What's a big coincidence you have experienced?

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[–]whyyoudrinksomuch 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

You reminded me of an experience, a true story. I'm not sure how you cross-post posts to comments, so here's the link https://saidit.net/s/ccj/comments/637c/coincidences/ and here's the text. Ignore some terms, it's a pigeon, they're quite east to work out.

Because all laowai smell, we take great care showering in the morning after a night of rolling in body odour on our wooden mattress.

Like every morning, I was shaking my phone to find a hot Rainy to cherping with. Total 7/8. Added instantly. She didn't want to cherping but seemed abashed and demure, to use Rainy language from her translation A P P. She was location in Shenzhen, worked in finance, 27, preferred to use Chinese but spoke English, mainly posted about the restaurant she was eating in, some pictures of coffee cups, buying clothes in a boutique store occasionally a screenshot of a financial graph or how she'd earned some commission. The usual crap.

We spoke for a few months, most days. I promised to visit the next time I went to Shenzhen.

Not content with 300 Rainies to speak to while on the crapper, another morning I was shaking my phone and saw a picture of another girl who looked incredibly similar. I was going to Shanghai in a couple of months anyway, so why not? She added back after a few minutes and I saw she had a pretty similar lifestyle as the first: restaurants, coffee, clothes, and a smattering of finance. This one worked in banking in SPD. Never asked for a Hongbao.

We continued chatting for a month, and then:

They both posted almost exactly the same selfie sitting at work in the morning at exactly the same time! Wow! Were they twins? I understood they weren't as they both said they were single children, born in the country, and had done well in school and searching for a job.

This image was almost identical, same hair, same make-up, same smile. The only difference was the plant on the desk. Even the desks were the same. They also posted exactly the same recommendation to buy a small cap stock, at the same time. The stock seemed to have been doing very well recently, so they seemed to know their game.

What a coincidence!

Immediately it rushed through my head that these poor girls growing up in poverty could have been identical twins separated at birth. I wasted no time forwarding one the picture of the other. I always saved their pictures on my Oppo's SD card anyway.

I sent their contact details to each other eagerly expecting a gushing of thanks.

Then they both deleted me. Instantly.

Back to shaking my phone.

[–][deleted]  (2 children)

[deleted]

    [–]whyyoudrinksomuch 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

    This is an in-joke for foreigners in China, and Chinese too. Yes. Sort-of. If someone buys and furnishes a house they'll likely have a proper mattress bought from Slumberland, IKEA, wherever.

    But a lot of rental places, especially the older, cheaper, and free ones (a lot of schools have free accommodation for their foreign teachers or students, dorms or a dusty beat-up apartment) and there are some several hundred thousand of these 'foreign friends' in China, so several hundred thousand in the same boat, have a few sheets of plywood with a few sheets run over them. That's the mattress. The landlords don't care, they don't need to, and in their eyes it was fine when they were growing up, so why shouldn't it be fine for you?

    And there's the local thing, whatever the bed, nice or not, of putting a bamboo sheet over the top and sleeping on that when the weather's hot. Which I'm not a fan of. It's not getting caught up in the wrong thing, not at all. Come over to s/ccj if you're interested in any more of the 'differences' of life here - it's a satirical sub BTW that was banned from Reddit, banned twice.