Congress has passed a bill about making and amending bills. This sounds like big news, but as always, that is all the information that I have, and the comment section has no substance about what exactly this means.
Someone asks why scooters and bicycles drive on pedestrian sidewalks in Shenzhen—whether it’s a wide or narrow sidewalk too, even some barely wide enough for people to walk on. OP was terrified when taking her 3-year-old there and had her toddler walk on the grass the whole time for fear that he’ll get hit. Though, he ended up getting hit by a scooter anyways—thankfully, the rider was already braking and not much damage was done. Comments say that this is because there is no “bike lane” so to speak, and riding your bike on non-bike-lanes gets you a fine. The riders themselves don’t want to be on the sidewalk, because the tiled texture is super shitty for riding on, but Shenzhen had a total ban on non-motorised vehicles, and therefore never accounted for them when building the infrastructure.
A emotion blogger posts that she went to the movies recently, and while waiting for her movie to start, she saw a 10-year-old girl in a nearby store, squatting on the ground and crying. Her father was loudly yelling at her. Their conversation went as follows:
Little girl: “I didn’t mean to do it! Can you stop yelling at me, dad? I won’t do it again…”
Her dad, screaming, “How did you not mean to do it!? If you just watched where you were going, you wouldn’t have fell! You even wet yourself! How could that possibly be an accident!? You are lying to me? When did you learn how to lie!? Huh!?”
Little girl, increasingly hysterical, “I really didn’t mean to! Why would you say that about me!?”
Her dad: “How dare you talk back to me!? Just sit here, don’t change your pants, wear it around all day, so everyone can see who’s still wetting themselves!”
And the little girl continued to break down and started screaming and crying. OP didn’t know how to feel about it.
Maybe to a grown person, this doesn’t sound like much, but she thinks that for that little girl, this is an absolutely terrible day. And this sort of day is going to happen again and again in her future.
OP says that in her own memory, she’s been yelled at countless times for being sick, falling off her bike, losing some little item. This caused a habit that whenever something went wrong, she’d rather do a terrible job of fixing it herself than ever let anyone know, because 90% of the time, all she would get is scolding and blame, and not any actual help.
Now that she’s grown up, she often wonders who wants to get sick? Who wants to fall down? Who wants to lose stuff? Once this has happened, the kid’s already feeling bad about it on their own. Why can’t you just talk to them nicely? Why do you have to yell at them? Kids are kids because they’re not grown up yet and need help with all kinds of things. And parents are just normal people too—it’s not as though they know perfectly what to do in every situation. If you’re insisting that they execute your commands absolutely perfectly at all times, you’re not really educating or even raising your kids. You’re just testing their obedience.
Kids need for their emotions to have value. Otherwise, all the violence that happens to them, whether physical or emotional, will be branded deep in their psyche and become sources of their misfortune later in life.
She saw a line lately that read, “Even if you come from a bad family background, don’t conclude right away that you’ll never be happy. Trauma itself does not continue on in your life—your interpretation of your trauma does.” She agrees with that, but she can’t do it yet herself. It’s hard, but she continues to try every day.
A humour blogger looked under actor Huang Lei’s weibo account and got alarmed at how many people were gathered there, chastising his daughter for mispronouncing words in her videos reading aloud children’s books. The blogger went and found the videos and watched them. He said that before he watched, he thought to himself, “Man, who has all this free time to be this assmad about a little girl not knowing some words.” And after he watched it, he thought, “Yeah, the target audience are little kids too. If you’re gonna put it on the internet, you need to do your home work before hand and at least not be teaching kids wrong words. Otherwise, you’re doing more harm than good.” Apparently, people are also mad about her having blonde streaks in her hair and wearing a halter-top sweater in a video aimed at kids.
Beijing Youth News reports that doctors warn not eating carbs could cause brain function to deteriorate. It used to be that various forms of carbs, whether rice or bread, consisted of half of Chinese People’s food intake. But now a lot of people think that carbs are the cause of high blood pressure, cholesterol, and blood sugar. But doctors warn that with carbs taking up 50% of people’s caloric intake, cutting it cause could cause lack of nutrients, which is the root cause of a lot of diseases. Comments ask, “Lack of which nutrients? Cause which diseases? Is there a paper on this?” There are no replies to these questions.
A repost of a western tiktok video, of a lady who is the mother of 12 children, who has to wake up at 5am to prepare breakfast every day for her kids and folding 14 people’s worth of laundry. Comments explain that this looks like a foster family, and the government gives you money for fostering, followed by a heated argument over whether or not $1200 a month is enough to raise a kid.
A doctor blogs that she had a teenager in the hospital reporting strange pain for no reason. Sometimes, it’s joint paint. Every time it acts up, he’s in the worst pain of his life and it’s only fixed by strong painkillers. Did all kinds of imaging on his joints, and never saw anything out of the ordinary. Every day, it would flare up at the same time. An injection of painkillers will last the whole day, and the next day, it’ll flare up again at the same time.
Then, the pain moved to his head. Every time he gets a headache, it’s bad enough he would smash his head against the wall. Again, they ran all kinds of tests and imaging and could not figure out what is causing it. It acts up at the same time every day too—around the time that this doctor is leaving for work. Every time his pain flares up, his parents feel bad enough that it’s like they’re going through it too. But they can’t figure out how to treat it, so they can only continue to give painkillers.
One day, she was staying late and chatting with people in her hospital rooms, and she saw the kid’s dad grab a doctor to administer painkillers. She decided to follow to see what this pain actually looks like. She saw the kid is covered with sweat, shaking all over, his eyes clenched shut, his limbs trembling, breathing so hard and fast it’s like he’s going to pass out. As soon as he’s injected, he relaxes again.
She told the kids’ parents that they can try to do some fun activities with him, like watching TV or playing video games, distract him a little. The kid’s father says that it was in the middle of playing a video game that it started yesterday.
She took the dad outside the hospital room and talked to him a bit about the kid’s childhood, how he interacts with his parents, and had a thought.
The next day, the kid’s headaches flare up again, and the doctor on staff said that they had a nationally-renowned doctor coming in today, and he’d prepared an experimental dose of medicine. In one injection, it’ll cure the kid forever, and he’ll never have headaches again. And had the nurse prepare a “medicine”.
And from then on, every time she’d check up on the kid, she’d say, “Wow, you’re getting better and better, aren’t you? You haven’t had anymore pain, huh? You won’t ever again. Eat more, walk around more, do whatever you want. Sure, you can play video games. I can have my brother come in and couch co-op with you.”
And the kid did, in fact, get better and better every day. His appetite and circulation is improving too. After another month, he could walk around unassisted. For over a week now, they haven’t had to give him any painkillers or “medicine”.
An askreddit, “Can China ever overtake America as the strongest country on Earth?” The top voted answer is, “I read an Australian news report once, that says we can set aside the question of when China’s economy is going to overtake Americas, and ask some other whens.
First, when are the global elite going to send their children to school in China, instead of America or Europe?
Second, when are the young people around the world going to largely consume Chinese movies, culture, books, and not American or European movies, books, and music?
Three, when are consumers going to seek out Chinese brands and made-in-China products as a priority?
These three question strike at China’s weak spot directly.”
A tiktok video of a lady taking her four-year-old in to get braces, because her daughter has an overbite. The father says it’ll probably get better as she grows up, but the mother insists that it’s important for a little girl to be confident in her looks. She had to be held down to get fitted. The first few days she wore her braces, it made her lips bleed all the time. After wearing braces for a year, she now has straight teeth. A blogger reposted this video, concurring that, “She’ll thank you when she grows up—you need to fix teeth problems as early as possible.”
Comments say, “The dad already fucked his kid over on the genetics front, and he doesn’t even want to put the effort in to fix it. ‘It’ll get better when she grows up,” what bullshit. What use are men, anyhow?”
These are all weird enough that in total the effect is to make China seem like a deeply bizarre society. That's probably not correct, though.