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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

#231

Post by ChristianBundy »

DoubleCribble wrote: post #227
ad_hominem wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The USA has a lot of room to improve for sure. But solutions that work for Finland, which is a small, ethnically homogeneous, high trust society, simply won't map to the USA which is the opposite of all those things.

It won't map because of our national obsession with crime and punishment . I'd bet dollars to donuts that it's far cheaper to put a drunk in a homeless shelter AND give him treatment (AlAnon, etc) than it is to lock him in a cage with a herd of sociopaths. But the Prison Industrial Complex has got to look out for its own, after all.

> a herd of sociopaths

I agree with everything you said except for this. The idea that many/most/all prisoners are violent or sociopathic is a myth propagated by those who stand to benefit from the prison industrial complex. Prisoners are human and prisons are inhumane. For another take, here's the IWW IWOC[0]:

> Incarcerated people are legally slaves as per the 13th Amendment which abolished "slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime". We are legally slaves. If you've been to prison you'd know we are treated like slaves. Billions are made annually off our backs. Outrageously priced or grossly inadequate privatized 'services' like health care, food, phone calls, assault our humanity - they feed us like animals, suck our families dry, and when sick leave us to die. The government spends as much as an elite college tuition per person to keep each of us incarcerated, but this money does not develop us as human beings, reduce crime or make our communities safer.

[0]: https://incarceratedworkers.org/about

Re: The Bitter Regrets of a Useless Chinese Daughter

#232

Post by biztos »

walshemj wrote: post #223
ptaipale wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True enough, but having a history doesn't make one "high-class". I do know part of my genealogy up to a landed gentry nobleman who wreaked havoc in Germany and Prague in the 30-year war on behalf of the Swedish king, but still my father was born to a tenant farmer family. But you may have a point that apparently the social differences are smaller small countries and communities where genealogy is better known. To tak…

Actually it probably does a "poor" kid from the right back ground (minor nobility landed gentry or even middle class ) will find it easier to get into Oxbridge / Harvard and also grok the social aspects as your parents told you how it works - Boris Johnson is a good example originally not rich but had a lot of connections. For example know why not to wear "brown" shoes in town to an interview for a high paying job /…

What's the issue with brown shoes?

Re: The Bitter Regrets of a Useless Chinese Daughter

#233

Post by whorleater »

kos_ wrote: post #75
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…

You don't need to collect the "right" kind of friends. This kind of thinking strips the humanity out of the process. It's an understandable conclusion but highly misleading. The simplest heuristic to use that will get you to a better place - is to maintain/grow the connect with people you care about. What does that mean? Why do you care about certain ppl? How do they make you feel? What needs of yours are they meetin…

> You don't need to collect the "right" kind of friends. This kind of thinking strips the humanity out of the process. It's an understandable conclusion but highly misleading.

I hate myself writing this, but I'm also going to say that you sometimes don't have the privilege of making friends for friend's sake. I'm Chinese, and in college I went out of my way to collect "useful" friends and curry favors because I knew that my parents (poor immigrants from Shangdong) couldn't support me if something happened, and I would rather die before asking them for more than they've already given me. It felt slimy and grotesque to work relationships in this way, but for me it felt like the only way to survive and build a safety net.

Re: The Bitter Regrets of a Useless Chinese Daughter

#234

Post by walshemj »

sangnoir wrote: post #225
TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Though there's no word for it here, this is also how the poor in the US get things done. Where the middle class become insular, and simply buys someone's time to do things they don't want to do, the poor trade favors with a large network of contacts to do the things that they need to get done.

In the UK it's known as the "Old-boy network" between former students of all-male elite schools (Eton being the most prominent). In the US, I'm guessing the closest is frat-bros?

The right frats and societies at the right university's I would imagine.

Re: The Bitter Regrets of a Useless Chinese Daughter

#235

Post by walshemj »

HillaryBriss wrote: post #183
cbhl wrote: post #33

One of the least useful pieces of start-up advice I received in college was, "if your startup fails, don't worry, you can go live in your parents' basement." Well, fine, if your parents owned their home, the worst you have to deal with is the shame of failing. If I did a start-up and it failed, it's probable that my parents wouldn't even have a basement for me to return home to.

This also applies to taking a low or non paying internship at a big company: free labor, subsidized by the dream-seeking intern's parents. In LA, very often the dream is a job in the entertainment industry.

If its anything like the UK having family connections helps a lot.

Re: The Bitter Regrets of a Useless Chinese Daughter

#236

Post by walshemj »

geomark wrote: post #109
romanovcode wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So healthcare in China is two-tier? Excellent care for those with money or connections, and bad care for everyone else? > As someone living in a country with working universal healthcare I don't know where you are living, but for example the praised German universal healthcare works exactly the same way - two-tier. Of course it's not bad on universal, but if you have money to go private the difference is obviously…

Isn't it the same everywhere in the world? My first hand experiences are the US and Thailand and I have also researched quite a bit the medical tourism industry. Although there are some differences, it seems universally the case that most locals have access to public healthcare which is generally bad while those with money (wealthy locals and foreign medical tourists) have access to excellent doctors and facilities.…

Minor medical procedures I think you will find - serious cases get fast tracked.

Re: The Bitter Regrets of a Useless Chinese Daughter

#237

Post by hourislate »

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…

I don't think your perspective is uniquely Chinese. I think it applies to every Immigrant Family.

Most grow up poor and parents typically sacrifice their lives so their children can go on to be successful.

The Chain of Poverty requires an Epic amount of sacrifice to set the next generation free. Unfortunately it leaves the next generation with a feeling of loss. It's tough to see a parent give his life so his children can live a better one.

Re: The Bitter Regrets of a Useless Chinese Daughter

#238

Post by emodendroket »

gammateam wrote: post #220
emodendroket wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean I think the Europeans are probably lying to themselves if they think they're utterly ethnically homogeneous within one country.

in a lot of the world there are good reasons to only talk about the current national identity, but that doesn't mean they don't know where their family is from.

Going back four and five generations, unless you're from a prominent family or living in a family register-using country or something like that, the records are probably pretty spotty

Re: The Bitter Regrets of a Useless Chinese Daughter

#239

Post by js2 »

emodendroket wrote: post #207
axiom92 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm at least 95% European, but I have no idea from where Try 23andme?

There are lots of issues with the accuracy of that stuff, but even if there weren't, really, what does it matter, if you don't have any sort of connection to the places your forebears were from anymore?

I don’t know, I feel it connects and grounds us to know a thing of our past. I like to ask people about their ancestry as part of bantering and I’ve had a lot of interesting conversations that way.

I’m a fourth generation American of Eastern European Jewish background and I’ve been able to track my ancestry back into specific countries in Eastern Europe via documentation I’ve dug up on ancestry.com but haven’t gotten further. I’ve found it a fascinating exercise. I have not been able to determine the source of my surname (Soffian) which still remains a curiosity for me. Sometimes you uncover interesting artifacts. I learned I had a great uncle who immigrated to America from Romania aboard the RMS Carpathia in 1904. Eight years later in 1912, this would be the first ship to come to the Titanic’s rescue, and six years after that would itself be sunk by a U-Boat. My great uncle had left Romania likely to escape anti-semitism. He’d eventually find his way out to Denver. Sadly, he’d die in 1918 (the same year the Carpathia was sunk) at the age of 25, very probably from the flu.

This was him btw, along with his headstone and declaration of intent to become a citizen:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/l16p7esag82jibs/AADTWigk7acJSrK25...

I apologize for the digression, but I just find this stuff too neat not to share.

Re: The Bitter Regrets of a Useless Chinese Daughter

#240

Post by _JamesA_ »

walshemj wrote: post #223
ptaipale wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True enough, but having a history doesn't make one "high-class". I do know part of my genealogy up to a landed gentry nobleman who wreaked havoc in Germany and Prague in the 30-year war on behalf of the Swedish king, but still my father was born to a tenant farmer family. But you may have a point that apparently the social differences are smaller small countries and communities where genealogy is better known. To tak…

Actually it probably does a "poor" kid from the right back ground (minor nobility landed gentry or even middle class ) will find it easier to get into Oxbridge / Harvard and also grok the social aspects as your parents told you how it works - Boris Johnson is a good example originally not rich but had a lot of connections. For example know why not to wear "brown" shoes in town to an interview for a high paying job /…

> For example know why not to wear "brown" shoes in town to an interview for a high paying job / internship.

Why?

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