12/21/23 - My friend had pretty severe injuries. His entire calf was bruised.
“I suddenly understand why my mom uses most of her time for sleeping. My mom has been going to bed as soon as the sun goes down my whole life, about 7-8PM at night. She goes to sleep as soon as we’re done with dinner. And when she’s done with lunch, she naps through the whole afternoon too.
Sometimes, I’ll go into her room to hang some clothes up or fetch something while she’s sleeping, and she’ll suddenly ask in the dark, “What are you doing?” I don’t think she’s actually sleeping, so what is she doing?
Then, just as I woke up, I understood.
No much how much I run, I can’t avoid eventually becoming my mom.”
[This picture is attached to this post, but I have no idea what it means.]
Comments say, “This post really has a sort of, “Tries to capture complex, cathartic emotions with simple words, and use this contract to show off artistic prowess” sort of feel to it, but you don’t actually have the skills to pull it off. Sure, it’s great you understand your mom now, but literally what the fuck are you talking about?”
“A pretentious retard.”
“What are you trying to say? This is like the Department of Redundancy Department.”
“How do you take your kid with your while keeping up with connections?
Keeping up with your connections is something people have to do their whole lives, but you can’t teach this kind of thing. There’s no point in trying to talk reason to a little kid, because they’re not interested in it. So in order to raise our kid’s EQ, my wife has been taking him along on her connections trips. Of course, we’re not trying to take advantage of anyone, we’re just broadening his worldview. So how? You go from easy to hard.
The first target was his basketball coach. The basketball coach has a lot of excellent resources in his classmates and teacher, who are all teaching their own basketball lessons. In order to get more recruits, they’ll borrow kids from each other, and put on performances at communities to get people interested. The kiddos who get chosen for the performance get 300 RMB per hour, plus free transport and lunch, usually on a weekend or holiday.
My little Cai really wanted to make that money, and my wife and I thought it would be a good experience for him, so, let’s go.
First, you have to involute your capabilities. Being able to perform a three step layup is their most fundamental requirement, but that’s not easy to get good at either. So my wife told my kiddo that getting one-on-one training with his coach is 600 RMB per lesson. She’ll pay 550 of it, and my son should pay 50. He agreed, and they signed up for 20K’s worth of classes and bought a whole bunch of equipment. My god, you should’ve seen how happy the coach was.
Second, you involute your EQ. Every time he goes to his lessons, my wife asks little Cai, what kind of boba tea is he bringing the coach today? So little Cai will go buy an expensive cup of boba tea from the boba tea cafe beneath the stadium for his coach. That made the coach happy too.
Sometimes, the classes run late, and goes into lunch time. And my wife will ask, “What kind of takeout should we get for your coach?” And little Cai will say, “Abalone with braised pork!”
After extensive training by the coach, little Cai has become an expert at the three step layup. He’s a tall kid, very well developed, so little Cai has become this coach’s advertisement go to. Every month, he makes a couple hundred bucks for his performances, and he’s absolutely delighted.
Another kid who also trained with little Cai puts in way more hours every day, and still isn’t nearly as good. He’s never picked for performances. The kid is so upset that he refuses to talk to little Cai anymore.
After leading by example like this, little Cai’s grown a lot. He looks at things from a totally different angle now, and he’s realised the point of making connections. He’ll do great in society.”
Comments say, “I come learn from you every day. You’ve taught me way more than my parents ever did.”
“This is because little Cai has his mom to lead him along and pay his way. He’s already won before he was born.”
“I’m a grown ass man and I’m not even this good at making connections.”
“Looking at Korea really does make you feel better. It’s even more involuted than China, even civil servants have to do a ton of overtime, well over 10 hours a day. I asked the price of agricultural goods on the Korean market, and it’s almost always 3-4 times what they go for in China. And if a Korean lives in Qingdao or something, then they’ll often bring rice home with them to Korea, because it’s cheaper that way. But young people hardly cook these days, so they don’t seem aware of these prices.
What’s more surprising to me is that clothing over here is super cheap. A pair of jeans in an unusual size is like 2000 Korean won, which is less than 11 RMB. A grilled squid by the side of the road is more expensive than a pair of jeans. Of course, their clothes are usually made in China.”
Comments say, “I haven’t been to Korea in years, but I hang out in a group chat with Hong Kong and Australian people who go over to Korea frequently, and I see the latest guides on vacationing in Korea. There’s a ton of cheap made-in-China fast fashion by the side of the road here too. At least, they’re pretty common in real-life stores in Guangzhou. As for food, I know a buffet with no meat and just different kinds of kimchi, for 45 RMB a person, which is super popular with poor Korean people. It’s stuffed full at every meal time.”
“It’s something I viscerally feel every time I go back to Henan. Food is so cheap in an agricultural state. I feel like there’s no way I can actually starve to death.”
“My question is, how come clothing can be made in China, plus shipping costs, plus labour costs in Korea that’s more expensive than ours, and yet still end up cheaper than our clothes? How do they do it? The last time I bought 11 RMB pants was like well over a decade ago.”
“I bought the cheapest electric car on the market 5 years ago and I’ve driven 120,000 km in it. Bought this little thing in December of 2018, Xiao Mayi brand EQ 1 2018. With a full battery, it’ll go 301 km. It used to be our backup car, for my wife to commute to work with. We lived in Bao’an, Shenzhen, and my wife worked in Luohu, so she commuted 70+ km per day. Then, she changed jobs to somewhere in Pingshan, and now her commute is 120km. Now we’ve moved in Pingshan, and I drive this car to and from work now, 100km per day to Bantian. I could never pull off this kind of commute in a gas car.
To this day, I’ve used this car for over 5 years now, and the only thing that’s ever broken in it are two brake lights. I’ve done less than 20 RMB’s worth of repairs on it. I’ve never even changed the battery.”
Comments say, “But after five years, there’s no remaining value in it. Every car is the same. A 100K gas car that’s 5-years-old would sell for 30-40K at most. And if it’s 7-8 years old, then it’d only be 10K max.”
“What the hell have you been doing with that car for three years of covid, huh?”
“Now he’s edited his post to say he’s had it for 10 years [rolls eyes emoji]”
“Happened to encounter a film crew shooting some kind of show. Without photoshop, these celebrities all look so real.”
Comments say, “How is the one in black not gorgeous?”
“One of them is so short!”
“Even without photoshop, they’re all still pretty.”
“No wonder a Wuhan University Doctoral Advisor went crazy for her. If it was you, you wouldn’t be able to hold up either.”
Comments say, “She’s got a good figure, but her face isn’t very remarkable at all.”
“If I was a professor at Wuhan University, I’d sleep with some other university’s students [rolls eyes emoji].”
“Eh. I don’t see what’s so amazing about her.”
“So, basically, he’s completely innocent and it’s all her fault?”
“When I was little, my family loved eating plain broth hotpot, but as a little kid, I preferred bolder, spicier flavours. But every time, my parents would only buy the food that they thought was good. They’d spent hundreds on sea food and veggies, but every time I wanted spicy hotpot instead, my mom would tell me off, or even warn me about “inflammation”. She’ll scold the shit out of me for even adding half a grain of chilli powder to my dipping sauce.
It might sound ridiculous, but the 20 years I was at home, I’ve never eaten something I truly enjoyed. These last couple of days, I was running low on budget and not feeling well, but after hesitating a long time, I still decided to buy some stuff and make myself a hotpot. Got myself about 70 RMB’s worth of veggies (and I only ended up eating a third of it), had it delivered in 10 minutes, washed it, prepared a dipping sauce I liked, and ate in the kitchen.
When I put that first bite of spicy, flavourful lamb in my mouth, I suddenly burst into tears. All those nights I spent crying myself to sleep, wishing that I had the freedom to eat what I wanted—all it took was 20 minutes and 30 RMB to satisfy me.”
Comments say, “I don’t get why the comment section is being so hard on her. Sometimes, your emotions just kind of build to a point, and you’ll get weirdly vulnerable over very small things. Are you guys okay?”
“Man, what a fucking snowflake. Even if you can’t eat it at home, have you never eaten out this whole time you’ve been renting your own place?”
“This is just something that set her off. The fundamental problem here is that all of her needs and attempts at expression were stifled by her parents. This feeling of being controlled is going to extend to far more aspects of her life than just food, and she’s upset over a whole lot more than just this cheap, spicy hotpot.”
“The first little kid you take care of when you grow up is yourself.”
“After my sister got a divorce, she’s been staying at my house. It’s been 7 years now. My wife demands that she either move out or start paying rent. What should I do as her brother?
I payed the down payment on this house. My parents paid for it to be furnished. We’ve lived here for 7 years ourselves. Last year, my sister’s husband didn’t want their daughter anymore, so she’s brought her daughter into our house too.
Right now, I’m paying the mortgage on both this house and a backup house, and I’m under a whole lot of pressure paying off 2 houses and raising two kids.
For New Years in 2019, my mom handed out red pockets, and gave my kids 1000 RMB each, and my sister’s daughter 2000 RMB. She said it’s because I’ve got two kids, and my sister’s only got one. At the time, I was feeling kind of upset, but she’s my actual blood-related sister, so I didn’t say anything. But my wife is upset too, and she keeps nagging me about this.”
Comments say, “Are you even human, bringing this kind of shit up to your own sister?”
“Honestly, if you don’t have a family of your own, then you wouldn’t have a problem with your sister living with you. But you have a wife. You’ve got your own family. And your sister’s lived with you for seven years now. You’ve done all that can be expected you. Not to mention, she has a little kid with her too.”
“I can understand living at your parents house. But I don’t get living with your brother, dealing with the dissatisfaction of your sister-in-law, and never just renting your own place. That’s what I’d prefer to do.”
A tiktok video where a Taobao merchant shows off a returned pair of snow boots that are all worn and blackened, saying that she can’t sell these on to other people anymore:
Comments say, “Honestly, if you can’t afford to keep living, you can stop.”
“These online platforms need to have an option to see a photo of what people are returning before you accept the returns. And if it shows up looking different from the photo, then you don’t have a give a refund.”
“These people come over to Harbin and take photos and look at ice statues and ice lanterns, and then yell about getting their tickets refunded just because they didn’t get a turn on the big slide. And now that they’ve went home, they start returning their shoes and hats and winter coats. They’re all bastards! Shameless! Utterly shameless!”
“Making a record of this brilliant battle.
A couple of days ago, my friend got into a car accident at school. The reason is that he didn’t look both ways crossing the road, and a girl riding a scooter didn’t brake in time, and ran my friend over.
My friend had pretty severe injuries. His entire calf was bruised to hell and back, and he couldn’t walk for a whole day. I asked him if he got any money out of the girl, and he said no. He even paid her 200 RMB. Yes, that’s right. He’s such a pushover. He got ran over, and he paid the rider money, because he sincerely thought it was his fault for not looking first, so he just wanted to pay some money and make it go away.
Then, he went to the hospital for a check up, and although it was pretty severe, the doctor said he just needed to rest up and he’ll be okay. So we thought this whole thing was over.
And then, today, the girl at fault found my friend’s professor and demanded that my friend pay her scooter repair costs.
When I heard the news, I just about blew my lid. She was lucky my friend had such a good temper. He even asked if her scooter was still under warranty, like it didn’t even occur to him that she’s being unreasonable. I guess she figured out that my friend doesn’t have a spine, so she started getting all accusatory, like, “Did I tell you to dash out in the middle of the road without looking? Is it my fault that you’re too dizzy to walk? It’s not like I saw you and sped up to deliberately run you over!”
She kept pushing him, like she was certain that he was going to pay for her car.
I was worried that he’ll get himself into more trouble if he kept talking, and get taken advantage of because he’s not good at arguing with people, so I volunteered to help solve this problem for him. I told him to pull me into a group chat with the girl, and talk thing out.
When the girl saw that a new person joined, she didn’t slow down at all, she was still typing away talking about how my friend is at fault so he needed to pay, getting really worked up over it. She even wanted him to pay her medical bills.
Of course, the mission I’ve set for myself is to make sure my friend didn’t have to pay anything. And seeing how confident she was, I didn’t want to fall behind either, so I started to list her fault. The core boils down to
Sure, it was our fault for not looking both ways when crossing the street. But it’s your fault for not braking in time too.
This is the middle of the day in a school, and you’re driving fast enough to give someone’s calf bruises along the roads. Is that reasonable?
We’ve already paid you 200 RMB in compensation yesterday, but you never took responsibility for your mistakes.
We’re clearly more severely injured than you were, and we spent more money on medical bills probably. And we were still the ones to pay you.
So how dare you continue asking for money? Do you not feel like you have any responsibility in this accident?
At first, she was trying to dodge the point, not answering me directly, just kept on repeating that we needed to pay her. After she figured out I wasn’t going to back down, and she really didn’t have a leg to stand on, she went to PM my friend, trying to avoid having to talk to me. And I just @‘d her in the group chat and told her to talk here, and after a barrage from me, she fell silent.
And at the same time, this girl’s boyfriend came and added me.
The best part came.
At first, we all thought her boyfriend was here to join the argument, since my friend called me in as his champion, so it’s pretty reasonable that she’s find herself a champion too. So I pulled her boyfriend into our group chat, and shared past chat history with him, asking him to read over what ground we’ve already covered. I warned him we weren’t going to pay a cent either.
The girl was still silent, but the guy started off by pretending that he’s being all reasonable, we’re both at fault, and then he immediately added me as a friend and PM’d me:
“Bro, I’m so sorry about all of this. If you pretend to take a step back in the group chat and just apologise to her, I’ll have her apologise to you too, and we’ll all forget about this yeah?”
And I was like, “Sure, okay.” Since my goal was to solve the problem without my friend having to take on any further financial burdens. Since I’m getting what I want, I don’t really care how this ends.
So I let her down easy in the group chat, and admitted to her mistake again, and started playing the emotional card, “My friend couldn’t sleep last night at all. He’s going to have to miss out on his Christmas plans. This is all the result of his own carelessness sure, but it’s it a bit unfair to heap even more damages on him?” My friend is joining in too, apologising and @-ing the girl, wanting this whole thing to blow over.
But the girl still won’t reply, and didn’t look like she was happy with how things were turning out.
So 30 minutes later, I got another PM from her boyfriend.
“Hey, how about this, bro? I’ll secretly send you 200 RMB, and you can give it to her in the group chat, and say that this is to repair her scooter. Then, I’ll buy some fruit and have it delivered to your friend in his dorm too. I’ll even take you guys both out for dinner. Is that fair?”
That’s right. This guy, who’s completely uninvolved in any of this, is trying to spend his own money to settle this fight.
My friend and I were shocked, but this guy is still apologising, and he hasn’t accused my friend at all, and he’s been super nice, so we knew he must’ve tried his hardest.
At this point, my friend and I weren’t going to be mean to him or anything, so we took his money, then sent it to the girl in the group chat and apologised again.
And this time, she instantly replied, “OK.”
And sure, at this point, she apologised to us in the group chat too, and he quickly popped up to smooth everything over, talking about how we’re all polite people, no one has it easy these days, hope everyone has a good New Years, more friends means more opportunities, blah blah blah.
And with his best efforts, we shook on it and agreed on peace and disbanded the group chat.
Afterwards, all I could think about was that yeah, I like fighting on behalf of my friends. I’m good at settling conflicts. I know how to fight for my rights. When I went travelling with my girlfriend, I settled all kinds of issues from getting the wrong food at a restaurant, to taxi drivers taking the long route, to the hotel not giving us our deposit back because we were 5 minutes late checking out, to the quarantine mobile hospital not telling us our test results and making us pay for our stay.
I’ve always been super proud of my conflict-solving skills, but I never mention all the arguing and fighting and not backing down and getting red in the face, because I’m not proud of those parts.
Before this day, I always thought that “arguing my point” was the best, and perhaps only way to solve problems. For example, after getting stuck not going anywhere with this girl today, I bought up calling the police, because I don’t mind getting through a long, asinine legal process to protect my rights.
Of course, I’d prefer for her to back down in the negotiations stage, but my competitive nature makes me think that backing down is an ugly look, that it’s losing.
And this guy demonstrated to me another way of solving problems outside of “arguing my point”, which is just…taking a hit for the team. He resolved the problem in the fastest way possible, while saving everyone’s face involved. Seemingly, he’s the one who took all the losses, but every party involved thinks he’s a great guy.
My friend thanked me, for spending time helping him out, but I’m more grateful to him. I learned a very valuable lesson. Maybe I can’t do this yet, but I can think on it.”
Comments say, “I honestly can’t even imagine how many times he’s going to have to do this for her in their relationship. I guess he’s asking for it.”
“I can’t stand this kind of girl though. I’d never let it go.”
“I’ve done something similar to this guy. My girlfriend’s got quite a temper, and she got into an argument with our takeout delivery driver. Since the driver can see her phone number and everything, I was worried he’d hold a grudge or something. So when she was cussing him out and threatening to leave bad reviews or file a complaint, I contacted the driver on the down low and ordered him a cake and apologised to him. It’s just that, you know, even rabbits will bite when push comes to shove. He knows our phone number and address, and I just don’t want any trouble.”
A tiktok video of the same guy that’s been wearing traditional Dongbei flower print around the world [we’ve seen him before in Paris], but this time in London:
Comments say, “Proving, once again, that if you’re hot, you’re hot in anything.”
“It’s really got its own special vibe.”
“THIS IS ART.”
“A shocking demand! They don’t want goods, they want money!
The Gansu earthquake has drawn a lot of aid from all over the country, but local officials have brought up an unbelievable demand: donations should preferably take the form of money instead of goods. That’s very surprising to hear, because goods are exactly what is most urgently needed in a disaster. What good is money in this situation? Money can’t satisfy any real demands in a disaster zone.
Faced with the severe cold and hunger, tents, food, and warm clothing is what’s most important, because almost all the work being done right now is being focused on these aspects. Money is only useful once we’re in the rebuilding stage.
And yet, this disaster relief worker dares to demand monetary donations! That just makes people feel baffled and angered. After all, this is only the second day after the earthquake!
Does a normal disaster relief worker even have the right to make demands on what’s needed? Clearly, this is a decision that was made by a higher up, or a group of higher ups. This is such ugly behaviour!
Personal and private donations are very important in addition to governmental aid, and when I see demands like this, I don’t feel like helping anymore. After all, donations have to happen voluntarily, from a place of good will. But when people are arrogantly ignoring material needs and just asking for money, it really chills people’s hearts.”
Comments say, “Stop over-dramatising. Money is just easier to move. It’s easy to get too much or too little of something when people are donating goods, causing waste or shortages. Nobody is trying to make money at a time like this.”
“I mean, but I still feel like it’s best to donate appropriate food and warm clothing, because you can’t actually make sure the money would end up getting spent on the people. don’t flame me trolls.”
“Then just make a list of exactly what goods they need, and charitable people or companies can donate what they want off the list, and it increases spending and helps the economy. I just know I’m not gonna donate any money.”