[Since the only real question I got for the FAQ is just about the AI stuff, I don’t think I’ll dedicate a post to answering it. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a big question. And somebody who’s familiar with the industry would probably be able to write a fascinating post about it. But I literally know nothing about AIs and I’m not involved in those communities or circles. And as far as I can tell, the average Chinese person also knows nothing about AIs (except that they make art—bad art). I’m sure there’s communities of Chinese people who are into AIs and talk about it all day or something, but I’m not in those communities. And the thing about the Chinese internet is that to dodge censorship, large chunks of hobby groups and dedicated forums are kept explicitly private and invite only, and their posts aren’t easily searchable on Baidu or whatever. All I can say is that the mainstream discourse hasn’t evolved much beyond protesting AI art.]
A blogger posts screenshots of a news article from Qianjiang Evening News: “A lot of parents, especially mothers, put too much of an emphasis on studies. “Even if the kid has pneumonia bad enough that they need to be hospitalised, their mothers are still unwilling to take them out of school for it.” Ningbo University Hospital paediatrician Li Zhifei sighed.
That day, she saw an 7th grade girl Yun (pseudonym) in her office. A week ago, Yun started having a low fever, her temperature never dropping below 38C. She was diagnosed with Mycoplasma pneumoniae. Her mother bought her Azithromycin and had her take it for three days, but Yun still maintained a temperature of 38C, and her cough was getting worse by the day. Sometimes, it would get so bad that she would curl up into a ball as she coughed. Even her teacher suggested that Yun go to a hospital.
When Yun was diagnosed, Li Zhifei pointed to her CT scan, “This is very severe pneumonia. All of the lungs over here are completely white. The infection is very bad. I suggest that she be hospitalised for treatment.”
The mother hesitated and said, “Could we go home and just do two more days of Azithromycin, doctor? Maybe she’ll get better in another couple of days. If not, we can always come back, right?”
“My suggestion is that she needs to be hospitalised right now. Her cough is very severe, and I don’t think you should wait any longer. We can check if she’s built up tolerance to Azithromycin while she’s in the hospital, so we can put together a plan of treatment.”
But Yun’s mother was still very hesitant, “But doctor, she’ll fall behind on all her classes if she stays in the hospital.”
Finally, Yun’s father decided to listen to the doctor’s suggestion and have her be hospitalised, although Yun’s mother still felt like it was a shame.
Li Zhifei sighed, “We see a lot of parents like this in our clinics, especially in late primary school or middle school. They’re terrified of their kids falling behind. Some kids are burning up at over 39C, and the mothers send them back to class with just a bit of tylenol.”
And what’s even worse for Li Zhifei and his coworkers is that a lot of kids will get repeatedly sick, worsening conditions, or multiple sicknesses due to not enough rest or going to class with a weakend immune system. Kai, who was hospitalised that day, was one of them. It hasn’t even been a week since the last time he was hospitalised.
The 10-year-old Kai was hospitalised at the end of November because of severe pneumonia. Every day he was in the hospital, his parents would ask the doctors, “When can he leave? He’s falling behind on his classes.”
After 10 days in the hospital, Kai left with a prescription, and the doctor repeatedly warned, “He needs to rest for at least a week after going home. Don’t send him to school. We’ll schedule a checkup to see how his lungs are recovering after a week, and based on how well he’s coming along, we’ll decide whether he can go back to school.”
After Kai returned home, his parents thought that he looked a little under the weather still, and he was still coughing, but he hasn’t been burning up for a couple of days now, so they sent him back to school the very next day. And yet, the day before he was hospitalised this time, Kai returned home again with a high fever of 39C.
Li Zhifei shook his head, “This time, he got sick with Influenza A, and he’s got another case of pneumonia. Right now, we’re not sure if it’s caused by the influenza or other factors. We need further analysis.”
“I understand how his parents feel. They don’t want his sickness to interfere with his studies. But when a child is sick, rest is the best treatment they can get, and it’s absolutely necessary to their recovery. If they go to school sick, or before they’re fully recovered, then they won’t be very effective in studying either. They’re better off resting their body before they throw themselves into their work. They’ll be able to get twice the results with half the effort.”
Li Zhifei suggested that if a kid is diagnosed with influenza, then even if they took Oseltamivir right away, the medicine only helps in suppressing the time it takes for the virus to replicate. Ultimately, it’s still relying on the body’s own immune system to actually kill the virus. In this case, plenty of rest is undoubtedly crucial to becoming healthy again.”
The blogger tags the trending hashtag #Boy discharged from hospital for pneumonia and become infected again at school the very next day, and writes, “These shitty parents are so suffocating. It’s like they can’t stand it unless they fuck up their kids. And they’ll find every excuse they can to heap the blame on the teacher.
They’re useless and don’t dare to refuse the teachers. They have no agency with their own kids. Everything is the fault of the school and teachers.
What a poor kid, to have reincarnated to such horrible parents. If this continues, I’m sure the kid will end up with depression too.
Maybe the mother will finally be satisfied once the kid’s thoroughly ruined.”
Comments say, “You’re not gonna fall behind if you’re not in school for just a month. If you do, it means you were never on track to begin with.”
“If you don’t go to school, wouldn’t you feel guilty inside?”
“Do these people just genuinely hate their children or what?”
“Everyone’s saying that the expecting mother should get to choose how she delivers her baby.
Okay, let me ask you guys a question then. If a patient with early to mid-stage cancer was worried about the pain and suffering of receiving treatment and just wants to give up, can she do it? Sure.
Okay, so what if an early to mid-stage…let’s say stomach cancer patient is worried that the cancer will spread to her liver, so she wants the left half of her liver removed, so that it’s further away from her stomach and less likely to get cancer? Even though plenty of tests have been done to show that the cancer hasn’t spread? Can she use the same reason to request that her ovaries be removed? Can she do that?
No.
Because she doesn’t have any indicators that qualify for cutting off her liver or her ovaries.
Why can’t we respect patients? This patient is so worried about the cancer spreading that she’s suffering severe mental stress, to the point of maybe a mental illness. She’s even threatening suicide. Why can’t we just cut it off for her?
No. Mental illnesses need mental treatments.
And some people will say, well, that’s a bad comparison. Because if a vaginal delivery doesn’t work out well, they have to do a C-section anyways, so why not just go straight to the C-section? There’s only two ways to have a baby, why not choose the one that’s more certain to begin with?
But early to mid-stage stomach cancer only has three types of treatments too.
First, do what surgeries you qualify for, then chemo.
Or just do chemo right away with no surgery.
Or just don’t treat it at all.
Some patients have a bad enough basic physical condition—like being old or malnutritioned, such that they’re unlikely to survive surgery, so they do chemo until their physical condition gets better, and then do surgery.
Everyone has the right to choose plan 3, so why do doctors always suggest the first plan? Either way, after the surgery, you have to get chemo, so why not just get chemo right away?
Either way, you’ll probably die anyways, so why not just…?
Why do doctors even bother to take all kinds of cases and study them with all kinds of complicated statistical tools?
Everyone’s been studying exactly what week people should ideally give birth depending on what kind of conditions they have.
Why so much effort? So what if they’re a couple of days late?
My husband or my dad or my mom or my oldest kid or my ancestral spirit said that the luckiest day to be born is next week. I want to wait one more day. Why do I have to give birth today?
The internet said that 9 out of 10 inductions end up a C-section, why can’t you consider my feelings? Why can’t I choose how I delivery my kid?
Why do you let patients choose to end their treatment, but you don’t let doctors give them bullshit treatment?
Why do you make people who don’t have preexisting conditions try vaginal birth first? Because you have a quota on C-sections?
You’re right. There is, in fact, a quota on C-sections. But if you go over it, you won’t get fined or anything either.
It’d be easy to find an excuse to cut into you. If I throw on a lab coat and tell you that you can’t have vaginal delivery, would you dare to do it anyways?
Why does the government set a quota to begin with?
I’m sure it’s just to ensure you can have a second, third, or fourth baby, right?
So why don’t they put a quota on condoms or contraceptive pills or IUDs?
They must’ve just not thought of it, right?”
Comments say, “It’s like the default on Chinese Instagram is to get a C-section, then immediately take medicine to stop lactation, and feed the baby on pure formula. They dress it up with words like, “I’m myself first before I’m a mother.” “You gotta learn how to love yourself.” And I just want to say, if you want to love yourself so much, why get pregnant at all? It’s not like the kid demanded to be born. But if anyone tries to promote vaginal delivery or breastfeeding on Instagram, you’ll immediately get a “you’ve lost yourself” label slapped on you.”
“The expecting mother expressing a strong desire for a C-section is in fact an indicator for a C-section.”
“There are just too many accidents with vaginal deliveries.”
“If a foetus has no left hand, should I keep it? I’m sure my family and my husband and I would love him very much, but what should we do if he faces discrimination by society? Maybe it’s better for the kid to not keep him to begin with?”
A reply under the post says, “I’ve got a coworker whose foetus turned out to have some sort of lip deformity, and she immediately chose to end her pregnancy. Everyone thought she was super cold for a while. But she was like, “If the kid is born, we can take care of him while he grows up, but what about the discrimination he faces? This isn’t the sort of deformity that can be corrected by surgery. That discrimination is going to stick with him his whole life. Life is hard enough already, why would I make it even harder on him?”
Some people were like, “But that’s a life after all.”
And she told them off right away, “I’m the one who has to take care of him if he’s born. I don’t want to make life any harder for myself either, for something that’s completely avoidable.
As soon as she recovered from her abortion, she got pregnant again. The second kid was perfectly normal for all his checkups, very healthy, and her family and coworkers were all very happy.
When it came to naming this baby, her coworkers suggested, “Just use your first baby’s name.””
Comments say, “The entire point of pregnant checkups is to detect problems and avoid them early, not so you can throw yourself face first into hardship.”
“If you can’t even give him a healthy body, how can you talk about loving him?”
“Everyone suggesting keeping the baby should be put into a list, so whenever disabled kids are upset that they’re different from normal people, they know exactly who to curse.”
“Chinese parents understand education to be “teaching concepts”, not “teaching skills”.
Kiddo, you have to concentrate in class—concentration is a concept. But when it comes to precisely how to concentrate, under what circumstances you would become distracted, and how to concentrate once once you’re distracted? That’s a matter of skill. The parent never teaches it, because they don’t know how to themselves either.
When it comes to sex education for children, that’s a concept too. But exactly how should it be taught? Dunno. Can’t say.
Teaching kids contraception—that’s a concept. But how should you go about using protection? They’ve never thought about the problem in terms of the skills involved.
Do they use condoms?
Okay, simple question then: what if your partner refuses to use condoms once the doors are closed? What do you do from there?
Maybe some people will say, “Well, you’ve agreed on beforehand, right? He can’t change his mind once he’s already agreed.”
Maybe some people will say, “You can call the police—but what kind of evidence do you need if you call the police, what crime are you even reporting him for, and how do you give comfort to a victim? Never thought of such a thing.
So, how are we even teaching our kids to “use protection”? Just by talking about it?
So, when it comes to educating kids about safe sex, you don’t need to ramble too much. You can explain just this one detail, and so long as you can give them a good plan of action, that would still create a world of good in this world, right?
I really encourage parents from overseas to share your local experience. Different laws and cultures can lead to very different end results.
But I also want to know from Chinese parents, who do you really go about teaching this? That is, exactly how do you teach your underage children about safe sex? And how do you teach them to deal with incidents that come up in the course of safe sex, like someone refusing to use condoms?
“How” is a very important question, much more important than grasping the concept itself.”
Comments say, “I keep condoms and sex toys in my drawer at home, and my daughter’s played with all of them. She’s played with a vibrator against her face and ears, she’s poured water into condoms. I’ve told her that boyfriends and male friends are supposed to serve you, like bringing you drinks and sharing their food and toys and stuff with you. I just don’t know how much of it she’s really remembered and applied to real life.”
“Even teaching concepts is more than my parents ever did. They seem to think that I should just understand certain things without it ever being taught to me.”
“Are there really any professionals who can teach these skills? Not only do kids not get sex education these days, even grown ups can’t educate themselves.”
“There’s a bro who sold bananas from Hainan. He sold all the bananas, but had a bunch of banana stems left, and he wasn’t allowed to dump them just anywhere, and it would be costly to have them professionally dealt with. So he came up with an idea, and claimed that cooking banana stems in water can cure coughs, and gave it away to passersby. Then, he went into a different industry and forgot all about this.
Several years later, when he passed through that area again, he saw people out with stalls selling banana stems. He was confused why anyone would buy such a thing, and asked the stall owner what it’s for, and they told him that it cured coughs when boiled in water.”
Comments say, “Is this not how all health supplements on the market works?”
“What a brilliant idea. Now, housewive’s idea of “medicine” can expand from normal oil, salt, soy sauce, and vinegar to include other kitchen trash too!”
How does the face pay thing work? Because I have to imagine with 1.4b people, some people must have similar faces? How can you pay simply by showing your face? There's no false positives? There isn't a random guy in Hunan confused why some random guy in Guangdong keeps charging his account for groceries?
Appreciate the answer anyway, didn‘t know about the private dedicated internet forums, would find it really interesting to learn more about that. Like, how common are those, how successfully do they avoid censorship, how does the discourse in those groups differ from Weibo.