66 posts tagged with "Satire"

Lao Li stared at the number on the screen, his brows furrowed like a twisted rope.

Zhang Qiang sat blankly in front of his computer for an entire day. On the screen was his father's WeChat profile picture - a gray, empty space.

Three months ago, his father passed away. A sudden cerebral hemorrhage took away the quiet old man, and also took away one of the few sources of warmth in Zhang Qiang's life.

Xiaoming, clutching a thick stack of New Year's money, excitedly arrived at the bank entrance. Today was the eighth day of the Lunar New Year, a day of good luck for starting work, and also the day he could "liberate" his New Year's money from his parents' "safekeeping."

There was a long queue in front of the Automatic Teller Machine (ATM), mostly children like him, all holding bulging red envelopes. Xiaoming stood on his tiptoes, watching the adults skillfully operate the ATM, his heart filled with anticipation.

Li Xiaoming, an ordinary screenwriter at a well-known animation film company, spends his days in front of a computer screen, racking his brains to write all sorts of bizarre plots. Originally, his dream was to become an animation master like Hayao Miyazaki, creating works that touched people's hearts. However, the reality is that he is busy every day with various projects like "IP adaptation" and "traffic first," and has long forgotten his original dream.

Until the movie called Ne Zha was released.

The air in the cabin, as if the oxygen had been sucked out, became dull and oppressive. Li Ming sat by the window, trying to look like a calm traveler. The small, red, crumpled thing in his hand, like a hot potato, made him restless.

It was nothing else but a firecracker, a firecracker that had clearly been lit, with only some paper scraps and charred marks left. It lay quietly in Li Ming's palm, like a time bomb that would detonate fear.

Old Wang rubbed his hands together, bowing three times to the dark, hulking "Kitchen God" in the kitchen. It wasn't a wooden statue, nor a printed New Year picture, but a smart speaker with a screen.

Old Wang, the Stove God, has been very bothered lately. The Jade Emperor approved his descent to investigate public sentiment, euphemistically calling it "experiencing the human touch." He was overjoyed, thinking he'd see wisps of smoke rising from chimneys and hear cheerful laughter. But what did he find? On his first day, he was almost run over by a food delivery guy.

He transformed into a middle-aged programmer named Wang Ming, who was woken up by his alarm clock at 7:30 AM every morning. He'd hastily shove a few bites of bread into his mouth, then squeeze onto the subway to begin his daily "cultivation." Wang Ming’s "workstation" was in a transparent glass cubicle. He could see everyone in the cubicles across from him buried in their work, with only the clatter of keyboards rising and falling.

Old Wang shivered in the cold wind, carrying his ancestral small bench. Today was the first day of the Lunar New Year, and he had managed to get away from the mahjong table to watch a movie at the newly opened "Bench Cinema" in the county town. He had heard that this cinema was unique in that it did not have seats, and audiences had to bring their own benches. When the idea first came out, Old Wang had scoffed at it, thinking it was nonsense. However, he couldn't resist the cinema's "New Year Special Offers," the tickets were surprisingly cheap, and curiosity eventually overcame his principles.

When he arrived at the cinema entrance, Old Wang realized he was not an oddity. Men and women, old and young, each carried a bench, of different colors and materials, like a bench exposition. There were plastic ones, wooden ones, and elegant folding stools. Someone even carried a small grand master chair. People sized up each other's "vehicles," with a hint of novelty and a hint of helplessness on their faces.

Lao Wang pushed open the office door, and a wave of heat hit him. It wasn't that the air conditioner was broken, but that everyone was red-faced, as if they had just come out of a steamer. Today was the first day of the company's "absolute fairness" system.

The cause was a while ago, when actor Yu Shi's statement "We just want fairness" caused a huge response on the Internet. The boss was deeply inspired and decided to implement an "absolute fairness" system in the company.

"Gold, it's gone up again today!"

Old Wang muttered to himself, holding his thermos mug, staring at the glaring numbers on the computer screen. He worked at "Gleaming Gold" company, whose main business was gold jewelry. But Old Wang wasn't a designer, nor a salesperson; he was just an ordinary clerk in charge of data entry. His daily task was to input the real-time gold prices and inventory data of various jewelry items into the company's internal network system.