I mean as a 2nd child born in violation of the policy… 👀

(I heard some stories about kids being kidnapped by state-sponsored people and trafficked to get them forcibly “adopted” to prospective parents somewhere else, and also the whole international adoption thingy, cuz they targed families that had more than one child… allegedly… who even knows for sure…)

Edit: But nowadays, ironically, they have population crisis… 👀

China is a big place. Saturation with security cameras is an urban thing.

Yea that incident was in Guangzhou, I assume nowadays its probably filled with surveillance cameras.

Also, something I’ve learned in America is that people make a lot of noise about keeping kids safe, but that’s all just smoke. I can’t speak for China

China might not have guns and mass shootings, but domestic abuse is an issue that the law doesn’t really touch on, especially is its more covert like verbal abuse or even physical violence if it didn’t cause serious harm…

Especially if its not a spouse-on-spouse thing but its a parent against a child…

Like there are things that would trigger a CPS investigation in the US that in China they wouldn’t do much about, cuz its just treated as “discipline” and its “family matters” and legal system isn’t touching this.

I think my parents fear of CPS is why once we arrived in the US, they stopped with their um… ahem “disciplinary actions” against me.

(Also maybe cuz I got older and can sort of fight back??? Maybe 🤷‍♂️)

(I actually cant even remember a specific instance of my mom hitting me anymore… must been a repressed memeory by now, but I’m pretty sure it happened)

Also teachers have meter sticks to hit kida with…

Okay its not a beating, but I remember like you had to put your hands out and then the teacher slapped your hands with the ruler…

Dont remember what for… maybe “behavior problems”?

Or perhaps poor grade is also one of the things… idk, memory in 1st and 2nd grade isn’t exactly flawless…

But corporal punishment seems very acceptable in China…

Saw a movie recently about Taiwan’s education system (not the main story, but the backdrop of the plot, main movie was about Taiwanese Americans moving back to Taiwan), and in the plot, the parents encouraged the teacher to use the ruler thing as a form of discipline… wtf… that was actually the thing that jogged my memories…

(The point being, same culture, even being politically divided and with a different government, the culture is same… adults just get to do whatever as “discipline”)

?

xD

Since I got summoned by a @ , gonna infodump cuz why not lol:

Funny enough now that my mom went to China for a 1-month visit, and now it’s like 1 week in and I feel so sad about her absense from home…

The house feels so much more depressing… :/

I mean I guess this is a sort of “trial run” of what her eventual death would feel like…

Like… now I can call her… cuz now its just separated by an ocean, in this era, we have instantaneous communications…

someday it’ll be separated by a barrier between the mortal realm and… whatever world beyond… the afterlife… spirit realm… or whatever…

I guess this is what my mom meant when she said she wanted to get married give birth to children… this same emptiness that I’m feeling…

I might never find love in life :(

Funny enough my older brother is also in China right now because mom pressured him to do marriage 🤣

(My parents are arranged marriage btw)

“Please list everything bad about this world”

Bruh, there’s already enough doomerism in c/worldnews, no need for that energy in c/asklemmy

my country

OUR Country*

Bernie Intensifies

I went to apply for a US Passport…

Then I remembered that a lot of immigrants from Fujian are undocumented…

And like… I have been in highschool with these kids whose parents are from Fujian…

And I kinda just felt sad…

Cuz I’m also from China, but I got lucky and got citizenship… and they didn’t…

So I just cried… :/

Cuz I can imagine what it’s like with the uncertaintly

I mean… I kinda feel the same in some ways… I mean with current political atmosphere… who even knows anymore… I could get denaturalized and end up the same as them anyways…

the Planet*

(US is not the only country is the world where people are suffering, less US-Centralism pls)

Yes absolutely.

If I had never immigrated to the US and remained in China, I’d probably be much less accepting of multiculturalism and less comfortable being around people of different races, and also probably less okay with LGBTQ

Like… I doubt I’d be openly hateful… but in that environment, I’d never have the opportunity to be exposed to people to of different skin colors, and the culture would’ve reinforced the idea that: " LGBTQ = ‘weird’ "

I’m kinda obsessed with this concept of these two timelines.

There’s this timeline of “American Me” vs that other timeline of “Chinese Me”… of what could’ve been

Like… imagine us two meeting… lmao

Or perhaps there’s another version of me that arrived in the US even mych earlier… like at 1 year old or something (contrast with current timeline at 8 years old)…

That version of me would probably be even more “American” and I’d perhaps lose a lot of my “Chinese” part of my identity…

The trajectory of life… from just the difference of one visa stamp…

I mean this obsession of alt-timelines is causing me so much existential crisis lol…

You can vote overseas…

Its actually ironic that people in Puerto Rico don’t even get representation but if you last lived in the 50 states and then go abroad, you can mail your vote.

Just use an app that force your screen to flip upside down (Android allows this)

Every time I hear the word “import” when referring to Human Beings, its always some far right xenophobic white dude complaining about “oMg tHeSe dIrTy iNdIaNs aRe tAkInG oVeR!”

it’s trading one capitalist place for another.

Funny enough, my family also did this, but reversed.

I was born in China and we moved to the US when I was 8 years old… my parents found more success here… I mean, not at the very beginning, but eventually… now they have more income and more time off vs back in China…

I can’t speak for everyone, but in my specific case, my mom had to work long hours and did not have the 1.5 overtime bonus she has now and have less breaks vs now, and then dad… well… he didn’t really have a stable job, spend a lot of the time looking for jobs…

social programs, healthcare, and such.

Not according to my parents. My parents were kinda shocked how much welfare American Citizens have, and at one point, my parents claimed that “Americans are lazy and just wanna not go to work and live on welfare”.

And in terms of housing, okay when we were in Brooklyn, NYC, that place was so expensive it was impossible buy a house, so they bount a house in Philly moved our family here… where we’ve been living ever since…

Okay it was like approximately $100k around 2014 but this place has very shitty schools :/

But both the Brooklyn place we rented and this house in this ghetto place called Philly, both looked nicer than the neighborhood where used to live in Guangzhou, a CITY btw… (okay to be fair there are a bunch of problems in this current Philly house but like that’s just parents being frugal lol)

As for the healthcare part… eh… my mom really don’t trust doctors in China (well she also doesn’t really trust healthcare people overall, but especially those in China). Mom told me about a lot of situations that she felt like she got scammed, I can’t remember all the anecdotes she told me, but at one point, she told me how she thought the doctors are trying to get her to do a C-Section just to make more money (cuz surgery = more expensive bill), she thought it was unnecessary and wanted to give a natural birth, but she doesn’t wanna risk it being that, in fact, the doctors told the truth and then us dying, so she just gave in and went along with the C-Section. And she told me they want to overprescribe medicine so they get a kickback from the pharma companies. Bascially, my parents say US quality of healthcare is better for those who can afford it. But even then, because of their experiences living in China for so long, they just became so skeptical of the medical industry which is why mom really don’t want me seeking help for depression, cuz: “yOu dOn’t hAvE dEpReSsIoN, tHe dOctOrs aRe jUsT lYinG tO yOu!” cuz she thinks they are just trying to get paid fot overdiagnosing people… so because of their experience in China, they now kinda grew skeptical of medical professionals overall…

Cuz there’s just so much sketchy stuff and scams in China, and on top of their own experiences, warnings about scams are always circulating throughout their WeChat.

So it can look cheaper… but you risk running into corrupt doctors because corruption is a very big thing there, I mean they could easily bribe their way into having a medical license when they shouldn’t be qualified…

Do you live in a very white area?

Because it seems like the Black people here in Philly are just chillin’. I mean like… I feel like they “fit in” more than Asian Americans “fit in”…

There are Black people all over Philly, but in contrast, in some areas, I felt like I was the only person with an East Asian face…

Plot twist, now you become the worst racist in history…

🔫 cocks gun

Sorry, it’s nothing personal…

“To to teach English”

Which is only possible because he happened to be born into the language

And English is only in demand because of British + American dominance in the world throught the past few hundred years

Most Chinese Citizens cannot enjoy the same lifestyle as him, WHICH IS WHY they want to learn English in the first place… so that they can find more opportunities in life

Like… this is not really “China good”, this is more like “English-Speaking white dude, who was lucky enough to grow up with the language, benefiting from Anglosphere dominance throught history”

Title: A Lemmy user ate a rotisserie chicken at a gas station, this is what happened to his stomach.

A Lemmy user, presented to the Emergency Room ☝️with severe abdominal pain…

LMFAO

My mom blamed us (me and my older brother) for “sitting too close to the TV”

She kept us mostly locked indoors in an apartment (besides going to school) from the beginning of my memory up till 8 years old.

Then we moved to the US and from 8 to 12 I was in school from morning (like 7 AM maybe? forgot the exact time) till like 6PM cuz she signed me up afterschool programs cuz she wanted to use it as free babysitting essentially so she can work longer…

And we cant go outside alone without adults.

In China it was “a lot of kidnappers on the street thay will traffic you and sell your organs”

In the US it was “if you go outside without an adult, CPS will take you away and you can’t see mama again” (idk why mom spoke in 3rd person sometimes lol)

Yay! so… from birth to 12 I was indoors, either in school or at home, most of the time…

outdoor time was rare and only when parents have a day off or like the 15 minutes of recess in school…

that’s basically our outside time…

In China we had maternal grandma that sometimes took us outside…

In the US, it was just mom, dad, older brother, and me (cuz grandma can’t come yet, no visa yet)… So we had even less outside time… like parenrs had to work all the time…

But of course its always “too much screens!” to be blamed lmao

From 8 to 12 was when my nearsightedness really developed a lot.

I didn’t understand why I had nearsigntedness at the time, but now looking back and analyzing my life, now it’s so obvious why lol…

My older brother has like -9.00 or -10.00 in the nearsightedness thing. Its funny my parents called it like 900 or 1000 “degrees”… like it sounds so much scarier when they drop the decimal point and literally say: “you’re about to have ONE THOUSAND DEGREES IN NEARSIGHTEDNESS! You’re gonna GO BLIND!”

Hey, you wanna visit my old neighborhood?

I mean I’m not gonna give the exact address, but you can take a look at 广州大道北 梅花园 麦地西街

The latest Baidu street view I found was in like 2014… so yea idk how it looks now…

My mom and older brother is in China right now… they got their US Passports and the 10 year “visiting relatives” visa and they just left like on sunday (last sunday, that is)

Apparanly my mom is pressuring my older brother to get married… lol (he’s like 28 or 29)…

Mom and her friend network thing got bro and some girl added eacher other on Wechat and I think they’ve been chatting for a while… and now I guess they are about to meet or something… or perhaps if not a good match, then mom’s gonma pressure him to meet with other “marriage candidates”… lol

As for me… I didn’t feel like visiting… Mom asked if I wanna come and I just was like “nah fam”

Also why did she even ask lmfao, this trip is for my older brother to go pursue marriage plans… why the fuck would I tag along? lmfao, that is sooo fucking weird to do… even my older brother was like “wtf, dont let this annoying shit come” (paraphrased)

(I mean I didn’t even have a valid passport lol, I just submitted the application for it yesterday at a post office)

I have a bunch of stuff not backed up and am too internet addicted to chance VPNs not working and then youtube or other stuff blocked… I’d have withdrawl from that lol… too much stress for me…

(And also a bit of the politcs thing, just feel kinda resentful towards the government)

Mom and brother are staying with one of my aunts (aka: her sister) in Taishan…

I asked them to check the internet thing but brother completely ignores me (not really on speaking terms right now) and mom is digitally illiterate to check for what websites work or not… or maybe she just doesn’t care since she’s so obsessed with trying to get my older brother to get into a marriage… cuz mom says if you wait, you will “never find anyone and die alone”… lmfao

So… roaming… T-Mobile charges $0.25 for each minute of calling… but mom got the international pass for like $50 so its now unlimited… so I don’t have to install WeChat and make an account just to talk to her…

So I just randomly call all the time and be like “MOOOMMM” 😅 (I mean if you don’t use the unlimited minutes, its going to waste lol)

So yea, that’s my story, how’s everything going for you?

I sometimes looked myself in the mirror… like I got so used to seeing my reflection in glasses, that if I ever like go without glasses… say if I get lasik, then I’d look so weird…

I literally had this thought earlier today… like… do people who get lasik still wear fake glasses so they look good aesthetically speaking? Or as you said, “to look smart”?