My question is, why does this government job have such a low diploma requirement?”
“She has no connections.”
“So long as she didn’t cheat to get first place, then who cares? Is it so hard to admit that someone else is talented?”
“Why is the comment section full of this emoji under the Li Gang corruption news story?”
The news story reads, “#Li Gang accepts 102 million RMB in bribes. Today, Hubei Wuhan Middle People’s Court announced its first sentence of the Central Committee, National Oversight Committee, Central Organisational Discipline Committee Head Li Gang’s corruption case, sentencing defendant Li Gang to 15 years for accepting bribes and a 6 million RMB fine.”
Comments say, “Goddamn. I get fined 150RMB just for parking on the side of the road. He embezzled over 100 million and only got fined 6 million XD You get sentenced to 10 years just for stealing some bird eggs.”
“Because they’re censoring the comment section so you can’t post anything else.”
“There are too few XD emojis.”
“”You’re exposed! Not a single one sold in Dubai!”
The Dubai Aerospace Expo just ended, and already, people are mocking on the internet. “You’re exposed. Not a single jet sold at Dubai. You gotta rely on someone else for all the key components like the engine, the flight control system, and the hydraulic system. Who’s gonna buy something like that?”
Yeah, this is all true. So?
These complaints look reasonable, but none of them hit the nail on the head at all.
What I want to say is, no matter how great the C919 is, in the current environment, it’s never going to sell to western nations.
All this “there’s not enough design information”, “it hasn’t been in operation for long enough”, “there’s not enough data about the supply chain” is all excuses.
They’ve been monopolising civilian aviation for decades. They never wanted a third player to be fighting over this enormous cake.
All C919 can do right now is keep its eyes on the domestic market where it has the most hopes of replacing other jets, with just a little bit of the international market.
Even so, there are people who criticise, “The domestic market has no choice but to buy the jets, plus there’s government subsidies. After all that, we’re better off just buying from Boeing or Airbus.”
So your suggestion is just not to build them? To keep using hundreds of millions of shirts to buy jets from Europe and America?
But shirts have to be imported from Vietnam and Bangladesh first because we can send them to Europe and America…
C919 is like a 2-month-old infant. Do you expect it to go out there and make money? It needs an invisible hand to protect it right now.
Airbus was established in 1970 and it burned money until 1996 before it started making a profit. It was taking losses for 26 years.
Without government protection, where would Airbus be right now? Can they still take 65% of the market?
It’s just like how 20 years ago, I made fun of BYD’s F3. But without the F3, where would the U9 be?
It’s just like I’ve always said, “The best time to build a big jet is 20 years ago. The second best time is today!””
Comments say, “With China’s industrialisation, there’s no reason we’re not building our own jets.”
“Great post! However great other people’s jets are, they’re other people’s. C919 is entirely ours. So long as we raise it well, it’s going to grow.”
“A lot of people only know to complain. Whether something’s going well or not, they’ll complain. But they immediately keel over as soon as you ask them to do something real. They don’t know how to do anything except complain. I approve of C919!”
A compilation of creative ways to save up money:
“Get internet loans off of every app that offers them, and save it all into a 12 month CD, then spend the year paying all of them back. Paying back debts is easier than saving up money, and ignoring the interest, once you’re done paying it off after a year, what’s remaining in your CD is yours. Continue it the second year and just keep going. Having debt on you suppresses your desire to spend money and you’ll be more frugal. In two years, you’ll have six figures in savings.
“I save money this way and all my friends say I’m insane, borrowing money to save money, but I actually did it for a year and saved up 80K.”
“Once you get your pay check, don’t spend a cent of it and save all of it. If you want to eat food, get a second job.”
“I saved money this way, decide for yourself. If I get paid 4K a month in wages, I’ll save 1000 into longterm savings, and split the remaining 3K into 30 days, so I can spend 100RMB per day. All of my expenses have to fit within that 100RMB. If I didn’t spend all of the 100RMB that day and there’s 20 remaining, I’ll save it into Alipay and not use it, and then spend tomorrow’s money the next day. You’ll find that the more you save, the stingier you get. You don’t want to buy anything anymore. And once you get paid the next month, you’ll save another 1K.”
“I agree, the more you save, the stingier you get. I used to get cabs all the time, and now I won’t get a cab if there’s a subway. Unless I’m travelling somewhere for vacation, and I’m too exhausted, then I’ll get myself a cab.”
“Writing down expenses. It’s the most useful method, by far.”
“And faking your own books occasionally.”
“You could throw it into an insurance, where you can’t take it out in so many years or else you’ll lose money. Isn’t that a way to save money?”
“You don’t even begin to compare to my coworker. She cooks all her own food as a starting step. But whenever she buys a piece of pork, she’ll split it into 7 portions and store it separately, and eat a tiny piece every day. If she doesn’t have time to make stir-fry, she’ll bring chili sauce and mix it with rice (homemade chili sauce). She doesn’t even have a table in her apartment. The only thing in her kitchen is a rice cooker. That’s right. Only a rice cooker. She can use it to cook veggies and rice and even make stir-fry (I was really impressed by this). She also told me that before she buys something, she has to decide if she’s going to use this thing more than 80% of the time before she’ll buy it. She went on an 11 day vacation to Yunnan and only spent 1700RMB. I am just in awe.”