12/25/23 - Merry Christmas, everyone!
On the 29th of May, 2021, there was an incident in Nanjing, where a man ran a woman over with his car and got out and began stabbing her. A passing delivery driver rescued the woman, and was stabbed three times himself, becoming famous on the internet as “Nanjing Fattie” as a result. Sichuan Observer conducted an interview with him, about everything that’s happened in his life this year, where he got married to his wife in January. Had a daughter in February. Opened his own restaurant in May. Their daughter died at 21 days old in September from a heart defect. And his father passed away from oesophageal cancer in December. His summary of 2023 is, “Keep going forward, don’t look back.”
He posted a video to the internet begging for funds for his daughter’s treatment, because she needed to go on the ECMO machine, and it cost 40,000 RMB just to turn the machine one, and every day she stayed on it would cost another 10,000. He talks in the interview about how he and his wife often blame themselves for not making enough money, not saving up enough money beforehand, that they couldn’t afford to help their daughter. They’ve since started a charitable fund for babies with heart defects.
In November, his father was diagnosed with terminal stage oesophageal cancer, and the program shows a video clip of him visiting his father in the retirement home, which he does three times week. He reminds the nurse to keep giving his father Chinese Medicine, saying that, “This place is good. If he was in an actual hospital, he’d be dead already.” His father doesn’t know his daughter has passed away. When the old man asks, he just tells him, “Oh, she’s doing great.” He also talks about debating himself for a while, whether it would be better for his dad to pass away before the cancer spread to his lungs, to save him on pain and suffering. But he also wanted his dad to survive the year at least, because otherwise, 2023 would be too sad of a year for him. But in the end, his dad still passed away on the 6th of December.
Meanwhile, he hasn’t recovered from being stabbed two years ago either, and will need further surgery to deal with hernias. The reporter asks if he would save that girl again, knowing what it would cost him. He replies that in all his past interviews, he’d always said yes, but after this year, he probably wouldn’t have the courage to go up and fight someone hand-to-hand anymore, because he has to remember that he has a wife now. He’s not as hotblooded as in his youth anymore.
When it comes to their future plans, his wife says their first priority is to buy a house, so that when their daughter comes back to them, she can have her own bedroom.
Comments say, “T_T Why don’t good things happen to good people?”
“My boss is a weirdo who loves to drink her workers’ cokes. For a long time now, everyone at my office had a habit of hoarding coke and yogurts in the company fridge, in case they get hungry in the afternoon.
And our supervisor, who gets paid like 3-5 times what we make, makes a habit stealing our cheap drinks.
She’s super shameless about it too. Just sneaks up to the fridge, then pokes her head in and looks around, and ferrets out a can of coke or jar of yogurt, and then make a pretense of asking, “Which cutie’s coke is this? Could I have a sip?”
>.> Which of her cuties would dare to refuse.
Every day at lunch, she’s over there, eating her expensive ass 98 RMB a serving salad, while drinking the 2 RMB a litre coke that we had to save up for. We make fun of her all the time behind her back, that all the salad she eats isn’t gonna help with all that coke she’s drinking. And yet, she’s totally one of those bitches that never get fat no matter what she eats.
Until one day, one of the beasts of labour in our office howled—he’d bought some yogurts yesterday without looking at the date of production and they’ve already gone back. And another, much smarter beast of labour immediately comforted him, “It’s okay, CC [supervisor] will eat it.”
And of course, that afternoon, she’s getting piggish again and starts digging through the fridge. Since she’d already had some coke for lunch, she chose yogurts as her afternoon snack.
And so, an entire case of bad yogurts got eaten up by her in a week. And she never had the shits or anything. She’s still just as active as ever, telling us off.
Then, an evil beast of labour brought in a case of coke that his wife had bought last year and forgotten in the pantry. He was about to throw it away yesterday, but then he thought it would be a waste so he’s bringing it into the office to feed our supervisor.
And of course, she goes stealing cokes again at lunch.
This guy’s old coke was different from all the others, with an older packaging. When she closed the fridge doors, we were all sneaking peeks to see which one she got.
Woo! She totally took the bad cokes!
And so, that entire case of bad cokes disappeared with her efforts.
Ahh, yet another day of using my boss as my trash can.”
Comments say, “I’ve got a case of moon cakes that’s past the best-by date by 8 months, do you guys want it?”
“I used to sit in front of our department head, and every day, he told me to get him a coffee. But our coffee station only has cups, it doesn’t have mixing sticks. I was just fretting when his secretary told me the secret—just pick up whatever off the floor and mix his coffee with it. She’s a very beautiful girl, who later married the son of the mayor.”
“I’ve got dog food from 2007. My dog’s passed away for 5 years now. Do you guys want it?”
“Will your later years be really shitty if you have no children?
Before covid, I used to work in a retirement home in Xinjiang. Every day, I’d take the old people in the home to do some light exercises, like taichi or something. Whatever they can handle.
This is what I observed on my job. Don’t question me. If you think this is made up, then sure, it is.
There are two types of old people—people who can take care of themselves and people who can’t. For old people who can take care of themselves, their days are pretty good. Especially if there in there with their wife or best friends. If their children have good jobs or lots of money, then even the retirement home owner has to be super respectful to them. And if we run any kind of events, they’re sure to be the centre of attention.
The chain of bullying in retirement home is the type I mention above -> a couple whose children are poor -> single old people whose children visit regularly -> single old people with no children -> single old people whose children never visit.
Why are people who have no children better off than people whose children never visit? Because old people with no children are Lone Old People [a government categorisation], and the community or their old workplace would assign people to check up on them. They’re really better off than old people who are abandoned at the retirement home by kids who never visit.
Retirement homes are just like schools. All the heads of various departments are like the teachers, and the nurses are like school staff. The old people are the students, and there are all kinds of cliques among them. Where there’s people, there’s worldliness, after all.
And old people are just normal people who got old. Selfish people don’t start being selfless just because they got old. Hard people don’t get soft with age either. Cunning people don’t become optimistic and nice and merciful just because they’re old.
When I first got hired, I was still all enthusiastic, but I got a bucket of cold water over me in no time.
At first, I found that all the old people were bullying an old lady really badly. No one would stand next to her while they were doing taichi. If she gets close to anyone else, they yell at her to “fuck off!”
After learning about the situation, I found out she was at the bottom of the food chain—single, with children, but they never visit all year long. Worst of all, she’s from out of state, speaking a dialect that nobody understood.
As a person full of justice, I couldn’t stand that. Everyone’s paying the same money to come to this retirement home. Why should some people get left out of things? So I started being extra nice to this old lady, talking to her every morning and evening, and letting her stand next to me while exercising.
I thought because everyone respected me, they would accept her when they saw me doing so.
But I’d underestimated the amount of evil in old people back then.
Soon, rumours began spreading like wild fire, that this old lady was a thief. Several old people came reporting to me that some of their stuff was stolen by this old lady, but when I ask about details, it was all clearly made up.
One would say that the old lady stole her face cream, because she couldn’t find her own, and when she looked, this old lady had an identical bottle of equate moisturiser on her desk.
Another said the old lady stole his apples, because his son had brought him apples, and the next day, he saw this old lady eating apples, and they looked just like his.
The most ridiculous one was someone claiming to have lost a pair of white socks that looked just like what the old lady was wearing.
Like, what the fuck is this? This is just baldfaced lying. 90% of the old ladies here use equate moisturiser. 70% of them eat apples every day. 50% of them wear plain white socks! How the hell could they prove any of this was their stuff?
But all of them were vehemently demanding that I pull security footage. And of course, when I did, there was no record of the old lady ever entering their rooms.
In the face of iron evidence, the old people went away in defeat.
But the next morning, the nurses cleaning the rooms found that the old lady, who was accused of being a thief, had hung herself in her room.
They discovered her body at 7AM, and her son came by to pick up the body with the funeral home people at 8:30AM, and I only found out this news when I came into work at 9:20AM.
I cried all day in my office, feeling super guilty, and super shocked that the people who’d caused this were going about their day like it was normal, still playing mahjong with each other, even talking about how glad they were that she was dead.
And the worst part was, that the son that she was so proud of, that she talked about constantly, didn’t even ask the nurses why his mom would commit suicide out of nowhere when he saw the body. He just let out a breath of relief, and told the funeral people to take her to be cremated right away.
That night, I burned her some hell money on my own, to see her off. And I’d learned something new about old people.
In my years of work, I saw plenty of drama among these cliques, but those are stories for another time.
But honestly, these evil old people are still in the minority. Most old people just live their lives peacefully, and most are pretty kind and sweet.
Just after this sad incident, I was really moved by another old lady.
If this old lady was still alive today, she’d be exactly 100 years old. At the time, she was only a young girl of 95. She couldn’t see anything because of cataracts, so she couldn’t cut my nails, and the nurses always fucked up cutting her nails, so I’d do it for her once a week. Sometimes, I’d bring her some of my snacks too.
Every time I went to trim her nails, she’d happily stroke my face, and tell me how I looked just like her daughter when she was little.
By the way, this old lady has a son and daughter, who’ve both passed away. Her grandchildren never visit, so she’d kind of a lone old person too.
I had a week off for spring break, and when I came back to the retirement home afterwards, I saw her sitting by the door of my office playing with her fingers. I thought she’d come looking for me because no one else could cut her finger nails.
When she saw me, she smiled really happily and said, “Sweetie! You’re finally back! I’ve got some yummy stuff for you!” And she pulled out a wrinkly plastic bag from her jacket, filled with crushed walnuts.
I put the walnuts away in my drawers and trimmed her nails for her.
Then, when I invited my coworker to share the walnuts for me, he asked me, all envious, “XXX gave it to you, right?”
I was like, “Yeah, how do you know?”
And he was like, “She’s been smashing the walnuts apart in the yard for several days, and she’d hide the walnuts away like treasure. Won’t give it to anyone. Said she was saving it for you.”
And I was like, “It’s not like walnuts are expensive or anything, why are you asking her for hers?”
And the coworker said that this old lady had no money. Aside from the free fruit and milk she gets from the retirement home, she only gets snacks when her grandchildren visit once a year. So the people who’ve been around for a while would always joke with her and ask for her snacks, and she’s never given anybody anything. And he was like, “The hell kind of charms have you been putting on her, to make her sit in the yard in the middle of winter cracking walnuts for you?”
I’m a big crier, and I didn’t want to embarrass myself in front of my coworker, so I ducked out claiming to go to the bathroom.
I couldn’t bring myself to eat these precious walnuts, so they ended up going bad in my drawer…
Now that we’re done with the old people who can take care of themselves, let’s talk about the old people who can’t.
They’re, like, completely different worlds. Most of the old people in the invalid section are completely paralysed, or half-paralysed. In some of the more severe cases, the completely paralysed people can’t even speak. That is, aside from blinking their eyes and maybe making some groans of pain, these old people aren’t that different from vegetables.
And the half-paralysed people are basically stroke victims. They’re a lot better than being fully paralysed, at least they can express their needs and stuff, and they can still be spoon fed, instead of eating through a tube.
And a small minority of old people have severe mental illnesses, mostly Alzheimer’s.
My main work is with the old people who can take care of themselves, and I almost never come in contact with the fully invalid old people. Mostly because I really don’t like going to that area.
I’ll tell a story about them too.
One year, in the winter, our retirement home got sued by the family of a fully-paralysed, mute old person. The reason is, the old person was stripped naked, strapped to a wheelchair, and left in the corridor to freeze all night in about 10C by the nurses.
The old person’s daughter had come to visit her mother on the weekend, like she usually does, and found her continuously crying and making “ahhhh ahhh” noises with her mouth. Just as she was about to leave, her mother even tried her best to grasp on to her. She got really unsettled, and called a nurse to ask about how her mother was doing lately, only to be told that everything was normal.
This daughter had a sharp sixth sense. She felt like the nurse wasn’t telling her the truth. So she went to the manager and said that she’d left her phone in the activity room and couldn’t find it, and wanted to check security camera footage to see if some demented old person had hidden it or something.
The manager didn’t think anything of it and let her into the security office to check the footage, and the girl saw her mother get pushed into the corridor in a wheelchair and left there for four and a half hours.
I don’t know what the management had to pay to settle the case. I just know that that nurse got fired.
Later on, when I talked with the head nurse about this incident, what the head nurse said completely upended my worldview about retirement homes.
She was like, “No matter how shitty the old person is being, you can just beat them a little in their rooms! I don’t get why she’d drag her out into the corridor! God, what an idiot! I told her, the corridors have cameras! Cameras! She never listened! It’s her own fault for getting fired.” And I was like, “??? What? It’s normal for nurses to beat old people?”
And she was like, “That’s not what I meant. You’ve been to the invalid section. As soon as the elevator doors open, you’re hit by the smell of piss. The whole corridor is filled with their groaning. These old people can’t talk anyways. And some of the crazier ones even regularly try to beat you. Ask yourself honestly, if you had to stay in that environment 8 hours a day, wouldn’t you be upset?” I tried imagining it, and yeah, it would suck, but it’s my own choice to be there. Why would I take it out on the old people?
And she was like, “I mean, sure, I look down on these abusive nurses too, but what can we do? The regulations are getting stricter by the day. They don’t let people who don’t have a nursing license work here anymore. But any nurse with a proper nursing license would rather work in a hospital. They pay better and the work is easier.
If a normal family had a paralysed old person, it basically ruins the whole family with how much work they are. But here, a single nurse has to take care several paralysed people. Who would do this work? I’m just happy we can get people hired. I just look the other way if they fuck up a little here or there.
If it gets too bad, I’ll fine them or whatever, but in a couple of days, I have to find an excuse to give them the money back, because what if they get mad and quit?”
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I just pretended to be thinking while praying that this incident has at least taught this head nurse a lesson.
Finally, I’ll go into why I don’t like to go to the invalid section.
Aside from the horrible smell that never goes away and the endless screaming and groaning of old people, the worst part is the way the old people look at me. Every time I see them, my heart clenches and I get sad for days on end.
Because of long term torture by disease and loneliness and abuse, they have such passionate burning desire for new people and things. And since they’ve stayed too long in a retirement home, they were used to “charitable people” who come by with a couple bags of rice and cooking oil and want to shake everyone’s hand and take a million photos. So they’ve always got this careful sort of kissing up in their mannerisms.
I think maybe I’m just not made for working in this kind of environment. I can’t handle looking at those eyes.
Then covid hit, plus the owner made some bad investments, so this retirement home closed its doors.
I’d quit before that ever happened, and for the last couple of years, I’d been calling all the old people whose contact info I still had. This year, the last old person I had the contact info for passed away.
The last threads of fate tying me to that retirement home has been severed too.
I hope every old person can have a peaceful end of life.”
Comments say, “So the most important thing is to be healthy.”
“I hope everyone can realise that if you’re old and your life sucks, it’s not because you didn’t have children. It’s just because you’re old and life sucks when you’re old.”