I used to have a classmate whose family was very poor. His uncle paid for all of his tuition and helped him through high school.

Later, we were both working, and he told me, “The person I hate the most is my uncle. I don’t ever want to see him again.”

It confused me. “He paid your tuition for years. Why would you hate him?”

He said, “You only saw the money he paid for me. You have no idea what I had to go through for that money.”

“I felt insecure in front of my classmates and teachers because my parents can’t afford tuition. And I felt inferior and like I owed a debt in front of my relatives.”

“If my uncle hadn’t helped me, worst case scenario, I just drop out a few years early. But now that he’s helped, he’s crushed my dignity beneath that money for all these years.”

I didn’t speak for a long time after hearing that.

Helping people is hard. Accepting help is also very hard.

Some people remember that you delivered them coal in a blizzard. But some people only remember what they were like at their lowest point.”

Comments say, “Ultimately, it’s just up to the person. Not everyone knows how to show gratitude, but not everyone is an ungrateful bastard either.”

“What a bitch. If he had balls, he would’ve just went ahead and dropped out. He got everything he wanted and now he complains.”

“Maybe his parents told him too many times to respect his uncle. Maybe his uncle really did hurt his pride as a sponsor. Maybe he was never taught how to be grateful while growing up. There’s too many possibilities…”

“The former biggest female clothing livestream Ms. Kekeli announced they are shutting their doors. It’s a reflection of all cheap livestreamed female clothing.

They started with the low price, high volume model, using their low prices to attract large amounts of orders. But what followed was a high return rate. Plus, quality control was very iffy. I the livestreams, the clothes the streamers model have all been tailor fitted to them, and it’s very different from what the average consumer gets.

The low price route seems crowded, but the actual profit margins are very low. They only compete on price and can’t maintain quality, so high return rates keep eating away at their costs. This kind of model never lasts long. And with female fashion going into a winter, it’s stores that use low price to involute that fall under the pressure first.”

Comments say, “It’s not a shame at all. Their quality isn’t up to standard, who knows where they source their materials, and with such high return rates, it’s clearly people weren’t getting what they were promised.”

“This can get on the trending hashtags? They charge quite a lot of money for a couple scraps of fabric in female fashion, and they won’t give refunds. And they’ll sell the exact same item at different prices.”

“What’s so hard about female fashion? These bullshit stores will call adding a belt to a skirt a “two piece set”. Can’t they at least make good fashion first before they try to get our sympathy?”

#Sun Yuchen files complaint against commenter. “It’s probably this post by Lu Kewen, right? It’s so blunt that it got through Sun’s defenses.”

[The post reads:

1. Sun used this short story to completely destroy Jing’s future. After two days of public opinion fermenting, Sun got the complete opposite result. So far, the public mostly thinks, “Although Jing did some things wrong, she still didn’t deserve to be treated this way. And Sun’s behaviour is too low. He’s more deserving of public shame.” Some media personalities even call out Sun as a “scumbag of the ages”. Now the entire Chinese internet doesn’t quite agree with what Jing did but still have sympathy for her, but are all united in their condemnation of Sun.

2. Before Sun attacked, he probably thought he could use the enormous enmity between men and women on the internet, and use bride price as a cover to get the support of men. But things didn’t go the way he wanted. Most men are rational. And the way he destroyed Jing is so vile. He’s not acting like a man, but like a petty worm. Nobody agrees with his actions. Sun has failed on both a legal and emotional level.

3. Looking at Sun’s entire life path, he’s constantly engineered virality to attract people to buy his coins and enter his platforms. He’s always drawn public attention with ridiculous behaviour. But whether it’s eating with old American men [he bought a lunch with Warren Buffet and then didn’t show up], eating a banana, going to space, etc, that’s all stuff only the crypto or tech circles would pay attention to, and nothing was too beyond the pale.The public watches him screw around the same way they’d enjoy a clown show. But htis is different. He’s using actions the public can’t accept to destroy his ex-girlfriend who is an A-list celebrity. This act of publicly writing a pornographic story went against the most basic of social values, and that’s why all this attention has bit him in the ass.

4. Why would Sun do something so extreme? I didn’t understand yesterday, but I combed through the news today and it’s become more or less clear. Some people on the internet says he’s doing this to drum up hype for his new meme coin, but he probably didn’t issue this coin. He went to hold a meeting in Hong Kong on the day he posted in order to make the public think he’s the head of some legitimate institution. He’s trying to build up an image of himself as a legal builder of basic infrastructure. He wanted all of this attention to whitewash himself. But now everything’s gone off the rails towards some uncontrollable direction.

5. The reason he acted so weird, challenged all of society’s values, is most likely because he’s having trouble with cash flow right now and he’s run into big trouble overseas. Most likely, the Trump family is targeting him. He couldn’t convert his investments in Trump into cash, so he’s been forced to enter a lawsuit with a company under the Trump family conglomeration. He’s fallen into a double trap both economically and politically, so he was forced to go all in on this gamble. He screwed up, he’s panicking, and that’s how he created the biggest piece of gossip in 2026.

6. But what we have to make clear is that Sun’s previous public image is, “smart, good at starting shit, a little ruthless, but it’s fine if you just don’t get close to him.” But after this, his public image has become that of a “ruthless and petty person”. Sun is hated by everyone now. At this rate, this will become the biggest mistake of Sun’s life, and it’ll become the turning point of Sun’s life too.

7. You can check it out yourself. In the last 10 years, has anyone who’s gotten a ton of negative publicity and been hated on the Chinese internet had a happy ending? That’s why I said yesterday that Sun is going to face a lot of backlash. He might see a powerful force beyond anything he’s seen before. This might just take longer than other people think.

Final clarification. I had a bit too much to drink this morning, and I wrote down all this rambling while drunk. I’m not targetting anyone in real life. This is all a fictional event I dreamed up.”

Comments say, “The last sentence is the core essence.”

“This is all true, and I’m sure it was very embarrassing for him, which is why he complained.”

“Her team is really working hard.”

“Of the recent cases where a entertainment personality publicity incident caused feminism to backslide, a certain K-pop idol doing a strip dance is a very typical case.

At the time, a lot of people were on her side with the excuse that it’s legal in France, what’s it got to do with you in Asia?

But we see the result in the last two years. It’s directly caused female idols to wear less and less on their bottom half. You can often see female idols with half their butts hanging out.

Although K-Pop culture has always been about sexiness, they didn’t used to show their butts.

Back in the day, Stella was forced to wear sexy clothes and film a sexy MV. That song, “Marionette” caused members to become traumatised. But from a modern point of view, looking back on the MV, it’s really not that big a deal.

Because our bottom line has been lowered. Even an A-list idol is stripping. Showing your butt has become the newest trend. What used to push our bottom line now seems positively conservative.

Is this progress? Or is it a step back?

Of course it’s a step back.

Especially for idols in the lower tiers. They didn’t used to have to show their butts. K-Pop had a tradition of performing with safety shorts. But when a top idol abandoned her boundaries, then lower tier idols don’t have a choice anymore.

They’ve collectively been “voluntold”.

Even if they didn’t want to, they will be forced into it. All you have to do to shut them up is say, “Even the top idols are showing their butts. What are you getting hung up about?”

I’ve even been seeing Chinese celebrities showing their butts, even when that’s not necessary for a complete performance. And after being brainwashed by butt-showing culture, our bottom lines have all been lowered, and this is one more traditional value we’ve lost.

It’s the same thing with this Sun and Jing case.

Fundamentally, it’s just a naked transaction. Sun is a scumbag, but Jing shouldn’t get to whitewash her behaviour because of Sun’s lowliness.

The cost of whitewashing her is eroding people’s understanding of surrogacy. I’ve seen a lot of slipper slope comments.

Like, “Surrogacy is legal overseas. What’s wrong with it?” Or, “It’s not like she went through with it, so it’s fine.” Or, “Older women should be allowed to get surrogates.” “If you were rich, you’d want a surrogate too. Only women understand how much childbirth harms the body.” Slippery slope comments like these.

But I remember that in the past, if a public figure even revealed the thought about getting a surrogate, they’d be destroyed, like Xu Jinglei.

All she did was post her opinion, and she was repeatedly whipped. But now, you can get a surrogacy contract exposed, and so long as you didn’t carry through with it, you’re not allowed to be criticised. Our bottom lines have been lowered.

This kind of lowering is very scary. The slippery slope of understanding will cause a lot of poor women to lose their rights.

Do you still remember the surrogacy village? Wives and daughters all became surrogate mothers, even when they’re in their 40s and 50s. They have to get pregnant with the next baby before they’re even done recovering from the first.

Why? Because our bottom lines are too low.

So long as you lower the bottom line of surrogacy, use a slipper slope, brainwash people’s understanding, and turn surrogacy into a normal transaction, then poor women will become commercial uteruses. Nobody cares about their rights.

Support Lisa and it lowers the bottom line of clothing, and make more idols lose their rights.

Support Jing Tian and you lower people’s understanding of surrogacy, and you’ll increase the risk that poor women will end up in a surrogacy situation.

The cost of supporting them is being paid by the bottom of society.

Shangguan Zhengyi put his personal safety at risk to expose surrogacy, but all you need to lower people’s understanding of surrogacy is just some hot gossip about public figures.

Everyone is responsible for condemning surrogacy.

Sun and Jing, who broke up because of surrogacy, should both be chased out of the public view. Platforms need to stop giving them traffic, or else it might as well be exposure therapy.”

Comments say, “Like the saying goes, downward freedom is not freedom.”

“Don’t forget about that accountant.”

“Actually, a lot of people get brainwashed by Koreaboos. Koreans work hard, Koreans are popular all over the world, but they have no idea that Koreans have always been damaging their rights.”

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Shanxi, Shuozhou recently saw a dispute. The news never actually explained the key point. The whole case is that a man and a woman held a wedding but didn’t get a marriage certificate, and then the man died in an accident. In this situation, there’s two sums of money in dispute. The first is the bride price the man paid, 500K. Should that be returned since they didn’t actually get married? The second is the inheritance the man left behind, sum unknown. The woman didn’t actually get married to him so she’s not sure how much money he has either. She figured by herself that there’s probably 4 million and demanded that the man’s mother, the only legal inheritor of this man, give her half, which is 2 million.

The first dispute is whether the bride price should be refunded? The judge ruled no. He believed that it was the man’s accidental death that prevented the marriage from taking place, so there’s no need to return it.

The second dispute, the judge ruled that the man’s mom should pay the woman 400K. This ruling is actually completely baseless. There’s no statutes supporting it at all. It’s a typical case of an “arbitrary ruling”. Since 1994, China hasn’t had any civil marriages. In this situation, if they don’t have a marriage certificate, then they’re not husband and wife. There’s no basis that she should get any money. But the judge has the right to make arbitrary rulings. He has a lot of power in our current justice system, and almost no oversight.

The judge just felt in his heart that 400K was a reasonable number.

You have to pay attention that since the woman and the man never got married, she can’t accurately assess how much money the man has. In this sort of case, the judge making the mom pay the woman 400K basically proves that the judge favours young women. If a different judge felt that older women who lost their only child need the money more and ruled that the woman has to return part of the bride price and doesn’t get any of the money, that’s also permissible.

So this sort of case might as well be opening a lootbox. And the reporter is going to focus on different aspects when it comes to persuading people to accept this ruling. If it favours the younger woman, then they write about how young women have it hard. If it favours the older woman, then they’ll write about how old women have it hard.

And the public will get mislead for so long that they mistakenly think there’s some kind of hard rules being followed here.”

Comments say, “What if he had left behind 4 million in debt? How much would she have to pay back?”

“If they had a wedding, they would’ve been living together as husband and wife, so they should be recognised as such. That’s how we use bigamy laws. How do you explain that?”

“I can understand not returning the bride price. I don’t understand getting part of the inheritance.”

#Jing Tian surrogacy in America conflict. “I hope the all the angry people remember that Chinese laws has never listed the surrogate as a criminal.

Institutions that organise surrogacy, healthcare workers are all in violation of the law, but the surrogate herself isn’t. There’s not a single law in China about this. None.

If you can’t accept anyone doing surrogacy, then you can reach out to your People’s Representative to propose an amendment. But right now, this doesn’t exist in Chinese laws. No matter how immoral you think surrogates are, they didn’t violate the law.”

Comments say, “Jing Tian is a public figure. She’s not any random person. If she really did sign a surrogacy agreement, then she shouldn’t appear in public anymore.”

“Cancelling someone is about morality, not the law.”

“Is it already starting?”

“Zhang Yuqi isn’t around anymore because of surrogacy.”

“A lot of people, especially parents, have never actually lived alone before. When they were little, they lived with their parents, and then they lived with their spouse once they got married. They can’t comprehend living on your own and think it’s really scary.”

“Don’t you feel like that generation of people seem really scared of loneliness? I don’t know why.”

“This is why they’re so scared of going to a retirement home once they’re old. But they never felt bad for us when we had to live in a dorm as teenagers.”

“Living alone is great. Sometimes, I’ll walk out of a shower halfway through to start doing my dishes.”

“Living alone is great. If you don’t feel happy living alone, it’s probably because your house is too small.”

“A lot of parents are just old on the outside. They never actually developed any independence at all.”

“I read a saying: marriage is using hassle to replace loneliness. Some people don’t fear hassle, some people don’t fear loneliness.”

“Because old people didn’t have phones.”

“Why did your tolerance level go down? It’s simple. Because no one is grinding you down. No one is waiting on you to serve them.”

“I don’t know how you feel, but after living on my own for a while, I’ve become like this.” [Attached screenshot of another post, “The older I get, the more I sympathise with “evil witches” in fairytales. They avoided crowd and moved into the woods to live by themselves, and when someone comes by to trouble them, they’ll want to kill those people…”]

“The best part about living alone is that nobody can judge me.”

“Yeah, living alone is all about how when shit goes down, so long as you don’t mind, then everything is okay.”

“The best part about living alone is that when you spill something, you can just clean it up. You don’t have to face accusations and questions. And if someone else screws up, you don’t have to waste effort comforting them or getting angry. You don’t have to digest anyone else’s feelings. You’re only responsible to yourself.”

“Yeah, when you’re by yourself, you just have to solve problems. You don’t have to deal with other people’s questions, accusations, curiosity, etc. You just have to be responsible for yourself.”

“No wonder my mood is so stable when I’m by myself.”

“Summers are the best when living alone. You can change out of your shoes and strip out of your clothes when you come home and walk to the shower naked, and then walk around naked afterwards too. It’s cathartic like being a caveman.”

“People who like living alone wouldn’t get lonely. If they felt lonely, they shouldn’t live alone.”

“They don’t know how to live with themselves. They gotta be talking to someone no matter where they go.”

“Aside from safety issues, there’s only benefits to living alone (of course, men don’t have to worry about this).”

“Actually, getting murdered by a stranger while living alone is a lot rarer than getting murdered by your husband.”

“The worst part about living alone is probably just not having any money.”

“You’re better off living with a roommate your age than being at home. Roommates have a sense of boundaries.”

“Living alone is indescribably great.”

“It’s great. I can get up at 2AM to mop the floor and nobody is going to say anything.”

“I live alone. My cat is my servant, and I’m the Emperor. My house is my dedicated cat cafe.”

“I still haven’t figured out the downside to living alone.”

“The biggest problem with living alone is that I can’t finish all my food by myself. I bought a bunch of bananas two weeks ago and haven’t gone through them yet.”

“All I can say is that if Sun Yuchen’s story was true, then the Jing Tian I see isn’t a beloved celebrity that’s called a treasure of the world. She’s just a 38-year-old woman who’s been through heaven and hell and is full of anxiety and uneasiness and yet is still earnest and trusting.

After experiencing her ex, she might not know how to trust men again, but she still desired being loved and happiness.

She tests men, and when men pass her tests, she tries her hardest to pay them back in a way she thinks they deserve.

Awkwardly, like she’s trying to prove something about herself.

She’s been using her own way to tell this man, “I’m not a gold digger. I want to do something for you and for this relationship too.”

When they went to see a movie, she said they have to be alone in the theatre, but she probably didn’t mean that she had to watch the very next showing.

It’s not that hard to get a private showing.

She never thought about making someone wait by the theatre doors and give money to the audiences that already bought tickets. But this cryptobro wanted to take things to the extreme and made someone wait by the door and give people with tickets cash.

And she bought into the performance.

That’s why I don’t think she was trying to build something up by filing his nails for an hour.

She wanted to pay him back.

She wanted to earnestly pay back what she thought was also earnestness.

If I wasn’t sure about filing her nails, then we can see that this is how Jing Tian continues to act too.

She said she wanted to go to Tenerife, but she might not have meant making a huge deal out of a private jet. She says she doesn’t want to see other people on the island, but she probably didn’t mean making someone clear people out of everywhere. She said she can’t have any light when she’s sleeping, but she probably didn’t mean making two assistants cover all the windows with black tape. She said, “Can we go to Maldives?” But she might not have meant right away…

She mentions her desires on a whim, and there’s 100 ways of achieving them.

But this man always completed everything in the most expensive, over-the-top way. Of course she would be touched.

I think when they exchanged their exes like exchanging secret code phrases, she really took it seriously.

She was immersed in this relationship and was dating very seriously. She thought about how this might be the real deal. They might have a future together.

Or else she wouldn’t have asked him, “Why are you so nice to me? Have you treated other people the same way before?”

She wouldn’t use her own celebrity account to visit his ex-girlfriend’s social media and get screenshotted by her.

She wouldn’t have said that she wanted a child with him.

At 38-years-old, she might really want a kid.

That’s the best thing she could pay a man back with that she could think of.

But she’s not stupid. She’s a 38-year-old celebrity, after all. From having the thought to carrying it out, she wanted some level of security.

So she had him give her 30 million bride price.

When he instantly made the transfer, when she saw the “Got it” her mom sent, that’s the closest she’s ever felt to the security and happiness she imagined in the future.

And everything after that is the abyss.

No one can know about her getting her eggs extracted, so she probably had to go by herself. She probably didn’t even bring an assistant. She went to a hospital in Beijing at 6AM in the morning on an empty stomach to get 8 vials of blood drawn, and get all her hormones and ultrasound and AMH checked out…

To see how many eggs she had left.

She just about pulled her heart out of her chest. She wanted to prove to this man that she deserved the 30 million bride price.

But he didn’t show up even once.

Slowly, she began to realise that he might not be there in a lot of moments in the future.

When she was getting her blood drawn, when she was getting checked out, when she was waiting for the results on the hospital benches, when she was injecting herself with ovulation shots, when she was getting her eggs extracted, maybe even when she’s picking up the baby…

She got swayed again…

At her age, even if she’s going all in, she doesn’t want to lose everything.

She asked him for 50 million USD.

A little more expensive than that banana. She probably felt her future was worth that price.

She knows how much money he has. You can look it up any time you want. But at the same time, she knew that this isn’t a small sum.

What she was hoping for might not have been that he would instantly agree and make the transfer.

Maybe all she wanted was just a promise, maybe it’s some back and forth about their emotions, or even him pushing back and haggling her down…

What she wanted might not be a black and white relationship of yes or no.

But she overestimated herself.

She got nothing but silence.

In the end, she asked him, “The clinic asked me when the father is going to get here.”

And he said, “I can send someone over.”

She saw her future.

This is her future.

There’s no need.

Not just the 50 million she was never promised, but also the father who never shows up.

She asked him, “Are you sure about this?”

Silence for 11 seconds.

She said, “I understand.”

She understood.

And then she packed up her luggage and quietly left by herself. Left his team, the hotel he booked, his private jet…

All those moments she put on her face mask and sunglasses to go by herself to the hospital for a check up on a chilly morning, when she was injecting herself with ovulation shots in the morning, the imaginations she had about her future family and happiness, the moments she gave him her heart…

Nevermind.

She should just call herself stupid for still believing in that at 38-years-old.

She thought maybe he would try to fine her. Maybe they would just talk and have dinner. Maybe he’d ask for her back. Maybe he’d ask for the 30 million back…

She didn’t think she’d end up on the trending hashtags.

She thought they could part their ways peacefully before she saw the trending hashtags.”

Comments say, “If she had done the surrogacy, that bitch of a man would have ruined her. Thank god she stopped.”

“I’ll never condemn Jing Tian, because there are millions of us who might become just like her.”

“She went even though he didn’t even buy her a house.”

“Even in his own story, Jing was clearly more devoted than he was. He always had this judgmental point of view, getting his dream girl, his dream girl is a huge hassle, spends too much money, thinks too highly of herself. But her reaction was, “Why are you so good to me?””

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Her father was saved by someone in the desert, and in order to pay back that life debt, her father promised to marry her here on his death bed. And the new “home” she was married into was a half-collapsed cellar, an endless desert, and a husband she didn’t know.

She tried to run 7 times and was stopped each time by a sandstorm. At the worst, she was in so much pain that she thought about death, but there’s no way to even die out here.

What most people can’t imagine is that the worst thing about the desert isn’t the poverty or the wind or the sand, but loneliness.

Yin Yuzhen recalls that it was 40 days after she married in that she saw someone pass by her house. She ran over in excitement but saw only the footprints left behind in the sand. So she quickly went back home and got a bucket to put over the footprints, and soothed her loneliness by going to look at the footprints every day.

When Universal interviewed her, they asked her the secret to desertification control.

She said, “I think of the trees as my children. When I get sad, I’ll go cry on the sand dunes, and I’ll hear my trees rustling in the wind, and that’s my children comforting me.”

“The trees know all my suffering. The sand knows all my exhaustion.”

“In the past, I hated the desert. Now, I love the desert. It recreated me, and I will recreate it. We are even.”

Experience and suffering has created the most touching philosophy…

Ms. Yin Yuzhen is no doubt a great hero, but I don’t want to just praise her suffering. Her experiences are just experiences.

False honour delivered a true Jing Wei. [A little girl in Chinese mythology who drowned in the East Sea and turned into a bird after death, and now carries pebbles to the ocean every day in the hopes of filling it up one day.]

She dyed the whole desert green with her hate just like Jing Wei filled up the sea.

Some people choose to live this way, some people choose to live that way…”

Comments say, “Just reading this is making me want to cry. It’s such overwhelming despair, and an obsession much stronger than that despair. Jing Wei has the strength to fill the oceans because of her hate, and Ms. Yin’s story also started from an enormous hate.”

“Grow trees to pierce the heavens. What powerful words.”

“I only felt suffering. I can’t leave. The heavens won’t save me. So I’ll grow trees until they pierce the heavens. Yin Yuzhen, you are such a resilient woman! What a great woman!!”

“Goodness and evil comes from the same source. This is a concept that we need to teach all single men and women.

A take that came to me while I’ve been scrolling dating short videos.

Everything has two sides.

A husband can’t expect that a super pretty wife who dresses up all the time isn’t going to spend money, because for most people, beauty needs money to maintain.

A wife can’t expect a gentle family man husband can conquer win in the cruel rules of the jungle of society.

We’re all adults. We gotta be realistic. Nothing wrong with that.”

Comments say, “This is true. My ex-boyfriend was someone who had a very strong sense of responsibility. I later found out that even while he was in debt himself, he’d sometimes give money to his sick ex-girlfriend and even visit her sometimes. Why did I break up with him over this? Because I was helping him pay back his debt, and I can’t guarantee that he never slept with his ex-girlfriend in the half a month that he was visiting her. So I became his ex-girlfriend, and now he’s giving money to me hahahahaha.”

“An obedient man who listens to you will listen to his parents even more.”

“You’re so right. Someone’s good qualities and bad qualities are often two sides of the same coin. But amazingly, sometimes flaws can co-exist with flaws. Women can spend money and dress up and still not be pretty. A man can never do anything at home and never make any money outside either.”

“My example is that if someone has a very good temper, then you can’t expect him to be hardworking and selfless. He only has a good temper because he thinks nothing is his business! So people with a good temper need to be matched with lazy people, and people with bad tempers are often impatient but work very quickly.”

“The example I’ve seen is that if a kid is independent and mature, then you can’t expect him to love his home or his parents much.”

“So those CEOs in romance stories that dominate everyone outside, but come home and take care of you and serve you like a lovesick fool is also very rare?”

“I’ve never seen anyone who’s both got a successful career and really cares about family life in my life, men and women.”

“It’s not just people who are dating who need to understand this. It’s the same for following a celebrity or making friends. If you like someone for being straightforward, then you have to accept they’re going to say blunt things. If you like someone for always listening to you, then you have to accept that they don’t have strong opinions. There’s no such thing as a perfect person in the world. If there is, you probably just don’t know them well enough yet.”

#Tibet landslide. #Tibet landslide 3 dead 558 missing. #Northern Nepalese flash flood causes near 400 people missing.

“A couple of guesses. There’s probably not a lot of bodies in China because most of them got washed away downstream to Nepal.

They’ll probably build a mass grave here in the future.

The Kyirong port of entry is probably going to be moved back (ports of entry don’t have to be built right on the border). Maybe even as far back as a proper city.

Some of the local geography is going to change, but the Chinese-Nepalese border agreement says that the middle of the river will be seen as the national borders, and when the river changes course, the original border boundaries will not change.”

Comments say, “Probably not. From the final video, the people hiding in the first floor of the building might get washed away downstream, but the people running towards the branch on our side most likely got washed ashore the bank along the branch on our side.”

“A lake has formed now. A lot of them might still be within China, but if we don’t clear out that lake, it’s going to flood again.”

“All the life has become part of the mountain T_T There’s no way we can find any of them.”

“So this is a cultural difference. A 26-year-old Chinese man shot a cat with a bow and arrow in the Netherlands and was arrested and taken to court. He explained that he was looking for cat for his girlfriend, and he had fed the cat in this case before. The cat bit him while he was trying to capture it, and that’s what led to what happened. The lawyer explained that he was affected by Chinese norms and mistook someone’s pet cat for a stray cat (Dutch people like to free range their cats).

The aftermath is that the case caused a panic among the local residents and court is going to continue on the 2nd of November. The news story says that the man plans to return to China after serving his sentence, and his company is keeping a spot open for him, though the company has denied this, claiming to have revoked his labour contract and will never hire him again.”

Comments say, “This is all the fault of animal rights groups.”

“You’re allowed to randomly hurt stray cats with a bow and arrow? Is this how we export our culture?”

“The last sentence killed me.”

“Why would we allow someone like that back? XD”

“Nobody’s gonna say anything about how there must not be any birds in the Netherlands if they free range their cats?”

#An adult ticket trapped kids who need to ride alone. “What the rail department really needs to think about isn’t the rules about one person one ticket, but why in this day and age we still can’t meet the basic needs of an unaccompanied minor riding alone.

This is why moms, dads, and kids are the real oppressed minorities.

In comparison, “quiet cabins”, “first class seats”, and “pet transportation” are all specific needs that have been met.

So how come the much more urgent and important need of children riding the train has been put off for so long and not even thought about?

According to the most basic logic, if we really need to rank children’s needs, luxury needs, quiet needs, and pet needs…isn’t it obvious which should come first?

That’s the weirdest part.

The children who should have gotten the most consideration are having their needs answered to last, and when it comes to public opinion, people are the most demanding and mean to kids.

What we really need to think about is these backwards priorities.”

Comments say, “Because the responsibility for children lies with the parents and not the rail system. As a non-profit transportation system, the main job of the rail is to fulfil people’s travel needs. You can’t compare it to planes. Planes go from point A to point B with no stops in between and is much easier to manage in comparison. Not to mention, how much do plane tickets cost? How much do unaccompanied minor services cost? How many people are on a plane? How can trains possibly compare? Think about how much it would cost to have unaccompanied minor services on trains. It’s easy to say, but you won’t be happy if you have to pay for it with your ticket price.”

“Because the people with the strongest needs are at the bottom of society—can’t get a day off, can’t afford plane tickets, live further away and have higher travel costs. It’s the easier for these people’s voices to be ignored.”

“Of course we need to guarantee that children have the right to ride a train, but we also have to deal with children who take up extra seats with the urging of their parents.”

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“This blogger’s finally hit the problem on the head!

He said, “This Xingyu case has been fermenting for over 20 days. It’s such a big labour dispute, but the unions that are supposed to speak up for employees basically never said anything at all. What’s going on?”

According to regulations, when a company mass fires people, unions have the responsibility to protect worker’s legal rights. But from beginning to end, the union at this company never spoke up for these young people.

Some people said that internal unions in a business is different from a regional union.”

[The original blogger post is attached below: “I don’t know if people have noticed or not. This Xingyu case has been fermenting for over 20 days, and our union has been silent the entire time. Do we even have unions or not? If so, what are they doing? This has been blowing up all over the internet, and they haven’t even made an announcement, so how are they protecting worker’s rights on a daily basis? Should we be proud that hundreds of workers who’ve been forced to quit filed a complaint with the European Union and Hong Kong Stock Exchange?”]

Comments say, “It’s been over a century and we still have to beg white people for help with some things…sigh.”

“Unions just pass out benefits.” [As in, moon cakes during the moon festival, zongzi during the dragon boat festival, gift bags and such for Chinese New Year, etc.]

“Unions have never been involved in labour or pay disputes. All they do is tell workers to stop throwing a tantrum and go back to work first.”

“Unions aren’t gonna do anything. You don’t actually think unions work for the workers, right?”

“9 years of domestic violence. Sued for divorce twice and was denied each time. The 13th day after the latest denial, she was knocked out by her husband and toss off a cliff and died.

What was the judge thinking? A woman suffering long-term domestic violence wants a divorce. How is that so hard? It’s not like she didn’t fight for herself. The law left her hanging.

Now there’s no point in saying anything. She’s already dead. Her family doesn’t want compensation, doesn’t want to forgive, they just want the death sentence. The second hearing is on the 1st of September. I hope they give the deceased an answer.

And to those people casually denying divorce, take a good look at this. Behind every ruling is a life.

#13 days after denied divorce woman killed by husband.”

Comments say, “Not letting her divorce after 9 years of domestic violence? This judge is at fault!”

“Can we sue judges who deny divorces so we can make sure this sort of thing doesn’t happen again and protect women trapped in marriages?”

“There’s something wrong with our current marriage laws. If there’s domestic violence, cheating, prostitution, gambling, or drug use involved, you should be able to get a divorce straight away.”

“A lot of people don’t understand why Sun Yuchen is such a villain. When this story first broke, it was Sun Yuchen who contacted paparazzi to expose Jing Tian demanding 50 million USD for her eggs. Anyone who knows anything about the entertainment industry didn’t think this was a big deal, because it’s such a straightforward story. Jing Tian and Sun Yuchen must’ve been introduced to each other by some middle man. She contacted Sun Yuchen probably because she needed money, and Sun Yuchen is spending money to fulfil a dream of his. It’s just a transaction.

This is business as usual for the entertainment industry. People who need money find a rich person and give that person what they want in exchange for money. Sun Yuchen probably didn’t just give Jing Tian 30 million in bride price, but an even bigger number through the middle man. Or else he wouldn’t have demanded that Jing Tian fly overseas to see him and have relations with him on their first date.

This sort of thing has nothing to do with love.

So why is Sun Yuchen such a villain?

We’ve encountered a case before where a girl was dating a guy and was at the point of marriage. Her ex-boyfriend found her current boyfriend and asked him, “How much did it take you to bag her? I got her for just 200K.” And that was the end of her relationship. She did have a bride price dispute with her ex-boyfriend. They even took it to court. But at first, she probably just ran into some problems with debt, and her ex-boyfriend helped her through her difficulties, and she was so touched that she offered to marry him.

But when her ex-boyfriend spreads that information around in this way, her social image is done. There’s no point in trying to argue back.

Jing Tian is encountering the same problem, except she’s an actress that relies on her image to get paid.

The “boyfriend” that Jing Tian met when she first started her career is probably a very traditional man who’d never do something like this. Zhang Jike had certain lackings in his morality, and now with Sun Yuchen, he doesn’t have any morals at all.

If you accuse someone without morals of being evil, he would think you were flattering him. #Sun Yuchen responds to claim that Jing Tian wouldn’t sell love for money.”

Comments say, “Is there’s a price, then it’s a product. No matter how high the price, it doesn’t change anything. When someone labels themselves with a price, then they should get sympathy.”

“Is this the only time she’s done this? I don’t think so.”

“He’s making himself out to be the Gatsby of our age, and he’s telling everyone that Daisy will fuck you anywhere in the world for 30 million~ You can say he’s a ruthless guy, but he’s not a good guy at all.”

“She is an actress, but she’s not making money off of her abilities. Since the start of her career, she’s relied on capitalists backing her, and she’s never went back on that path.”

“Poor Jing Tian. I just found out that if you do surrogacy overseas, if the biological father doesn’t show up in person, then he’s defined as a “sperm donor”—in other words, after the kid is born, they have nothing to do with him legally speaking. He has no obligation to raise the kid, no inheritance rights, worse off than even an extramarital child.

So even in his own story, he said that Jing Tian kept urging Sun Yuchen to come over himself before egg extraction, and Sun Yuchen refused to.

So Jing started panicking, and she said, “Okay, if you don’t want to come here, then fine, but at least give me some money as collateral, so if you run off and disappear on me, I’m not stuck raising your kid for you.” And Sun’s Claude said not to give it to her.

So of course Jing retreated. This is the story behind, “booked for a month but only stayed for 8 days.”

And afterwards, Sun charged her for all the money he spent on flights and hotels and fees and demanded his money back or he’d expose her. He doesn’t care. He can even issue a girlfriend coin or something. Jing is a celebrity. She needs to maintain her image. This has ruined her.

So Jing got scared. Supposedly, she’s selling her house in Shanghai to raise money, but housing prices have been falling for the last two years, so she might not be able to get enough together. Even if she did, it’d be no use…she has nothing on him, so Sun can still expose her whenever he wants. #Sun Yuchen’s coin has market cap of 4.55 million USD.

So the lesson to learn here is, if you’re a celebrity, then don’t touch men. #Sun Yuchen wants a refund.

Of course, this doesn’t mean I condone surrogacy.”

Comments say, “Oh! Is it that guy! That something something Bo guy!! [Xu Bo] The one with tons of kids! This is how he got a lot of biological kids that has nothing to do with him legally!”

“Your take is obviously exaggerated and misguided. You have to look at the specific country/region, the surrogacy agreement, and how they determine paternity.”

“Sun is honestly so trashy.”

“I do feel bad for her, but she should still get cancelled for illegal surrogacy.”

#Moviegoer who was refunded by Sun Yuchen speaks up. “Sun Yuchen’s “My girlfriend Jing Tian is absolutely ridiculous. It’s been out for less than two days, and everyone has been debunking it. I tried to count how many, and it’s more characters than exist in his story.

A pilot who flies the A330 was the first to speak up, posting a video breaking it down line by line: 30 people is too light and you need to add extra fuel for balance, and then dump it again after you land? Balance is maintained with weight blocks. Dumping fuel in the air is only for emergency situations. It’s not something you just casually do to burn money.

Commercial airline blogger “Pilot Nic” followed, checking open flight records to see that this VQ-BIG isn’t a 200 seat passenger jet, but a 19-25 seat ACJ330. The operator is in Hong Kong, and the last owner is the real estate billionaire that everyone knows—30 people is going to fill it to bursting, and he says it’s “too light”?

A heavy hitter in private jet circles, Ma Hong, was even more blunt: Bullshit no plane that big has landed at this airport. Your pilot just wanted a bigger red pocket.

Qinghua University Aerospace student calculated: Even if it happened exactly the way he described, the fuel would only cost at most 300K USD, but he says it’s millions?

The airport wasn’t far behind either: Tenerife’s airport regularly sees 747s and A380s landing and taking off. Male has a run way of 3400 metres and can land an A380 easily. This “had to switch to a smaller plane half way” is actually just then riding a seaplane to get to their specific resort.

A commenter who’s been to Tenerife debunked the temperature: even in winter, the island is well over 10C. He says it was -15C, but not even the mountain tops get that cold.

Math commenter debunks cash: If 50 million is in 100 dollar bills, then it’s only 0.5 tons, but he says it’s 2.5 tons. It would have to be 20 dollar bills to make that true. This produced the trending hashtag: “Didn’t wanna shell out for hundreds even for a fictional story.”

A blogger who’s worked as an executive assistant before debunked the part about movie theatres: you get a private showing by contacting the theatre beforehand and locking a room down, and normal audiences won’t be able to get a ticket. Who would stand in front of the movie theatre and pay people off with cash? An audience member who was there in person adds: “He only refunded the original ticket price and not a cent more, and I had to waste my time waiting for the next showing.”

Bank worker debunks transfer: the first 30 million went through no problem, but the second one was suddenly limited to 1 million a day per card and you have to rotate through five cards? Why did a daily limit appear halfway through?

Claude officially said, “When it comes to personal decisions, I would only try to guide you to your own decision. I would never outright tell you no.” Sun Yuchen later admits that his conversation with the AI was fictional.

The lawyer he hired, Zhang Qi, even slipped up. The lawsuit they brought to court only seeks the 30 million in bride price and never even mentioned the part about 50 million USD.

All the big names are making their attitude known. Zhao Changpeng says he’s blocked him. Wang Xiaochuan fires shots, “It’s one thing to have no credibility. Having no heart and no honour is the scariest.” Even Hu Xijin said that he embarrassed himself.

The people close to him haven’t been sitting idle either. Ex-girlfriend Ma Jiajia posted to her friend’s circle saying he’s addicted to making money and is sick as a person. Another ex-girlfriend, Zeng Yi, is making fun of him while debunking rumours. Jing Tian’s office announced that this is an attempt at extortion using her reputation.

The best one was a reproductive medicine educational account, who confirmed that the only thing the story didn’t get wrong was the opening line, “An egg weights 3.5 micrograms.”

6000 words, and pilots, businessmen, ex-girlfriends, AI, and even his own lawyer all joined in. And in the end, the only true sentence was the line at the very end, “This is a purely fictional story.””

Comments say, “There’s another part that’s accurate. He really can’t go back to Beijing.”

“The hotel on the Pacific Ocean, the Montage Laguna Beach, costs 410K a night in his story, but that’s actually in yen. In RMB, it’s only a little over 10K.”

“He still got what he wanted—this is an unbelievable amount of traffic.”

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If you’re not sure who Sun Yuchen is, remember the art auction where someone bought a banana taped to a wall for millions? That was him. There was also a Coffeezilla video about him.

If you don’t remember Jing Tian, I made a post a while back about former famous Chinese Ping Pong athlete Zhang Jike, who was exposed to have massive gambling debts and to have given nudes of his ex-girlfriend to the mafia that he borrowed money from so they can extort money from her. She’s the ex-girlfriend in that story too.]

“My girlfriend Jing Tian.

The weight of an egg, 3.5 micrograms.

50 million USD in cash, 2.5 tons.

Jint Tian asked the latter from me in her phone call from Montage Laguna Beach, and her collateral was the former.

She went there to have her eggs extracted. Our surrogate child was supposed to be born in 2027. If we acted fast, they could’ve been born in the year of the horse. She offered this herself. At the clinic, she said she’s not getting it done without 50 million.

Montage Laguna Beach is on a cliffside. The Pacific Ocean is right below. Renting out an entire floor for 30 days cost 1 million USD, just for her privacy. She left after 8 days.

The remaining 22 days, the hotel’s cleaning staff still went up every day. My assistant told me that when she went to turn in the key, she ran into her once, a Mexican woman pushing a cart, going room by room, changing the towels, wiping down the counters, tucking in the sheets, and closing the doors behind her. It takes her 2 hours to complete a floor.

The assistant asked her, “Why keep doing this when there’s no one living here?”

She said, “The registry said there is someone.”

It’s a Palace of Versailles without its queen.

I suddenly realised that Jing Tian loves this. Jing Tian loves a place being empty because of her, she loves nothing happening.

Just as empty as the Montage Laguna Beach is a Gulfstream G700 awkwardly parked at Van Nuys. The flight crew check in every day. On the eighth day, she made that phone call, and no one has seen her since.

By 2007, there’s already people spending money on her. That year, I just got into Beijing University.

Of course, I wasn’t spending money back then.

A popup window appeared in my QQ. It was an ad featuring her. On my ancient IBM computer, the resolution was awful. I saved the picture.

I searched the internet in my 1000RMB a month Beijing University dorm, and I found her in our internal net. I sent a friend request. The school web asked for a comment. I write and deleted and deleted and wrote and after 49 minutes, finally managed to muster up a “Hello.”

She didn’t accept it.

She might not even have a school account.

In the following years, everything I have done, I have been thinking one question, “At what point would she accept the request?” When I made my first billion, I thought about this. When I made my tenth billion, I thought about this.

Then I stopped thinking. The website closed down.

I never sent a second request.

In 2011, Beijing was very cold. I bought a down jacket, 150RMB. I remember that price because I hesitated for three days.

The same year, she was featured in a 150 million RMB movie, The Warring States. Sun Honglei, Wu Zhenyu, Kim Hee-sun, Nakai Kiichi, and Jiang Wu were invited to decorate her, just like Montage Laguna Beach and the Gulfstream G700 19 years later. They don’t know why they’re here, but since they are here, something had to happen, but nothing happened. And then there was the 150 million USD movie, The Great Wall. Zhang Yimou, Andy Lau, Matt Damon. And then Jackie Chan. The list of names in the Jing Tian universe grows ever longer.

I was already in America by then, studying, investing. The only thing that hasn’t changed is that every computer I switch to, no matter how much of a pain it is, I would transfer that QQ photo to it.

19 years later, I joined her list.

We met each other for the first time at the Rosewood Hotel. I thought I would be nervous the day I finally met her.

I wasn’t.

She was much thinner than the photos show, dressed very casually, leaning on a couch. I stared at her and suddenly couldn’t remember just what I was waiting for.

I took her to see Cattelan’s banana. She stared at it for a long time and asked me, “How much was this?”

6.2 million USD.

She asked, “What if it rots?”

I went silent.

She said, “Whatever, let’s go see a movie.”

I said okay.

She said, “Aside from the two of us, there can’t be anyone else in the movie theatre.”

I said okay.

I went out and placed a call, and when I came back, she was still standing before that banana.

The movie was Zootopia 2.

A movie theatre with only two people—this scene typically only happens when the Central Propaganda Bureau reviews movies. I told my assistant to buy every seat in the threatre.

I’ve seen articles before denouncing fake box office numbers, saying that tickets are all sold out but only two people are watching. Now I understand that it might not just be for box office numbers.

It’s not that hard to buy up all the seats. What’s difficult is the tickets that were already sold. My assistant and bodyguard went to the doors of the theatre beforehand, and whenever they met an audience that already had a ticket, they’d hand over cash.

A couple with a kid came. The kid was already excitedly checking out the popcorn.

The assistant handed over a wad of cash. The kid doesn’t understand why they can’t go in. The adults accepted the money, said thank you, didn’t ask anything, and walked away.

26 people collected money that day.

After watching, she changed her WeChat profile picture to that of Officer Judy.

That night, I groped her breasts with my hands and she pushed me away.

I thought she didn’t want to do anything and pulled my hand back, just about to say something.

She didn’t say anything. She sat up and pulled a small bag out of her handbag and opened it. There was a row of tiny tools inside.

She said, “Your nails hurt me.”

I looked. I usually just cut my nails with nail clippers super quickly. The sides are still sharp. I never noticed.

She said, “Come here.”

She put my hand on her leg and filed my fingers one by one.

First the rough side, then the other side, then the other side. Every once in a while, she’d pick up my hand and examine it under the light, and then keep filing.

I asked, “How long do you need to file it for?”

She said, “Until it stops scratching me.”

She spent almost an hour on ten fingers.

In the meantime, she taught me that this side is for shape, this side is for polishing, don’t rub it back and forth, do it in one direction.

I said okay.

Afterwards, she turned my hand over and examined them again, touching them.

She said, “Okay, you can grope now. Wherever you want.”

She also said, “If I’m no longer around anymore, then there’ll be no one to polish your nails.”

I just laughed and didn’t say anything.

Three months after meeting her, I asked someone to put together a document for me. All her projects during those years, her partners, her company stocks, Jing Guoqing [her dad], Tian Xin’ai [her mom], all her associated accounts, her rental place in Beijing, the unit she owns in Shanghai, and others. It was completed in a week, a total of 40-some pages. There’s some romantic things in there too, but I don’t think it’s important.

Some of the things in that report she told me about later, and her story was a little different than what the report said. I didn’t tell her.

Some things, she never told me, and I never asked.

I trust everything she says.

I kept that report until today.

But I don’t believe a word of it.

She said that there was too many people in Hong Kong and we’ll get recognised. “We should go out somewhere.”

I said okay.

And she pointed to Tenerife on the map.

I said okay.

I went out and made a phone call and learned that that location was in the Atlantic Ocean off the Northwestern coast of Africa. The next day, by noon, our party of 30 set off. An A330 was waiting for us at the airport.

In the bedroom on the plane, she asked me, “Do you like my name?”

I said yes.

She said, “It’s a combination of my dad and my mom’s surnames put together. Isn’t that neat?”

Not really.

I said I remembered it the first time I heard it.

She hugged me and said, “Don’t call me Jing Tian from now. Call me mommy.”

Okay, mommy.

After we landed, the pilot came over and told me, “Boss, we’re not allowed to land on the island. They’ve never seen a private jet this big.”

Her rules were the same on the island. There can’t be anyone around us. I sent my assistant to deal with it. No one asked why. I didn’t ask how many people they had to clear out this time.

The Ritz Carlton faces the Pacific Ocean. The windows were too big and she can’t stand even the smallest shred of light while she’s sleeping. My assistant covered the whole room in black tape. Even when it’s bright daylight out, it’s still complete darkness inside. The tape kept peeling off under the sunlight, so it needed to be redone every day.

We had a total of 11 assistants. We arrived at 6:30AM, and they only left after we fell asleep. Two girls did the taping. One was responsible for the window frames, the other for the lights on the AC and power strip. They checked three times after taping.

We bought 30 rolls of tape, and then had to buy 20 rolls more. They discovered that it falls off the fastest when it’s put up after 3PM, because that’s when the glass is the hottest, so they switched to doing it in the morning. They’ll discuss it with each other, like they’re talking about an art project.

She knows what those two girls are called. I have no idea.

We stopped on a road next to Teide National Park to watch the sunset. The assistant got the roses out of the car and opened a champaign.

Mommy watched the sea of clouds and said, “It’s beautiful, but the sunset at Delingha in Qinghai.”

I’m a Qinghai native.

But I didn’t say anything.

That night, we watched the stars on top of the mountain. It was cold even with winter jackets on.

Mommy said, “Make a wish.”

I asked, “What did you wish for?”

Mommy said, “I’m not telling you.”

Mommy said, “It’s beautiful, but it’s too cold. Why don’t we go to Maldives?”

I said okay.

It was -15C in Tenerife, and 27C in Maldives. They’re 9500km apart, an 11 hour flight. But the airport in Maldives was too small. We had to switch from a passenger jet to a smaller plane half way.

Mommy said, “The small plane is so much louder. I like the big plane better.”

In the bedroom of the jet to Maldives, mommy told me she wished for a child with me, preferably through surrogacy.

I didn’t ask why. I figured she didn’t want to go through the pain.

Half way there, mommy suddenly sat up and looked for her phone. She connected to Starlink and said, “Oh no.”

I asked what was going on.

She said, “Someone is threatening me. They’ve been texting for three days and I never responded.”

I asked, “How much do they want?”

She said, “It’s none of your business.”

She spent a long time typing, deleting and retyping and retyping and deleting. Afterwards, she turned her phone over on her leg, and then turned it over again soon after to check it.

I asked who it was.

She said, “Someone who used to work for me, an accountant. They went to prison, took the fall. Got nothing when they came out and came looking for me.”

I told her, “Just call the police.”

She gave me a look. “You don’t get it.”

I asked her, “Did you give them money?”

She said yes.

“How much?”

“Eighty thousand.”

I said, “You had to hesitate for three days over that?”

She didn’t say anything.

She didn’t say anything for the rest of that day and only went to sleep after we landed.

The first to arrive in Soneva Jani is mommy’s luggage. The small plane couldn’t hold 30 people’s luggage, so we had to use three planes. Mommy only had one suitcase but she had a plane all to herself. She said she didn’t want her stuff piled up with everyone else’s. Soneva Jani is famously, “no news, no shoes,” so mommy felt relaxed.

We had 26 people with us between hotel butler, body guards, assistants, and two drone pilots following from afar. The assistants began taping again—the lights on the AC, the lights on the power strip, again and again.

That night, we told each other about our exes like we were exchanging code phrases, like we were matching up the years in a distant Dynasty. Mommy didn’t want to miss anything. But there’s a taboo for mommy—no bringing up the athlete. I didn’t bring him up, but I know that he did the tattoo on mommy’s back.

It’s too big to remove.

She said, “We’re family now. My parents didn’t have it easy raising me. You have to give a bride price.”

I said okay.

She told me two names, Jing Guoqing, Tian Xin’ai, and two bank accounts.

30 million RMB.

I transferred it. I saw those two names for the first time in that 40-page report.

In a bit, she showed me her phone. Tian Xin’ai had texted her, “Received.”

[There’s a missing screenshot here so the story doesn’t quit match up.]

The picture was too blurry for her to see, so she went to do something else.

That night, I deleted that photo.

The next day, I got it back again from my old phone.

Mommy keeps scrolling on her phone. I asked her what she’s looking at.

She said, “Nothing, just people fighting over credit again.”

Credit. Someone has to come first in the credit in a movie. Even if it’s dual protagonist, only one person gets to be first.

I said, “How boring.”

She said, “Yeah. What’s harder is that sometimes, you have movie couples. For the 40-50 days they’re filming, they’ll sleep together at night and fight over who comes first in the credits in the day.”

I said, “That’s so inhuman.”

She said, “Yeah. But once the movie is done, no matter how many times you fucked before, you act like nothing ever happened.”

And then she scrolled for another half an hour.

On the 2nd of January, 2026, Soneva Jani, New Year, I proposed to mommy.

I decided on it on the morning of the 1st. The ring was still in Hong Kong. There was nowhere that sold rings on the island. The assistant took a seaplane to Male and came back that afternoon with a ring in a hotel envelope.

Mommy said the diamond is too small.

Mommy said, “It’s okay, we’ll get a bigger one later. Also, can you come to Beijing?”

I went silent.

She thought I didn’t want to go. [To be clear, Sun Yuchen is wanted in China and will get arrested if he ever steps foot onto the mainland.]

Mommy asked, “Why are you so good to me?”

I said, “Because I love you.”

She said, “Have you ever done this for someone else before?”

I said no.

She laughed and didn’t say anything.

One morning, I woke up early and she wasn’t in bed.

I checked outside. She was sitting on the balcony, facing the sea. The whole sea was dark. There were no lights, the sun wasn’t up yet.

I saked, “Why are you up to early?”

She said, “I’m counting the days.”

I asked, “Counting for what?”

She said, “Go back to sleep.”

I sat next to her for a while, didn’t know what to say. Then I went back to sleep.

When I woke up again, she was already done with her makeup.

We stayed for 14 days in Maldives. No one recognised her.

The thirteenth night, we were in a restaurant. She took off her sunglasses. After a while, she took off her hat too and put it on the table. She sat like that for a whole meal. It was a German couple next to us. The waitress is Sri Lankan. No one looked at her.

After eating, she put her hat back on.

Mommy said, “Let’s go back.”

I said, “I thought you weren’t done yet.”

She said, “It’s too quiet.”

Back in Hong Kong, mommy met my parents.

That night, she said, “We have to meet each other’s parents and plan the wedding. You gotta send more money.” Once again, to Jing Guoqing and Tian Xin’ai.

I didn’t ask why.

I said, “I have a daily limit of 1 million per card.”

Mommy said, “That’s too slow. Use all five cards.”

Five cards, bound to two accounts, on rotation. When I got to the third card, I hesitated, but I still made the transfer.

Mommy said, “This is so inefficient.”

I said, “You should invite your parents over to Hong Kong for Spring Festival.”

Mommy said, “We already planned to spend Spring Festival in Hainan this year. Maybe next year.”

Spring Festival, fireworks in Victoria Harbour. A million people came. She wasn’t one of them.

3AM in the morning, I took my parents back home.

The roads were empty. No cars waited at the red light. But I still stopped.

Mommy said, “Don’t worry about meeting the parents for now. I’ll head to LA right away to get my eggs extracted. I just need to deal with some business first.”

Mommy asked again, “Can you come to Beijing?”

I was silent.

She didn’t tell me what’s at Beijing. I didn’t ask.

Mommy said she had to have a house in Hong Kong under her name.

I said okay.

We didn’t see each other for Valentine’s Day.

One time, she told me over the phone that they took 8 vials of her blood that morning.

I said, “That’s so much.”

She said it was fine.

I said good job.

And then we talked about something else.

I only learned later that she had to fast for the blood test, and it has to be on the 2nd or 3rd day of her period. The day has to be exactly right. She headed out around 6AM that morning. In winter in Beijing, the sun wasn’t even up yet. There were more tests after that. I only learned about this because there was one more entry in the bill my assistant would show me every month. It first appeared last year. Not a big amount, just a couple thousand. Then it was every month after that, sometimes 2-3 transactions. I approved it very quickly. I don’t need to look into the details of that kind of numbers. I only learned later that they were blood tests, hormone tests, ultrasounds, AMH, checking her egg supply and how many can be extracted, whether this is even worth it.

She did all of it in Beijing.

I don’t know at which hospital. I don’t know if she went alone or if there was someone with her.

25th of February, she arrived in Hong Kong.

She said she’s not going to LA until she sees her house in Hong Kong.

I showed her all dozen units I checked out in the last half a year. She diddn’t like any of them. I’ve never been to any of those units. My assistant spent half a year picking them out one by one. The assistant sends it to me, and I send it to her. One unit was half way up a hill and has a view of Victoria Harbour. The photo was taken at dusk. For a second, the camer shook, and you could see the photographer’s shadow on the wall. I stared at that shadow and wondered who that person is. How much did he walk today? How many houses did her see? Does he know who he’s checking this house out for?

There wasn’t enough time, so she still boarded the Gulfstream G700 to LA. 28th of February, she flew to Montage Laguna Beach.

On the 8th day, mommy called. It was afternoon for her, and early morning for me.

She said 50 million USD.

I said I have to think about it.

She didn’t say anything. I could hear ocean waves crashing on her side.

After a while, she said, “Okay.”

I hung up.

Since I met her, I’ve never told her, “I have to htink about it.”

I used Claude Code to go through all my cash assets, and it concluded that this amount won’t affect me at all. I checked again. Then I asked Claude Code my question, and Claude said, “Don’t give her the 50 million USD.”

I asked, “Does she not love me anymore?”

Claude said, “I don’t understand love, nor do I care about it, but you can’t give her the 50 million USD.”

I’ve never refused her before. It wasn’t out of generosity, but fear. I was scared of her response back.

And now someone is saying it for me.

I stared at that line of text for a long time. What scared me wasn’t its intelligence. It’s that Claude didn’t hesitate at all.

Claude didn’t find it difficult.

I thought at the time, this is probably something transcendental. Humans couldn’t do this.

Does she not love me anymore?

The next day, she called me again.

Mommy said, “The ocean is so big.”

I said, “Is that so?”

She said, “This floor is so big, it echoes. Someone came by to clean up this morning and I hid in the bathroom until they went again.”

I said, “You can tell them to not come.”

She said, “It’s fine.”

She said, “The clinic asked me when the father of the baby is going to get here.”

I said, “I can send someone over.”

She said, “It’s fine.”

And then she said, “Have you decided?”

I didn’t say anything. I wasn’t thinking. I wasn’t thinking about anything at all. In the phone, there was the ocean on her side, and Victoria Harbour on my side. Neither side spoke. I counted, 11 seconds.

Jing Tian said, “Okay.”

Jing Tian said, “I understand.”

She hung up.

I thought back to this multiple times. What did she say to me in those two days aside from 50 million USD? The ocean is big. The floor is big. She hid in a bathroom. That’s all. I remember all of it, word for word. What I don’t remember if her voice. How did she say, “I understand.”? I couldn’t remember, so I stopped thinking about it.

I put my phone on my bedside table, screen down, and then I did something. I don’t know why to this day. I put my hand on my chest and counted.

My heartbeat was very even.

I counted again. Still even. About 60 beats per minute, just like normal. I sat there, hand on my chest, like a doctor doing a check up on someone else.

I thought, “So this is how it is.”

For the rest of that day, I did nothing. I stayed in my room until the sky went dark and lit up again. I watched Victoria Harbour go from blue to grey to black. 6AM, the buildings in the financial centre across from Victoria Harbour began lighting up one by one. In the middle of all that, my assistant knocked on my door once and asked what my dinner plans were. I said I didn’t need it.

I didn’t cry. I kept waiting for myself to cry.

Later on, my assistant helped me with the bills. One of the fees was from the hotel in Tenerife. After we left, the tape stayed on for a couple more days. Nobody told them to stop putting it up. The hotel said the tape had stayed on for too long and too frequently that they couldn’t clean the glue off of the windows, and they had to switched out the glass for that entire window.

I approved it.

That window faced the Atlantic Ocean.

The fuel for the jet cost more than the entire floor of the Montage. I asked, and the assistant said that the A330 was designed for 200 people. We only had 30 people. We were too light and the weight distribution was off, so every time, they had to add extra fuel until the plane is heavy enough. And when we arrive, they can’t keep the extra fuel, so they have to dump it.

I asked, “Every time?”

He said, “Every time.”

And there’s a box mailed from the clinic in Los Angeles. Eight days of ovulation shots that need to be kept refrigerated. None of them had been opened.

And the down payment at the surrogacy institute, 200,000 USD, non-refundable. We booked our surrogate a month in advance, a Californian, 34-years-old, two previous kids. Her photo was in the files. I never looked at it. She’s been prepared since January.

After Jing Tian left, I pulled that photo from 2007 out again. 19 years. The resolution of my devices has gotten better, but that photo seemed to get blurrier. The whole face was blurred out. I zoomed in and stared at it for the longest time, trying to figure out how she’s changed. I couldn’t see any difference at all. Because that photo was never clear.

One day, I was cutting my nails. I touched them after I was done, and they were still sharp.

I remembered that the tool was still in my drawers, left behind by her.

I took it out and tried to file, but it was all wrong. She said I had to do it in one direction, but I forgot which direction.

I put it back.

My nails are still sharp now.

One morning, a notification came up on my phone. My assistant set it when putting together my schedule last year: 3 months before due date, ready room.

I checked it off.

After she left, I kept thinking one question.

If I gave her the money that day, would she have stayed?

I thought for a long time.

I took the report out again and read it again. 40 pages.

I remembered that night on Spring Festival, looking down at the Victoria Harbour fireworks from the top floor.

A million people swarmed in like a tide. The fireworks ended, and a million people receded.

A million people.

Every year.

3AM in Hong Kong.

Nothing happened.

This post is entirely fictional. Any resemblance to reality is pure coincidence.

No copyright, feel free to repost.”

Comments say, “I feel like a mortal that just got a glimpse of life in heaven.”

“All I want to say after reading is that I hate rich people.”

“I can tell he’s spent quite a lot of time reading trashy romance novels. He wrote every sentence trying to strike gold.”

“He seems like he has a bit of a performative personality.”

“Keeps going on about mommy, mommy and I can’t stop laughing.”

Answer: “Nanyang’s Taking Southern Water North grand canal is right next to the Luozhong Xianghe development, housing for the village in the western expansion of Nanyang. It’s been blacklisted by delivery drivers. No one’s willing to go anymore, even if you tip an extra 10, 11 dollars on your order.

The elevator is so old that the cover on all the buttons has broken and the metal core is exposed. Every time you touch it, you get shocked. A lot of people got hit with it who didn’t know.

There’s no security, no janitors. The stairwell has turned into a public toilet and faeces and piss flows into the first floor lobby. If no one does anything, then everything’s covered with a black swarm of flies and bugs crawling everywhere.

The elevator opens the doors automatically at every floor and you have to yank the doors shut yourself, at every floor. And it only goes up to the 11th or 12th floor, and after that, you have to take the stairs.

The problem is, there hasn’t been any security or janitors for ears and the stairwell is a public toilet, like I said before. Everywhere is covered with shit and piss and flies and toilet paper all over the floor. Some delivery drivers who deliver here for the first time will throw up multiple times.

A couple of pet cats and dogs and a big pile of rats died on a certain floor and nobody ever cleaned them up from 2024 to now. The bodies are completely rotten and there’s skeletons lying on the floor. If you’re going up the stairs lit only with your phone and suddenly see a random pile of bones, you’d be scared to death. Someone brave eventually stomped on it enough that it’s mostly broken scraps now.

The places with no piss and shit has dust that’s been gathering for years. Take a single step and the dust flies up and everything turns yellow. It’ll choke you up. If you wear glasses, you’d have to take them off and wipe them on your shirt before you can continue.

In the last building, next to the fence, the construction team dug a giant pit probably 10-20 metres deep with a pile of sand inside. It’s destabilised the foundation so that the fence and that building has started leaning slightly.

No one has ever trimmed around the development, sprayed, or weeded. The lettuce, reeds, and grass in some places grow taller than people. It’s a perfect mosquito nest in the summer. As soon as you step into the development, a dozen giant mosquitoes will land on your arms and bite you until you’re hurt and itchy. If you have takeout in your hands, you can’t swat the mosquitoes away, so you have to put up with the itch while hurrying to deliver your takeout.

That development is famous in Nanyang takeout delivery circles. If you’re not desperate for money, nobody wants to accept an order from that development. It’s super far away and you have to drive on roads crammed with big trucks, and there’s piss and shit and flies and bugs and elevators that zap you and stairs you have to climb and choking dust and mosquito nests. It’s become a truly hellish experience.”

Comments say, “Can any locals tell me whether it’s really that scary?”

“I’ll check it out next time I’m free. It’s only 4km away from me.”

[OP also attaches the comment section’s response.]

“I actually visited the Luozhong Xianghe development in the answer here.

First, it’s geographic location in Nanyang.

The existence of this development is very magical. The “Taking Southern Water North” project used Luojia Village’s land. In order to resettle the people, the government build this high rise in western Nanyang and delivered the units between 2022 and 2024.

Out of curiosity, I rode my bike over and discovered that reality is even more ridiculous than the internet rumours.

[Picture of an empty delivery app screen: “Nobody wants to deliver buddy meals, and there’s no normal takeout below 20RMB. There’s a note that there’s an extra tip attached for delivery drivers.]

Before I’ve even entered the development, the problem is already here.

I haven’t entered yet, this is just the intersection, and I can already smell a horrid stench like the trash cans at the centre of the village that hasn’t been collected for too long.

The whole entrance feels more like a village that no one manages than a residential development that’s only been built 5 years ago.

After I went in, I checked out the giant pit mentioned online first.

Turns out, the northern side of this development is right next to an abandoned development. The construction has long ended and left this big hole behind, with a big pile of sand next to it.

From the outside, the building still looks new. It’s only been a couple of years, after all.

But everything changes once you head inside.

It’s just as chenfugui1990 said, all the infrastructure in this development is broken down. It’s hard to imagine that 5 years is enough to turn a new development into this. The result of the lack of maintenance is rapid slumification.

There’s no security guards patrolling, no janitors cleaning up.

(The rain water in these buckets have turned green.)

The elevator is super old, even though it’s only been used for 3-4 years. It makes a huge noise every time it closes its doors.

(The screen on the elevator is broken, but I haven’t seen any buttons that zap you. Maybe they fixed it already.)

(The glass is broken.)

(Pesticide spray can right next to the water meter.)

(Stray cats and dogs getting along with their human neighbours.)

(Weeds growing everywhere. God knows what’s all piled up here.)

(There’s even tractors in this development. Almost all the first floor units have demolished the outer wall and started running stores out of their houses. And they’re all growing produce too.)

I visited another couple of buildings. The stairwell isn’t that bad anymore. It’s obvious someone’s cleaned it recently. But you can still go to the rooftop whenever you want. Everyone has access.

(Door to the rooftop wide open.)

(People growing produce on the roof.)

Why is it this bad?

The reason isn’t complicated at all: it’s all about money.

These residents used to be villagers who lived in a village all their life. They never had the concept of paying an HOA fee. Are they happy to suddenly be living in a “skyscraper”? Of course. But these high rises with elevators cost thousands every year in HOA fees, and most people just refuse to pay it.

Apartment management can’t get any money, so they took away the security and janitors. No one maintains the elevators, no one takes care of the lawn, no one collects the trash.

Once the downward spiral starts, a couple of years is more than enough to turn a brand new development into this.

I saw a notice from apartment management urging people to pay their fees in the corridors. The language used is very sincere and pleading, but it clearly isn’t working.

Honestly, after walking around here, the primary emotion I feel is absurdity. This isn’t an old slum from the 80s and 90s. This is a new development finished in 2022.

Most people think that slums have to be old and shitty and tiny, but that’s not the case here. Just five years ago, everything here was new—the elevators, the grass, the corridors.

It took less than five years for it to go from new development to a slum.

So this supposed slumification isn’t a physical problem, it’s a problem of a management vacuum.

The hardware is all new, but so long as there’s no mechanism for collecting money and assigning responsibility, then buildings are just a shell. They’ll rot at a rate much faster than natural because no one is maintaining them, and no one has the duty to maintain them.

Finally, a photo of the main canal of the Taking Southern Water North project that I took on the way.”

Comments say: “It’s about the same here. There’s a couple units of old village in my development, and they were able to single-handedly ruin the stairwell.”

“Just a couple of days ago, there were people claiming that developments would be better off without apartment management.”

“I’ve lived somewhere like this. The units are all shit, the construction crew drink all night on a rest day, people throw trash everywhere, old people are homemaking fertiliser on the first floor and keeping chickens and ducks, and hooligans steal shit.”

“I’m still reading about that female international student [who went missing in Korea five days ago and was confirmed to have been murdered today]. This is what I’ve been able to piece together based on the news and insiders.

The culprit is probably her teacher, Zheng Changsheng, a Chinese Korean with Korean permanent residency. At first, the news probably mistook him for a Korean native. This Zheng guy is the murderer, and also was the first to call the police. When he called the police, he self-identified as the missing student’s boyfriend, but he’s just one-sidedly crushing on her. The student’s actual boyfriend is in China and had posted to Rednote before asking for help.

She was at such a beautiful age. She only travelled to Korea this time to get her diploma, and her life was ended by this animal of a man. I saw this Zheng’s student say that he was responding to people like normal in the school group chats right after he murdered her. I’m so angry my liver’s hurting in the middle of the night…”

Comments say, “People who’ve had contact with the murderer before all say he’s always has no morals.”

“Korean news releases footage of the murderer walking around with a suitcase while dressed like a woman.”

“Other students have reported him before and the school did nothing.”

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Answer: “Lemme talk about my own observations first. I’m guessing a lot of people have the same experience.

When I was little, I loved my aunt. She only lives two streets down from my house. I basically lived with her every summer break. She bought me a really expensive pencil case at the time. I remember all of this.

Now, I speak less than 10 sentences to her all year. We didn’t have a fight or anything. Nothing happened. I can’t even come up with any incident that might serve as a reason.

And this “no reason” is what’s worth talking about here.

Because if there was a reason, it’d be much easier. The responses under this question with thousands of likes all have reasons: someone’s family got backstabbed by a relative right after a tragedy, someone got made fun of, someone lent money and never got paid back, someone got put down as a kid. The response with 1306 upvotes that said their aunt said, “Even if your heart is bigger than the heavens, it would have to lose a few pounds now,” after they lost a big investment is really hurtful. I totally believe this really happened.

But those stories are about why a specific relative became hateable, and this question is actually asking about something else: why is it that overall, in general, even people who’ve never wronged you before are fading out of your lives?

These conflicts don’t explain the whole. And in terms of causality, conflict is often the result and not the cause—the relationship was already empty, and that’s why people can go no contact over something tiny.

What I want to talk about is the process of becoming empty.

Relatives have never been a unit of relationship, but an insurance company.

Lemme first talk about a conclusion that might sound quite blunt.

The reason your parents are so close to their relatives isn’t because they’re better relationships, or they’re more mature, or they’re more connected. It’s because they have to be.

In that day and age, there’s almost no solution on the market for the risks a person might encounter.

There’s no construction teams if you want to build a house. You have to ask people to help you stack bricks. You need relatives to work in shifts to make the harvest in time. If you urgently need some money, there’s no loaning companies, you have to borrow from people. There’s no daycares for your children, you have to leave them with their aunt. There’s no hiring website if you’re looking for a job, you have to “see if I can ask my uncle”. Someone needs to stay with you overnight in the hospital, you can’t do it by yourself.

So fundamentally, a network of relatives is a mutual aid insurance pool that doesn’t involve any currency. The insurance fee you pay is favours, holiday money, visiting, and putting up with them even when they’re annoying. What you get out of it is a guarantee that people will be there if something happens to you.

The sort of relationship where “even when the bones are broken, the tendon remains connected” is a side effect of this system after it’s run for a long enough time. It’s not their bond that created the mutual aid, it’s the mutual aid that created the bond.

And now look at each item separately.

Now we have renovation companies, we have lending companies, we have daycares and domestic help. We have platforms you can look for work on, you can book an appointment at the hospital on your phone, and you can pay someone to run errands for you.

Everything this insurance covers has been covered by the market in a way that’s cheaper, more professional, and with less follow up.

When all the risk that an insurance covers has been covered by some other product, it might still exist, but no one is going to pay the fees anymore.

That’s where relatives are these days. They’re not disliked—they’re obsolete.

(This also explains the phenomenon that the places with strong relative relationships are often regions where the market isn’t saturated yet. Look at the families that operate small businesses together, or with someone in a goverment position, or families that need to be guarantors for each other. They’re still very close to their relatives, because their insurance pool is still running.)

What accelerated the collapse is that the insurance fee and the payouts don’t match up anymore.

What I said before is a sociological explanation. It makes sense, but it’s too mild. It only explains why relatives are more distant, it doesn’t explain why so many young people viscerally dislike their relatives.

Distance is natural decay, dislike is a proactive emotion. These two are different.

I think the key is that the function of the insurance pool no longer exists, but they’re still charging an insurance fee.

Think about how young people actually interact with their relatives.

They ask about your pay, your dating life, whether you’ve bought a house. They compare you to your cousin, to the neighbour’s kids. They demand you go to their events, greet them, put on a performance and act obedience, let yourself be criticised, whether you’ve gained weight or lost weight or whether your job is stable enough.

What is this? This is all insurance fees. It’s the cost of keeping the system running.

But what about the pay out?

When you graduate and look for a job, who’s actually helping? When you want to establish yourself in the city, who provide you with anything? When you’re upset, which relative can you talk to?

Probably no one. Not because they’re evil, but because it’s genuinely beyond their capabilities. The problems you’re facing is beyond their experience and resources. Anything they can help you with is something you can already get in the market.

So the experience of young people is very clear: they’re still charging the fee, but they’ve stopped paying out.

This is no longer a relationship that grows distant—it’s a scam. And people’s reaction to scams has never been distance—it’s annoyance.

What’s interesting is that our parents generation don’t seem to realise at all.

This is the layer that I find the most interesting, and it explains best why so many families fight over visiting relatives.

Your parents aren’t insisting on an outdated habit. They’re continuing an insurance that they’ve actually used, that’s actually paid out before.

Your mom tells you to visit your uncle for the New Years because her brain is connected to a piece of real history: when she was sick, it was your uncle who took her to the hospital on his bike. When your family was going through its most difficult year, it was your uncle who gave her money. This insurance saved her life before.

She’s telling you to go not just to go through the motions, but to continue the insurance policy for you. Because in her experience, a person needs this kind of network to survive in the world. She can’t imagine how someone is supposed to survive without this network.

But your experience is completely different. In your world, you bought your house with your mortgage, you got your job with your resume. You rely on health insurance when you get sick, you make your friends through mutual interests. From your point of view, this is just a one a year ritual where all you do is put in and never get anything out.

Neither of you are wrong. You’re each making a correct decision in two completely different risk environments.

(Honestly, once I realised this, I’ve had a lot less fights with my mom over this. Before, I thought she was forcing me to socialise. Now I know that she’s just afraid that one day, something will happen to me, and there’ll be no one behind me. This fear is very realistic to her, because she’s seen people with nothing to fall back on.)

And something else that doesn’t get discussed enough.

We’ve previously only been talking about function, but there’s something about connections itself that I think must be mentioned.

Relatives have a quality that’s unique from any other relationship—you didn’t choose them, and you can’t back out.

You can choose your friends, you can quit from your coworkers, you can split up with your partner. But your relatives are set in stone, and theoretically last for the rest of your life.

In a low mobility society, this “no backing out” is a pro. It means reliability. Because they can’t leave, they can’t abandon you. The basis for the trust between you isn’t whether you’re both good people, but because you’re both locked inside this relationship.

But once there’s mobility in society, “no backing out” immediately turned from a pro to a con.

Because now you have tons of relationships you can choose for yourself. You’ve got coworkers, friends, internet buddies, and all of these relationships have a huge advantage: you got together because you get along, and you can leave if you stop getting along.

Once you’ve experienced this kind of relationship, then you’ll feel very uncomfortable with the kind of relationship where you have to stay together whether you get along or not and you have to act super close.

So the psychological basis of no contact isn’t that you don’t want family anymore, it’s you don’t want to be forced into anything.

(Interesting, a lot of young people still have very strong emotional bonds with direct relatives like grandmas and grandpas. What they’re cutting off are relationships where there’s no emotional basis but you have to put on an emotional performance. So I think the saying on the internet is very accurate: “It looks like cutting off relatives, but you’re actually cutting off differences.”)

The takes I don’t agree with.

There’s a general trend under this question that says this is a sign that people are becoming less decent, morality is slipping, everyone’s becoming more materialistic.

I don’t agree for a very simple reason.

If relatives were maintained through morality, then it should be the weakest during the poorest years with the most stress on people’s morality, because that’s when the cost of mutual aid was the highest. You can’t even feed yourself, and you have to split your food with your brothers? That’s a much higher cost to morality than today.

But the reality it, it was the most stable in those days.

So what’s maintaining it isn’t people’s morality, but because it really was useful back then.

So similarly, young people today aren’t more selfish. Look at what they’re paying in other areas: they’re more than happy to donate to their friends, to social groups they approve of, or even to strangers on the internet. Their willingness to give didn’t go down, the direction of flow just changed.

It’s went from “whoever is the closest to me by blood” to “whoever I think is worth it”.

This is a change in standards, not an overall lowering of kindness.

(I don’t think this change is free. A commercialised relationship is something you can back out of. And although not being able to back out of relationships by blood is a con, it also is your last line of defense in extreme situations. When shit really goes down, the “friends you get along with” can leave. I’ll talk about this later.)

So is there a cost to this?

Yes, and I think a very important cost. So I don’t want to conclude on a note of, “cutting people off is progressive”.

Commercialised coverage all shares the quality that it pays out according to the contract, regardless of your actual situation.

Your health insurance will cover your medical bills, but it won’t accompany you throughout the night in your hospital room. A lending company will loan you money, but it’s based on your credit. The more you need money, the less you can get. A nanny helps you with your kid, but they won’t stay an extra two hours when you’re having a breakdown.

And this is what the previous network of relatives are the best at.

The best part of that network isn’t efficiency, it’s what it’s willing to give you even when you don’t have any qualification at all. When you’re unemployed, sick, fucked up, with absolutely no ability to pay back anything, it’ll still engage. It doesn’t judge you by your qualifications, but by your connection.

So my attitude is, growing more distant is inevitable. I’ll never tell anyone to go back. But you have to understand what you’re giving up, and rebuild it for yourself.

To make it more specific, you have to have a couple of people who don’t care about qualifications.

Not a lot, 2-3 is enough. It’s the sort of people who you can still ask for help from when you’re at your lowest, at your most worthless, when you have nothing to give back.

These people don’t have to be your relatives nowadays. They can be your friends or your partner. But this is a relationship you have to actively manage, because it won’t happen by itself. This is a product the market doesn’t provide, but blood relations used to. And now this free channel is closing.

(There’s a trap here I have to mention: there’s a hidden condition to commercialised relationships, which is that it’s built on the basis of “I still have value”. You get along, you’re interesting, you can provide something, so people are willing to hang out with you. This is completely fine when everything is going well for you, but it’ll be exposed when you hit rock bottom. I’m not saying that friends are all unreliable, but you need something extra to strengthen this type of connection. It doesn’t automatically come with a lock that you can’t back out of like blood relations.)

Finally:

This whole “relatives are drifting apart” take is kind of inaccurate in general.

Relatives didn’t change. It’s just that relatives have never been about relations. It’s a basic infrastructure.

Right now, it’s like the abandoned water towers in your home town, the community stores, the town theatres. Nobody hates them. The function they used to serve has been taken over by something else, so they just sit empty now.

Every year, during the holidays, you’re getting dragged along on a tour of not relationships, but an old system that never fully shut down.

A system would never announce its shutdown itself. It would just slowly have less users.

So you don’t have to overthink it or feel guilty, or get angry over its decline.

You just have to remember that this system used to guarantee something real, and now you just don’t have a guarantor anymore.

Now you have to buy your own insurance.”

The mom couldn’t get a day off, so she couldn’t go with them. She thought about getting her adult ticket refunded, but if she had and only the child tickets remained, then train crew would have the right to demand the kids get off the train. She was afraid to get a refund. With an empty seat, the kids could lie down in the night and they wouldn’t have to sit next to a stranger. They just put some snacks there because it was convenient.

This isn’t taking up an extra seat. This is a mother’s last resort when she had no better options.

This case has been argued so much not because of a bag of snacks, but because of a problem many families encounter. Kids have to ride the train alone, what do you do? It’s not just left behind children. Lots of double-income families send their children to their grandparents’ out of state for summer break. If the parents can’t get time off, kids have to go on their own. According to the rules, minors under 14 have to be accompanied by an adult, but the adult ticket holder can’t get on the train. You can’t get a refund, and you can’t not get a refund. There’s no good solution either way.

A good comparison is that airlines have long had services for children travelling without adults. For 5-12 year old kids travelling alone, parents can apply to have someone pick them up on the ground, take care of them in the air, and hand them off at the destination. The process is very clear and mostly free. The train still doesn’t provide this service.

They transport billions of people every year, and yet don’t have a solution for when children need to travel alone. If your rules can’t keep up with your service, then parents have to come up with their own solutions, and even then, they have to fight standing ticket passengers. This argument isn’t about any one person, but every family that might need to send their kids on the train alone.

The rail department cited a lot of statutes afterwards to analyse the situation, but whether it’s the Civil Code or the Transportation Procedures, these statutes can’t solve the reality this mom had to deal with. Their service wasn’t complete, their rules weren’t thought out, and it puts parents in a difficult situation. So although this official announcement is in accordance with the law, it avoided the actual conflict: what are you supposed to do about kids who need to travel by train alone?

Industry workers explained, “Trains make many short stops and only have so many stewardesses. It would be hard to copy the airline’s system outright, but “hard” doesn’t mean “impossible”. A lot of local rail departments are testing out paid child accompaniment services, meaning that if demand really exists, then service might just follow. The key is whether they’re determined to step up here.”

So the conflict about the “snack seat” was never about the snacks, but the lack of both rules and service.

If the rules can’t make an exception and there are no services offered, then you force parents to find loopholes, and it makes train conflicts inevitable.

Once this storm is over, the person who needs to reflect isn’t that mom, but the rail department: when a lot of families have the legitimate need for their children to travel alone, are you going to keep insisting on sticking by the rules, or quickly come out with “unaccompanied minor” services to fill in the blanks? I hope the rail department figures out the answer soon.”

Comments say, “Finally, we have the right trending hashtag. I’ve been saying since the beginning that the problem is that the rail department needs reforms and figure out some kind of “unaccompanied minor service”. Not allowing children under 14 to ride the train by themselves is basically just negligence of duty for the sake of avoiding hassle.”

“They shouldn’t have given up their seat. They shouldn’t have had to.”

“They bought a ticket, but the headlines are all saying they’re taking up an extra seat with their snacks, like it’s criticising this mom and these two kids. What a hilarious society.”

“Standing tickets are same price as economy seats. This goes against economic rules, and that’s the source of all the conflict.

People who bought standing tickets have no seat, so they have to shamelessly take other people’s seats.

A lot of people might feel slighted. “We spent the same amount of money. Why am I not allowed to sit?” And they see two underage minors who seem bulliable, so they want to take their seat.

Standing ticket passengers spent the same amount of money but don’t get the same service, and have to figure out their seat themselves. That’s the source of the problem.

We should either do away with standing tickets, or make standing tickets cheaper than economy seats. Once all the economy seats have been sold, if there’s still demand, then you can sell standing tickets.

By selling standing tickets and making them the same price as economy seats, you’re deliberately putting off all the problems until the train passengers deal with it themselves.”

Comments say, “Even fi you’ve never rode the train before, you’ve rode the bus and subway, right? Everyone spends the same amount of money on tickets, but are you guaranteed a seat every time?”

“This isn’t something against economic rules, it’s a choice a socialist country made to maximally fulfill normal people’s needs to travel. OP probably never experienced what it’s like to fight over tickets. They probably never have to ride the train during peak travel season in the holidays. So they don’t understand how important standing tickets are.”

“If you lower the price of standing tickets, it might cause passengers who’s rather buy standing tickets than economy seats. It’ll cause overcrowded cabins and make a lot of problems for the rail department and passengers. If standing tickets are more expensive than economy seats, then the rail company would come off like weird capitalists. So maybe the reason standing tickets are the same price as economy seats is just to make sure that passengers don’t buy it unless necessary.”

“It’s not an odd case to see two people buying three tickets and taking up three seats on the train. It’s happened before.

I understand some parents. They want their kids to be more comfortable. And if no one is on the train, then it’s fine. But so long as someone with a standing ticket got on the train, then that seat should have somebody in it.

These days, some people want to enjoy the luxury of private space and don’t want other people around even on the train or the plane, but they don’t want to shell out for first class or business class tickets, so they’ll do this, thinking that they can put their snacks anywhere they like if they buy a row of seats, and they can refuse to let strangers sit next to them.

But in reality, you can’t. Any old man or old lady can walk up and sit in that seat and you can’t stop them. The rail department isn’t going to be on your side. It doesn’t matter if you spent money or not. First of all, you used somebody else’s ID to buy that extra seat. That seat doesn’t belong to you. Secondly, China’s rail system is a type of public service, meant to serve the proletariat. It’s not a private, commercial method of travel. Even if you’re rich, you can’t buy extra seats.

The trail isn’t a private business. Train seats isn’t something you can monopolise if you spend enough money. If some people think they should get to do whatever they want if they spent the money, then in an extreme example, if some trust fund brat bought out an entire train car’s seats so that he can have a private car and no one else can get a ticket…can you accept that situation?

People have been doing similar things since years ago. Back in the day, there was a mom who bought out 6 seats so that her kids can lie down and sleep, basically circling out a whole area of the train to be her kids’ personal space.

And in reality, it’s bound to cause conflict, because whether it’s a normal train or high speed rail, it’s one person per ticket. If you bought a ticket, then someone needs to be in that seat. If there’s nobody in that seat, then that seat doesn’t belong to you and anyone can sit down in it. Back then, the mom didn’t get away with buying six seats so her kids can rest. Now, she’s not going to get away with buying three seats for two girls so they can have more space.

You can say that the auntie who came up and demanded a seat isn’t polite, but you can’t say that her demands are unreasonable.

Another fun fact—every passenger on the train has a ticket. The standing passengers couldn’t get a ticket, so they bought a standing ticket, but standing tickets cost the same money as economy seats. They didn’t spend any less money than economy seat passengers. And standing ticket doesn’t mean they don’t have a seat, it just means they don’t have a designated seat—it means they can sit down in any empty seat they want on the train.

For example, if someone bought a train ticket for several stops before they get on, then for the first couple of stops, other passengers can sit in his seat. He only owns that designated seat when he actually gets on the train.

So why do people buy extra stops or even extra seats? The core reason is that train tickets are really cheap. Train tickets are a charity for the public.

All of China’s public resources and public infrastructure serves the people. It’s a part of the “benefits” of socialism. It doesn’t belong to any one person or one group, and it’s not something you can get more of if you spend more money.

If you want quiet, if you want to be undisturbed, if you want your own space, you can spend more money, buy a business class ticket or a first class ticket. It won’t be that much more expensive than buying all those extra seats.

If you can get more public services by spending more money, then what about healthcare services? What about public education? It’s not that expensive to see a specialist at a top hospital? Why not buy out all his morning appointment slots? You don’t have to stand in line, don’t have to squeeze with other people. For an entire morning, he only services one patient. Wouldn’t that be nice? Do you think that’s reasonable? Tuition at a public school is pretty cheap too, so why not pay a whole class’s tuition so that all the teachers only teach one student? Wouldn’t you want that? A lot of people don’t understand that public services is a benefit, not a commercial product.

Public transportation, public schools, public hospitals are all public resources. It’s not something you get to have more of if you spend more money. It’s not a business you can squeeze other people out of. If you really are rich, then don’t stand in line with normal people in public hospitals. Don’t sent your kids to public school. When travelling, don’t use the bus, subway, or rail. You can drive your own car, or rent a car, or even buy a private jet. You can even ride a donkey. You can do whatever you want, it’s your private property. Why take up public resources meant for normal people?

The trains in a socialist country is national property. It belongs to all of the people. It’s not something you can buy. It’s a benefit for all Chinese people, not a sheep you can fleece. If the ticket holder isn’t on the train, then the seat you’re taking up is a public seat that anyone can sit down in. You bought a ticket, you didn’t buy public resources.

Those standing ticket passengers also bought a ticket that’s worth the exact same as your ticket. Why can’t they sit down? Is your name on that seat? If it’s not your name, then don’t take it up. You don’t have any right to use public resources that don’t belong to you.

Some people really are grown up children, complete selfish bastards. They’re born in a socialist country but have no idea what socialism means. They want to live like the lords and ladies of old days and think they can get extra privileges if they spend more money. If you want privilege, if you want to stand out, then to travel back to before 1949. You can spend your Dayang to buy a train then, and I guarantee you’ll have it all to yourself. You can bring all eight of your concubines on there and eat hotpot and sing songs, and aside from bandits and militias and the Nationalists, no one can steal your seats.

According to the troll logic that you’re in the right if you paid the money, then some people can not just buy out a train, they can buy out a subway, buy out a mall, buy out a park, buy out a department, buy out a tourist trap, buy out a mine, buy out Earth, and buy out the whole universe.

Go ahead and do it. No one’s stopping you.”

Comments say, “The rail worker who mediated the conflict was on the kids’ side. They said that if someone bought the ticket, then they own the seat, and all you can do is ask nicely.”

“This is very clear and the example is very compelling. But it also means that we really need to raise more awareness and do more education. A lot of people don’t understand what public service means.

“I totally agree with your take. The parent violated the rules here, not only letting her kids ride the train alone, but an overnight long trip too. She really isn’t afraid. Not only are the kids not allowed to take up a seat with their snacks, they should’ve got off the train too.”

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“There is a plot twist here after all. First, let’s make the facts clear: the two girls bought a 27 hour train ticket back to Sichuan. Their mom couldn’t get time off, and kids’ tickets have to be attached to an adult ticket. So she spent 236RMB on an adult ticket, took her kids into the train station, watched them sit down, and then left. The reason she didn’t get a refund afterwards is very understandable too—she couldn’t get a sleeping ticket for her girls [which would come with a little cabin that you can close and lock the door to] and didn’t want a male stranger sitting next to them while they’re sleeping at night.

So the idea that they took a seat just to hold their snacks was misleading the narrative to begin with.

And there’s nothing wrong with the response by the Rail Department either. If you bought a ticket, but didn’t punch in your ticket to board the train, then you’re considered to have given up on your right to use that seat. That’s the rules. It’s not targeting anybody in particular. The point of rules is that they won’t give you an exemption just because you have a legitimate reason. And they won’t force anyone to give up their seat just because you have the moral high ground.

What should be discussed in this case is actually how the system is going to deal with the very realistic needs of “children travelling alone”. 27 hours of hard seats, underage minors, safety concerns—when a mother has to protect her kids by buying an extra ticket, what we should be reflecting on isn’t whether or not she’s wasting a seat, but whether she has any better options available.

In this case, rules maintain the bottom line, and empathy gives warmth. These two factors don’t conflict.”

Comments say, “If an adult buys a ticket and walks their kid onto the train, can they still get a refund?”

“If she bought the ticket, then she has the right to use the seat. If she wants to leave it empty, then she can leave it empty. Nothing wrong with it.”

“She paid money for the seat. She doesn’t have to give it up to anybody.”

“I reported my coworker for slacking off and she got fired. Now everyone is singling me out. Am I the asshole?

So this female coworker got hired around the same time as me. And around three months in, I feel like she spends at least 2 hours a day not actually at her workstation. She’s either going to by coffee, or she’s watching Tiktoks, or she’s chatting with other departments. She always waits until the last second to turn in her work, and the quality is really meh too.

At first, I didn’t say anything, until last month, my boss put me on the same project as her, and she kept procrastinating on the section she’s responsible for. I had to work overtime every day for a week straight to clean up her work.

So I started a record for every time period she’s not at her work station, what she was doing, how many times I had to delay the project for her, and I turned it into my boss.

Three days later, she got pulled into a meeting with HR and she quit that day.

I thought that was the end of it.

Until I found out that at lunch time now, the coworkers I used to eat with started making up excuses to not go to the cafeteria with me. When I walk into the break room, everyone who was chatting suddenly go quiet. There’s a new team-building activity and no one is @‘ing me.

Yesterday, a coworker I get along with got drunk and told me the truth. “It’s not like people think you did something wrong. They just feel like if you can reporter her today, then you can report us tomorrow.”

I didn’t know what to say to that.

I just want to ask, does everyone who try to maintain the rules end up singled out?”

Comments say, “Did you make the record of her slacking off at work or while working overtime?”

“Girl, lemme teach you, just report all your coworkers and it’ll get better.”

“If you can’t complete your work because of her, you should have talked to her first. If she won’t listen, then you can talk to your boss, and you have to explain to all your coworkers that you can’t complete your project because of her. From your coworker’s point of view, they just think you make a super detailed report for no particular reason, watching her at work, counting her slacking off time, and reported her. And all the other coworkers feel like they might be next.”

“You’re just like the classmates that secretly report people to the teacher. If you just saw her looking at you, you would think she was trying to find something you’re doing wrong.”

“I only notice my coworkers slacking off when I’m slacking off.”

“You can just tell your boss that she’s very slow with her work and attach your attempts to communicate. Your boss will investigate the reason themselves. It’s really scary to be so obsessed as to observe everything she’s doing. You deserve everyone distancing you.”

“You won’t be able to stay there for long either.”

“If she’s not doing her job, go talk to her. Do you not have her contact info? Why would you need to secretly record everything she’s doing and go snitching to your boss? I would never do that even to my worst enemy. You made her lose your job. Cool.”

“If you just reported a coworker for not working with you and affecting your progress, that’s perfectly understandable! It’s a legitimate reason! If you reported her for slacking…who doesn’t slack off sometimes? Of course they’d single you out.”

“If it was me, I would tell my coworker first that she’s not doing her part of the work and it’s affecting project progress, and if the boss asks, I’d have to tell them the truth. And if she keeps going, and I explain to the boss that it’s not my fault, then the boss will talk to her himself.”

“How did you come up with the worst solution? You would’ve been better off just having a huge fight with her in the work group chats. The boss might not know that she slacks off, but your coworkers do and they’d be on your side. Now everyone’s scared of you.”

#Old man stops at store to rest and dies and store sued for 100K for trying to help. “17th of August, Hunan, Hengyang, the internet exposed a case of an old man who stopped in front of a mahjong parlour and sat down to rest due to feeling discomfort, and lost consciousness. The parlour helped him to the hospital, where he passed away. The old man’s family sued the parlour for 100K.

The owner claims that the old man’s family believes that he died at the mahjong parlour who tried to help, so they should be held accountable for the old man’s death. After mediation, the owner offered 2-3K RMB out of humanitarian reasons, but the other side insisted on 100K, claiming that they’re going to leave the old man’s dead body in front of the mahjong parlour. In the end, mediation agreed that the parlour should pay 19K RMB, and the old man’s son came to collect the money.

Owner Mr. Lee says that his wife is very upset that this happened as a result of her attempt to help. She was trying to do the right thing and yet this is where she ended up.”

Comments say, “19K is still a lot of money. Small businesses have it hard.”

“This is going to hurt everyone’s heart. No one is going to get involved with anything again.”

“So just leave them be, right?”

“If I was the old man’s family, I’d show up to express my gratitude and give them some thank you money, that they gave him some care and help in the last moments of his life.”

#Official announcement on travelling buying ticket for a seat to put their snacks. “The core of this question is the nature of a train seat. It’s not a normal product, where whoever buys it owns it.

The seats on a train is a part of public services, and it’s fairly rare during peak travel season. A public service doesn’t just focus on profit. The reason you can only buy one ticket per ID is to make sure that every seat is filled and not waste any seats, to maximally ensure that everyone who wants to travel can.

If you buy something at a store, then it’s yours, and you’re free to never use it. But train travel isn’t. If you bought a ticket and rode the train, no problem. Buying a second ticket just to put your belongings is damaging the public service nature of the train.

If it wasn’t a public service, train tickets wouldn’t be the price they are anyways.”

Comments say, “If buying an extra seat is improper behaviour, then what about buying a school district house?”

“So can we compare it to a hospital bed that’s covered by health insurance? Before you’ve been discharged, can the hospital allow some other patient to sleep in your bed without informing you?”

“I agree! We can have ridiculous scenarios like one person buying an entire train car’s tickets and 107 people have to stand.”

1. So long as you’re not the wealthiest and most powerful person in the world, then it’s always possible for you to become someone else’s prey.

2. The reason we oppose surrogacy is so that poor girls won’t be forced to become surrogates, and wealthy girls don’t get trafficked to become surrogates.

3. It’s so that you can walk home late at night without being stuffed in a burlap sack and carried away, and wake up on an operating table waiting for a foetus to be implanted in you. That’s why we have to oppose surrogacy.

4. You can’t even stop your boss from telling you to work overtime. Why would you think women would be able to make decisions about their uterus once surrogacy becomes legal?

The reason we oppose surrogacy is so that uteruses don’t become a tool that can be traded, so that babies don’t become a product in dirty transactions. We can never predict how dark and evil human nature can get. This is a black market that, once legalised, will victimise women and even girls. A baby should be the product of love, not profit.”

Comments say, “You can refuse to work overtime. Who would work if they didn’t like the price they were offered?”

“Surrogacy is so common among rich people right now.”

“Most people think they’ll be the one in power.”

“If they have needs, why not go to countries where it’s legal like Georgia?”

“Hilarious! Some people’s brains work so fast!

I saw a post where OP said that she went with her biological brother and his family to Universal Studios. Her boyfriend got really jealous and exploded, angrily demanding her, “Ask any other man and see if he can accept this!”

Yes, it’s her biological brother that she’s actually related to.

I thought to myself, “What a psycho.”

Opened up the comment section and people figured it out right away. “It’s Qixi tomorrow [traditional Chinese romantic holiday, like Valentine’s]. Smart people are already looking for an excuse to fight XD”

Took me a minute to understand and then I burst out laughing!”

Comments say, “Why would you argue because of Qixi? Because you don’t want to celebrate?”

“Reminds me of a commenter talking about their scheming boyfriend. Every time, right before Valentine’s, Christmas, Qixi, her birthday, whatever, he’d threaten to break up, and then get back together afterwards.”

“A long time ago, when I was a lovesick fool, the guy also deliberately asked me while we were on the phone, “Why do I hear another man over there?” I was really upset and angry at the time, trying to explain to him no one else was there. Later on, I thought about it, and he was just looking for an excuse to dump me and make me the bad guy, lol.”

“A little while ago, Wang Hong and Deng Yu got the Fields Medal, and a very frequent comment on the internet was that they were both 35+ years old but both unmarried, is this the cost of having achievements in life?

They’re not the only two people who got a Fields Medal this year. There’s another guy, John Pardon, who used to be a Princeton professor, and later went to New York State University.

He got married young and has a son and a daughter.

And Jacob Tsimerman won an award too. He’s also married with a daughter.

So the price of getting achievements in life isn’t neglecting family life. That’s not a very accurate take.

The real reason is actually pretty simple.

A big factor in whether or not you can have a stable marriage is whether your family can provide you with resources.

Pardon and Tsimerman are both American locals, and their fathers were both professors. They got plenty of support.

But Deng Yu and Wang Hong are both foreigners fighting by themselves overseas.

This phenomenon isn’t just in academic circles. Our daily lives are the same too.

The traditional wisdom in China is “form a family before focusing on your career”, but I’ve figured out there’s a big problem with this piece of wisdom in middle school.

Forming a family has nothing to do with establishing a career. In some sense, having a family would only hinder your career.

Most people with a family don’t have much of a career.

Most people with a career don’t have a family.

The only relevant factor to having a family is family resources.

And not absolute resources, but relative resources. Whether your family resources can be helpful where you live.

If they’re helpful, it’s not hard to start a family. If not, then it’s all up to luck, and it’s just as hard as winning the lottery.

When I’m talking about starting a family here, I’m not talking about marrying whoever and having a kid. I’m talking about a stable, high-quality romantic relationship.

If you just quickly got married and live in chaos every day, that’s worse than staying single.

And a high quality family life relies on your original birth family.

Your original family doesn’t just provide money, but also reliable social connections and potential dates that you know the background of.

For a normal man, even if he’s a billionaire, he won’t have as many deep connections as a 50-year-old government worker.

The reason is simple. Connections for forming a family is different from business connections. You need time to build them.

For a 50-year-old government worker, the people he dates about he’s probably known all his life, he knows plenty of people who watched them grow up.

But when a normal guy or girl meets a date, they have no idea who that person is, what their background is, how many exes they have, whether they’ve got a criminal history, whether they’ve spent time in jail.

They don’t even know if the other party has AIDS or not.

All the cases that’s went on the news shares a commonality:

The family is too weak and don’t have a vibrant, reliable, stable social network. They have to rely on a matchmaker, or even buy a bride from Vietnam.

And in the end, either they lose all the bride price, or they find out she has AIDS.

As for a lot of the infection cases that doctors talk about, it’s also mostly young girls travelling, being flirted with, thinking the guy seems hot and high quality with a proper job, so they start dating without knowing anything and end up catching all kinds of diseases.

This is the consequence of not having enough social prestige, but at the same time having too much money or too much beauty. Having relations at random carries a lot of risk.

I used to have a friend who was imprisoned for 2 years for a pretty serious crime. After he got out, he moved to a new city and opened a store and had a really successful life thanks to his good looks and his way with words. All of his friends have no idea he has a criminal history.

This kind of friend terrifies me and makes me feel a lot of distrust in my own social relations.

So long as it’s not a salaryman, I try to avoid self-employed people as much as possible. I try not to be friends with any of them.

Because salaryman at big companies have to go through background checks, and those companies have way more resources than I do.

Whereas self-employed people, who knows who they are.

If you don’t have local family resources, then you shouldn’t be too obsessed about starting a family.

Focus on your career first.

I don’t think sacrificing family is the price of success.

Most people in reality are middle-aged with no family and no career.

I think this has mostly to do with how they wasted their youthful years.”

Comments say, “I don’t think marriage counts as a personal achievement. It’s just a life choice.”

“Normal people living their lives is like a blind man feeling out an elephant. It’s totally up to luck which part they felt. It’s completely different with resources and connections. Those people have heat vision goggles on and can see exactly what’s happening even in the dark. They know exactly who farted in the room.”

“Based on my observations, the people who married young all have family who they can fall back on.”

#6 people arrested in Zhuozhou illegal surrogacy case. “You can read this type of news alongside entertainment news. Today, another paparazzi exposed some old news and it got on the trending hashtags #aloof A-lister celebrity has child outside of marriage with elite businessman.

Surrogacy is the most common in the entertainment industry. From Lin Zhiling, Zhang Yuqi, and other married female celebrities to unmarried ones, surrogacy is very common. Why don’t paparazzi ever tell us who by name?

The reason is simple. Celebrities usually use the “overseas egg donation” route with businessmen, where she’ll donate her eggs and have a child with the man who shares her DNA but has nothing to do with her legally.

No marriage certificate, no worries about joint assets, but they have a child together and have mutual interests. There’s no risk of being exposed either, because you can sue anyone who makes it public.

Once you understand how rich people do this, you can take a look at what poor people are doing and understand the core problem.

Surrogacy is illegal in China, but neither the buyer nor the seller are considered to have violated the law. The only people getting punished are the medical institutions that provide services. But surrogacy requires doctors, and the doctors are the only people getting punished.

So why do doctors keep doing it? Does it really pay that well?

No. According to previous reports, a doctor at a top hospital in Qingdao took the risk of having his medical license revoked to perform surrogacies and only charged 1500RMB per case. The reason is that ob/gyns are making so little money in China that some doctors are actually running into problems in their livelihood.

Once you have this basic knowledge, you’ll understand why so many people participate in these surrogacy institutes that get reported by vigilantes. Because the pricing is so incredibly involuted. The 600K-700K they talk about on the news is just doing reverse advertisement for these underground surrogacy institutes. You don’t even understand the prices at some of these institutes nowadays.

But every time you look it up, the only charges that can be pressed is forging birth certificates. For people who don’t forge a birth certificate and get the child on their household registration by taking a DNA test, there’s nothing that can be done about them legally.”

Comments say, “We already have artificial uteruses. I’m sure we probably have artificial eggs too. Reproduction is going to have nothing to do with women in the future.”

“If we ever did make an artificial uterus one day, then the gender relationships will completely collapse. You’ll have to pay an even more painful price to get marital relations with a man. I hope I can see an artificial uterus in my lifetime.”

“This is a good thing. It’s not oppressing women anymore. If they’re doing it voluntarily, then it’s not oppression.”

“If you don’t have any other proof and just show up with a baby to do a paternity test, would institutions even do it for you?”

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A buys a house from Evergrande and pays 2 million in cash. B also buys a house from Evergrande for 2 million, but takes out a 1.3 million mortgage from the bank. Both of those houses were never delivered.

If B doesn’t have to pay back his mortgage anymore, then isn’t it unfair to A who paid 1.3 million “extra”?

In reality, the mortgage that these purchasers owe isn’t to Evergrande, it’s to the bank. Evergrande owes them a house, and they owe the bank a mortgage. This is two separate legal relationships.

As for whether the buyers got screwed since they paid the money and got no house? Of course. They were thoroughly screwed. That’s why Xu Jiayin has been sentenced to life in prison. If Evergrande actually delivered the houses it promised, there wouldn’t be a life sentence.”

Comments say, “If we know that there’s legal risks in Xu Jiayin selling houses, then isn’t this where lawyers come in to push for legislation to close the loophole? I’ve never seen any lawyer try to block loopholes. I just see a lot of advice in hindsight.”

“This is a very appropriate example, but some people aren’t going to listen to reason.”

“The bank is half invisible in this case, and the housing and construction bureau and planning bureau has taken an invisibility potion.”

“Diarrhea, missed the service stop, took a dump on the highway, and got called by the traffic police. I’m so scared they got footage of my butt. Old aunts need to live too T_T”

Comments say, “You can zoom in a lot on highway cameras.”

OP: “I want to die. The police said it was a high resolution camera.”

“Did they just give you a lecture or do you have to pay a fine?”

OP: “They said there’d be a police waiting for me at the next exit so I can explain myself and maybe get fewer points deducted.”

“Thank you, OP. I’m never going to think about how I can poop by the side of the road next time I have a stomachache.”

OP: “You can. You just gotta follow the rules.”

“It probably costs at least 200RMB to get your car cleaned, and it’s probably going to keep smelling even then, so you still won in the end.”

OP: “When I got the call, I was thinking that so long as it’s not 12 points [which would get your driver’s license revoked for losing all points], then I still won, since it’ll refresh next month.”

“How many points? How much money?”

OP: “Probably 9 points and a 200RMB fine.”

“You should have stopped your car, put up a sign, and say that you had some issue with your tires, and then happened to also take a poop.”

OP: “Yeah, that’s what the police told me too. I should have put up a sign.”

“You can hear screams in the fields of rural villages. This isn’t a dramatic scene from a movie, but normal daily life in the Zhuozhou, Lujiachang underground laboratory. The pain of the girls getting their eggs extracted with no anaesthesia pierced through the sealed car windows and heavy factory walls.

Shangguang Zhengyi [influencer who exposes a lot of human trafficking] went undercover for half a year to expose the biggest nest of surrogacy in the North. Behind the cold number of 150 surgeries a month are countless women who are searched, monitored, and treated like containers. From a Director who retired from a top hospital, to nurses with zero experience, this black market puts a price on life and completely objectifies human bodies.

What chills the spine isn’t the blood on the operating table, but the speed with which everyone escaped after they were reported. Who is leaking information? Where did their anaesthetics come from? Where are the girls trembling in pain? When the cost of breaking the law is only a carefully planned retreat, then the loophole in supervision has become the best protection for black markets.

What we need isn’t just an unannounced inspection, but a total audit of guardianship relationships and negligence of oversight. I hope every girl has the right to their bodies without exploitation and violation.”

Comments say, “Makes me scared just watching.”

“This isn’t even on the trending topics.”

“You can get your bride price back, there’s a cooldown period to divorce, and no one cares about surrogacy. We’re closer and closer to a horror movie.”

“This isn’t even that long after the surrogacy centre in Changsha. There’s no peace anywhere.”

“How unpredictable fate is. Went from a healthy, active athlete to a cripple in a single afternoon, in a single moment. Just look on Weibo and no one is even talking about this.”

[OP attaches an AI summary of events: “The “Harbin Dadao speed skating amputation incident” that you’re asking about probably refers to the accident that happened to 18-year-old speed skating athlete Wang Xinrui in January, 2026. This actually happened at a professional training facility, and not the public Dadao skate rink.

Core information:

Person involved: Wang Xinrui (born 2007), athlete at the Heilongjiang Province Ice Training Centre, a freshman at the Harbin Sports College, champion of the national youth leagues, won the title of “outstanding athlete” in 2024.

Events: During daily training on the 10th of January, 2026, he collided with a teammate, causing an ice blade to cut his left leg, cutting through his artery, vein, and nerve, causing dead muscle tissue and shock from blood loss. The centre’s ambulance took him to the hospital (his blood loss was close to fatal and he could have lost his life if they were a few minutes late).

Injury and treatment: After 6 surgeries and 3200ml in transfusions, they were unable to save his leg, causing his left leg to be amputated. He still needs to fight infection, go through physical therapy, and get a prosthetic fitted.

Aftermath: His family makes 50-100K a year (farming + part time work) and could not pay the 370K in fees and started a crowdfund which drew societal attention. The final amount raised was never officially revealed. Wang Xinrui is in a depressive mood and is accepting therapy.”

Comments say, “He was only 18.”

“This is so sad. How can I help?”

“Why didn’t the other guy pay for it? Why did the family need to raise funds on their own?”

“A baby girl outside the Fuzhou orphanage’s doors, weight 5.5 pounds. She has been determined to be a full-term baby after check ups, showing healthy indicators all around, no health conditions. The baby is breathing normally and taking milk well.

Details at the scene show that the people who abandoned her took care to protect her. There’s a pad underneath her to protect her from the hot ground, and a parasol above her to shield her from the sun. There was no formula or bottles left next to her, only a handwritten note reading “Please take care of her.” When workers picked up the baby, she was very quieter and only softly babbled.

Right now, the baby girl is being taken care of by hospital and orphanage staff. The police have begun an investigation, checking surrounding camera footage to search for her biological parents.

Abandoning a baby is an illegal act. Once they find the child’s parents, the government will hold them legally accountable. If you are unable to support your child, please do not abandon them. You can contact your community or the Civil Affairs Bureau for societal assistance. And if you want to adopt this baby girl, you have to wait until the police investigation is concluded and go through the normal legal channels.”

Comments say, “They should be charged with neglect too. With how many cameras are around, there’s no way they can’t figure out who it was.”

“Can rich DINK families adopt?”

“Maybe they really are facing difficulties. The kid seems very healthy, so they must’ve been taking proper care of her. Of course, abandonment is never okay.”

“Abandoned kids like this will inherit their parents’ shitty genes. I knew a girl like this and she was totally evil.”

#Qingdao Tourism Board. “The case of the Qingdao man flirting and screaming at a female tourist has been quickly fermenting online. Commenters used public information to figure out the man’s identity. Business Search information shows that the man is named Shi, and is the legal representative and CEO of Qingdao Ruitai Wealth Management, holding 50% of the shares of said company.

In the video, the tourist was forced to repeatedly apologise, “I’m sorry, bro, I will kneel for you.” But Shi still pursued her and screamed at her for nearly 6 minutes. An out of state girl got put through all of this just because she politely turned down some flirting while she was taking photos in the park? This is not a fight, this is public bullying.

His identity as upper management in a company made this incident completely explode over the internet. Legal representative, majority share holder, he spends his days in a proper suit managing a company, but flips out at a girl in the park? This has nothing to do with his identity, but the public reflexively wants to ask, “Does he think he’s not going to be held responsible for bullying tourists because he’s wealthy and powerful?”

The incident happened on the 4th of August, and the tourist called the police and made a statement the same day. And what’s the result? It’s been over 10 days now with no further news. It wasn’t until public discourse got heated that the Laoshan police finally posted an announcement that they are investigating the case on the 20th of August. Everyone is thinking in their hearts, “Why did they have to wait until this is all over the internet before taking it seriously?”

The announcement called the man a “person with illegal conduct” and not “suspect”. The wording the police used already gives a signal. And the announcement made no mention of the man’s identity and whether or not he’s been arrested. Rumours say that Shi claimed to have “mental illnesses” and wants to use that as a shield. If you really want to claim mental illness, you have to go through legal evaluations. We’re not just going to take your word for it.

A 26-year-old out of state girl was screamed at and chased by a man in public, forced to kneel to apologise. This case has video evidence, has voice recordings, police reports, and it’s not complicated at all. Why did it take two weeks to start the investigation? What’s stopping them behind the scenes? Does someone want to settle this through “mediation”?

Trying to muddy the waters with “mental illnesses” is harming the victim for a second time. Even if the evaluation says there really is something wrong with him, his caretaker should apologise and pay for damages. No one is escaping this. If he wants to push this down with his connections, then he’s really miscalculated—in the age of the internet, the tighter you try to keep a lid on things, the bigger the explosion will become.

Haizhilian Park is a popular tourist spot in Qingdao. Tourists come here for the blue sea and blue skies. But girls have to be on guard against strange men flirting with them and aren’t allowed to turn anyone down? If they did, they might be chased and screamed at for 6 minutes? What kind of tourism experience is that? The legal colours of Qingdao as a city is going to come across in how they deal with “small cases” like this one.

Commenters are already digging into the Qingdao Ruitai Wealth Management company that Shi holds shares in. Their legal representative is publicly bullying tourists. The public has every reason to ask, “How does this company normally treat people?” The image of a company isn’t just held up by marketing pieces. The way your boss acts in a park is a living advertisement.

I hope that the police aren’t just doing an investigation for show. The facts are clear, there’s plentiful evidence, he needs to go to jail and face punishment. It’ll give the victim justice and give other tourists some comfort, and make everyone else think they can do whatever they want because they’re rich think twice.

What do you fellow readers think? You’re welcome to discuss this in the comment section.”

Comments say, “Hospitable Shandong welcomes you! This can’t just be a slogan…You can’t brush this Qingdao man bullying tourist incident under the rug with just “mental illnesses”. If he really does have mental illnesses, you need to punish his caretaker. They’re letting a mentally ill guy run around all over town. If something really happened, who’s going to be held accountable? This is a public safety risk!”

“Commenters say that the way the girl rejected him hurt his ego. What do you think?”

“Why can a mentally ill guy register a company? He shouldn’t have any legal agency, so let’s take that company away from him.”

“Upper management has mental illnesses? How is he managing his company then?”

“Why did you attach your own photo on your post? Now you’re photo’s all over the trending hashtags.”

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Refer a friend

Man and wife got married in October of 2020. His BIL wanted to get a new car to kiss up to his girlfriend, so his wife gave her brother 70K behind his back. After the man learned, he objected, and his wife claimed that was her bride price and she can spend it how she wants.

In the first half of 2021, man brought up trying for a baby, and the wife kept refusing, insisting on contraception. One time, he didn’t take proper precautions, and his wife threw a fit afterwards, got violent, and bought Plan B medicine.

His wife didn’t have any work after marriage. And nothing ever claim of the man’s desire for a child. He brought up a divorce, and his MIL called and accused him of not respecting her daughter’s wishes. The man gave in and chose to continue maintaining the marriage.

In 2022, wife tells man that her brother owes over 200K in debts and demands that he help. Man didn’t agree right away, and the wife became very upset, brought up divorce as a threat. The man gave in and their relationship improved somewhat.

Middle of the night, December, 2022, MIL calls saying that the BIL is suicidal. Man drives wife home, setting off at 10PM and only arriving at the BIL’s place at 4AM. After going through his text logs, everyone finally found out that the BIL only confessed to 200K of gambling debts, and he actually owed well over 600K. The BIL even took the deed to his house to take out a private loan for 50K, though he only got 40K in the end.

Man was resting on the couch in his BIL’s house. When he woke up the next morning, he found blankets over him, and later found out that it was the BIL’s girlfriend worried that he’d catch a cold.

The wife says that they can’t just do nothing about his brother. His FIL wants to get the loan on the house paid off at least, and asked to borrow money from man. Man agrees to make the transfer, and made a note in the transfer, “Lending 50K.” When his wife saw the note, she felt her husband was disrespecting her family and began arguing with him again. The man felt wronged that he spent 12 hours hurrying here, took a day off work to sort out family issues, and never got a word of comfort and even got blamed for writing a note on the transfer.

The FIL tried to mediate, admitting that the wife shouldn’t force the man to put up his money, but hoping at the same time that then man will have more tolerance for his wife’s personality. After that wave, they seemingly returned to normal life, but the hidden troubles were always there. The wife continued to try to persuade the BIL’s girlfriend into not breaking up with him and continues to get involved in their relationship.

April of 2023, BIL and girlfriend come to man’s house. Wife plans to take her brother to see a therapist the next morning, hinting that the man has to pay for this fee too. The wife still made the decision first and just informed him afterwards. The man was unwilling to accept and slept away from home that night. His wife kept urging him to transfer money and even threatened to take out an internet loan herself. The visit ended up costing over 3000RMB, and the BIL’s girlfriend ended up paying it.

Afterwards, the wife demanded that he lend another 50K to her brother and in exchange, she will agree to try for a baby. Eager to have a child, the man immediately made the transfer.

July of same year, BIL sold his house for a total of 680K. BIL’s girlfriend tells them to keep an eye on the money in case he gambles with it again. Wife takes on this responsibility, promising nothing was going to go wrong. After 10 days or so, man asks where the money went, and wife confesses that she took the money out and spent some half of it to keep her brother calm and mediate his fights with his girlfriend, and some of it to her mother to take care of her.

November of 2023, BIL lies to girlfriend again, using the excuse of investing in a auto repair shop to get her to take out an 80K internet loan. She couldn’t pay back the loan and asked for help from man and wife, hoping to get at least 5K to avoid the loan defaulting. Out of the kindness of his heart, man makes the transfer, and takes another day off work the next day to go with his wife to where her brother lives. Girlfriend cries that she’s tried multiple times to get BIL to quit gambling and nothing’s worked.

Then the FIL gets involved again, asking man to pay for the remaining 75K for now to get rid of the internet loan and avoid the girlfriend from calling the police and pressing fraud charges. The man makes the transfer to her in two separate transfers, and FIL promises to pay him back this money. After wife talked with BIL, she understood that her brother knew he was dragging his girlfriend down and agreed that they would split up. On the way home, wife brings up wanting to take out a loan on their marital house to get more money to pay back her brother’s gambling debts. Man explicitly refuses.

A month later, man sees screenshot that wife was still asking to borrow money from BIL’s ex-girlfriend that he’s already split up with. This completely disappointed him. He’s unwilling to put up any more money to support his BIL. He continues to talk to his FIL in private, asking for his money back. The FIL acknowledges the debt, but doesn’t have the ability to actually pay him back.

Chinese New Year, 2024, wife remained at her family’s home to deal with her brother and didn’t spend New Years with man. Man was alone at home, feeling depressed, and made a WeChat post. Wife didn’t comment anything about it, but BIL’s ex-girlfriend expressed her concern and offered that if the FIL can’t pay man back, then she’s willing to pay him back in installments. This kindness was at such odds with how his wife has been acting that man contacts his wife and FIL and asks them to not continue harassing the ex-girlfriend.

6 days after New Years, man visits his FIL for New Years in accordance with customs. During dinner, family asks about their plans for children, and wife lies in public that they’re already trying, which is not what’s actually happening. Man sees reality the way it is and become more determined to get divorced. Lantern festival, he’s alone at home and receives a holiday greeting from the ex-girlfriend. A simple line warmed his heart.

May 2024, wife confesses that in order to continue supporting her brother, she now owes 260K in internet loans. Man didn’t get upset when he heard this number. He calmly asked for a divorce. Wife was in disbelief, and threw her usual tantrum and left, thinking the man would look for her like before. This time, man didn’t go out and look, and just called his FIL telling him about what he’s been putting up with for these years. Throughout their multi-year marriage, his wife didn’t have steady work, relied on him for daily expenses, and repeatedly used their family funds to help her brother. Man makes it clear that marriage requires mutual respect, and he can no longer accept one-sidedly helping her family.

Divorce proceeds well. During cool down period, wife returns home to pack belongings multiple times hoping husband would ask her to stay. Man is thoroughly disappointed and never does. Once they get their divorce certificate, they officially split up.

Night of divorce, man has complicated feelings and ends up venting to BIL’s ex-girlfriend. The two end up voice-chatting for over 2 hours talking about their experiences. August of 2024, girl’s mother visits state capital for medical treatment. Man is familiar with local hospital and offers to help get appointment set up, stand in line, and arrange hotel and transportation for them. The more they interact, the more they fall for each other. The girl doesn’t mind that he’s divorced and is willing to meet him half way. Considering what other people might say, they dated online for 4-5 months and kept it civil when they met offline and didn’t hurry to move in together.

June 2025, man learns from ex-wife’s cousin that his ex-wife has found a new date. The family has seen the new man and everything. After confirming this, man leaves his worries behind and officially shows his girlfriend to his family too. His family elders don’t have any objections. The two agree that they’ll just get some wedding dress photos and not bother with a full wedding to avoid too much discussion. 26th of May, this year, the two got married and the girl is already 2 months pregnant.

Man claims that the difference between his two relationships is all about respect. In the last marriage, he was treated like an ATM. The welfare of his family was continually second to his BIL’s gambling debts. His new partner knows to understand him, to talk issues through, and his new in-laws haven’t made any demands. He repeats that his wife has broken up with BIL a long time ago, and he has divorced his ex-wife. This new relationship is entirely legal.”

Comments say, “He got conned into giving that much money before giving up?”

“TL;DR: Man gets together with BIL’s ex-girlfriend, while ex-wife and ex-BIL live together. Everyone is in their rightful place and got exactly what they wanted. Happy ending for all.”

“He must have a really high HP bar to have tanked so much damage and not died.”

#Man leaves all inheritance to brother and not wife and children. “My friend passed me this case. The comment section is so full of despair that it made me curious.

The basics of this case is that a man passed away after being ill for a long time. His brother has a will that says he’s leaving everything to his brother and not his wife and son.

The wife questions the authenticity of this will. She thinks the brother made her husband sign it when he wasn’t in his right mind. The brother claims that this will came about because the wife divorced the man while he was still sick, abandoning him, while he’s been taking care of his brother this whole time, so his brother left everything to him.

The court didn’t make any judgement about which side took care of the man more. Both sides are insisting on their story. The wife says she took care of him, the brother says he was the one that did it. The wife claims that the “divorce” is actually just them living at different locations, because her husband keeps abusing her son.

I have to mention here that their oldest son has second level intellectual disabilities and can’t take care of himself. Which is to say, not only does the wife have to take care of her sick husband but also her oldest son. So you can imagine how much this inheritance mattered to her and her son.

In the end, the court ruling wasn’t about which side took care of the man more, but about whether the man took actions that went against the will after it was made. Legally, this is seen as a withdrawal of your previously stated intentions in the will. This is pretty understandable. What’s there to argue about?

So although there’s a will, the judge didn’t end up ruling in favour of the will.

The ruling first ensured that the disabled son would have his share, and then gave the wife her half of the joint marital assets. Considering the brother’s portion in the will, they ended up giving him 30%. As for the brother’s claim that he spent 700K on the man’s medical bills, the court didn’t accept that claim due to lack of evidence.

The second ruling maintained the first ruling.

Both sides are dissatisfied. The wife doesn’t understand why this brother gets some of their joint assets. The brother’s dissatisfaction is obvious. He wants it according to the will.

Both sides say they want to keep fighting.

I don’t understand why this commenter is so upset about it.”

[The comment in question is screenshotted below: “This sort of case is very damaging to common morality. When someone gets cancer, their spouse doesn’t want them to get better, but instead wants them to die early so they can take over their assets. The crime of neglect has disappeared here.”]

Comments say, “The brother claimed that both sons were completely on the wife’s side, but it turned out one of the sons is intellectually disabled and can’t take care of himself at all.”

“I think it’s already illegal to completely cut a disabled child out of your will. You have to leave them something, even if this will is perfectly authentic.”

“Why didn’t she get charged with neglect for moving out a month after he got diagnosed with cancer? Because she has to take care of her child? Shouldn’t she get less of the joint assets if not none in this case?”

“Because these men assume that all of the assets are theirs and there’s no such thing as joint assets. If he’s upset with his wife, then his wife and son should get absolutely nothing.”

#Xu Jiayin sentenced to life in prison.

“Xu Jiayin case timeline:

Latter half of 2021: Evergrande debt crisis explodes, cash flow completely dries up.

28th of September, 2023: Evergrande China announces that Xu Jiayin has been taken into custody on suspicion of criminal activity.

29th of January, 2024: High Court of Hong Kong orders Evergrande to go into bankruptcy, and bankruptcy process begins.

25th of August, 2025: Evergrande drops out of Hong Kong stock market, leaves capital market.

13th-14th of April, 2025: Xu Jiayin case opens in Shenzhen. Xu Jiayin confesses to all charges in court, sentencing is set for later.

20th of August, 2026: First ruling announced. Xu Jiayin sentenced to life in prison for all his combined charges, removal of political rights and confiscation of all personal property.”

Comments say, “So we’re taking care of him for free in his retirement. Definitely worth it.”

“He’s moved all his money ages ago.”

“How many people were fucked by Evergrande’s houses? Are they never going to get a house?”

“His wife and kids are overseas too?”

Calling a girl over to drink with them, deliberately getting her drunk, and molesting her in public.

After the girl fought back, these embarrassed animals pushed her over and gave her a broken spine.

We can’t just punish these two.

Everyone who was drinking there or who called her over shouldn’t get away with it.”

[OP attaches an AI summary of the story: Information on the internet has revealed more details about the business dinner in Hangzhou in July, but note that many of these details have not been officially confirmed:

Background of dinner: Zhaoshang Shekou and Jianfa established a cooperation to get a piece of land and held a celebration dinner for obtaining a piece of land in Binjianger, Baonan for 6 billion.

Victim identity: Internet sources say that she was a young employee at Jianfa named Li Jing (false name) and was called to the dinner at the last minute to drink.

At the party: Li Jing was made to “chug from the bottle”, consuming more than 250ml of Moutai in an hour, vomiting several times, and slowly losing consciousness.

Harm afterwards: The dinner then moved to a commercial karaoke, where she was supposedly molested and harmed. After being pushed away, Zhao Haifeng became angry and shoved her down, causing her spine to break.

After the case was exposed, Hangzhou Binjiang District Deputy Director Yu Tingdong’s personal resume was removed from the official government website on the 14th of August, and internet discourse has connected him with this dinner.

Resume changes: Yu Tingdong’s resume has disappeared from the “leadership window” on the official website, and his employment information can no longer be found through the provincial government website.

Background: Yu Tingdong was born in 1972 and manages city construction and real estate management. The last public event he was at was on the 24th of July.

Supposed connection: Internet rumours say that Yu Tingdong was also at the dinner and acted inappropriately, but there’s been no official announcement or arrest information.

Indication: Previously, social media reporter Yi Dichan mentioned that Yu Tingdong was the “central host” of the dinner, and Zhaoshang Shekou’s Zhao Haifeng was “second place”.”

Comments say, “I heard that the whole table got suspended (which is possible. There’s been other events not nearly as bad as this one, and the whole party lost their jobs.)”

“Why hasn’t his university come out to denounce him yet?”

“Suspended is way too light a punishment. He should get charged with criminal offenses.”

#Pang Dong Lai accused of hiring rapist. “This is getting pretty controversial, so let’s sort out the facts first. Pang Dong Lai [extremely popular supermarket] has released their hiring plan for their new location in Zhengzhou. They’re leaving 20 spots for ex-convicts who had served a sentence over 5 years, and given them their own application route. And this is not the first time Pang Dong Lai has done this.

What’s drawn public discourse is that an old statement by Yu Donglai [founder of Pang Dong Lai] got dug up, which was something like, “Whether you used to be a rapist or a murderer. I don’t care. I only look to the future.”

They did not explicitly say in their hiring policy that they want rapists. What this statement is trying to say is don’t define a person by their past.

The core conflict that commenters are arguing over: it’s not that anyone is against giving a second change to reformed ex-convicts.

But supermarkets have very heavy traffic, and there’s old people and little kids everywhere. What the public is concerned about is that if someone with a history of sexual assault was in a public-facing position in a supermarket, then who’s going to take responsibility for the safety of customers?

On the one hand, a business wants to give people a chance at a new life and reduce recidivism rates. On the other hand, normal customers want to shop in a safe public environment.

The hardest part about this isn’t kindness and forgiveness—it’s the boundary of forgiveness, standard of selection, and management of risk.

Which convicts are appropriate for a supermarket? Which jobs are they not allowed to hold? We need clear rules. Kindness can’t be without limit. Tolerance shouldn’t come at the cost of public safety.”

Comments say, “Honestly, there’s no need to go this far to display how tolerance your business is. Theres 400 million “self-employed” people in society who need jobs, and whether on the inside or outside, rapists are at the bottom of the chain and are considered unforgivable.”

“I mean, to be fair, you can say you don’t discriminate against people like this applying for a job at your company, but setting openings aside just for these people? Are there not normal people with no criminal history who deserve the job more?”

“They check your background for criminal records before you’re allowed to work at a school. A supermarket has even more customers across all demographics. Who would dare go in if it’s staffed by murderers, arsonists, and rapists? The customers might be more comfortable with financial crimes, but the supermarket probably wouldn’t like that.”

“Every once in a while, you’ll see a propaganda article come out about how #Peng Yu did knock old man down in Peng Yu case. [An extremely famous case in China where Peng Yu helped up an old man who had fell down and took him to the hospital and helped pay for some of his medical expenses and then was falsely accused of knocking the old man down to begin with. The judge in question ruled Peng Yu was guilty on the basis of, “If you didn’t knock him down, why would you help him up?” Which established a legal precedent that’s made Chinese people extremely averse to helping old people for over a decade.]

A lot of people fall for it because they don’t know that this case is a historical embarrassment for Chinese law. The method they ultimately used to cover up a judge ruling on a case with his ass is honestly chilling.

The facts of the Peng Yu case is very simple. Peng Yu said he was being a good person and helping an old man. The old man said that Peng Yu knocked him down. The judge’s first ruling was that there was 130K in damages, and Peng Yu was secondarily responsible and should pay 40%. Either Peng Yu knocked him down and he should be primarily responsible, or he’s doing a good thing and has no responsibility. How could he have 40% of secondary responsibility?

Then it’s the judge’s reasoning. The reasoning he used was deducing that because Peng Yu took the old man to the hospital, that means Peng Yu knocked him down. The whole reasoning doesn’t stand up at all. It’s absolutely idiotic. So in the end, this judge was removed from his job and he won’t get to rule on any more cases for the rest of his life.

Because he’s such an idiot, he’s not an actual villain. He’s just a normal everyday moron who can’t tell right from wrong. But he has an official government job, so they just stuffed him into a street office somewhere.

But for the local government, judges are a part of their image. In the justice system, judges should be highly educated. But everyone’s seen this judgement. They can deal with the judge, but they can’t deal with public opinion.

So they came up with a strategy that’s going to work short-term called a “non-disclosure agreement”. Think about it, did Peng Yu or the old lady ask for a non-disclosure agreement?

Of course not. In that day and age, neither party involved even new what an NDA was. At at most, this was a civil dispute case. Why would it need an NDA?

The reality is, neither party could afford to waste any more resources on this case, so they ultimately signed the agreement that they’re not allowed to talk about the case to anyone. The second ruling adjusted Peng Yu’s responsibility to 10% and had him pay a symbolic 10K to the old lady and closed the case.

The people involved were shut up, and the case was wrapped up from there.

And then, they get a third party to leak information that Peng Yu “admitted” to running the old lady over. Then they’ll clickbait it as Peng Yu “confessed” to knocking the old lady over. And try to cover up all the problems with the first ruling by making the results of the case sound just.

This is just about face.

Any media that knows about how things work won’t say anything about “Peng Yu confessing to knocking the old lady over” because even idiots can see that a third party made both parties sign an NDA, and then that third party reassured everyone that the case was totally just and fair. How was it just and fair? You can see the first ruling decision right there. You can’t make it make sense.

It’s not that “truth” doesn’t get any spotlight. It’s that the justice system’s face is you’r own business. If you really find it embarrassing, then stop bringing it up.

So long as you follow the timeline, you’ll know that the story doesn’t add up.

You can screenshot this article and look at it the next time this gets brought up again.”

Comments say, “They come out and slander Peng Yu on a regular basis. Are they really not worried that societal morality is going to break down? What kind of freaks are we dealing with.”

“Propaganda is propaganda, truth is truth. The two have nothing to do with each other. It’s just that the propaganda is what they want people to think is the truth.”

“Same thing with Fat Cat.”

“I’m a Nanjing local, and the Peng Yu case was covered from every angle back in the day. A lot of people don’t know that Peng Yu had a witness back in the day, an old man called Chen. He loudly demanded to know in front of the cameras why the old lady was lying, and even offered to be a witness in court. But then later on, he started saying he couldn’t remember and didn’t want to get involved. As for why…lol. Either way, as a local Nanjing’er, it was pretty clear to me back in the day and I won’t accept historical fiction.”

#Mother and daughter trafficked father tricked into unpaid labour for 11 years. “Look at the language criminals used. Trafficking a woman and her daughter, not letting the little girl go to school, and making her work round the clock around the house—that’s called “adoption”.

A husband searches for his trafficked wife and daughter and got imprisoned by an unlicensed factory and forced to labour for 11 years—that’s called “kindly taking him in”.

They’re so good with words…”

[OP attaches the original news story, which reads, “Jin Jun, born in 1989, should have had a childhood where she learned to read and write, but her life totally changed in the winter of 1994. At merely 5-years-old, she was travelling at night with her mute mother when they were forcibly taken away by two men and trafficked to a rural village in Shanxi. After being bought and sold by multiple parties, they were ultimately adopted by a family named Han.

In her new home, Jin Jun was forced to change her name, and had to shoulder heavy farm work and household chores since childhood, losing her chance to go to school. Living in someone else’s house is very difficulty. She couldn’t talk to her mother, her adopted father was very distant, and her childhood was very lonely. She missed her biological father with all her heart and hoped he would come take her home one day.

November of 2015, a phone call from cousin Jin Yong brought earth-shattering news. Jin Jun’s father, who had been missing for many years, had finally been found. The clue came from a normal inspection by Shanxi Yuncheng police. While conducting management of the local migrant population, workers found a man named Jin Fuchun at a concrete mixing plant at a construction material company. He pulled out his ID which was a long discontinued first generation ID, raising alarms. Local police contacted Jin Yong.

After 31 years, father and daughter were finally reunited after being separated for half their lives. Jin Jun told her white-haired father, “I have went through so much looking for you all these years. Everyone else has a dad who loves them. No one loves me.”

After talking, Jin Jun learned that it’s not that her father didn’t look for her, but at the time, her father was tricked into going to work at a gold mine in Henan by human traffickers. When he heard that his wife and daughter might be in Shanxi, he moved there instead. All these years, Jin Jun and her father were both in Shanxi, only a couple hundred kilometres apart, but they never saw each other.

Jin Jun’s father worked at the concrete mixing plant for 11 years and never got any pay. The initial explanation was that they had “taken him in out of the kindness of [their] heart.” With the intervention of the government, the company in question negotiated with the father and daughter and finally paid him past wages for the last 11 years, a total of 380K.

Now, Jin Jun has brought her father to the new house she bought in town. She said that she’s going to take care of her father from now on. The human trafficker who initially abducted Jin Jun and her mother has already been held accountable by the law.”

Comments say, “Why did he keep working if he wasn’t paid for 11 years?”

“I heard of news story of a boy from a rich family who was trafficked to an even richer family, and a lot of people described it as “adopted” or “taken in” by a rich family too.”

“So the factory owner didn’t get held accountable at all except for paying some money. How unbelievable.”

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Poor people don’t usually have bastards. They usually don’t even have wives, much less any extramarital children.

Working class, salarymen, and middle-class men don’t usually have bastards either. Supporting their marital children is hard enough. Very few mistresses are willing to have children for these men.

The men with the most bastards are rich.

When I first started being a lawyer, I handled a lot of marriage cases, and some are really dramatic, like the man has a mistress or kids on the side. Without exception, all of these men were pretty rich.

In some cases, the mistress is super committed and want to replace his wife. I assumed that the wife would be furious that her husband is cheating and had extramarital kids and would definitely want a divorce, but some wives choose to forgive him, stay together, and kick the mistress out.

And I have to mention a fact that a lot of women don’t want to admit online. When a man reaches a certain level of wealth, he’s not the one seeking mistresses to have kids with. It’s mostly women who are going after him.

On the internet, we’re used to calling these men scumbags, describe them as disrespecting women, etc, but that’s not necessarily accurate. It’s the other way around—a lot of women proactively try to get close to these men, have sexual relations with them, and have kids for them.

Because even just a little bit of resources that slips through these men’s fingers are enough for these women to live half their life, or even their whole life on. A normal man makes a couple thousand or maybe at most 10-20K a month, and they’re well off if they make a comfortable six figures a year. But men at the top of wealth see six figures as just chump change they can give to women.

Wealthy men aren’t idiots either. They’re not going to give just any woman their money.

So the woman needs to either establish a partnership through some project, and use the project to launder money from him, or establish a partnership through children and get money through their kids. If it’s just a purely sexual relationship, they usually won’t give too much money, because sexual relations isn’t anything new to these men.

The topic of whether extramarital children should have inheritance rights has nothing to do with most men.

Because most men won’t have bastards in their lifetime. No woman would be willing to have a bastard with a man with no money. In fact, some women who make enough of their own money don’t even want to get married to normal men. They think if their partner doesn’t make enough money, then they won’t bring enough value into a marriage.

Of course, this topic has nothing to do with most women either, because if you’re not pretty enough or good enough at scheming, even if you wanted to have kids for rich men, they won’t do it, because there’s a lot of competition surrounding these men.

The biggest paradox for some modern women is that on the one hand, they want to find men at the top of the pyramid, and on the other hand, they expect these men to be loyal and devoted to them, and these two qualities are fundamentally at odds.

Our ancestors saw things more clearly, and systemically acknowledged that top men or nobles can have multiple concubines. Once you get rid of these mental shackles, women don’t find it insufferable to share a rich man either. But modern society only has monogamy, and morally demands that men and women have to be devoted to each other, causing a lot of women orbiting rich men to feel pained.

On the one hand, they gather around rich men in large numbers due to natural competition, and on the other hand can’t accept that this rich man has other women in his life due to the influences of monogamy. They can’t handle sharing, and end up in a place of suffering.”

Comments say, “There’s been cases of powerful people like corrupt officials being caught with dozens of mistresses.”

“My family owned a factory growing up so I’m kind of well off. My dad knows a lot of friends who are rich too. Honestly speaking, it’s not easy for a rich man to stay completely chaste. The environment and the temptations are right there…”

“Is our current marriage and inheritance system not just the concubine system by another name?”

#Low marriage rates has nothing to do with the Civil Affairs Bureau. [A hashtag that came about because the Civil Affairs Bureau revealed that they started up a partnership with banks and subway stations, so you can get married while you’re at the bank or waiting for your train, causing a lot of people to question, “Is that really why people aren’t getting married? Because going to the Civil Affairs Bureau is too much hassle?”]

“An important reason the marriage rate is low is because there’s big problems with the entire institution of marriage.

On the one hand, it demands that husband and wife are faithful to each other, and on the other hand, it pursues freedom of both marriage and divorce. These two things are at odds with each other, but they’ve been put into the same system.

That’s like if traffic laws said that on the one hand, you have to stop at a red light and wait for it to turn green, but on the other hand, you have freedom of movement and can stop and go whenever you want. If you put paradoxical things into the same system, then you’ll make that system lose all value.

The marriage system right now is something that has lost all systemic value.

After women get married, they find that their husband can leave them at any time, even if they accompanied him through his darkest times, once he gets rich, he can still leave whenever he wants. So women think there’s no point in marriage.

After men get married, they’ll find that their wife can leave them at any time, even if they had to put a lot into the marriage, like high bride price, putting her name on their house, etc. And not only can the woman leave, but she can walk away with his money. So men think there’s no point in marriage.

This has become a system where the bad outcompetes the good. Whoever is more shameless gets to benefit from the system. So as time goes on, there’ll be less and less people who participate in this system.”

Comments say, “I don’t think both sides are equally free. Cheating, extramarital kids, marital rape, “wouldn’t know if it didn’t happen”, etc, it’s hard to even look at. Just hold a ceremony in the future, don’t get the certificate. We gotta link up with international customs and just have boyfriends and girlfriends who live together. Marriage is sacred, don’t defile it so easily.”

“The marital laws right now doesn’t hold people to their responsibilities. They’ve left a lot of loopholes for people to indulge in their human nature…being educated changes things.”

“It’s because people’s right to not get married is protected too well. Extramarital kids still have inheritance rights. Living together can still count as common law marriage. So why bother getting the certificate?”

“Oh my god, I just came across this content creator yesterday. His latest video is just him cooking, but his fans say he’s a thirst trap. He owes a lot of money and finally paid all of it off, so he stopped doing thirst bait content and just uploaded cooking videos. And I just found out today that he died.”

“I saw the comment section say that he worked hard for 19 years and only managed to live life for 19 days after his debt was paid off…”

“I kind of get it. Some people are kept going on nothing but obsession alone. They’re holding in their last breath. He paid off his money, the obsession disappeared, and the last breath in his heart was gone too.”

“It was an accident. He didn’t even get to enjoy life but for a few days.”

“He just bought a brand new Audi, how could he not have any obsession left?”

“He paid back 3 million RMB in 8 years. He was only 11-years-old when he started paying back money. Only got to drive his new car for a day before dying. T_T”

[A screenshot of a post from the content creator in question.] “Remember when I said I was 14 and couldn’t afford food, so I dropped out of school to do hourly work there? It was 100RMB for 12 hours, 110RMB if it’s night shift. I’d live on 5RMB a day, and rent a place in the slums for 500RMB a month. I got through it. I swallowed it. I hope you can too.”

[A post from his sister.] “Hello, guys, I’m Guang-sir’s sister. He was in a car accident yesterday around noon, and has passed away this morning. The cause is that he didn’t slow down at an intersection on his motorcycle and ran into a small car. He’s actually younger than you think. He’s 19-years-old this year. And he’s a hard worker. He bought a 220K Audi car and paid in full all by himself. But life is fragile sometimes. He died after driving it around for only three days. What do you think is even the point?

Sometimes, I don’t get it. How could such a skillful driver have an accident? He only just drove me to the station this morning. We only said goodbye for 6 hours before we were separated forever. I stayed by the ICU door and listened to his heart monitor beep for 3 hours, terrified that this was the moment it would stop.

We begged the nurses to let us in to see him. He always runs a little warm, but he was so cold and his eyes were so dead. The machine pressed down on his chest again and again like it’s trying to break his bones. I gripped his hand and called his name but it was useless.

I still can’t wrap my head around the idea that he’s gone, but all I can do at this point is learn to accept it. This account is very meaningful to him. I’m going to try to get it under my name in the next few days. I hope more people can remember him.”

“Oh no, he just said yesterday that his debt is all paid off T_T”

“Finished paying off his debt at the end of July, only had his new car for three days, just started a new project, about to have his birthday on the 30th. His life had just begun and it’s been cut short. He doesn’t want to suffer anymore. He’s been through all the hardship and gone to enjoy himself on the other side. Good night.”

#Trendy appliances are gathering dust. “I won’t mention what some singles or couples buy, lemme just talk about the least useful appliances a family can buy:

Personal opinion only, don’t like don’t read:

Soy milk machine: I listened to influencer horseshit that homemade soy milk is more nutritious…my 900+RMB soy milk machine only makes 3-4 cups at a time and gets super dirty. After half an hour of waiting around, I have to clean it right away, or it’ll be even harder to clean once it dries. I only used that machine at most 10 times…

Breakfast machine/waffle iron thing: I honestly don’t have the time. Used it 2-3 times and now it gathers dust.

Electric oven: Maybe the one I bought was too small. It doesn’t actually cook anything properly and has all kinds of problems. It’s hard to talk about it all.

Microwave: At first I’d heat food in it, but then I just got too lazy to. It’s convenient for heating bread and whatever, but there’s no point in putting food in there. It changes the taste…gathering dust now.

Juicer: Used once. Maybe I just hate juice or paste-y food! I just don’t like food like that!

Air fryer: The most practical out of all my appliances! After all, I’ve got a kid at home, so I’ll sometimes buy premade frozen chicken nuggets and fries and whatever, and my kid knows how to use it himself.

I haven’t used other appliances so I can’t comment.

Things that come out of these appliances don’t taste fresh-cooked. I don’t know how to say it. I don’t usually order much takeout, so I’m used to eating food straight from a wok.”

First comment is from OP, “ETA: I haven’t used it for so long that I completely forgot I had it, but roombas are also hard to describe. Maybe my house is just too messy or something, but it did not meet my expectations at all. And vacuums. My house is paved in tile, not carpet, and hair gets caught up in it all the time. I feel like it’s a waste of time and doesn’t actually clean anything.”

“Buying a soy milk machine for your house is really useless. It’s a pain to clean and you won’t use it often enough.”

“I need an oven and microwave. Don’t care about anything else.”

“Microwaves are so useful though! Heating up food is it’s least useful function for me XD I like to make garlic oil, green onion oil, lard, or just thaw things or process green peppers or something. And making popcorn XD”

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What I want to say is that a lot of female commenters who are getting angry on her behalf and supporting her still have too much hope in men.

Men are way more disgusting than they think, and gold diggers are far more capable than they think.

Lemme tell you a couple of points that these justice-filled commenters would never think of.

One, the more you talk about how uneducated the mistress was and how rich the guy was, then the more gold diggers will flock to this Mr. Tang.

Because gold diggers think differently than you do. What they think is, “If a primary school educated, infertile mistress can wrap Tang around her little finger—that means Tang is a “virgin” among scumbags.”

He’s never seen the world but he has a ton of money.

Then, “Wouldn’t it be easy to bag him when I’m younger, pretty, and more educated than this mistress?”

That’s how gold diggers think: this man is easy to get.

Now the entire internet is talking about how this mistress is uneducated, got a ton of plastic surgery, has a kid already—that’s all advertising for him. This is a man who’s easy to bag, and his demands are very simple—he just wnats a son.

Lemme tell you, there’s going to be a lot more gold diggers after this Tang guy. Just wave after wave of them.

Most commenters are upstanding working folks and think that it’s normal for married couples to share money. That it’s normal for him to pay for his wife’s treatments.

But a lot of gold diggers live on the edge of society and fight for every breath they take.

In their world, there are plenty of men even more fucked up by this. This Tang guy is a pretty decent dude.

The more you talk about how much money Tang spent on his mistress, the more gold diggers will throw themselves at him.

This is the reality of the world.

Second, Ms. Zhu is all by herself, and she used to have cancer.

I think she should focus on protecting herself first and make money her primary demand.

After all, there’s only so much a single person can do.

A lot of sisters have put her on a pedestal and this is actually harming her.

Like “defending marriage” “societal justice”—that’s all unnecessary.

With how much of a shitstorm this has become, the best thing that can happen to her is getting a big settlement and getting to leave.

You need a powerful person and a powerful organisation to push society to progress.

To be honest, you have to at least be a People’s Representative or a political committee member with a lot of support before you try to push for things.

Anyone who’s tried to do anything in society knows, forget pushing for new laws. Forget pushing for justice. Just organising a couple of thousand people to attend an event together is exhausting.

Don’t put Ms. Zhu on a pedestal, don’t try to trick her into doing charity for society, to make the marriage system better blah blah blah.

She’s doing pretty good if she can leave this marriage without getting fucked.

And she needs to focus on her goals.

Third, no one can follow someone else around for the rest of their life, and internet discussion lasts even shorter than that.

Raising public opinion to get results has a very short time window.

Don’t waste that window. You need to get your divorce settlement done in this time period.

If you get sweet-talked into not divorcing, then in another year or two, when Tang found some other gold digger to be his mistress (which is super easy) and gets another kid through a natural pregnancy, you’d have to get divorced anyway.

And public opinion won’t be around a second time.

Four, don’t say that you’re not divorcing for your daughter’s sake.

I’ve seen a lot of interviews with Ms. Zhu.

Her daughter is an honest kid, very straightforward personality. The best thing for her is to get some money and finish her studies.

As soon as the kid got bullied by her dad, she immediately came back and told her mom everything. This is a kid with no schemes in her heart.

She’s the last person who would be fighting a bunch of bitches in the middle of a storn.

Honestly, if either of this mother-daughter pair was good at fighting bitches, this event wouldn’t have become such a big deal on the internet.

We have to face the facts here. If your daughter is an honest kid, then protect her, let her focus on her studies, get away from the whirlpool early.

She’s never going to win if her dad has a concubine on one arm and a step-mom on the other.

Stop watching household drama power fantasies and letting it fuck up your logic. A spoiled uni student with a mother with a strong personality is never going to win against a bunch of gold diggers who had to survive in the bottom of society.

Because gold diggers professionally please people.

So if you want a good future for your daughter, there’s only one path: get money, study hard, stay far away from him, be independent, start a business in the future or at least find yourself a good job.

That’s, “The hardest path to walk is the moral path.”

Fifth, I think a lot of girls are still too kind.

A lot of them have never fought men before. Many have never been enemies of men.

They have no idea how hard it is to be the enemy of a man, especially the enemy of a man who commands societal resources. They have no idea just how low these people’s bottom lines are.

I’ve seen plenty of male entrepreneurs with no morals—lemme put it this way. If Tang ever pulls out his finishing move and public discourse has already died down, if Ms. Zhu hadn’t gotten a divorce with her money by that point, there’s going to be a lot more shit in the future.

Including but not limited do: taking away her insurance, taking away her social security, freezing her credit card, cutting off her daughter’s tuition.

Since Tang isn’t making his finishing move yet, quickly get your money and leave. That’s the best strategy.

Just get a big lump sum payment right now.

Do not drag this out any longer. If you drag it out any more, to be honest, you’re not being realistic.”

Comments say, “No problem with this. Don’t overcommit to a fight. Even if you’re an idealist, you gotta know when you’ve won. Be an idealist who can evaluate what’s good for you and what’s not. Live your life first, don’t be a lone warrior fighting for a pyrrhic victory.”

“The more I look at this case as an honest woman, the more it grosses me out. The sin of honest people is thinking too highly of men, and it’s a sin that condemns you for life.”

“There’s no way they can reach an agreement. He offered to pay her in split payments. That means he doesn’t intend to dip into his real assets.”

“Simple introduction, green text bubble is me, black text bubble is boyfriend.

We went out for Dragon Boat Festival and when we came back, he suddenly texted me to ask for me to split the bill. I put together our itinerary, booked our travel, and got our hotel room. He didn’t pay for anything up front (this was around 6/18 [internet shopping holiday] and he asked me to buy some daily necessities for him because I’m good at figuring out the discounts, but he didn’t pay me for that either). I had to bring up that this is inappropriate and he should be taking on some of the responsibility as a man before he paid me the money. Before that, what he said was, “Just book everything first, I’ll pay you back half later, and I’ll carry all your bags for you.” The ticket and hotel was 985RMB per person. He sent me 999RMB and said 14RMB was my tip. You can’t say he didn’t pay me, and it’s not like he shorted me, but it’s so weird.”

Boyfriend: “Baby, we spent a total of 880RMB on food this trip. Let’s split it. Take a look at how much those Ubers cost and we’ll deduct it from the 440RMB you have to pay. How does that sound?”

OP: [Sends 454RMB in transfer] Lol, never thought this kind of bullshit would happen to me. Consider the uber money payment for your fridge magnets and shit, including the 14RMB tip you gave me. You can hold onto your chump change. Holy shit. Let’s break up.”

Boyfriend: “Why? Why can’t we talk about it?”

OP: “There’s nothing to talk about. We have different values.”

Boyfriend: “You start off with breaking up.”

OP: “I’m in shock too. Every step of the way, you make me feel like we’re not walking together. Do your friends split the bill like this with their girlfriends too? If so, forget I said anything.”

Boyfriend: “I just asked your opinion. Why are you speaking to me this way?”

OP: “This is the first time I’ve seen online bullshit in person. If this kind of thinking even enters your head, then there’s nothing for me to say. Are you going to pay me every time we sleep together? Every time you pick me up or drop me off? Get it in your head. If you want to negotiate, do that before the trip. Don’t spring shit on me afterwards.”

Boyfriend: “How is this bullshit? Why do you say there’s no point? I’m just trying to talk to you, ask your opinion. There’s really no need for all this over a couple hundred bucks. Not like I need the money. I’m just trying to talk to you about the expenses for the trip. We both contribute towards our joint expenses normally, and we spend each other’s money all the time and don’t nickel and dime it. I’ve never brought that up with you.”

OP: “I worked hard to put together an itinerary and make sure every detail lined up, and at the last minute, you tell me the schedule is too packed. Fine, I won’t ever do it again. You try doing that and getting treated by someone else this way and you’ll get it. I saw you deleting the photos I just sent you, and I reminded you that I just texted those to you in case you thought you took those photos or something, and you yelled at me over it. I didn’t accuse you of anything and I never said you’re not allowed to delete them. I’ve always said you should delete some of my photos so you can have more space. You screamed at me, so I have nothing to say either. If that’s your attitude, then you have to take on the risk that I’m going to get cold to you. You know why we didn’t talk last night. When you got up this morning, I thought you’d be a man and just get a ride and leave and let me sleep. But you just suddenly turned on all the lights to burn my eyes and refused to say anything to me. Do you want me to get up and walk you out the door? And you accuse me of being cold. You mean after all that shitty attitude, I still have to simp for you and make you breakfast?”

Comments say, “Who’s got it worse than me? He insisting on splitting the bill on a Mixue lemonade with me. [A 3RMB drink.]”

“I’ve got it worse. He offered to drive me back to my place, and had me pay him on Uber.”

“I personally feel like while dating, there’s no need to split the bill on small amounts. On big amounts, you should just give back a gift of similar value. If you nickel and dime everything, then you’ll always feel like the other party doesn’t trust you.”

This plan might not make the marriage more stable, but at least the divorce won’t be ugly. There’s no joint marital assets, so there’s no need to go to court to split anything. They just have to split up and mutually agree on how to split custody.

A lot of commenters who are confused by this topic might agree with another topic on the trending hashtags today “#Doesn’t seem to be much purpose to marriage.”

Yeah, in this system, there isn’t much purpose to getting married. It’s just for the sake of love. The two people have thought it through, put money out of the picture, and only married each other out of love.

I don’t think it’s that hard for people to accept such a system, but why doesn’t it exist in China?

Actually, when China was first founded, we’ve tried to import such systems before. The early form was that a joint asset agreement between husband and wife was acknowledged by the law. Why would the government have to get involved between a couple deciding for themselves how they want to split their assets?

I feel like nothing bad would happen if the law just stayed out of it and let people decide how they want to split assets.

I’m sure people would never accept that the most common place you’d see such an agreement is in the 2000’s kids in rural villages in China. China’s propaganda is very strong, and the impression it’s given people for the longest time is that when it comes to rural villages, because there’s so many more men than women, men have to beg girls to marry them by offering up lots of money.

But is that how it is for even moderately well off rural men?

Let’s look at the standard marriage for a rural Hebei 2000’s guy. I’m talking about an actual guy who exists here. His parents bought him his house, and it’s agreed that it has nothing to do with his wife. They paid a bride price, but it all goes into his pocket to go towards future living expenses, so there’s no such thing as returning the bride price. They don’t even need to get a marriage certificate together. Because they have no marriage certificate, in order for the baby to get on the household registration, there’s a mandatory DNA test, so you don’t have to worry about bastards. His pre-marital assets and post-marital assets are completely independent, just like Christiano Ronaldo.

When are they going to get a marriage certificate?

We’ll see.

These young people in Chinese rural villages are completely different from the propaganda. The Christiano Ronaldo mode you see today is everywhere in our rural villages.

Do you think the law respects the marriage agreements these villagers made for themselves?

Currently, it gets ripped apart during divorces or split ups, for all kinds of ridiculous reasons. And at the same time, the media still doesn’t report on the changes in rural villages and continues to propagandise, “This is how villagers are supposed to live.””

Comments say, “I wanted to ask, actually, is the best strategy just not to get married? Is that the best way to lower risk?”

“If you ask, then we’ve got 30 million single men sweating bullets, so I have the upper hand.”

“There’s plenty people like this locally where I am too. If she can’t have kids, then you can just split up without having to go through a divorce.”

#Marriage rate breaks historical low. “You know, although I’m constantly accused of being a “feminist blogger”, I still want to tell young girls, don’t be afraid of marriage.

Worst case scenario, you can always get a divorce.

There is a purpose to marriage. For example, when I had appendicitis, my man just sat by and did nothing, and even made fun of me for crying in pain when no one else was doing it. But at least he was there. At least I don’t have to trouble my elderly parents.

(If the man you found is completely useless, you can always get a divorce.)

These extreme events are in the minority. Although most people have all kinds of flaws, they’re still, for the most part, normal people.

When looking for a date, try to find people you know in daily life, like your classmates or coworkers or other people you know through work. This way, you have an idea of what kind of person they are and the possibility of a trap lessens.

As for worrying that he won’t help with the kid or do housework after marriage, there’s always more solutions than problems.

Like if he doesn’t handle childcare at all, just sent the kid over to his office and then book yourself a train ticket and take a trip.

Don’t worry about MIL conflict either. If your husband can’t even act as a go-between, then just go take a vacation. If you really can’t leave work, then book yourself a hotel.

See? It’s not that hard.”

Comments say, “Is it possible that Shanghai men are just more self-aware? At least all the 90’s Shanghai men I know, know how to live life and are generally clean and are happy to act as a go-between. There’s another type of man who’s going to constantly go on about how his mother has it hard. I’m not afraid of marriage, I’m afraid of that kind of man. I want to stay far away from them.”

“Marriage is great. You get an extra source of income, an extra set of hands to help out. There’s not that many toxic men. All my girl friends have obedient family men as husbands.”

“If you have kids, it’s actually really awkward. You can’t leave, but you can’t stand not leaving either, unless you’re super strong.”

“People have been arguing about the Changzhou Starbucks closing their AC for a while. From a normal person’s point of view, it’s entirely normal to want to find somewhere cool to rest your feet and sit for a while when it’s hot out, and most stores don’t mind.

But looking at the videos that commenters have posted, this Starbucks has basically become a mahjong parlour. People are taking up seats all day long, playing loudly, and paying customers can’t actually get an order at all. It’s severely affecting normal business…

That’s the hardest part: they’re not fighting or making trouble, you can’t deal with it too harshly. You’ll get into just as much controversy trying to kick them out by force, but they won’t listen to reason either.

Closing their AC solves the problem temporarily, but normal customers who just want a cup of coffee still have to suffer the heat. No one wins here…”

Comments say, “Isn’t IKEA even worse off then?”

“Closing the AC only treats the symptom, not the root cause. They need a different sort of management.”

“I’m not going to blame Starbucks. I think they did the right thing. If I went to buy something at Starbucks and all of those people were there being noisy, I would get annoyed too. I would just not buy anything and go somewhere else.”

“Lemme tell you something ridiculous. I have a friend who drives for rideshare apps, and he was down to his last bar of gas.

There was a PetroChina right in front of us, but he drove for another 8km to go to a Sinopec. I asked him was that necessary? And he said absolutely. Sinopec’s gas lasts for 40 more kilometres.

I thought he was crazy at the time, until I dug up the data on the gas and found there’s a lot more going on than you think.

PetroChina’s 92 gas has a density of roughly 0.72-0.73g/cm3.

And Sinopec is usually at 0.75-0.77. If you have a 50 litre gas tank, then Sinopec will give you 2 extra kilos of hydrocarbons, which will produce more energy.

In 2025, PetroChina made a profit of 164.7 billion RMB, and Sinopec made 50.3 billionRMB.

PetroChina made three times as much money by taking their oil upstream, but everyone praises Sinopec’s gas for lasting longer. That’s business. One is making money off of resources, and another is making reputation off of technology.”

Comments say, “How come I feel like PetroChina lasts longer?”

“Is this true?”

“He’s driving for ride share in a gas car?”

#Full social security payment in 3-5 years. “Small companies already have thin profit margins and have a hard time surviving. If they do this, then it’s just waiting for mass unemployment from bankruptcy to happen.

Lemme give an example: if an worker is getting paid 10K a month and pays according to the lowest standard, then the company pays around 1300RMB a month. If they pay the full amount, based on a 10K salary, the company needs to pay about 2600RMB. That’s 15K extra per person per year. For a small business with only ten employees, that’s an additional 150K in cost every year. How much profit does a small company even make?

Looks like we’re really entering an aging society. There’s more and more people taking social security, and less and less people paying in, and they’re running out of money.

There’s a couple in my development in their 60s. The man makes 13000 a month in social security, and the woman makes 3000 a month. Of course, they both worked great jobs before retirement.”

Comments say, “Why are you sympathising with company owners?”

“The problem is confirming the base amount of social security payments. Having to pay more if your income is high makes sense, but if you’re making less money than the local median, then…[doge] And people didn’t pay enough back in the day and are taking too much now. We have to lower social security payments and not raise it every year. While we’re looking for more streams of income, we also gotta cut costs. If we spread the suffering out to people in their 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s, then it’ll be a lot better.”

“If you only make 150K a year in profit, why would you hire 10 people?”

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His wife gave up her position as a government Director and accompanied him through the hardest times of his life.

His wife took out over 10 million RMB in loans from the bank to buy a pharmaceutical company.

His wife always worked with him, and even gave birth to a son for him at 49-years-old in order to save her marriage.

And yet despite being old himself, he still cheated with his secretary…and had extramarital children.

And faced with such a wife who helped with his career through his hardest times, he went to the kitchen with a meat cleaver and hacked her four times.

Zhang Xiaolan described the events, “He walked towards me. I was sitting on the chair, no idea what he’s coming over for. He pulled me over, grabbed me by the head, and pulled out his meat cleaver and started hacking at my neck…”

And in the end, he got sentenced to 11 years for premeditated homicide.

So, who dares to get married when they see such a terrifying life and such lack of protections from the law?

ETA: I don’t know what kind of brainwashing some commenters went through. Who’s whitewashing a murderer?

I’ve attached a pic of the guy’s letter of regret. She’s his second wife. They were legally married. And no matter what, there’s no excuse for murder.

A second wife is still a wife, and his second wife helped him a lot.”

Comments say, “They got divorced already, and his ex-wife ran away to America, but his youngest son wanted to come back to see his dad. And he ended up murdering his ex-wife in front of his son. That kid’s gonna be traumatised for life. And the money he promised to give her in case they divorce, he never ended up giving either.”

“OP fact check your sources. There’s a lot of fake news on the internet, especially in gender-related topics.”

“The reason he got 11 years is probably because she didn’t actually die. This is a fair sentence from a legal point of view. It’s a pretty normal ruling. It is a disgusting case though. Why didn’t he manage to commit suicide? What a shame.”

“She didn’t look into why he got divorced when she married him, huh.”

#Female village branch secretary who can handle 85kg can’t handle internet bullying. “A 25-year-old girl fought a typhoon for two days and two nights, and no one praised her. In fact, she got bullied onto the trending hashtags because she was wearing coloured contacts and had her nails done. This ridiculous event happened in Zhejiang, Xiangshan County, Huaqiang Village, on their young village party branch secretary, Gu Wei.

Typhoon Dolphin arrived and Gu Wei held the line for tow days and two nights without sleeping a wink. When interviewed by a reporter, she laughed and said, “I can carry 85 kilos.” This sentence got clipped and people joked that she was the greatest warrior in all of Zhejiang. The comment section slid from questioning whether she was lying to judging her appearance, and even started making up lies about her background. But is the claim that she can carry 85 kilos really a lie? Looking back on the entire interview, the reporter saw that Gu Wei was on the small side and asked if she was worried she would get blown away. She laughed and explained that she works out all the time, doing squats, and she can carry 85 kilos. “If any senior in the village have an emergency, I can carry them to safety.”

Clearly, what she means is that she can squat 85 kilos [this is a trick of grammar where the two expressions sound the same in Chinese but is hard to get across in English]. She’s not gloating about super strength. She’s just trying to break the stereotype that people who are lighter can’t handle typhoons, and she made clear her responsibilities as a village party branch secretary in a joking tone—if necessary, she will figure out a way to handle it, she won’t ever back down. And the facts prove that she is, in fact, a responsible civil servant. Last month, when Typhoon Bavi came, Gu Wei stood guard the whole night. At 2AM, the railings of some houses broke. As soon as she got the call, she hurried to the scene, took photographs as evidence, comforted villagers, arranged for repairs, and dealt with everything quickly and efficiently. To fight against Typhoon Dolphin, not only did she mark out important areas to patrol, she touched based with the village clinic beforehand to make sure they had blood pressure medicine and first aid packs prepared for seniors living alone.

A 25-year-old female official is doing all she can for her villagers, and yet her hard work has been covered up by jokes. She is being flooded by people picking on her appearance.

But do you know? This isn’t the first time that the focus has shifted when faced with female civil servants working on the front lines of disaster relief. May of this year, there was severe rainfall in Hunan, Shiman. The female village party branch secretary Xiang Jinyuan stood in the rain for several days, her eyes bloodshot with exhaustion, her voice hoarse, making sure that every villager was safety evacuated. There wasn’t a single casualty in her village. But most commenters only saw the gold earrings she was wearing, and many people made up rumours that she has suspicious streams of income.

Like female officials who are on the front lines of disaster relief don’t have the right to wear a normal piece of jewellery. What’s ironic is that in office work, it’s often considered a part of professionalism for women to wear make up and dress in nice clothes, but in any practical setting, women have to be completely bare-faced or else they’re not doing their jobs seriously.

This kind of double standard is all about using judgements about their appearance to replace actual evaluations of their work. It’s not fair or objective. What’s even scarier is the unfortunate trend online where people will pick others apart with a magnifying glass. Last month, during Typhoon Bavi, a female official in Wenzhou repeatedly told a reporter, “Don’t film me, it’ll look too much like I’m putting on a show.” When a civil servant is standing in front of the cameras, their first reaction is, “Am I going to get bullied for this?” That’s clear evidence of how much trauma this trend has given to civil servants.

But in an emergency, first responders are often the closest source of information on the ground. If everyone is scared of internet commenters and won’t speak up, then suspicion and rumours will sneak their way in, and the first people to be affected will be the crowds that need information to avoid danger. And long term, the people actually doing their jobs will become increasingly silent. Be more tolerant, be less picky. Don’t chill the hearts of the people on the front lines sweating away.”

Comments say, “The people who should be bullied at the ones who hid and didn’t do anything.”

“There’s a lot of uneducated people online with no manners and no values.”

“I have to try to defend her. I wear coloured contacts too. I have some sort of oversensitivity, and even wearing very light glasses frames makes it feel like there’s something super heavy on my face, and my head will be super tense all day. It’s half a day at most before I develop a horrible headache and can’t get anything done. I put on coloured contacts whenever there’s something important going on, and only bother to wear my framed glasses when I don’t have much to attend to.”

“Oh my god, I just saw a word called “patriarchal substitution”, where an absent father + a complaining mother makes daughters develop masculine characteristics and take on a male-like role.

In these daughters’ mindsets, women are all super pitiable and sad and deserve empathy, and all men are evil.

The way I get along with most of my female friends, I always become someone like their boyfriend. I take care of them, I explain things, I make them feel better, I solve their problems. A lot of people say I feel like a lesbian (I’m straight, but I have a pure platonic love for girls), like I don’t even like men.

Growing up, I never like talking about myself either. When I chat with other people, it’s always the other person talking about their life, and I’m responsible for listening, asking, and solving their problems.

Because I feel like (societally, stereotypically) men are supposed to handle their own business and not talk about it to everyone (and I’m the man, even though I didn’t realise I thought this way).

My friend told me, “You always think everyone else is sad and you’re always trying to help everyone, but you don’t actually have that ability. In the end, nothing changes, but you’ve crushed yourself. You need to change your mindset. They’re not sad! They deserve it!”

That’s when I discovered that when I thought everyone had a really hard life, I was really depressed, because I’ll end up shouldering the burden of other people’s fate.

Even if other people hurt me, I never try to defend my own interests because I always think they have it hard too. I’m always helping other people hurt myself while looking for excuses for them, and I just can’t take it.

I’ve put myself in the way of all the attacks, stuck in a state where I feel like other people just can’t help it.

When I heard what she sad and changed my mindset, my feeling of strength came back again!

Because I’ve been able to liberate myself from other people’s lives.

If I can help, then I’ll give specific help, but if I can’t help, then I don’t let myself take on other people’s emotions.

No one is sad. Everyone’s responsible for their own lives. I’m only responsible for mine.”

Comments say, “What are masculine qualities?”

“Treating their husband like their son, treating their daughter like their husband, treating their son like their lover.”

“My own observations: no matter which parent is absent, when there are multiple children, the oldest child often takes on the role of the missing parent.”

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According to news from netizens, after leaving Ili, Chongqing Mr. Wang did not return home, but headed straight to Tibet. After news spread, all the restaurants, beds and breakfasts, and hotels in Tibet are warning each other, “Do not serve this man!” Why is he being boycotted by an entire industry?

The script he performed in the tiny hotel with only 10 rooms in Ili almost caused that hotel to close down.

This happened on the 27th of July, in the busy season of travel. Mr. Wang and his two female companions arrived at the Yining Yimei hotel in the middle of the night. There weren’t many free rooms in the whole city at the time, and the only room they had remaining was a King bed for 300RMB a night. He stayed in the hotel room by himself, and his two female friends had to spend the night in the car.

The next day, however, two more cars showed up, one jeep and one RV. Their team went up to a whole 10 people, but they still only booked one room. The dozen of them took over the hotel’s yard, pitched tents, used an employee’s personal rice cooker to make food, used the hotel’s washing machine to wash their clothes, move the chairs to hang their clothes to try, and used the business place as a free camping site, kitchen, and laundromat, wasting water, electricity, and other resources.

The hotel tried to negotiate a 150RMB fee to using their land, and Mr. Wang happily agreed, but when it was time to check out, he insisted that the hotel add a note “living in car fee” to the receipt with an official company title. The hotel said that that item was against regulations and they couldn’t do it. The owner compromised and offered to waive the 150RMB fee to end the conflict, but Mr. Wang refused, insisting on getting the receipt he wanted, and even called the police to pressure the hotel.

In order to settle the matter, the hotel was forced to give him the receipt he wanted. They didn’t expect that after receiving the receipt, Mr. Wang would file a complaint with 12315 about illegal fees at the hotel and demand 5000RMB recompense. After much negotiation, not only did the hotel refund him 150RMB, but paid an additional 1000RMB to him, including a 500RMB fine to the front desk that was wired straight into Mr. Wang’s personal account. He made 1050RMB of profit.

Happy with this result, he made a short video which deliberately hid the fact that he took over the hotel’s land and the negotiation about the fees, and tried to paint himself as a poor tourist who was charged ridiculous fees by a shady hotel. After the video went viral, the small hotel was drowned in bad reviews and had most of their bookings cancelled. The small hotel fell into a crisis. And he went to the comment section of the official announcement to continue drumming up the narrative and increasing negative public discourse.

It wasn’t until the owner released the full security camera footage and publicised the truth that the commenters figured out what was going on. After digging deeper, people found out that Mr. Wang wasn’t a normal DIY tourist at all. He owns two heavy equipment companies and was a proper CEO who didn’t lack for money, but he’s extorting small businesses by making up lies to misdirect public opinion.

The owner of the hotel gave an inch out of the kindness of her heart and it’s only made him take a mile. This tiny dispute not only destroyed a small hotel, but it wore down the reputation of Xinjiang tourism in general. Now that he’s heading to Tibet, the entire industry is banding together to boycott him. That’s the soundless resistance of business owners.

Making up tragic lies and using public opinion to make a profit will come back as karma eventually. The internet can temporarily hide the truth, but you won’t get away with it forever.

Do you think these extortionist tourists should be put into a tourism blacklist?”

Comments say, “We should send these scumbags to Myanmar to get their kidneys taken.”

“Wait, so 12345 didn’t investigate at all? If there’s security camera footage, then how did the hotel get punished to begin with?”

“Without a photo or ID, how are other hotels supposed to boycott him? Show us everything.”

#Murderer’s parents warmly welcomed drowned girl’s parents multiple times. “For 17 years, they visited 7 times, and every cup of hot tea was aiding and abetting.

In 2008, 16-year-old girl wanted to break up, and was wrestled into a river by her boyfriend Liang and drowned. The guy escaped on his own and disappeared. For the next 17 years, the girl’s parents visited Guizhou 7 times to look for their daughter, and every time, the murderer’s mom warmly welcomed them, expressed her care, and even invited them to stay. It wasn’t until last year that the suspect was caught, and this old couple finally learned their daughter has passed away long ago, and the people they’ve been telling about their pain to for the last 17 years was the family helping to hide the murderer.

What’s scary isn’t aiding and abetting, but the performance they kept up for 17 years. They weren’t silent observers. They deliberately poured tea, offered comfort, and pushed the victim’s parents into a deeper pit of despair. A 16-year-old girl died in a river, and her parents were killed by the smiles of the murderer’s parents for another 17 years.

Now the murderer is being charged with premeditated homicide and his parents are out on bail for aiding and abetting. The law is going to make them pay, but who’s going to give the parents back 17 years of life that was stolen from them?”

Comments say, “This world is crazy.”

“This is so scary.”

“This whole family is evil.”

#Wife of man who stabbed 19-year-old assistant police speaks up. “Lately, media reported on the final ruling on a murder case in Guiyang: a man was constantly annoyed by loud motorcycles on his street and after being woken up early in the morning by noise again, he stabbed a 19-year-old assistant policeman on his motorcycle to death. [Assistant police get to wear the uniform, but are closer to security guards, in that they don’t have the ability to arrest anyone or issue fines or carry any kind of weapons. Their job is usually to help out with paperwork or conduct interviews, and are often the people who show up to try to mediate conflict so that real police don’t have to get involved.]

The murderer was named Wang, 52-years-old this year, living in a certain development in Yunyan District of Guiyang City. His wife, Ms. Lei said that they have two children together, the oldest in university and the youngest in middle school. A couple of years ago, she was diagnosed with cancer, and the entire family got by on her husband’s meager income. “He works in installing weak electronics, mostly security systems or intercom systems.” Her and her husband’s bedroom is next to the road and her husband has very poor quality sleep. He often wakes up in the middle of the night to find stuff to eat before going back to bed.

During the hearing, Mr. Wang’s lawyer claimed that Wang only wanted to teach the loud motorcycle rider a lesson. Committing a crime with such a mindset shouldn’t count as premeditated murder. He only did this because he has been affected by loud noise for so long. The victim, Fu, is also somewhat responsible for causing this case, so Wang shouldn’t qualify for the death sentence. Wang’s family is willing to compensate the victim’s family, and he’s willing to admit to his guilt, so he should get a lighter sentence.

The deceased Fu’s parents asked the court to order Wang to pay for the funeral cost, motorcycle cost, burial plot, and missed wages that resulted from their son’s death, 1 million RMB in damages to them for raising their son to adulthood, and 2 million RMB in emotional damages, a total of 4.13 million RMB.

Guiyang Middle Court proved the following facts. They believe that the victim Fu and his friend was acting inappropriately riding a particularly loud motorcycle at night, and this behaviour may constitute a violation of administrative law, but evidence shows that Fu did not ride around too frequently and therefore isn’t at any kind of legal fault. On the 18th of May, 2026, Guiyang Middle Court ruled that after discussion by the sentencing committee, the defendant Wang is guilty of premeditated homicide and has been sentenced to death. Wang was dissatisfied with the first ruling and appealed to the Guizhou High Court, claiming that Fu had committed major faults as an assistant police officer, and his illegal behaviour is the direct cause of this case. “The first ruling’s sentence was too harsh. I hope to get a different decision.””

Comments say, “Isn’t it about time we give more training to assistant police?”

“Who’s going to pay for all the noise he had to suffer through for so long?”

“Was that assistant police officer actually on duty at the time? What’s the point of emphasising this identity?”

“You’re allowed to be an assistant police at 19-years-old?”

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“A tragedy has been packaged up as a carefully-scripted public opinion drama.

In the hour-long pre-surgery talk, the doctor already made the risks of surgery clear, but they tell the public that the doctor hid risks from them claiming that it’s just a minor surgery with no risk at all.

The kid was born premature and had been hospitalised three times in her five months of life, and had a severe heart defect, but she’s been made out to be a perfectly healthy baby who passed every check up.

The autopsy report makes it clear that there’s a 1.0cm gap in her heart, but they lied and claimed it was 0.3cm. They take what is standard practice in surgery and turn it into a horror story about how “the baby bled to death”.

The parents took off her clothes themselves, and then turned around and accused the hospital. They already signed that they’d received her health history report, but tell the public they got no such thing. The doctor previously suggested open-heart surgery and they refused to give consent, and then turned around and lied that the hospital turned a laproscopic surgery into open-heart without their consent.

They’re yelling about how all they want is the truth, but they won’t show the public any of the voice recording, video, complete autopsy report, and other key evidence they supposedly have.

They claim it’s not about the money, but keep bringing up payment in negotiations. They refuse to monetise their online accounts, but then start doing sponsored streams.

They claim to trust the coroner and autopsy, but care more about security footage than the autopsy report, and there’s contradictions everywhere in their story.

Using the enormous tragedy of losing a child, using bits and pieces of an edited story and a shocking photo, they put on a performance again and again.

And a lot of kind-hearted normal people is caught up by empathy towards this suffering to the point that they can’t see all the contradictions. They fill in the blanks of the bits and pieces they’ve been given to turn it into a whole conspiracy and willingly raise awareness for this story.

The public’s kindness and sympathy is worn down this way, used up, turned into a tool to get traffic and clout.

Losing a child truly is a tragedy, but you can’t use this tragedy to make up lies and make the whole internet fight for you, destroying the trust between patient and doctor.

I sympathise with their tragedy, but I don’t believe their backwards, illogical story. The truth isn’t in the tears they shed on stream. It’s in the black and white evidence of health history and analysis reports.”

[There are supposedly 947 comments under this post, but all of them have been deleted by OP. I’m writing out the comments people are attaching as they repost this post.]

Comments say, “Is something wrong with your brain?”

“An hour long means they talked for a long time. It doesn’t mean they were actually clear about all the risks. You can’t equate length of talk with quality of talk. Not to mention, the official report said there was insufficient evaluation before the surgery (and the doctor misjudged the patient’s condition). Why is this blogger so confident?”

“Anyone who repeatedly speaks up on the internet and refuses to shut up even after public opinion has resulted in a judgement has demands other than justice.”

#Extramarital IVF case husband’s lawyer claims foetus has been destroyed.

“A lot of people might have taken medical morality as just another extracurricular while going through medical school, just like me. After all, it’s not nearly as important as internal medicine or gynaecology or paediatrics. But now I’ve found that morality really is important. It’s like rites for people.

Lemme tell you a cool fact:

1. A fertilised egg or frozen foetus is only a seed of life, it has no human rights.

2. A baby inside the womb has certain protections under the law, but still doesn’t count as an independent person and has no complete human rights.

3. Once the baby is born alive, that’s the start of their human rights!

That’s all according to the law.

But I think from a spiritual point of view, life probably started at fertilisation.

Like the second this foetus was fertilised, it carries sin. Destroying the foetus is destroying your karma, and these parents will be punished.”

Comments say, “The wife is really pitiable here, betrayed by her family while she’s sick. Marital law should protect married spouses.”

“Just get more money for yourself and get a divorce. This is a foetus. If the mistress was actually pregnant, what are you going to do, drag her to a hospital and force her to get an abortion? You’ve destroyed the foetus for now, but are they not gonna make another one? Is she still waiting for her husband to change his mind?”

“Women have the right to have a child with their affair partner, so don’t affair partners have a right to have a child for the husband? A husband can’t interfere with his own wife’s reproductive rights, but she gets to interfere with the home wrecker’s reproductive rights as a complete legal outsider? If you want freedom, then I’ll give you freedom. More freedom than you imagined. Now you understand why this is such a difficult problem.”

“Recent British news has shocked me. Although the numbers aren’t high yet, some foreigners are starting to come to China for cancer treatments.

I looked it up. No matter what your employment status is, do not stop your basic healthcare payments in China (this is not an advertisement).

The news told the story about an Australian woman, Amanda Harvey. She’s the mother of two children and is a licensed doctor, and at the same time, she had cancer. She’s done years of treatments in Australia and tried just about everything that exists, and she could only maintain the status quo and couldn’t get cured.

She looked up medical research and found that the most hopeful treatment for her was the “CAR-T cell treatment.”

The CAR-T treatment is, to put it simply, taking the immune cells out of your blood (T cells) and then putting a cancer cell radar on them in a lab, grow a whole bunch of them, and then put them back in your body.

They’ll automatically search out and kill cancer cells, and they’ll multiple by themselves and turn into long-term protection.

The only problem is, this technology doesn’t exist in Australia.

She asked American and British hospitals, and getting treatment out of pocket would cost over a million AUD. That would cost her everything she had. She might get cured, but she wouldn’t be able to keep living.

That’s when she noticed that some patients from New Zealand were going to China to get CAR-T treatment, so she went to Shanghai too.

She stayed in Shanghai for 7 weeks and received the CAR-T treatment.

When she left China, no cancer cells could be detected in her body. It’s went into complete remission.

And the whole thing only cost her 110,000 AUD, only 1/10th what American or England charges.

Most importantly, she said that it takes 2 months to make CAR-T in America and most patients can’t afford to wait, but China was able to make it in 10 days.

CAR-T is the most cutting edge, most advanced cancer treatment in the world, and China’s technology leads the world. We’ve even come out with the very first CAR-T treatment that specifically targets solid tumours like stomach cancer.

But Amanda by herself doesn’t represent payment standards across all of China.

I looked into the specific situation in China. Commercialised CAR-T treatment takes about 10 days to 3 weeks to make, and usually cost 990K to 1.3 million RMB.

Although it’s a lot cheaper than Europe and America, it’s still a heavy burden for normal people.

But this is the important part.

CAR-T is the most advanced treatment in the world.

But it’s already a part of Huimin health insurance in most cities in China. [Health insurance overseen by the government, but still comes from a commercial insurance company that you can sign up for and pay for with your own money, but the government keeps the prices within a certain range. It’s like an addition to your basic healthcare coverage you get through public health insurance.]

So long as you’ve been paying healthcare, you can buy into your local city’s Huimin health insurance.”

In Beijing, up to 500K of CAR-T is covered. 600K is covered in Yunan, Chuxiong. It might not be completely free, but it covers a major portion and gives people some room to breathe.

Honestly, I didn’t think this kind of cutting edge healthcare is a part of Huimin health insurance.

Although I bitch about societal events too, China’s really done a good job of benefits. Universal healthcare benefits is respect for life.

(I hope we’ll never need this insurance all our lives.)”

Comments say, “You don’t need to get a check up for Huimin insurance either. I bought a plan for both my mom and my dad and paid for it out of my social security.”

“Australia has this technology in all its major hospitals in major cities, and it’s completely covered by health insurance. But the situation is similar to America, it takes a long time. It’s only a few weeks in China so it’s much more efficient.”

“If the line is too long in Shanghai, you can consider getting it done in Gansu, Weiwu.”

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I wrote an article last year that went viral about what life in jail is like, “Why is jail worse than prison.” I always wanted to write another article about life in prison but lacked for material, until one of my readers finally got released and I got in touch with a couple of prison guards who follow me too, and I got to fill in the blanks.

Of course, the goal is for everyone to keep this in mind, what you can do and what you can’t. I can’t repeat enough, don’t let yourself sink too low.

According to people in the know, there’s a lot of regional variations in prison. Every region has something different going on. But overall, just like everything else in China, the newer it is, the better it is. You want to live in a new building with heated floors and AC, and not an old building from decades ago,. And if they’re not at max population, like it was built to house 2000 people but there’s only 1500 people in there, that’s a little better too.

Generally speaking, the process is like this. Once you commit a crime, the cops will take you to jail first. It’s a big common room in terrible condition. And then the cops will charge you, the prosecutor’s office will bring it to court, and after the court makes a ruling, then you’ll get sent to prison.

Some people have a short sentence, maybe only half a year. By the time they get their ruling, there’s not much of it left, so they might just stay in jail until the end of their sentence. Some unfortunate people with complicated cases end up staying in jail for longer, like Wu —Fan and Li —Tie were in jail for nearly two years.

Overall, everyone agrees that prison is much better than jail:

First, you don’t have to stress out anymore. A lot of people are very uneasy in prison, either praying for good luck or scared of a harsh ruling, to the point where they can’t hold down food or get good sleep. Once the ruling has been made, a rock is lifted from your heart, your burden is lifted, and by the time you arrive in prison, you’re past the, “At this point, I just feel sorry for my family” stage. That’s something you figure out in jail. Now you just start reminiscing about the people you miss and the good food and good fun outside.

And prisons are mostly far away from cities and there’s not a lot of personnel turnover inside, so you get more room. Usually, it’s like a college dorm with bunk beds, with 4-8 people per room, a lot better than the big common rooms in jail that sleeps dozens of people.

Getting into prison is not too different from getting into jail.

A big bus will take you to the prison, and armed police will be watching the whole time. The common feature of all prisons in China is an enormous gate and armed sentries, and razor wire.

The first step after you get inside is the physical check up. After that, you don’t go straight to your room. New prisoners have to go to the “intake team” where you complete your transformation.

Once you enter prison, an experienced inmate will teach you all the rules inside.

Here, we have to address a key problem—a lot of the management work in a prison is actually handled by experienced inmates, sort of like how a dorm leader or a class leader in school is always a student. And it’s usually someone with a super long sentence or life. The reason is pretty easy to understand—these people have a long sentence, so they’re more “stable” in their work. You avoid having to change personnel all the time.

These people with long sentences are usually pretty obedient and don’t start trouble, so they can make their lives better, so they slowly become managers on the ground. A lot of prison guards interact with the same old inmates from their youth to their middle-age.

The intake team get their own separate room. The same batch of inmates are called “same batch”. You’ll get assigned a bed and a place to put your daily necessities. And then you assemble, and the manager will give you a talk and teach you all the regulations and requirements in prison.

It doesn’t matter if you can’t remember, you’ll have plenty of time to memorise it. The last thing you’ll lack in there is time. Even illiterate people can memorise complicated prison rules front to back. There’s no technique to it or anything, it’s just endless repetition. Repetition is the mother of memory.

Prison has a huge advantage over jail, and that’s less personnel turnover. A bunch of people are going to live in the same room for years, so most people get along and don’t make any trouble.

Of course, there’s a small portion of rebels who won’t listen, and that requires punishment.

First of all, they don’t beat people up in prisons anymore these days. Even back in the day, they rare beat people up. There’s plenty of ways to punish rebels.

There’s several levels of punishment in prison based on how severely you broke the rules.

You have the most minor offenses, like not properly organising your belongings, not doing your exercises or running properly, can’t recite regulations, or slacking behind on work, etc. In prison, a lot of time, it’s just about helping you adjust your attitude.

They’ll start with a verbal warning, and then make you stand in a corner. Sometimes, you have to loudly recite to a wall. Or you have to run in place or exercise or something, or you’re not allowed to sit down while you eat, or they only serve you rice for your meals. If it needs to escalate, then you’ll get assigned more labour and you won’t get to eat until it’s done.

Or they’ll lower your spending limit every month. In case you don’t know, there’s a little supermarket inside prisons that sells daily necessities and snacks. Some of the stuff used to be super expensive, but lately, they’ve strengthened the regulations so prices aren’t that different from outside. Some places will let you straight up order things offline. Depending on the management, you get a different budget every month, and you can buy instant noodles and sausages and stuff out of that. If you have plenty of budget, your life will be a lot more comfortable.

Before they banned smoking, you could buy cigarettes too, but as the government came out with more anti-smoking propaganda, the prisons have slowly banned cigarettes. Now most prisons are completely smoking free. Some inmates can’t take it and feel like they’re dying at first, but after a few months, they’ll quit literally decades’ of smoking. And all of a sudden, their bronchitis and pharyngitis magically get better.

Due to this budget, whether you’re in prison or in jail, you should try to get your family or friends to put some money on your account, or else you can’t buy anything and you’ll have a hard time.

Aside from people from outside giving you money, you can also work to earn money in prison, but it’s only tens of dollars a month. If it’s not enough, then sometimes, you have to figure out a way to work for the richer prisoners.

If you’re still not obedient, then you might get put in solitary. Solitary has different levels too. If it’s not too severe, you’ll just get put in your own room. People in prison are already bored. It’s even worse if all you have are four walls. Some of the solitary rooms face the grounds, and you can hear everyone else chatting and getting yard time, and you’ll go crazy by yourself. And when you’re in solitary, you’re not allowed to move or speak. If you need something, you have to report to the guards first and get permission to move, or else your solitary time will get lengthened.

For more severe offenses like you beat up someone, or deliberately sabotaged your work, or even cussed out the guards, then you’ll get the VIP treatment.

You’ll get put in the hole. The door to that room is super thick, so once it’s closed, there’s no light or sound at all. You movement is super restricted inside and there’s nothing to do. I need to say that everywhere in the country is different, but they’re also not that different.

According to what people tell me, it sounds not that bad, but it’s actually super scary. No matter what kind of badass goes in, for even a pretty short amount of time, they’re all completely beaten down when they come out. Time really slows down when you have nothing to do. You think a whole day has passed but it’s only been half an hour, and a day feels as long as a month. You can really feel that time is the ultimate punishment.

Once you leave the intake team, you’ll be taken to the section you’re assigned to, and your prison life has officially started.

Life on the inside isn’t that mysterious, according to my friends. It’s just “routine”, routine to hte extreme.

You get up at 6AM every day, sort your stuff, and clean up. Management will go through every cell and you’ll call our your number. If everyone is accounted for, then they’ll open up the cells and you’ll all go to the hall to eat breakfast.

Once you’re in the hall, you stand in line according to your number and sound off again. If everyone is accounted for, then usually you sing first (they’ll teach you the songs in the intake team), and then quickly eat breakfast. Prison food is notoriously bland, low fat low salt. That’s why most people lose weight on the inside.

Because there’s not a lot of taste stimulation, instant noodles are hard currency in prison and the best gift for friends and family to give. It gives you a huge boost in happiness. Also, there’s not a lot of meat, so sausages, vacuum-sealed drumsticks, and lao gan ma [chili sauce with ground beef] is also hard currency.

You assemble after breakfast, stand in formation, sound off again, and if everyone is accounted for, you report to work while singing and yelling chants the whole way.

A lot of people think of “sewing machines” first when anyone brings up prison industries, and it’s true that sewing clothes is the core industry for a lot of prisons, but there’s a lot of variation. There’s electronics factories, toys, furniture, they’ll do anything. They used to farm too, but you don’t see a lot of that these days.

Work is pretty stressful in prison. If you deliberately slack off, you’ll get punished. After all, if you’re slower than an old man as a healthy young man, who else is gonna get punished? Most of the punishment is just that when everyone else goes to eat, you have to stay behind to finish your work.

You clock off around 5PM and go through assembling and sounding off again, and get marched back.

It’s the same routine at dinner. Dinner is usually vegetarian. Only people who performed exceptionally well at work gets an extra treat once a week and get some meat. They’ll make a big deal out of it too. The point of it is for other people to see. You’ve seen the same tricks if you’ve worked in an office.

After eating, you’ll stay in the hall to watch the evening news. After the news, they’ll sometimes put on a documentary, or just leave the TV on. Then you get your relaxation time. If you have letters, they’ll be handed out now. Management will give talks around this time too, and criticise any rule-breaking behaviour.

If your task for the day isn’t done yet, then they’ll make you copy the rules so many times in addition to the lecture.

Around 9PM, you go through the same routine and go back to your cell. People on night shift will guard the doors, and you get half an hour to rest. Most people just lie in bed. It’s lights off at 9:30PM and everyone goes to sleep.

And the next day, you get up at 6 again.

The routine in prison is 5+1+1. You work for 5 days, and on Saturday and Sunday, you use one day to study and one day to rest. Most people study on Saturday and rest on Sunday, but some do it the other way around.

And it’s just all repetition from there until the end of your sentence. Every week is the same.

Some friends who are about to go inside are really concerned whether there’s bullying inside.

From what I’ve heard from my contacts, there’s not a lot of it these days. There’s security cameras covering every angle. If you were bullied, then you can go make a complaint, and the people bullying you will get put in the hole. They don’t want that either. And there’s a strict responsibility system in prison, so the prison guard will be held accountable too, so they pay a lot of attention.

Next, we’ll talk about sentence reduction.

Honestly, getting your sentenced reduced is harder by the time. Up until 10 years ago, it’s not that hard to reduce your sentence. So long as you don’t make too much trouble in prison and serve your sentence, then you’ll get some amount of reductions. Some people with connections will spend some money where it counts and get as much as half their sentence taken off.

And then the waters got deep and it’s formed a toxic feedback loop: people with connections commit crimes —> get sentence reduction through their connections —> get even more reckless when they come out —> do more crime and get caught again.

The most famous case of this is probably Sun Xiaoguo. Got sentenced to death but got released after 12 years, no remorse at all, and even started his own organised crime.

There’s an even worse case, the Guo Wensi sentence reduction case from a few years ago. He got sentenced to life for murder in 2005, and got 9 sentence reductions, getting out in just 14 years. Got released in 2019, and only half a year later, he murdered someone over a minor dispute in a supermarket again. When they looked into it, they found that at the peak, he got a sentence reduction every year. Completely ridiculous.

After that, he got sentenced to death, and investigation dug up a whole bunch of other people with irregular sentence reductions who got rearrested to serve our their sentence. Half the leadership in the local prisons got arrested.

So the government started cracking down, less quotas, more requirements and all that.

The people in charge are more cautious too. They don’t want to go to prison if something went wrong. And the prosecutor’s office and court has to approve of any sentence reduction that the prison applies for, and everyone who signs the documents will be held responsible.

Like Li —Tie. He was sentenced to 20 years. If he works really hard inside, gets employee of the month every month, then he’ll get out in 15-16 years at most. Considering he’s an athlete and pretty healthy, it’s probably entirely possible.

I also gotta mention that we’re seeing more and more fraud cases lately, and if these inmates don’t return the money they scammed, then they won’t qualify for sentence reduction.

Getting released is always the best thing to happen to you in prison.

The prison will usually transfer you to the release education section about 2-3 months in advance. Here, they’ll teach you basic societal knowledge, mostly telling you how the outside has changed and what you need to watch out for once you’re out.

Once they know the specific release date, the prisoner or the prison will inform the family by phone.

You don’t get to take your personal items with you. You either throw it away or gift it to another inmate. There’s a superstition in prison that you shouldn’t take anything there outside because it’s unlucky. That’s why you have to step over a fire bucket when you go out and go get a bath that night. Even down to your clothes, you need to at least buy a new outfit from the supermarket.

In the last 2-3 days, management will allow everyone to buy snacks from the supermarket to put together a party for the guy getting released. People will chat, usually about, “Don’t come back here again,” “You guys behave and get out soon too,” “See you around,” etc.

The experienced inmates will give you tips, like keep looking straight ahead as you leave, don’t turn around, etc. Once they confirm your identity and the release notice, then you can come out of the little side door and your prison life is officially over.

When you’re leaving, sometimes, management will say something too, but once you’re through the doors, you’re not inmate and management anymore, but people who’ve known each other for many years. Some older inmates who’ve stayed for over a decade inside and worked hard and reformed themselves, they’ve built a bond with the management inside, to the point where the management might call a taxi for them.

Conclusion: That’s about all I have to write. I’ve witness plenty of stuff these years. People feel like their life is boring, poor, no friends, etc, and even think they’re at the bottom of society and they’re hopeless. What they don’t know is that society goes another 18 levels down—people in debt, people in prison, they would kill to have a normal life back again. So no matter what, don’t let yourself sink to these depths.

Thank you for reading. If you like it, leave an upvote.”

Comments say, “If this works for quitting smoking, we should spread it.”

“I’ve gone on a tour. Aside from all the repetition and boredom, another thing is that you have zero privacy. Like actually, truly zero privacy.”

“I’ve went and done lectures for inmates, I can add something. In prison, the guards call the inmates “criminals”. There’s no other term inside. Even for an art performance or competition, the banner uses the word “criminal”. Prisoners have to squat down to talk to the guards or while assembling. When I was leaving, I ran into a team of inmates transporting dinner. As soon as they saw me from far off, they squat down, and only stood up once we were gone. People on the inside really thirst for information from outside. No matter what you’re lecturing on, they’re super happy to listen.”

[I have my own personal experience here. I’ve also been on a kind of tour of prison—not officially or anything. I was out with my dad when he got a call that one of his friends in prison kept getting into trouble and the prison guards didn’t know how to make him stop, so they asked my dad to come in as a friend to talk to him. Apparently, this is a normal thing in Chinese prison? Like if you don’t behave, they’ll call your mom and have her come lecture you? Except my dad was just a good friend in this case. This happened when I was a child, so definitely way more than 10 years ago, but at least back then, there was quite a lot of sexual exploitation in prison and that’s what this was about. I don’t know if it’s full on assault or what, they didn’t want to talk about it in front of a primary schooler, so a couple sentences in, the prison guard decided to give me a tour while my dad talked to his friend.

This wasn’t like a meeting across a glass booth or anything. They just brought the inmate into the warden’s office and had him sit down on a couch with my dad and I.

From what I could recall, the prison was actually pretty neat—as in, literally very clean and nothing smelled back, and everything was very orderly. It was 8 people to a room, but nothing looked cluttered or disorganised. It was winter time and they had no heat, so all the prisoners were wearing winter coats in their cells. It wasn’t like prison-issued or anything, it was literally just their winter coats from home that their family sends in. I don’t know if they had uniforms underneath it or anything, but at a glance, they didn’t look like prisoners on TV at all.

They also had a whole bunch of ping pong tables in the hall.

That’s about all I remember of that experience.]

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