An Introduction
A brief introduction here—I was born in rural Shandong in the mid 90s in China. We’re a super poor subsistence farming village, where at the time I was born, there were still plenty of farms where the primary farm tool is a donkey. A sweatshop opened up shortly after I was born, and that offered enough opportunity that my family was able to take me and move overseas. I’m still going back once a year though to visit family who is still in China.
After finding out about the chained woman (see the Cognitohazard Warning post), I spent a year being tortured by the lack of ability to do anything about it. I would literally wake up at 2am at night and not be able to go back to sleep, because I needed to do something and I couldn’t. So at the end, I decided to start up this blog translating the latest trending posts in China to a western audience. Partly, it is to bring attention about the chained woman case to a wider audience who isn’t yet numb to atrocities like that, whose disapproval might urge the Chinese government to do something (though I doubt it).
Partly, it’s just to give people a better idea of what daily life in China is like. It’s a very sealed off country, there aren’t a lot of Chinese people on the internet (for obvious reasons), and Chinese media isn’t nearly as popular as, say, anime is. Even from mainstream, legitimate reporters, I often see hilariously misguided reports, simply because most people lack the context to know what is normal in China.
My goal is to open up weibo every day, put it on the trending posts page, and just start going down the list. I won’t omit any posts (other than straightforward advertisements), so I’m not cherrypicking a data sample. I don’t know is weibo tailors posts based on what I look at and what I comment on, though. Once I have roughly 1500 words, I’ll post here.
Finally, I want as many people as possible to see this blog, so every post will be a free post. You get nothing if you pay money to me, except maybe peace of mind. I’m grateful for any support, but I don’t have any paid content to pay you back with. Every cent I receive will go into spreading awareness that the punishment for cutting off your husband’s penis in China will get you a sentence of $200. If you disapprove of this, then consider donating whatever money you want to give me to the Tahiri Justice Centre. They’re good people.