Xi Tingsong Appears! What Is His Relation to Xi Jinping? Zhang Weiwei Performs "Shamelessness"; Xi's New Millennium Project "Pinglu Canal" Causes Disasters Upon Opening? Bachelor and Master Degree Holders Attend Vocational Schools: Learning Skills to Make a Living! (Old Beijing Teahouse / Episode 1747 / 2026/09/18)
The video first satirizes the Global Times interview with Zhang Weiwei and his public praise of the Chinese system, then discusses the online associations sparked by the name of Xi Tingsong, member of the Standing Committee of the Hongkou District Committee and head of the Organization Department in Shanghai, as well as speculations regarding Xi Jinping's succession arrangements. The program also covers the enrollment of college graduates into technician classes in Hefei, Wuxi, Shandong, and other places, pointing out controversies surrounding technical school admissions and employment promises. Finally, it focuses on the opening of the Pinglu Canal, introducing the project's scale, construction background, and doubts regarding ecological damage, floods, earthquakes, and dam breaks.
Video link:
Full text:
When shamelessness meets shamelessness, how does the square of shamelessness create and superimpose a butterfly effect? And what kind of shameless, jaw-dropping joke is this? It's not a joke, it's real life. Just recently, the shameless Global Times interviewed the even more shameless Zhang Weiwei. You'll never guess what he said.
Zhang Weiwei said that fortunately China exists, and China is the truly rational country in the world: "our system, our model." Even with a mouth as big as Zhang Weiwei's, he wouldn't dare challenge Thunder God like that; he'd better stay far away, lest he gets struck.
Netizens watching the video felt a complete physiological discomfort. Feeling discomfort proves you're still human. Some netizens said that the submissive Zhang Weiwei has a resounding title: the imperial golden-mouthed urine bucket. So frustrating. He knows deeply that "three parts are determined by heaven, seven parts rely on hard work, and only sycophancy wins," risking his old face for money.
Others said that facts take responsibility for awkwardness, while he is responsible for mysterious self-confidence. Some people online pierced through Zhang Weiwei's camouflage of self-confidence, saying that he was earnestly telling the world that being a eunuch is not easy. Treating the interests of Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party as the supreme interests means swallowing all kinds of difficulties, and then taking pride in being a sycophant, which is even more hateful than a regular sycophant.
What he is doing is acting as a meat loudspeaker, a propagandist, and an accomplice. The specific method is to constantly harp on a nonexistent "systemic superiority" while turning a blind eye to the real survival predicaments faced by ordinary people.
Personally, I think Zhang Weiwei genuinely believes that iron fists and cold-bloodedness are the superiority of the system; otherwise, his behavior cannot be explained. A person who once spent time in a Chinese prison said that his first time paying attention to Zhang Weiwei was while watching a TV show in prison. At the time, prison guards and many inmates were listening with great relish, but when they heard Zhang Weiwei say that Yugoslavia's Tito had an iron-like wrist, a chill ran down his spine. The person who shared his view at the time was a man from Xinjiang.
Zhang Weiwei, who sings praises for the iron fist and the sickle, is truly not human, but a ghost. How do tea guests interpret Zhang Weiwei's public praise of the CCP's systemic superiority and his statement that "the world is fortunate to have the CCP's country"? The alternative answers are: First, lying every day until he finally believes it himself; second, kneeling against his conscience to suck up and show loyalty to Xi Jinping; third, trading his soul for fame and fortune, which is essentially prostitution; fourth, in the last days of the Red Dynasty, all kinds of monsters and demons have come out.
As the saying goes, in a magical world, donkeys travel together. Where did a donkey jump out from? Not one donkey, but 1.2 million donkeys. A million fierce donkeys heading south to Jiangnan, among which a few bald donkeys are mixed in.
To what extent has this Rakshasa market of the CCP's country been turned upside down? According to official statistics from the CCP, Ph.D. holders, who are flooding the CCP's educational system, now outnumber donkeys. This isn't something I made up; some media outlets have even earnestly and seriously compared the number of Ph.D.s to the number of donkeys.
Xi account "Old Driver" doesn't think so. The Old Driver said that this corrective investigation into the number of Ph.D.s exceeding donkeys is very timely. Although donkeys will decrease faster than Ph.D.s due to donkey meat fire-baked sesame cakes, the production line cannot stop, so the Ph.D. production chain must still be strengthened and doubled. Otherwise, as Ph.D.s decrease, master's and bachelor's universities will face the danger of closure; universities will no longer be universities, and the country will no longer be a country.
No matter how many rats there are, they still feed the cat. No matter how many PhDs there are, aside from making delivery couriers even more rat-raced into involution, what else can they do? They can also disrupt the ranks of primary and secondary school teachers in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) country. With PhDs flocking together and facing the "up-or-out" system, isn't this sheer torture? So it is better not to have PhDs; a master's degree is enough, as one can still manage to snag the chair of the head of the Organization Department of the Hongkou District in Shanghai.
How on earth did this suddenly swerve into the Shanghai officialdom? Because big news has broken out in Shanghai officialdom. A Xi family loyalist, stamped with a clear label on his forehead, has been promoted to member of the Standing Committee of the Hongkou District Committee and head of the Organization Department in Shanghai.
Who was promoted to head of the Organization Department of Hongkou District, Shanghai? Xi Tingsong. Is this a person's name? Not only is it a person's name, but it also got the green light all the way, reaching the position of Standing Committee member of the District Committee and head of the Organization Department in Shanghai, the ceiling of Chinese cities.
Could this big brother surnamed Xi be a distant uncle or cousin from the old Xi family? This surname is too sensitive. Indeed, some netizens sounded the alarm: having the surname Xi is the ultimate political correctness. Having the surname "Xi" and also being called "Tingsong" directly stacks a double bonus of political correctness.
Inside the system where bootlicking slaves crawl everywhere, once this full name is flashed, who dares to stop them? As long as one is tainted with this character, without establishing any merit, the official career gets a direct green light all the way. At the mere sight of the character Xi, even if you are five hundred years apart you are still family; the meat grinder has to back down and politely invite you right in.
So netizens are all whispering to each other there. Some asked, could this be the crown prince of the Eastern Palace? Some even boldly asserted: "This must be the illegitimate son of Xi Jinping." Someone quickly corrected: public data shows that Xi Tingsong, male, born in June 1971, ethnic Naxi, native of Lijiang, Yunnan, member of the CCP, started working in July 1993, with graduate education and a master's degree in law.
Let's calculate: born in 1971, he is 55 years old this year; old Xi is in his early 70s, already 75. This illegitimate son is a bit too old; having a baby when he just turned 18 of legal adulthood, old Xi wasn't that open-minded. Let's check if there was a nationwide linking-up trip to Lijiang back then. After finding it unlikely that he is an illegitimate son, netizens launched the final general offensive against this Xi Tingsong who was pulling clout off the General Secretary.
Some netizens said, how many times has the General Secretary said that we should live a frugal life? What does he mean by this? Going against the wind and singing a different tune. We've never heard of "Tingsong"; does being loose or tight have anything to do with living a frugal life? Other netizens delivered the final verdict, saying that this name seriously discusses the Party and state leaders in an inappropriate manner. Why? Because the surname "Xi" points the spearhead at the General Secretary, while "Tingsong" is an advanced black or low-level red, smearing the leader like "Tongshang Kuanyi" (trading partners loosening clothes). This is serious in nature; tomorrow the inspection team will have to talk to little Xi and make him explain: who wears clothes so loosely?
One cannot blame all the masterminds for worrying on behalf of Steamed Bun. There are truly not many people surnamed Xi in official circles who can be counted as someone, so wild imaginations are inevitable. I see it as not necessarily wild imaginations; rumors have circulated in the streets more than once or twice, saying that Xi Jinping trusts no one and in the end will still have to find his own direct blood relatives to take over.
There is news on the Chinese-language web that if Xi Jinping were to suddenly fall, who would take over is the question Zhongnanhai dares least to face before the 21st National Congress, and whoever asks it becomes a target for elimination. The outside world has been guessing all along to whom Xi Jinping will eventually hand over power. Someone put forward a deduction: what Xi Jinping is truly guarding against is not the succession of any specific individual at all, but rather whose hands the military will fall into once he himself suddenly falls.
Now the military is not completely in his hands either. Why has Xi Jinping repeatedly purged the military over the years, and even kept the top military echelons in prolonged turmoil? Overseas political commentator "Sino-US Benchmarking" believes that the answer may hide Xi Jinping's ultimate trump card. In the future, Xi Jinping is very likely to make major adjustments to the supreme command structure of the CCP military, using the 21st National Congress to amend the Party Constitution and abolish the Central Military Commission, with only one purpose: not to engage in intra-party succession, but to pass the throne to Xi Jinping's own family members.
It is that time of the year again for the school opening season. A fraction of university undergraduates, unemployed upon graduation, are driven by utter helplessness to choose to return to school to study. With jobs hard to find, they have no choice but to pursue advanced studies and gild themselves—finishing their undergraduate degrees to study for master's degrees, and finishing master's degrees to study for PhDs.
Yet this is not upward further education, but downward further education: returning to the furnace to take a vocational school test and learn a craft instead. As mentioned yesterday, some Chinese youth—referred to by netizens as the "last generation"—had a roadmap before lying flat: study, find a job, and lie flat. This statement is imprecise; it should be study, unemployment, re-study, find a job, and lie flat—studying twice.
On September 14, Yicai reported that during the recent autumn semester opening season, places like Hefei, Wuxi, and Shandong have successively launched technician classes geared toward college graduates.
Let's first look at Hefei Technician College in Anhui. The school's first college student skills enhancement class officially started on September 11, with the first batch of 15 trainees undergoing a two-year training program focusing primarily on skills such as CNC machining and intelligent manufacturing. Among the trainees are undergraduate and junior college graduates, predominantly liberal arts majors. Since liberal arts majors have a hard time finding jobs, they have no choice but to switch to science and engineering skills, which is framed as turning a disadvantage into a specialty and becoming well-rounded versatile talents proficient in both the arts and sciences.
Next, let's look at Wuxi Technician College in Jiangsu. On September 8, the inaugural college student high-skilled talent class commenced with a total of 36 trainees, among whom 13 hold undergraduate diplomas. They will undergo a two-year training program starting as "technician apprentices," taking off their long gowns and starting from scratch.
Then let's look at Shandong Chemical Technician College. On September 6, 320 "college graduates" enrolled and reported for duty, with undergraduates accounting for 60.6%, junior college graduates 38.8%, and master's degree holders 0.6%. Shandong Province boasts the "Lanxiang Vocational School," and this chemical vocational school opened custom-order classes for college graduates who had left school without finding employment as early as 2019. Over the past 6 years, it has cumulatively enrolled more than 1,400 junior college, undergraduate, and master's degree students.
In the past two years, the phenomenon of college graduates attending vocational schools has become increasingly common. Data from a survey by the China Vocational and Technical Education Society shows that from 2023 to 2025, the number of institutions offering skills training for college graduates has increased from 26 to 45. There are too many college graduates who are unemployed upon graduation, and the demand for vocational schools is too high.
Data from the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security of the CCP in 2025 states that there are 2,440 vocational schools nationwide. It is hard to imagine how many more vocational schools in China will recruit college graduates in the future.
However, there are many pitfalls here. The blogger "Shiju Insight" posted an article in June this year stating that although learning a trade seems like a pragmatic choice, the reality is not simple. Young people who bring their bachelor's degrees to the workshop to hold a wrench are very likely to be harvested a second time if they are not careful.
Some students discovered after enrollment that the so-called "college student technician classes" had insufficient enrollment, and they eventually had to attend classes with ordinary classes starting from junior high school graduates. In order to accommodate students with poor foundations, the teachers taught at an extremely slow pace with very shallow content, and the high-end skills training they originally expected turned into a "big pot of rice" that just killed time.
Vocational schools' employment promises are also comparable to telecommunications fraud. Many vocational schools recruit students under the banner of "order-based classes" or "guaranteed entry into state-owned enterprises," but many of the actual recommended positions are just basic labor dispatch or service jobs. Students who were deceived into returning to school later complained that the "guaranteed employment" they were promised turned out to be employment as a cleaner.
This report by Yicai is considered to be handled in a way of "celebrating a funeral," cutting out negative realities such as the unreasonable curriculum setting of Chinese universities, the single and backward training model, the poor employment environment, and parents being repeatedly harvested, and covering it up with the leaf that "the state attaches great importance to vocational education." Turning a bad thing into a good thing, it is all about moving the country.
the Party earnestly said, take off your long gowns, roll up your sleeves and work hard; if you endure the bitterness of bitterness, you will have endless bitterness to endure. College students responded that the long gowns had already been taken off, and they were currently running naked.
Xi Jinping personally directed, major projects competed to become unfinished "rotten-tail" projects, and the list of state-level "rotten-tail" projects has lengthened again. On September 16, the CCP's official media high-profilely announced that the Pinglu Canal, the first canal in the Party-state to connect rivers and seas, was officially opened to navigation.
Party media said that this canal has completely opened up the Guangxi river-sea combined transport channel, allowing rivers to rush to the sea and mountains and seas to connect, making a century-old wish a reality. Why is Guangxi poor? Because it is too far from the sea outlet, and goods cannot be transported out. So they dug a canal to connect Guangxi with the world.
Xinhua News Agency's press release said that the Pinglu Canal has opened up the shortest, most economical, and most convenient channel from Guangxi and Southwest China to the ASEAN region, belonging to a century-old super project.
More than 2,000 years ago, the ancients chiseled the "World Irrigation Engineering Heritage" Lingqu in Guangxi; more than 2,000 years later, today, at the birthplace of Lingqu, another world-renowned new canal is about to be born. The construction of the Pinglu Canal is compared with Lingqu.
Construction of the Pinglu Canal began on August 28, 2022. It has a total length of 134.2 kilometers and is a Class I inland waterway, capable of navigating 5,000-ton ships. It is the canal with the highest navigation level in the CCP's country. The canal starts from the Pingtang River mouth in Hengzhou City, Nanning, in the north, and goes straight to the Beibu Gulf along the Qin River. The entire line is built with three major stepped hubs: Madao, Qishi, and Qingnian, claiming to create four "world's firsts": the strongest navigation capacity, the fastest construction speed, the highest drop, and the largest scale among similar canals in the world.
However, the Pinglu Canal has been continuously questioned, including issues such as "competing for water" with the lower reaches of the West River, saltwater intrusion, and destruction of the ecological environment. Some people believe that this is another problematic project that destroys the environment, which contradicts what Xi Jinping once said: "Lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets."
The total excavation volume of earth and stone for the Pinglu Canal is as high as 315 million cubic meters, three times that of the Three Gorges hub. Domestic geologists worry that this high-intensity mountain splitting and river diversion will aggravate the changes, deterioration, marginalization, and fragmentation of natural habitats along the route.
In August 2023, the journal Science clearly warned that the construction of the Pinglu Canal would occupy large areas of mangroves, causing irreversible and major damage to the local wetland ecosystem and species reproduction.
The latest research in 2026 by a scientific research team at Beibu Gulf University in China shows that the construction of the Pinglu Canal has changed the natural landscape and water characteristics of the Maowei Sea and Qinzhou Bay at the estuary, directly threatening the survival of local tidal benthic organisms.
Some people believe that even if this canal is opened to navigation, it is only for Guangxi to compete with Guangdong for shipping business, and in the end, the whole country and all the people of Guangxi will pay for it. The comprehensive value is almost zero, and it may even be negative.
Water conservancy experts believe that the Pinglu Canal may aggravate typhoon and flood disasters in Guangxi. Guangxi was hit by continuous heavy rainfall in early July this year, and several reservoirs in Hengzhou City collapsed, causing heavy casualties in the floods. Wang Weiluo, a water conservancy expert living in Germany, said at the time that the dam failure of the Liulan Reservoir was closely related to the Pinglu Canal.
Wang Weiluo proposed three factors. First, the Liulan Reservoir is exactly connected to the starting point of the Pinglu Canal. The general flow direction of rivers in Guangxi is from west to east, while the Pinglu Canal is from north to south, which may cause floods in Fangchenggang and Qinzhou in southern Guangxi. Second, because the flood control standard of the canal is very high, after the embankments are built high, the water in the cities on both sides may not be able to drain out. Third, the Pinglu Canal destroyed the watershed of the Yu River, forming a large gap 200 meters deep, hundreds of meters wide, and 6.5 kilometers long, allowing typhoons to go straight down the Yu River and enter vast areas such as Nanning, Hengzhou, and Guigang.
In addition, the construction of the Pinglu Canal changed the terrain, which may trigger shallow earthquakes. The dam failure of the Liulan Reservoir is believed to be related to the earthquake in May. In May this year, two shallow earthquakes of magnitude 5.2 and 5.3 occurred in Liuzhou, Guangxi, one after another, with a very short interval between the two earthquakes.
These claims link earthquakes and floods to canal excavation, also raising concerns about the safety and ecological impacts of the Pinglu Canal construction.