12/28/24 - The three steps of life: 1. Accept your parents’ mediocrity. 2. Accept your own mediocrity. 3. Accept your kid’s mediocrity.
#Korean passenger jet on fire burnt to just the tail fins. “Today, a Korean passenger jet overshot the runway in an attempt to land, crashing with the fence around the airport and bursting into flames. After the accident, Korean firefighters immediately began rescue efforts. So far, two people have been rescued. From video of the scene, it can be seen that aside from the tail, the rest of the jet has been burnt beyond recognisability.”
Comments say, “RIP.”
“How despairing…it’s beyond lucky even two stewardesses managed to survive…”
“Now I get people praying on planes T_T”
“When did I start thinking love wasn’t important anymore?
A girl’s story of herself:
My dad was in the ICU and needed 20K urgently, and I only had single digits left in my card.
I called him and he only mumbled, “I…I don’t have money either…” And after a moment, he hung up.
He really didn’t have money. Never made anything of himself.
But he was a local. It shouldn’t be too hard for him to find some relatives or friends to borrow money from. But he wouldn’t.
I didn’t have time to feel sad or cry. I went through everyone I knew of who might loan money to me.
I married in from far away, and I’ve only been in this strange land for three years. Plus, I’m an introvert, so I had almost no friends.
But I still made myself call a coworker. “Is 30K enough? If not, I can ask my mom for more.” She agreed right away.
My tears immediately fell.
His mom had over 100K too, but he wouldn’t ask to borrow any for my sake.
My dad still passed away in the end.
I borrowed another 10K from that coworker to hold a funeral.
“I told you so. Why waste all that money…” He complained quietly.
Maybe the coldness in my eyes stopped him. He didn’t say anything after that and just hugged me from behind.
His broad chest pressed against my back. Through these years, every time we had a fight, he would resolve it this way.
At first, this warmth touched me. I married him despite his pennilessness without a second thought.
He’s said before that his chest will be my strongest support.
I honestly believed that even if he couldn’t bring me great prosperity, he could at least give me reliable warmth.
But now, I feel like there’s a block of ice pressed against my back.
It makes me shiver.
In my tears, I remembered all the little things…
Our kid was sick and in the hospital. He didn’t have any money and didn’t want to lose face by borrowing any. I had to take on a couple of jobs (writing essays for other people) before I was even done sitting the month, exhausted to the point of passing out. And he hugged me just like this and mumbled, “You worked so hard, wife. I’ll always love you!”
He’s always playing the ostrich when it comes to MIL troubles. Every time I’d be so upset that I burst into tears, he’ll hug me like this and rub the back of my neck and tell me, “I’m sorry you’re upset, wife. It’ll be better once we have our own house.”
But it’s been three years. He has a low-paying job, nothing in savings, and often says that people should be happy with what they have.
The more I recall, the colder I felt. I couldn’t help but shove him aside.
“I don’t want to live like this anymore. Let’s get divorced some time.”
These words fell out of my mouth automatically, coldly and naturally.
“But, but I love you, wife!” He hurried to explain.
I forced a smile.
“Does it matter if you love me or not? My dad is dead, but my kid and I have to live on. I’ve already found a better paying job in another city. I was going to leave in a few days anyways.”
I picked up the baby and went to the other room.
The door slammed shut and closed him off in a different world. And it shut off all my love in another world too.
The night hasn’t ended. There is so much left unspoken.”
Comments say, “This is Meilan’s storyline from A Song of Ordinary People, right?”
“Divorce right away! This is the type of people to suck others’ blood in the name of love. His supposed love is worthless!”
“Men’s love only exists in words. They only know how to talk. When it’s time to foot the bill, they say they’ll handle it, or go to the hospital and demand they treat people without receiving payment. Don’t fall for any man with no sense of responsibility or duty.”
A discussion on romance novel bad endings:
“I feel like the worst bad ending for a ship isn’t that they both die, or one of them die and the other one lives, but that they’ll love each other and break up and find closure and move on and continue on their life and find their next lover. That ending is so horrible. It’s the type of bad ending I can’t accept at all…”
“Why do you think this is the worst of the bad endings? Because it’s the most realistic one.”
“The worst part is when they both find a new date and the four of them can still get together and chat and laugh and say something like, “We were both too young back then.””
“And the end of this kind of novel, I’m just all like, “You guys have moved on, but what about me??””
“This really made me cry. I can’t even breathe.” [A short story that reads, “Qi Yan and I were each other’s first love. He had a great temper. He put up with almost anything from me. He was always smiling whenever I saw him. We were together for three years. Since we were long-distance, lots of small issues came up frequently. In the end, after thinking about it long and hard, we decided to split up. When we have the ability to not be long-distance anymore, if we still liked each other, then we could get back together.
At first, we still chatted with each other, shared our daily happenings. But as time moved on and our studies got harder, we messaged each other less and less. Sometimes, I’d want to send him something, but when I looked at the last conversation we had, I couldn’t bring myself to say anything at all. So we eventually fell out of contact. Aside from occasionally liking each other’s posts on social media, we didn’t have any connection with each other.
At the start of the year, my mom mailed me my high school year book. After so many years, it really threw me for a loop. I opened it to the first page, and there was Qi Yan. Under, “What kind of person do you want to be in ten years?”, I saw he had written down, “Have a happy family.”
I instinctively tried to recall what I had filled in, and I remembered. “Travel the world.”
Ten years after high school graduation, I finally have the ability to go wherever I want to. I won’t be stopped by distance now. I won’t be defeated by price tags. I won’t be looked down upon.
One evening, I had just gotten off a plane, and happened upon Qi Yan’s social media post. There was a picture and a caption. Qi Yan had a baby in his arms. The woman in the hospital bed was smiling. He was also smiling. “Mother and baby are both safe.”
And right next to this post from Qi Yan was the post of the northern lights I had just posted. I had captioned it, “Freedom.”
How amazing. We’ve both became exactly who we wanted to.”]
“The grandfather of this trope is here. He thought he was marrying her. She thought he didn’t want her anymore.” [Picture of the main characters of Dream of the Red Chamber.]
“But isn’t this every relationship you’ve ever been in?”
“Every time I read something like this and can’t move on, I imagine that it’s my best friend and her ex-boyfriend, and I immediately feel better.”
“False bad ending: both dead. Real bad ending: One dead, one alive. Worst bad ending: Love each other deeply but you can never see each other. Vicious bad ending: After loving each other with everything you have, you move on with your life and when you meet each other again, you can put everything behind you and talk and joke like always.”
“My best friend dated her first crush from 2017 to the beginning of this year. The guy went to the same middle school as us. They love each other so much. They’re both from shitty families, and they’re each other’s first love and salvation. Although they fight occasionally, they really did love each other. Everyone around them were witnesses. The guy didn’t go on to college. He worked and saved up money to buy her a wedding dress that fit. She saved up all her money to buy him a new phone. But this summer break, they broke up peacefully. Now he’s busy getting engaged to his new girlfriend, and my best friend just got a new boyfriend a couple of days ago. They’ve both moved on, but us onlookers can’t.”
A discussion of class differences in college:
“Cruel truths you only learn upon graduation: If you went to a normal school, you might fall into a delusion in your first or second year that everyone is just going to class, eating, gaming, and doing roughly the same thing in school, like there’s no difference at all between your classmates. It’s only around graduation time that you realise how far apart people are. The experience of going to class in the same classrooms makes people think that everyone is in the same socioeconomic class, but you were never the same. You just happened to all be waiting at the same red light.”
“Schools have weakened the distance between people. Once you get your graduation certificate, you return to your previous socioeconomic class. Or maybe you don’t need to wait until graduation. It’s pretty obvious by summer break. Some people are in the Grand Canyon in America, or vacationing in Hawaii, and some people are working in sweatshops for tuition money…”
“It’s true. All my friends around me get 100K+ for spending money every month, and I only get 20K.”
“So it’s not just that you should date someone from your own class, the saying works for friendships too.”
“If it wasn’t for uni, you wouldn’t get to talk to me in your whole life.”
“Uniforms are the best fabric for covering up income gaps.”
“Some things are obvious just through people’s vibes. You can tell at a glance.”
“I feel like unis were designed to alleviate class conflicts.”
“It’s true. My college dormmate paid for 4 years of electricity up front, and in the end, he ended up buying a house near the college and living there instead.”
“Some people were born in Rome. Some people were born workhorses.” [Rome and workhorse rhyme in Chinese.]
“I still don’t know what’s inside a Youth Palace.” [most extracurricular classes like art and music, a location that’s often described in primary school textbooks but that a lot of people can’t afford classes in.]
“”Hey, Yang, do you remember how we used to steal loquats from the school back in college? Lol…” “Of course I remember. Here, Mister Wang, allow me to make you a toast…””
“Senpai, I really want to know, after you graduation, at school reunions, do people really show off that much? Even if it’s unspoken?”
“The reality is, there isn’t any reunions.”
“My family is poor, so no matter what path I pick, it’s all uphill.”
“There’s a saying that I was born naked, so no matter what I have right now, I’ve still won.”
“It’s one thing that kids from poor families can’t rely on their parents, but most of the time, their parents are depending on them for a better lifestyle too.”
“The three steps of life: 1. Accept your parents’ mediocrity. 2. Accept your own mediocrity. 3. Accept your kid’s mediocrity.”
“My parents already gave the best they had to me.”
“Comparison is the best weapon for killing happiness.”
“My allowance is 1500 and theirs is 3000. I only learned after three months that I was the only one from the villages.”
“Older people always say that uni is a jumping board, but I feel like uni is more like an observatory.”
“So what if people are different? My parents already did good enough. Now it’s up to me.”
“Uni is like a 4 year long red light, and everyone just happens to be waiting together. When the light turns green, it’ll be obvious enough who’s driving onto the track in a scooter or a race car.”
“One of my roommates is going to school on student loans. My other roommate’s family drives a Range Rover.”
“It’s obvious enough right at the start of college. Some people need to depend on loans, while some people get five, six figures for spending money.”
“I’ve been graduated for ten years now. A classmate I got along great with is the Head of the Merchant’s Group now. He’s in my wechat, but I’m scared to talk to him.”
“My roommate is pretty lowkey. He gets 10K+ every month and I didn’t even know when we hung out. After graduation, we’re looking for jobs and places to rent and going to job interviews everywhere, and he’s just calmly waiting to go home and take over his dad’s factory. Sigh.”
“But the difference exists. My friend went to the neighbouring city for college for three years, so his dad bought him a house to study in. After he was done with his studies, his dad bought him another house where he likes to hang out so he can get better sleep. Good luck.”