DeathByBigSad

[鳳凰院凶真 Hououin Kyouma]|[alt: 黃家駒 Wong Ka Kui] @sh.itjust.works 7h ago

Its so ironic how the first line of PRC anthem is

“起来，不愿做奴隶的人们” ("Arise, people who refuse to be slaves")

Then we get... this... gestures at Mainland China

like...

lmao

Omg they play that shit like everyday, I have that PRC anthem stuck in my head, I can still kinda remember it lol.

I remember when I was a kid, I kinda wanna sneak into the broadcast room and like... mess with stuff... you know, I was 6-7 and curious. But they locked the door to that room.

I remember once I didn't wanna do the... I think its the monday thing (or was it a monthly thing?, can't remember), where like they make kids stand in the schoolyard and they make announcement, kinda like how in the US, they made kids go to the Auditorium, know what I mean?

Then I remember the raising the flag ceremony in the schoolyard.

I remember just standing there... listening to some... announcement thing? that I don't remember because it was probably boring as hell. Probably like school related, when tuition is due (I wasn't allowed in public school due to lack of Guangzhou Hukou, but I didn't remember learning about this until later on when I was older), or like when school trips happen, or like when school is off, about academics... I assume that's what the announcements were probably about, I have no memory of any of the content of it.

Sometimes the sun is just shining and it gets like hot and it's annoying to be there and I get tired.

So I remember like one time I didn't feel like being there, I just sneaked away as everyone was in the process going to ans gathering in the schoolyard, and I just hid in the staircase at like the very top (roof access is locked I was lile by that door, but still in the staircase), and I just looked over the schoolyard from the 3rd floor. I just sat on the stairs, my mind wandering, and occasionally looking over to see if they finished the boring-ass "rituals" yet. (Y'all ever hate being in the auditorium for so long? It's like that) I think by the end of it, like it was an hour long or something, some 4/5 grader found me and... told the teacher? and... I don't remember what happened after, probably got in trouble for not being with the class lol.

It's so weird, memories are fuzzy, but I remember the emotions associated with school. I kinda always hated school, like... I'm just socially anxious. Didn't like to conform. I don't remember ever really making friends. (Could be due being uncomfortabke with the language. I spoke Cantonese at home, school was Mandarin, so it felt "distant" to me, like methaphorically speaking, like I'm in a different realm. Or maybe that's just being an introvert.)

My throughts are messy, not sure if any of it was coherent.

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[鳳凰院凶真 Hououin Kyouma]|[alt: 黃家駒 Wong Ka Kui] @sh.itjust.works 8h ago

Because I'm ethnic Chinese and I'm biased and I wanna see people like me build a place of freedom, a democratic country, a country that I don't get discriminated in. Would be cool, no?

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[鳳凰院凶真 Hououin Kyouma]|[alt: 黃家駒 Wong Ka Kui] @sh.itjust.works 8h ago

Tbf, distance between Earth and Mars is way farther than England and American Colonies. A Martian revolution has much higher chance success.

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[鳳凰院凶真 Hououin Kyouma]|[alt: 黃家駒 Wong Ka Kui] @sh.itjust.works 9h ago

China will probably have the solar system in a generation

OMG I just had a thought.

Remember what happened when Great Britain expanded and colonized stuff? 13 colonies?Independence?

OMG wouldn't it be cool if China did that to like Mars, then the Martian colonists be like, "no fuck you CCP", then:

Declaration of Independence

United Provinces of Mars

Constitution (hopefully a smarter constitution)

Martian Revolution

Becomes a Solar Superpower

Chinese becomes the lingua franca of the solar system.

Time is a circle lmao.

Literally just The Expanse timeline, but without blue goo and Chinese becomes the lingua franca of the UN. LOL

FOR MARS!

火星联合众国

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[鳳凰院凶真 Hououin Kyouma]|[alt: 黃家駒 Wong Ka Kui] @sh.itjust.works 9h ago

There’s a huge difference between being ashamed of your Government’s actions

That's not really "shame", not really the right word for it, shame is something you feel about yourself, this is more like resentment.

1

[鳳凰院凶真 Hououin Kyouma]|[alt: 黃家駒 Wong Ka Kui] @sh.itjust.works 9h ago

Lunar New Year has joined the chat.

Wait actually nvm, the parents give $100 in a 红包 to your aunt's kid, then your aunt gives you $100 in a 红包, then you both say thanks.

Then you go home and your parents tell you to give it to them to "safeguard" the money for you; "帮你保管" my mom said, "for college".

So result:

Money exchanged, money has been moved, but zero actual value has been transfered. They just have a different, fungible, $100.

Gifts: None, except temporarily in possession of $100

But you know, "your mom gave birth to you, you need to 感恩, to be thankful" xD

"世上只有妈妈好" lolol

Thank a lot mom, I love the um... gestures to the air in front of me gift you gave me, very lovely mom 🤗

(okay I kinda exaggerated, I did sometimes get gifts, but not often. it was so rare lol. often its nothing I really wanted... 🥺)

Ugh... Asian Families... It is what it is... I wasn't even supposed to be born, so I should probably be more thankful to my parents that I even survived past One Child Policy.

1

[鳳凰院凶真 Hououin Kyouma]|[alt: 黃家駒 Wong Ka Kui] @sh.itjust.works 10h ago

Best you can do is to focus on your own life.

Lol that's why my parents say to me. That trying to change anything in politics is pointless, futile, that, in a hypothetical revolution, I'll never get to live to see such a hypothetical victory...

I mean I kinda get it, my parents don't want their kids to die in some war...

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[鳳凰院凶真 Hououin Kyouma]|[alt: 黃家駒 Wong Ka Kui] @sh.itjust.works 10h ago

Maybe not the "craziest", but I remember being a kid and on the NYC subway, a bunch of dudes were just like... doing "steet performance" stuff... like on the subway... like they'd while moving from one subway cart to another subway cart (is that what it's called, idk the terminology), like through the train connection thing while the subway was in motion, like a group of 4-5 guys, one went around, begging for money, which I thought at the time was a robbery, like, for context, I was around 8-12 at the time, I literally just came to this country, I was just so "wtf" about the whole situation. Like what the fuck was that. Like... I don't wanna be racist about this... but I'm Asian, and those dudes were not, so you know... me being a kid, I got even more scared about it. I just kinda leaned on my mom sitting right next to me and like hugged cuz I felt so scared.

No it wasn't really a robbery, but like... I was just so fucking confused at the time. What the fuck what that? Then like 10 minutes later, they moved to a different subway cart. It felt like 30 minutes to me lol. And like I don't think we ever were at a stop, since I think this was like those segments where it takes forever between 2 stops, probably the manhattan bridge section of the D train or N train, which takes forever.

Like can you imagine being a kid and a bunch of dudes are causing a scene for some reason you don't understand?

Also I remember this other time where I'm sure it was the D line, and like I went on this subway cart where it was empty. Like you know NYC always crowded af and no seats, and I always hated standing as a kid. So my mom and I picked this subway car that was apparantly empty. So then the doors close behind us and then we noticed a smell, then we notices some homeless looking dude on the other corner of the subway cart. And like the smell was coming from the homeless dude. (No offense to homeless people btw, but I'm describing this memory from a kid-me's perspective so keep that in mind) So it got really uncomfortable in there, but the doors closed and train already got moving. But the next stop was like 10 minutes away (one of the sections where they skip like 3 stops on the express track), so we just had to bear with the dumpster like smell and also the potential danger of dude just waking up and attacking us.

I thought about just hopping between the carts using the doorway thing (if you know what I'm talking about), but there was a sign warning not to move through doors while train is moving and my mom said no, its too dangerous, so we just stayed in that cart for 10 agonizing minutes.

Actually, current-me might've been actually been more freaked out by it since I have germophobia now. That's why I kinda hate public transit nowadays.

[鳳凰院凶真 Hououin Kyouma]|[alt: 黃家駒 Wong Ka Kui] @sh.itjust.works 16h ago

Off topic, but 作为大陆来的人，那传统字体 hurts my brain for some reason lol.

Like sometime I'd change the keyboard settings to traditional and use it for fun, but actually reading it makes my brain spin 头晕 lol

[鳳凰院凶真 Hououin Kyouma]|[alt: 黃家駒 Wong Ka Kui] @sh.itjust.works 20h ago

If you were to lose either sight or hearing, which one would you chose?

Honestly, if I lost either, I'll just kms.

Living with depression with all my senses is already hard enough, but fine, I'll continue the struggle.

If I can't walk, or can't see, or hear, or lose my hands, or some stupid shit like that, nah, I'd nope out of this real quick.

[鳳凰院凶真 Hououin Kyouma]|[alt: 黃家駒 Wong Ka Kui] @sh.itjust.works 20h ago

I don't think public education is meant to make people informed, one of it's goals is mass indoctrination. It's the same in almost every country. I'm fortunate to be one of the people that recognize that. Me being in two spheres of influence make it so easy to identify what propaganda looks like, I seen it on both sides, two different countries, how media, like tv shows, portrays things.

They want obedient people to keep the cogs of the machine running. They want nationalism and absolute obedience to the state, the government.

In the US, at least, there are a lot of reliable sources on internet, and also public libraries... but of course, poor people don't have time to educate themselves, just as its designed. The lower class, different countries, similar story.

[鳳凰院凶真 Hououin Kyouma]|[alt: 黃家駒 Wong Ka Kui] @sh.itjust.works 21h ago

Omg I ruminate on alt-timelines about decisions that weren't even my own. Like the alt-timeline where I was never born, or never moved abroad, or if I got different classes, that maybe I didn't get bullies, or like the alt-timeline where I left my country earlier and didn't get to keep my multilingualism. Or like maybe I could do things differently at home so that my parents loved me more, or like tried to make more friends... etc...

I get it. I think that's just brain.exe doing brain.exe things.

The worst part is those traumatic memories tho, I still remember one of those from like... a long time ago... been re-living that day for a long time. What if the outcome was worse? What if I never made it out of that situation alive?

So... yeah...

idk

OCD

CPTSD

🤷‍♂️

[鳳凰院凶真 Hououin Kyouma]|[alt: 黃家駒 Wong Ka Kui] @sh.itjust.works 22h ago

guilty over getting out of the US

Please don't feel guilty for leaving somewhere you don't like. That is your right. Stay safe, friend.

[鳳凰院凶真 Hououin Kyouma]|[alt: 黃家駒 Wong Ka Kui] @sh.itjust.works 23h ago

Ok, a majority of voters

Plurality of voters, didn't get more than 50% of all votes

[鳳凰院凶真 Hououin Kyouma]|[alt: 黃家駒 Wong Ka Kui] @sh.itjust.works 1d ago

When’s the last time you were in China? I wouldn’t be surprised if it was just a pushed social media post, but it seems like every city I’ve never even heard of in China looks even better than the best city America has these days.

Around 2010. Guangzhou.

The actual city part doesn't look too bad, but I lives in a slum neighborhood of Guangzhou that most tourists don't really see. It was very dirty and you go through narrow alleyways. Like, according to Baidu Maps, its a 10 minutes walk from the main street, in my memory, it always felt like a 20-30 minute walk for some reasons, it felt so distant, the walk was always boring af. It's as if through through that short walk, you time travel back in time 20-50 years. The school I went to was the worst school I ever went to. Even worst than the shittist American school I went to with a rating of like 4/10 looked better.

Although, it could've be my Hukou issue. The school I went to was not a public school, it was one for children of migrant parents that parents have to pay for. Kids without Guangzhou Hukou were not allowed Guangzhou's public schools.

So far, the worst places I've stayed at was the small apartment in Guangzhou, and the ancestral homes in parents villages in Taishan.

I mean, China looks so great? Sure, only if you are privilaged enough to live in the good parts, which my family wasn't able to. In China, most people have homes in their villages, but if they wanma find work, they'd have to go to cities, and then they'd have to rent some shitty apartment. Landlords are still a thing, but they don't call them 地主 (di4 zhu3), but instead 房东 (fang2 dong1), people "buy" (not really "buy", more like 70 years permission to use, but you get what I'm saying) housing, then lease it, kinda profits off it.

In Guangzhou, we were second-class residents.

China isn't really one united country when you really think about it. It's a bunch of different countries with different internal passports in a trench coat. Y'all can leave your red state shitholes and go to a blue city, in a blue state, and you are treated as any other resident.

In China, my ancestors are from Taishan, so I'm always a 台山人 Taishanese due to Hukou, even though I was born in Guangzhou and speak both Cantonese and Mandarin.

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[鳳凰院凶真 Hououin Kyouma]|[alt: 黃家駒 Wong Ka Kui] @sh.itjust.works 1d ago

I mean, a person from the western world is not gonna view this the same as someone from a non-western less-developed country.

Like, I know people shit on the US a lot, and perhaps it might be "the worst" in the Western World. But compared to globally, it's far from "the worst".

Like, if you gave a North Korean PRC Citizenship (which does not really happen btw, just a hypothetical), then the Now-Former North Korean would probably be proud to be a Chinese Citizen rather than being in North Korea.

Because it's relatively better by comparison.

So its the same with me. Sure, I know there are far better countries like Norway, but I mean like... Norway does not take many immigrants, and the best place I could be, given my circumstances, is the US. So, it's less about "I'm proud of my government" or "I'm proud of the history of this country", more like "I'm glad I'm here instead of [their ancestral country]". And as to getting questioned, its the fear of getting "othered", of getting rejected. So its natural to immediately declare their US Citizenship status as a defense.

I mean, I think nowadays, that's even more so the case.

Like I didn't really worry about this before. But especially nowadays, if someone, especially someone claiming to be a cop, is trying to talk to me, the first thing I'll do is immediately declare my Citizenship status and then assert my rights immediately after.

I still have memories of China, and I do not like being there. Not every Chinese American is gonna feel the same way as I do, but, at least in my case, our life in China prior to emigrating was very poor, and it got better in the US. So there's that.