Ask Lemmy

China doesn't even give permanent residency to foreigners

China totally does, if you're either employed for 3+ years with a master's degree and annual salary above 500-800k RMB (depending on the province) or with a bachelor's and 5+ years work experience (same income requirements), OR have a PhD and are employed by a company listed on a Chinese (not HK) stock exchange or a government owned company/entity in a higher R&D function (no income requirements), OR are married to a Chinese and have been working for 7+ years in China (no income or education requirements).

Source: Used to live in China, qualified for 2/3 pathways and my company kept pushing me to accept residency (which I refused to be able to withdraw my social security accounts upon my planned departure).

But I digress.

Due to my Chinese wife I have quite a few touching points with "offshore Chinese" as she calls them, and there are quite a few insane ones among the diaspora. The "glory to China, but I wouldn't ever live there again" types, mostly.

And yeah those wechat hymns and crap from douyin is omnipresent. We avoid those people like the plague, but every once in a while some of them show up to events hosted by saner people and spew their bullshit.

one of my relatives is a flat earther andrew tate support self-proclaimed "top-G"

Just know the most senseless people make up at least 2/3rds the population.

Yeah, my mom has unmanaged schizophrenia and my dad is an abusive piece of shit. So yes, very much so

I used to be pretty good friends with one of my cousins until I was trying to get a hold of a friend of mine several years ago on Facebook (only reliable way I can ever leave him a message) and saw all the batshit conspiracy theories she was posting on there like chemtrails being real and wifi poisoning your brain (this was pre 5G and COVID but I'm sure she eventually moved to 5G posion and vaccines being bad).

My family mellowed out a lot after the parents of the baby boomers died. The boomer generation gets a lot of flak online but for us it was the prior generations who were problematic.

I can confirm this is absolutely insane.

But sadly not the first time I heard about something like this.

Some of my friends told me on separate Occasions that their Parents ,they are 1st Generation Immigrants to Germany, support our far-right Party AFD. And are simultaneously angry with the racism they encounter.

Propaganda works.

My boyfriend and I were once snapped at during a family gathering because we dared to eat corn on the cob at a barbecue. The argument was something like, "A barbecue is only for meat, everything else is just greens, and the Greens (a german political party) want to ban our schnitzel!!!!1!1!" There's simply nothing else occupying these people's minds anymore—every topic, no matter how unrelated, somehow always gets dragged back to ThE gReEnS, CoViD vAcCiNaTiOnS, or whatever else.

It's kinda amazing how people are just so casually racist among people who they have more in common with than not, but skin color means so much more.

My mom was like that. Despite "having black friends" and all that rot, towards the end of her life after I moved out and left her homeless, she was so racist against POC. Like I distinctly remember the day my wife and I had stopped my and taken her to lunch out of pity, and we discussed her situation. At one point, when asked why she wasn't willing to try to get into public housing instead of living in a tent city, she told me she "didn't want to be a light in the dark."

If, unlike me at the time, you're baffled by what that means, she was saying she didn't want to live around black people. Despite having had black friends as roommates within the previous handful of years. I still played dumb and made her spell it out for me in crayon, because man is it fun to make 'not racist' people explain their racism in no uncertain terms and make them squirm as they try to dance around it.

More common than you think unfortunately. The internet has given anyone the option to find their mental echo chamber.

My parents are hispanic immigrants (both citizens) who voted for trump, are republicans and also hate immigrants. They believe all the Obama drinks children blood stuff, are antivaxers, and since my older sister is with them, she is now also an antivaxer so her children have zero shots of any kind. (Good luck to them in the future if they want to travel)

One of them believes aliens speak to them. I’ve seen a group in my family go to cult like events where they all dress in the same white uniforms and talk about the universe.

All I've got is, "Damn."

Wishing you the best.

My family is backwards, into ultra conservative religion and is deeply prejudiced in unconventional ways not (directly) racially. Meanwhile they are pro labor union to the extreme. My sister is all hardcore religious, and she is a deeply abusive and manipulative mach.

Religion has become my primary sign of insanity. Yesterday, the neighbor was beating his kid, so a few neighbors called the cops. When I told my fam, the guy was demon possessed and speaking in tongues. Like, dude drinks way too much some times, but how bat shit must someone be to diagnose a dimwitted drunk as demon possessed.

All I can say is peak leaded fuel happened in the 1980's. I'm from '84, so I'm not entirely free from doubt, but my parent's generation... They are generally everything that is wrong with the present, and everyone controlling the head of the dragon ATM.

I was gonna comment that this seems like basic ultra conservative nationalistic first generation Chinese American until you got to the Han replacement theory, which makes zero sense. I’m sorry this is really tough.

I’m happy for you that you have escape toxic Chinese and American nationalism. I’m sorry you have to deal with this.

My family can also be insane but dude, this is tough.

Edit: I want to add a comment that I frequently comment on Chinese culture and am sometimes taken the wrong way. I do not mean my first sentence in a rude or racist way. There is a weird trend of Chinese nationalism, and Chinese immigrants taking up pro China but extremely conservative positions that goes against minority rights while also being a minority in America. Chinese cultural is very conservative on its own but its blend with nationalism and political and social conservatives breeds wild ideologies in America.

Okay, I'll ask: If they like China so much what are they doing in America?

Unfortunately I think most people have family or at least friends like this here in the post-truth world.

I think what depresses me the most is that once the MAGA leopards start eating all of our faces, they will still do the mental gymnastics to blame all of the MAGA-induced suffering on "liberals". Even though the Democrats have basically zero power (and are right of center) they will still blame "the left" when a gallon of milk costs $18 and is full of dangerous bacteria.

Well let's see...

• Father: Statue.
• Stepfather: Conspiracy nut. Believes in a shadow government that strives to control everything while also already controlling everything. Good handyman with practical problem solving skills.
• Mother: Conspiracy nut. Believes in ancient aliens, auras, magic healing crystals, animals doing telepathy for verbal communication, and an occult shadow government. Very creative person, but very little practical skills.
• Little Brother #1 (mom's side): Conspiracy nut. Believes in... Hard to tell. It keeps changing, but it's some combination of shadow occults, god spirits, and completely misunderstanding quantum science. Also does drugs, and at some point believed to be the direct descendant of Thor.
• Little Brother #2 (dad's side): Completely bought into billionaire philanthropy. Believes people like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are highly intelligent good people who can't be greedy because they already have everything. Likes listening to Joe Rogen. Prefers his gut feelings over demonstrated facts. Very creative person who thinks a lot and makes beats.
• Little Sister #1: A very responsible person. Travels a lot. Probably the most mature from all my siblings. Is amazing at working in hospitality, and has gotten job offers from some pretty high profile hotels all over Europe.
• Little Brother #3 (mom's side): Looks like a tall, lanky hippie and is a botanist. Despite appearances, doesn't believe and doesn't care about hippie shit. He just likes plants. Also a D&D player.
• Little Sister #2: Hard to tell. Used to be a rebel, now is just sort of "normal". Just does basic things, like going to school, having a job...
• Little Brother #4 (dad's side): Terminally online no-life guy who hardly ever leaves his room, despite being a grown ass man at this point, but still behaves like a dank 16 year old. Sometimes I forget he's in his 20s. American style right-winger living in Europe, complete with being casually racist and sexist about everything, despite never going out and actually meeting anyone. Has literally no skills or ambitions.

Yeah... You know... I was about to say that my family isn't batshit insane, but it seems like it is...

Yeah man. Everybody’s family is insane on some level - some more than others. Lemme put it this way, there was a reason why I moved 3000 miles away from mine.

Yeah, a family member of mine was in a cult lead by a person who had everyone believing they were a reincarnated sun god.. and there were invisible planets travelling through the solar system on a collision course with earth, and aliens.. aliens living under the ocean near Japan, and they were thinking of taking over the world in response to Fukushima.. I lost touch with her when she was grabbing shovels and heading to the hills to live in a region that had been calculated as ‘too far for the non-believers to make it following a tsunami’..

Yep. I grew up in a crazy family. I was going through it a week ago or so and it suddenly clicked in my head that on my mom's side of the family all of the women in the family are sociopaths.

There's some weird quirk about their genetics or upbringing that prevents them from being able to care about or empathize with the emotions of other people.

Just for a run-down, if you had ever met my grandmother she would have gleefully told you the hilarious story about how when she was 5 years old she attempted to kill her dad for not taking her into town and buying her ice cream. And I'm not saying like you know poison or something like she picked up a rifle and fired it at his head and only missed because her body was too small to control the recoil.

When he ran up and grabbed her and shook her and said do you know what they would have done to you if you would have killed me, she said "yes, they would have taken me into town and bought me ice cream because my dad had just died".

Like wow. My family is insane in their own way but the stories in this thread are twisted. Yikes.

Someone mentioned leaded fuel. Makes sense. My guess would be additional burnout, undiagnosed mental issues and lack of education. At least thats the only way I can imagine this world being the way it is.

The most cruel part is the amount of gaslighting they deal out. I was told my whole life (not even youth but until my thirties) that I‘m overreacting while believing scientists.

I suggest searching for and joining international groups of likeminded people. Its what keeps me sane in this turmoil. Of course lemmy sometimes helps too.

Happy new year to those who celebrate it.

All the fucking time, I'm older and just have very little to do with them, comes a stage when you just don't want to excuse their shit anymore.

But I own my own house at the other end of the country, so there is that.

"Family" are people I share a philosophy with on how to treat other people, each other and treat the planet . I have little to nothing in common philosophically with people I shared some random genetic materail with.

You are not alone.

Most of my family is just bat shit insane

In my family my sister is an antivaxer, so my niece is unvaccinated and has been through some sicknesses - from my perspective unnecessarily. Good that she didn't get anything langlasting (yet).

I have no advice. I just hope you and your kitty find peace and calm soon. 🥲

Given what a shit state the world is in and seemingly headed for worse, I'd wager you're far from alone in having family that believes in absolute rubbish.