Someone talks about once going to Beijing with her aunt just after middle school. As she passed a KFC, her aunt asked her if she’s ever had it. Out of pride, she answered yes. Very loudly, her aunt mocked, “No, you haven’t! Your tiny ass town doesn’t even have a KFC! Where would you go to eat it!?” The embarrassment made her not try KFC until junior year of college.
She’d went with some friends and watched them order on the KFC app with practised ease when she didn’t even know what the KFC app is and had to have her friend order for her. She went to get a straw for her friend, and could not figure out how the straw dispenser worked for the life of her. Tried everything, and in the end, a random lady had to help her. She’d bothered to dress up and put on make-up that day, and it still could not hide how scared and helpless she felt. It sounds like inconsequential, but she doesn’t know how to describe what it felt like.
Comments say that she has a relative who’s getting their kid growth hormones to make them grow up taller. She asked why she didn’t get it as a kid, and the relative said, “Even if it existed back then, you couldn’t afford it.” Ever since, even though the relative had been polite and nice, she never got close again.
A video of primary schoolers absolutely failing to do some jumping exercises. Blogger says although this is certainly not a representative sample size, but you can see that it’s not just one or two. If we let this go on, how bad will it get? Comments point out that these pads are thigh-high on the kids. It’s clearly designed for a grown adult.
The child of a famous actors is doing a series where she reads books aloud to get other children to read along and get interested in books. The internet is in uproar because she mispronounced a word. A blogger says that it’s not that everyone is mad that she mispronounced the word—she’s just a little kid, it’s not like she can help it. Everyone is mad because why is it necessary to take a kid who’s not that smart, and package them as a genius and a bookworm? The force behind marketing her so hard is what people are bothered by. Clearly, she’s not doing this because she’s passionate about reading. There’s a whole team operating behind the cameras. This is far beyond just a family video of a kid reading out loud. This is a product designed for the masses. Taking a kid who should be focusing on going to school and studying to make a profit off of the expectations of an audience, is this really acceptable? Finally, the actor is pretty smart—looks like he’s making all the plans necessary to lead his kid into the entertainment industry.
Someone asks for advice on whether she should split the bill with her boyfriend. They’re both pretty poor, so they’ve always split the bill since they started dating. They’re both freshly graduated from uni and pretty low-income. She makes 3.5K a month, he makes 4K. Just about every month, she needs to ask her family for help.
They were planning on going on a date in the evening. But since it’s International Women’s Day, she only had a half-day of work. When she’s walking over to her boyfriend’s workplace, she saw a grilled squid stand, got hungry, and bought two, and drank a boba tea. Once she was done, she was practically full already.
She met up with her boyfriend and they ate at a famous restaurant. When she ordered, she thought she’d still have room, but once the food was served, she found she couldn’t eat much at all. She ate maybe five bite total. He ate most of the food, and he took all of the leftovers home. Afterwards, he wanted to split the bill, and she felt like she shouldn’t have to pay half if she didn’t eat half of it.
Comments ask, “Isn’t it normal for him to take you out anyways on International Women’s Day?”
A blogger points out that daycare is very different from kindergarten. The whole entire world has a problem with daycare shortages and high childcare costs for children below 3. France puts an impressive amount of money into this area, but their public daycares can still only satisfy a very small percentage of people, generally prioritising teachers and government employees. The second tier of priority are for double-income families, but even then, there is a big wait list. Most people sign up for the wait list as soon as their kid is born, and they might not make it.
The only other option is private daycares (super expensive), or sending your baby to a nanny’s place, with the government subsidising half your costs. These nannies live pretty comfortably on government benefits, weekends off, and are paid higher than actual teachers.
To try to make up for the shortage of daycares, governments let kids go into kindergarten at 3, as soon as they are toilet trained. So from three onwards, you’re “going to school”, with all schooling costs free up through public university. It’s the same in Germany. But a lot of European countries, including Switzerland, only start taking kids from 4.
Why can they do such efficient free public education, but not free daycare? Because too much goes into raising young children. If the government really took over all of it, there would be a lot of parents who dump their babies off with the government from day one, and no government has that much money.
So a lot of parents are rather annoyed—why do I have to go to work every day just to make barely enough money to pay my babysitter? I lose all that time with my own child. So inevitably, one of the parents chooses to lower their work hours to stay with their kids.
Oh, btw, Ukrainian refugees to France get free daycare though.
Someone asks for advice that her dad had bought a house today all of a sudden. A little over 100K he had borrowed himself, with 100K he hadn’t paid off yet. It’s unfurnished, but he’s out of money to furnish it. He’d went shop hunting with her aunt and uncle, because they’re looking for a house. They own a factory and are wealthy enough to afford it. But her dad saw the prices were low, so he jumped on it.
Now, her dad wants her mom to put up 20K and her to put up 10K. But this is only her third year working. Her salary for the first two years had all went towards paying off her student debt, she didn’t have any savings at all. She only has a little under 10K to her name. She’s a teacher, only making 2K a month, so it’s very hard for her to put away money. She could take money out of her 401K, but if she does, she won’t have any money to take out for when she buys her own house.
Her parents suggest that since her brother is still in uni, they could wait on furnishing it. Just buy it and set it aside for now. She’s a little torn whether she should give them her savings or take money out of her 401K. Sigh, this is why she can never save up money. It’s always one thing or the other.
The top comment is, “I saw there was a brother and I understood everything.” “They have 100K to pay for a house, but not money to pay for uni. Gotcha.”
Spain had a divorce case, where the man was ordered by the court to pay his ex-wife reimbursement for 25 years of housework, using minimum wage standards for the local area. The combined total is 180K Euros (or 1.48 million RMB). In addition, this man named Ivana has to pay her 3500RMB/month retirement money, and 7500RMB/month child support for their two daughters. Comments say, “Wasn’t it just a couple of days ago that a Chinese housewife had gotten a reimbursement in divorce too? What was it, 50K RMB?”
A followup on Yubo, who had become internet famous for having many children. This blogger circles out the one who’s clearly the most confident and attentive and smart, and sighs that, “Pick out the best kid to be your heir, that seems so unfair to all the rest. They’d have been better off if they were born to normal families—at least they’d have their parents’ love.”
A video of a perfume collector showing off a “white Qinan”, some sort of perfume ingredient. He scratches open the black surface to show a grey-white wood underneath. This blogger explains that this is what happens when you commercially farm Qinan, then press it for oil. Each piece only costs 100-200 RMB to make, but can sell for over five figures. He’s got a friend who’s moved into selling Qinan in livestreams. He promises his bracelets have never been pressed for oil, but even then, after a couple of months, you’ll get sick and tired of the scent. Comments question who the hell spends five figures at a time on the internet.
Sina news reports that there is a massive plummet in the price of fossil fuel cars thanks to government subsidies in Hubei. 210K cars are selling for 90K. Particularly the Dongfeng brand, a local Chinese carmaker, is enjoying subsidies up to 90K per car. Sina news wonders if this is the first sign that fossil fuel cars are being squeezed out of the market by electric cars, and whether we’ll see an industry-wide reduction to car prices.
I'm having some trouble parsing the third paragraph -- I can't tell to whom each pronoun refers.