July 2025. It’s been almost two years since I left China. But I have never been able to distance myself from the Chinese society due to the Internet and the social media. Or more profoundly speaking, since I’m a Chinese, I only care about what’s happening in China. It relates to my interest, my identity, my link to collective memory, thus my relationship with my fellow Chinese. It’s our story, I don’t wanna privileged foreigners or domestic dictator control the narrative, yeah, I can’t help messing up with them. So let me share you my personal Monthly China, on what’s happening and how do we common Chinese feel about it.

To summarize July 2025 in China, I would use one word: Indignation. If you check the dictionary: indignation means anger or annoyance provoked by what is perceived as unfair treatment.
The funny thing here is that you can see unfair treatment fairly befall on the head of Chinese average person. July started from Kindergarten in Gansu, over 200 children were poisoned by additives used to colorize their steamed bun. Honestly, I was not surprised at all by this kind of news, food security is never secure in China, which is sort of common sense. But this piece of news keeps bugging on my social media because the local government was so used to cover it up than do their job. So the news like parents of the poisoned children got arrested or their social media got shut down kept alive until a man dressed up as a woman doing free hooker and got laid with more than 1600 Chinese guys in Nanking.

The news of Uncle Red occupied the headline in the second week of July because of the hilarious absurdity. Videos and voice record of this suspected gay lied to straight men of every kind, assuring them that he has a vagina went viral. He single-handedly proved to all Chinese women who still have princess dream how stupid and horny their husband or husband-to-be are. It sounds vulgar, but a lot of women just realize that they /the Chinese guy just need a hole. So Uncle Red simply proved that an asshole also counts. This is a huge slap to Chinese patriarchal society. I can’t help laughing the whole day, and spread that news to my international friends who has Asian fever. While I’m writing, my Portuguese friend told me that this Uncle Red outfit has evolved into some funny foreplay between couples on TikTok. Sending gift as watermelon or half bottle of oil, you can only get the punchline if you share the collective memory of Chinese people.

Then the third week, an unknown university in Qingdao expelled one female student because she has a relationship with a white foreigner, accusing her with ridiculous phrase like insulting the national dignity. A lot of Chinese suspected it was done to hold up the rising trend of Uncle Red which is a real insult to national dignity. Because it turns out the whole accusation is made-up. At the same time, in Hangzhou, people’s tap water was polluted by shit, yes, you heard it right. Obviously some mechanic mistakenly connected the tube for shit into the tube for drinking water. So the citizens in Hangzhou, which also is the headquarters of Alibaba btw, saw their water turn into yellow and smelly. And they began to empty the supermarkets for bottled water overnight. The government reaction? Compensating 2 dollars for each family for their mistake, which incited more dissatisfaction in the city. The shitty water lasted two weeks in Hangzhou, the disgusting image spread by videos and photos online till the scandal of Shaolingsi came up near the end of the month. Shaoling temple, famous for being one of the original birthplaces for Chinese martial arts, was longtime being commercialized by the chief of the monks, some masters I don’t care his name, who turned out to be a super-corrupted businessman with a lot of mistress. Again, a huge insult to national dignity. Also, not surprised like a lot of common Chinese. We just joked that Henan province needs money, so they just go for the fattest chicken they know.

In sum, the main point I wanna drive home here is that the Chinese Orwellian system is beginning to show a crack. This month witnessed a sporadic backfire of the system from local government level. Each province, you can see the incapability of its government to be able to solve the real problem; each of them no matter in the North or in the South, the only thing functions right now in their institutions is the national security department. And Chinese people become more and more aware of that, so how do people feel: indignation.

Here emerges a predictable consequence from this vicious circle. Let me explain. From what I know, a lot of local governments across China are short of funds, public servants, institutional workers like teachers and nurses haven’t received their salaries for months even a year. The only department that would always get enough fund is the police. Make sense right, imagine what would the policemen do if they don’t get paid. The problem is that it is the only department that is well-funded, thus well functioning. They become the only solution or capability that the government has, no matter what kind of problems come up. So it becomes the only way they would answer the people. In my opinion, after several rounds of things in July, people would be trained and learn to respond accordingly to the only way that they receive from the government. What do you think?