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The Bitter Regrets of a Useless Chinese Daughter

nytimes.com

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Re: The Bitter Regrets of a Useless Chinese Daughter

#161

Post by tvanantwerp »

dangero wrote: post #8

This resonated with me as an introvert and I'm not Chinese. There have been many times that I've realized, I should have spent more time collecting connections and less time working in front of the screen. I think this also relates to the values my parents gave me that I should work for everything I have and hard work pays off. They never asked anyone for a favor or special privileges, so I never put much value on ne…

I feel the same way. As I think about my own network, I feel like it's dangerously small and can't bring much to bear in times of need. As a fellow introvert, I didn't work hard in the past to build more and stronger connections. Only now am I seeing the problems that arise from not doing so. If only I had known...but then, I still would've been an introvert.

Re: The Bitter Regrets of a Useless Chinese Daughter

#162

Post by danielsmay1 »

ptaipale wrote: post #154
k__ wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My grandparents always forced us children to eat up. I had to sit hours on the table.

The joke's been around for a long time, I was not very old when first time hearing sarcastically "eat your plate empty, because if you don't, some kid in Biafra will starve".

You are the only person besides my mother (born in the late 1950s in the Southern USA) that I've seen/heard mention Biafra. Her knowledge of Biafra was due to her being told a similar thing as a child, "eat everything on your plate because there are Biafrans starving."

Re: The Bitter Regrets of a Useless Chinese Daughter

#163

Post by axiom92 »

commandlinefan wrote: post #142
ptaipale wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That experience is not restricted to "3rd world". I think what you describe could be simply called "class differences". Even what we now call 1st world countries had incredible poverty some 60 years back and it's not so long back, even if the face of poverty has recently changed from lack of opportunity to lack of achievement. Up to 1980's, in the Finnish welfare state where I grew up, you would see men who slept in…

> could be simply called "class differences" Yeah, seriously. My family has been American for at least four generations. I can tell by looking in the mirror that I'm at least 95% European, but I have no idea from where - before about my great-grandparents, there isn't much genealogy to follow, and for the most part that's because most of my ancestors were trying to keep a low profile and avoid having any records that…

> I'm at least 95% European, but I have no idea from where

Try 23andme?

Re: The Bitter Regrets of a Useless Chinese Daughter

#164

Post by TomMarius »

bodas wrote: post #159
TomMarius wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or maybe USA has way more people or other factors that make it a harder problem. Some homeless people can't be helped since they have mental illnesses and break away from hospitals (USA has 70 times more people and homeless people are concentrating themselves in population hubs - that could make the problem more visible), and so on. Let's not assume things without proper analysis.

Something I've noticed about developing countries, people never attribute poverty to a character failure. People in developing countries come face to face with poverty every day, they have poor friends and poor family members, so the idea that poor people are unintelligent or not hard-working, never occurs. When countries become rich (it's not just America), people lose their connection with poverty and start to blam…

Not all social security programmes are good. Some of them are unrealistic, some of them are unfair to other people, etc. Voting against a particular social programme doesn't imply the person doesn't feel solidarity in general.

Maybe they're voting against it because while they're not poor, they still don't have more than enough - you can solve that by funding it through a progressive tax, but that makes it unfair in the views of many people.

Re: The Bitter Regrets of a Useless Chinese Daughter

#165

Post by ummonk »

The need for money and/or guanxi might be worse in China, but it's certainly not China-specific.

Every time I see an example of police and the justice system running roughshod over somebody I think "I need to be rich and well-connected so this won't happen to me". The ability to get top medical care in America is also dependent on having good connections, insurance, and/or deep pockets.

Of course, as an introvert, I'm relatively bad at creating and holding on to a wide net of connections, so I have to make up for it with more money.

Re: The Bitter Regrets of a Useless Chinese Daughter

#166

Post by giggles_giggles »

bodas wrote: post #159
TomMarius wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or maybe USA has way more people or other factors that make it a harder problem. Some homeless people can't be helped since they have mental illnesses and break away from hospitals (USA has 70 times more people and homeless people are concentrating themselves in population hubs - that could make the problem more visible), and so on. Let's not assume things without proper analysis.

Something I've noticed about developing countries, people never attribute poverty to a character failure. People in developing countries come face to face with poverty every day, they have poor friends and poor family members, so the idea that poor people are unintelligent or not hard-working, never occurs. When countries become rich (it's not just America), people lose their connection with poverty and start to blam…

Is saying that many of the homeless in America are mentally ill blaming them? It's our health system that can't handle them, for a plethora of reasons. It's not the homeless peoples' fault for having schizophrenia or PTSD or whatever mental illness, which many of them do.

Re: The Bitter Regrets of a Useless Chinese Daughter

#167

Post by taejo »

sametmax wrote: post #86
spyckie2 wrote: post #47

The harsh reality of 1st or 2nd generation Chinese is that while many of us went to the top universities and grew up with a modern, 1st world mindset, we can't escape the fact that our financial and family background is from the developing world, and we live in both worlds at once - our mindset is modern, but the issues and problems of the developing world are still very much things we have to deal with. I first enco…

Your testimony reminds me of a kid I met in Mali. The guy was our guide, and he spoke 6 languages, including 4 local dialects, french and english. He had a cellphone and knew how to drive a 4x4. He drove us to the desert, in a place at the north of Bamako known as the Dogon's country. There, he asked us if we were ok to take a detour by his parents village, and we agreed. His parents were living with no electricity,…

What do distinction do you make between "dialects" and other languages? I understand "dialect" to mean something like "one of several (usually regional) variants of a language", but that is only really meaningful when the language is referenced. Do you mean he spoke 4 local dialects of the same (unspecified) language, or of French or English? Both of these seem to be the wrong interpretation, since you count them as six languages in total.

Re: The Bitter Regrets of a Useless Chinese Daughter

#168

Post by justicezyx »

> After every social tragedy, victims are subjected to disdain on social media, rather than sympathy: “this happened to you because you are a loser; because you don’t have the right connections; because you are not making enough money.

Not true. People's reaction is same as ordinary people, sympathy and pity.

Re: The Bitter Regrets of a Useless Chinese Daughter

#169

Post by coldtea »

Retric wrote: post #99
coldtea wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People look at the recent actions of the PRC while ignoring the vast past economic harm 1949-1960. Set your house on fire and the rebuilding process looks like real progress. Sure, but when the house becomes the #2 most expensive property on the planet (and poised to #1), it's not a rebuilding success comparative the previous burn anymore. Especially if before the fire the house was in poor condition to begin with.

#2 is kind of meaningless when they are the #1 largest country by population and most countries are tiny by comparison. It’s like comparing the value of houses when one has as much land as Texas and you include that in the ‘house’ price. In nominal terms they are 72 per person adjust for PPP and they are #79 which which not bad. It’s the next 30 years when things get interesting. http://statisticstimes.com/economy/co…

>#2 is kind of meaningless when they are the #1 largest country by population and most countries are tiny by comparison.

That would be meaningless if having a citizen was an asset of more or less standard economic worth regardless of country.

But countries can have 10x or 100x as many citizens as others without having the 10x or 100x the same GDP -- in fact they could do much much worse than the other country.

Compare e.g. Nigeria with Japan or Ireland.

Re: The Bitter Regrets of a Useless Chinese Daughter

#170

Post by coldtea »

Retric wrote: post #111
pm90 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, so it’s a bad thing that they have more people? How does it make them any less powerful? PPP is metric, good for comparing certain things. I wouldn’t think that, for the purposes of determining which is the greater power, less population would be more beneficial as long as the total economic output is greater.

I don’t think total ‘power’ is a useful metric for comparing countries leadership. An incompetent farmer with 10x the land will likely grow more food than a competent one. That says little about who you should seek advice from.

>An incompetent farmer with 10x the land will likely grow more food than a competent one.

Would they? An incompetent farmer could very easily produce nothing even with 10x the land too.

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