Married to Pay the Bills, Divorced to Get Rich — The Cold Truth in China Today

[00:00:02]After Valentine's Day, I decided to get separated. And if I told you the level of poverty I sank to after that decision, you probably wouldn't believe that a woman like me ended up letting her life come to this.

[00:00:15]But that's the honest truth. In the settlement, the house stayed with me and the car went to him. And at the time, it seemed like I'd gotten the better part of the deal. But that was exactly where the hardship began. The thing is, on my own, I couldn't keep up the house, the mortgage, the condo fees, the bills.

[00:00:33]It all fell on me alone. And what I earned simply didn't add up at the end of the month. Every now and then, there were still the everyday expenses. And no matter how tight things got, you can't let food run short on the table. The basics still have to be bought. Life, to be honest, and without being afraid of becoming a laughing stock, got really, really hard. I tried to hold on for a while, cutting everything I could. But there came a point when there was no way around it, and I had to put the house up for sale. I spent so long thinking it over, hesitating about whether to sell or not, telling myself maybe I could hang on just a little longer.

[00:01:10]But in the end, I decided to sell, because there was no other way out.

[00:01:14]Selling was heartbreaking, because that was where I had pictured my whole life.

[00:01:18]After I sold it, with the little that was left, I ended up moving back in with my parents. At my age, going back to my childhood bedroom and depending on them all over again is something I never imagined would happen to me. Thinking about it, ending things like that and watching my life fall apart this way leaves a kind of bitter feeling. But for now, there's nothing else to be done.

[00:01:41]Living in this really difficult situation, whatever can be saved gets saved. And for now, with some unnecessary things, I just keep cutting back without feeling like it's that big of a sacrifice. Either way, it's enough for me to have a roof over food on the table, and my family close by supporting me. No matter how hard it is right now, I know it was the right decision for me, and from here on out, everything is surely going to get better and better.

[00:02:16]The saddest contradiction isn't the fact that every year over 10 million college students graduate and immediately become unemployed, unable to find work. The greatest sorrow is us, the middle-aged people who have elderly parents to care for above and young children below. Many of us are out of work. Our income has been cut off. Money is harder and harder to earn, and the opportunities [clears throat] left for us to make money are fewer and fewer. The crucial point is that there are so many mortgage and car loans coming due, plus already overdue credit card loans, that we just can't pay off. The cruelest part is that, starting in 2025, a huge wave of intelligent machines will be coming online, beginning to compete for the market with us ordinary folks. And it's possible that even more ordinary people will have no choice but to lose their jobs.

[00:03:03]>> First, let me throw a bucket of cold water on everyone. It's 2026, and a huge number of brick-and-mortar stores are going to face the fate of being forced into bankruptcy. And by then, those storefront properties will probably draw no interest at all. This isn't me being alarmist, but these days, a lot of people still cling to illusions, hoping the state will impose restrictions on internet companies to bring offline commerce back to its former glory. I'd advise everyone to stop having that kind of daydream.

[00:03:32]The wheels of the times roll relentlessly forward, and no matter how much it hurts, there's no going back.

[00:03:38]Just look at today's market environment, which is already in chaos. Service industries like printing and color printing, beauty salons and hairdressing, health and wellness, along with major home appliances, are using internet-based methods to frantically seize the survival space of small shops.

[00:03:54]And neighborhood group buying and social media commerce are coming to grab their share, too. This has choked off much of what originally belonged to physical stores. And look further at clothing stores, food stores, appliance stores, industry by industry. All of them have been absorbed and monopolized by internet platforms. People of every age group have grown used to shopping online. And under this major trend, physical stores that want to keep surviving absolutely cannot act blindly the way they used to. In the past, when opening a store, many people thought it was enough to rent a storefront, get a product, and easily make money as long as you were bold and driven. You could become your own boss. But that doesn't work anymore. Physical stores that want to stand out in the future must have sufficient capital as their backing, plus a flexible business mind, rich industry knowledge, and good connections and relationships. Isn't what I'm saying right? You have to juggle every aspect, truly requiring mastery of all the skills. Every single one of them, just so you can survive.

[00:04:53]If we keep taking on these break-even projects this way, we'll lose even the shirt off our backs. Nowadays, no one dares to take on projects from the big state-owned and centrally-owned enterprises. In the past, everyone pulled strings all over the place and lobbied hard to grab the work from these state firms. Now, it's not that we can't do the work, it's that we simply don't dare. Why? We've got both the crews and the technical skill. The moment a project comes up, never mind the price markdown, they also demand that you front the capital. And fronting the money, fine, you could say that's normal. Whoever wants a return has to invest, that's understandable. The key thing is that before I've even signed the contract, before I've even set foot on site, right off the bat they demand I hand over tens, even hundreds of thousands in so-called intermediary fees, deposits, and the like. How much it really costs and when it gets refunded, there's no reasonable explanation. If the funds don't come through, the main contractor takes no responsibility.

[00:05:51]As far as they're concerned, as long as they collect every management fee in full, it's fine. Good cigarettes, good liquor, and models have to be arranged from time to time.

[00:06:01]The demands on subcontractors keep getting higher, and before signing the contract versus after moving on site are two completely different worlds. The finding schemes come in every variety.

[00:06:12]They keep pushing you to speed up the construction schedule with no regard whatsoever for whether you live or die.

[00:06:17]Whatever the design change signed off right there on site, they all agree to it. But, they only settle up with you when it's time for the final accounting.

[00:06:25]From all directions and in all kinds of ways come the abusive deductions. And when you go to collect your money, the paperwork is more numerous than the stars in the sky. The reasons are the strangest things imaginable, and in the end you can't get the money and you've worked for nothing. Today, there's been no inspection. Tomorrow, the person in charge has resigned.

[00:06:46]The day after the manager is away on a business trip. Or else, the leadership is in a meeting going over the accounts.

[00:06:54]Stringing you along for a year is them being polite. 3 to 5 years is the norm, and all this over such a tiny margin of profit. You simply can't bear the cost of fronting the capital. This isn't hiring you to do work, it's clearly asking you for a loan. And asking with a sour face at that, treating you like a doormat without even paying you interest. Getting through one of these projects, you cross five passes and cut down six generals with social maneuvering and politics at every turn.

[00:07:21]At every holiday and festival, you absolutely must give gifts. And if the gift isn't up to par, something's already off. If you don't satisfy their appetite, on the construction site they throw up roadblocks and set up obstacles so you can't take a single step. The workers labor wages and the material suppliers payments leave you frazzled, dragging you from disappointment into despair. When the phone rings, your whole body feels awful because picking up is bad and not picking up is bad, too. Before New Year with people pounding on your door to collect debts, all you can do is run around everywhere, not daring to face head-on those who were once respectable people themselves.

[00:07:58]You tell me, a job like this, who would dare to take it on?

[00:08:07]>> 5,800,000 in project payment, and now you only admit to paying me 800,000. Back when we did the settlement, you said you'd first handle this part for me, and then the two of us would negotiate to pay me the remaining balance as well.

[00:08:23]Full of gratitude, I came to you all happy and cheerful. It's true, you did get all the paperwork done for me, but for you to want to slash 5 million off me in one stroke, isn't that a little too despicable? If you say you have no money, I can understand that. I'll even accept other payment methods, but that can't be used as a reason for you to bully me. Isn't it perfectly obvious that you're pushing me into a dead end?

[00:08:50]When it was time to come do the work, I unhesitatingly fronted the money out of my own pocket for you. Now that the work is done, you tell me that if I want to get paid, it can be settled at 800,000. You really do eat a person and don't even spit out the bones. Brothers, if this were your outcome, could you accept it? The 5,800,000 was the result of your own calculations.

[00:09:15]I know it's hard for everyone, and from start to finish, I never demanded that you pay me the full amount. At the very least, give me back my principal. Set aside my whole family, the old and the young, my house and my car. New Year is almost here, and everything is about to completely blow up.

[00:09:34]The the behind me and those few workers.

[00:09:38]What am I supposed to do about them?

[00:09:40]This pittance you're giving me, what can it possibly do? I don't know why doing this little project of yours has been such a suffocating ordeal. Me, alone, working hard to earn money, working hard to do this project well.

[00:09:54]Why is it that in the end the outcome is exactly this? Brothers and sisters in the construction industry, have your projects been settled? At settlement time, how big a discount did they cut you down to? Has the remaining balance been paid to you or not? An outcome like this, I really can't accept it.

[00:10:16]>> Why do Chinese people all live so exhausted? Because there's no money. And it's not just that there's no money, it's that everywhere you turn you have to spend money. Every day, the moment you open your eyes, apart from the air and the sunshine being free, everything else costs money. Property fees, heating fees, water and elec- -tricity, gas, broadband, medical fees, insurance fees.

[00:10:39]And then there's the car loan and the mortgage.

[00:10:42]Phone bills, fuel, TV fees, parking fees, traffic violation fines, and countless other places where you have to spend money.

[00:10:49]But if you want to earn a bit of money, it's brutal. And wanting to spend nothing is impossible because the cost of living is just too high. An ordinary person's daily wage is only 100 or 200 yuan. And beyond everyday life, you no longer dare to get sick. You don't dare see a doctor. A tiny little cold already costs 3 to 500 yuan, let alone raising a child. Young people today don't dare to marry, don't dare to have kids. They're exploited by the 996 work schedule day after day, worn out like dogs, yet they still don't dare to rest for even a single day. In the past, although people were a bit poorer, one person could support the whole family. Now the whole family supporting one person is already this exhausting. So you tell me, has our life actually gotten better or worse?

[00:11:35]Housing, health care, education, elder care, every single one of them crushes you until you can't breathe. An ordinary person empties out six wallets, three generations savings, and takes on a 30-year mortgage before you might be able to afford a single home. In the past, there was that bit of motivational soup that said, "The harder you work, the luckier you get, right?" But, reality slaps you in the face. The more you lack money, the harder you work, and the harder you work, the less money you have. Take those workers who get up at 4:00 in the morning to sweep the streets. They work hard, don't they?

[00:12:09]But, do they have money?

[00:12:10]And now, with housing prices having dropped so much, you find that the down payment our parents paid by emptying out a lifetime of savings has already been completely wiped out. And on top of that, they're left owing the bank several hundred thousand. You work hard putting in overtime to pay off the mortgage, and in the end, you've not only burned through the previous generations blood and sweat money, but also saddled yourself with debt. It's truly both pitiful and crushing. And today's policies really leave people baffled. Every day, they say they want to stimulate consumption.

[00:12:41]Well, then, loosen that hand that's clamped around our throat. A merchant puts out a flower basket and gets fined.

[00:12:47]Ordinary folks set up a little stall and get chased all over the place by the urban management officers. They mobilize tens of thousands of people to go inspect electric bikes. So, why don't they go after those deadbeats who owe money and won't pay it back? Why don't they go root out the fraudsters who swindle everyone's hard-earned money?

[00:13:05]Why do they spend every day making life hard for ordinary people?

[00:13:09]You can't burn the straw. You can't build the pigsty. Even digging up some wild vegetables counts as breaking the law. So, how exactly do you expect ordinary people to go on living?

[00:13:19]I can barely even eat my fill.

[00:13:22]So, tell me, how am I supposed to live?

[00:13:24]There's also a line online that stings the heart of anyone who hears it. It says that over these past 2 years, anyone with even a little bit of ambition has ended up in debt. Let me do a quick tally for you.

[00:13:36]Those who bought property, who ran businesses, who started ventures, over these 2 years, they've basically burned through all their money and taken on debt. Even the bosses can't survive. So, think about it. Where are any job openings going to come from?

[00:13:50]The officially announced unemployment rate is always just 4 or 5% but the real situation seriously contradicts that.

[00:13:57]Just the people delivering packages and food already exceed 100 million.

[00:14:02]Consider a college student. He beat the high school entrance exam, beat the college entrance exam, signed up for countless cram schools and tutoring classes, didn't sleep until midnight and had to get up at 5:00, studying that exhaustingly every single day. And wasn't all of that just to get into a good university, become one of fortune's favored, and change his own fate? But upon graduating, he discovers that the college graduate can't find a job. The college graduate's salary turns out to be less than his father's, who was a migrant laborer.

[00:14:32]How deeply ironic is that?

[00:14:34]So, you grind all the way to the end and end up with nothing. You think you wouldn't be exhausted? But what can ordinary people do?

[00:14:41]The broader environment we can't influence and can't change because our lives still have to go on.

[00:14:46]So, what I'd recommend now is everyone cut back on consumption, save up more money, and take good care of your health.

[00:14:53]We keep a good mindset and tough it out through this hardest stretch, and that in itself counts as a victory.

[00:14:59]Then, when you're able to earn a bit more money within what's within your reach.

[00:15:03]Besides working a job, there are actually plenty of side hustle projects online that suit us ordinary folks.

[00:15:09]Things like cross-border video reposting or second-tier e-commerce.

[00:15:13]If you put in just a little effort, you can add a few thousand yuan to your monthly income. If you don't know how, you can leave your age here and sister, he will teach you hands-on, step-by-step. For you and your family, that counts as adding another layer of security, doesn't it? We, the ordinary people of China, didn't come into this world to enjoy ourselves. We came to experience the sufferings of the human world. Every day breathing in smog, eating all sorts of additives and preservatives, being squeezed and exploited in every way by capital, and yet everyone can still manage to go on living just fine. These days, that alone counts as a miracle.

[00:15:50]>> If we stop and look at it from the outside without the veil of emotion over our eyes, what's left is exactly what I've been saying from the start.

[00:15:59]Relationships today have become a transaction of convenience, and in China, this is so blatant that it's almost instructional. Remember everything we saw in those accounts?

[00:16:08]The 36-year-old woman, divorced, selling second-hand real estate to support her daughter on her own, walking into a matchmaker livestream like someone stepping onto a trading floor.

[00:16:20]The man who separated and went broke.

[00:16:22]The guy crushed by his loan, by the rent on his shop, by the heating fee he hesitates to pay because it's another 2,000 yuan he doesn't have.

[00:16:31]It's not love that's at stake there, it's survival.

[00:16:34]People aren't getting together because they found that so-called soulmate, the waifu, the life partner that neo-romantic culture sold them.

[00:16:42]They're getting together because on their own, they can't pay the bills.

[00:16:46]Period. It's a spreadsheet marriage, not a marriage of passion.

[00:16:51]Two incomes that don't add up become one income that maybe does, and when the spreadsheet stops adding up, the relationship ends just as coldly as it began.

[00:17:00]And I'm not saying this with disgust, folks. I've explained it before. The transaction itself isn't disgusting or vile. Buying food at the market isn't disgusting.

[00:17:08]Hiring a service isn't disgusting. The problem isn't the transaction, the problem is the lie they painted over it.

[00:17:15]They painted as romance what was always negotiation. They painted as building something together what was always conditional, fragile, and with an expiration date.

[00:17:23]And the ordinary Chinese person today lives the rawest version of this because the economy has stripped away all the veneer.

[00:17:31]When you're breathing in pollution, eating preservatives, being squeezed by capital from morning to night with a real unemployment rate that doesn't match the official 4 or 5%, you no longer have the luxury of illusion. The great lie starves to death before anyone else does. What's left is the electricity bill, the loan payment, and the blunt question, can we split this or not?

[00:17:53]And now the point I know is going to bother people, but it's my opinion and I'm going to hammer on it. Look at the stupidity of the Chinese man in all this.

[00:18:05]China today has tens of millions more men than women. Tens of millions.

[00:18:10]By the market logic I always talk about here, the man should have the upper hand. He should be the selective one, the one who chooses, the one who sets the terms. And what actually happens?

[00:18:19]The opposite.

[00:18:20]The guy, even amid a shortage of women, even being the numerically rare side, keeps rushing to the pot far too thirsty.

[00:18:28]He keeps getting desperate, keeps accepting the spreadsheet relationship, keeps submitting to being tested, feminized, drained, treating as good fortune what is just a negotiation he enters at a loss.

[00:18:38]He had the demographic advantage in his hand and exercised no selectivity whatsoever. He chose nothing, he accepted whatever came along, and even thanked them on his knees.

[00:18:49]It's the simp on a national scale, the man who could have been the sought-after prize and even so became the thirsty one.

[00:18:57]Because neediness isn't a matter of how many women exist, neediness is a matter of mindset.

[00:19:04]And the mindset of the average man remains hostage to idealization, to I want to believe, to that god-sized void he insists on trying to fill with a woman instead of filling it with purpose, with work, with real self-development.

[00:19:20]So, the lesson I draw from all this, and the one I leave you with, is twofold.

[00:19:24]First, see the transaction for what it is, without hatred and without romance.

[00:19:30]Whoever understands that it's a negotiation stops getting screwed over, stops paying dearly for a lie.

[00:19:37]Second, and more importantly, don't confuse numerical abundance with power.

[00:19:44]It's no use having a surplus of women if there's a surplus of neediness in the man. [music] The guy who doesn't know how to not choose, who can't say this negotiation I won't make, is going to lose even in a scenario designed in his favor.

[00:19:58]And that's why I insist so much here on the channel on emancipation, on self-development, on keeping your feet on the ground before keeping any woman around.

[00:20:05]Because the self-sufficient man doesn't need the pot, and the one who doesn't need it, that one finally can choose.

[00:20:12]And that's it, everyone. If you enjoyed this video, leave a like, subscribe to the channel for more content like this, and hit the bell so you don't miss the next ones. I'll see you in the next video.