The Little Match Boy's Death: A Big Slap on the CCP's Lie of Lifting China Out of Poverty
Hello, everyone, welcome to “Inconvenient Truths”. I am your host Jennifer Zeng.
Maybe for most people in the world, one of the most unforgettable events in 2020 is the COVID19, or CCP virus pandemic. But for the CCP, when they look back at 2020, they are using 8 Chinese characters to summarize it: “人民满意 世界瞩目”, which means, “the people are happy with us, and the world is looking up to us.” Apart from “successfully defeating the pandemic”, “lifting the entire country out of poverty” is another most important political achievement of the CCP and its leader Xi Jinping.
While all the CCP’s official media were celebrating the “major victory in poverty alleviation”, the death of an ordinary 23 year old young man sparked a lot of attention, debate and even overwhelming sensation on the Chinese internet. The topic about him has attracted 580 M views and 266 K discussions on the Chinese social media platform WeBo. Some call him the Chinese version of “The Little Match Girl” by famous Danish author Hans Andersen.
Who was this young man, and why has his death drawn so much attention? Today let me share with you the story of this modern day “Little Match Boy” in China.
An “Uploader” at Bilibili
We don’t know the true name of this “Little Match Boy” , except that his surname is Chen. He hosted a channel at a very popular video-sharing website called Bilibili. You can roughly understand it as a Chinese version of YouTube. You know, YouTube is banned in China, so people use websites such as Bilibili to share videos. And video creators or channel hosts are called “uploaders” instead of YouTubers in China.
So this 23 year old fellow was an “Uploader” on Bilibili. He called himself Mocha and his channel Mocha Official. Mocha in Chinese means “black tea”, or “tea as black as ink”. Underneath his channel title “Mocha Official '', there is a short sentence, which means “I am the spirit of tea”. But let’s just call him Mocha to make things easy.
A Miserable Childhood
Mocha was born on April 5, 1998 in Zhuangpan Village in Xichang City, Liangshan Prefecture , Sichuan Province. A lot of ethnic Yi people live in that area. It is also one of the poorest regions of China. So Mocha’s family was very poor too.
To make things worse, his parents divorced when he was only 3 years old. After that he mostly lived with his grandmother, as his mother needed to work in the city to earn some money to support the family. Sometimes he also lived with his father, who also went to another city to work.
When Mocha was in high school, his grandmother’s health deteriorated, and his family had to borrow a lot of money to pay her medical bills.
Please bear in mind that in China, especially in rural areas, people usually don’t have health insurance, nor will the government cover their medical bills. If you are sick, you are on your own.
So Mocha’s family owed a lot of debt because of his grandmother’s bad health. Later on both his parents ran away to hide from the debt collectors, as they didn’t have the money to pay back their creditors.
As a result, Mocha had to drop out from high school. After that he went to the capital city of Sichuan province Shengdu to try to make a living.
A Miserable Start
He worked as a loader, and earned 800 yuan , or 124 US dollars, per month. The rent alone would cost him 500 yuan, or 77 US dollars, and he only had 300 yuan, or 47 US dollars, to cover all other living expenses. Sometimes he had to starve as he couldn’t make ends meet. The long-term hunger and hard labor ruined his health. He got a stomach disease. Sometimes the stomach pain was so bad that he couldn’t sleep the whole night.
However, sometimes he even couldn’t get his 800 yuan, as his employer wouldn’t pay him at all.
In April or May of 2018, 20 year old Mocha went to his employer’s place to try to get his payment. However, he was kicked out, with his ID card trampled by his employer and damaged.
Without any more money to pay his next rent, or an ID card to find a new job, he had to return home, where he was diagnosed with gastric ulcer and gastritis.
A New “Career”
However, because he didn’t have money to pay his medical bills, he didn’t stay in the hospital, or get much treatment. Because of his bad health, he could not do any jobs that are too physically demanding. So somebody suggested that he open a channel at Bilibili and become an “uploader”, a video creator. If you can attract a lot of views and viewers at Bilibili, you may be able to make a living there, or even make a lot of money.
So Mocha started his career at Bilibili. In this sense he was my colleague, right? Just a joke.
Anyway, he uploaded his first 4 minute video on Feb 27, 2020, and the last one on Oct 17, 2020. Altogether he had created 28 videos, posted 46 photos, and several dozen posts.
It was not clear when he was driven away from home by his relatives, as they wanted to take over the small cottage left over to him by his grandmother. So he went to the nearby Huili county, rented a small room to continue with his life. Let’s see a picture of the room he once lived in. This picture was taken after his death. This picture was the little shop under his rented room.
He tried to do some casual jobs to earn some money, and at the same time, learned and improved his video production skills.
A Tough “Career” & Sheer Poverty
According to public information, in Aug 2020, Bilibili had 200 million active users, and 1.1 million active “uploaders”. So you can imagine how hard it is to compete with over 1 million other uploaders to win any attention. When Mocha did live streaming, there were often only 1 or 2 people watching. But he tried to be brave. He seldom complained about anything, only wrote with a calm, and even indifferent tone about what happened to him, such as, “I forgot to mention, today is my birthday.” “My headset was broken. I’ll start broadcasting again after I get a new mic.” “There will be no broadcasting tonight, as I hurt my hand and need to take a rest.” “There are too many mosquitoes ...... I can not rest well, ” etc.
From these simple posts, I can hardly imagine what kind of hardships he had encountered and then managed to overcome.
On June 15, 2020, he posted a photo of a small rice cooker, which he bought for 20 yuan, or 3 US dollars. He said, “I hope it can last longer.”
Heath Problems
He then posted another post saying that he had difficult breathing, his nose was bleeding, and there was a lump inside it. It took him a long time to stop the bleeding. “I don’t know if I can hold out until the day of surgery”, he said at the end of that longer post.
On June 19, he said his mouth was so painful that he couldn’t sleep or eat. His nose kept bleeding, and he was afraid that his health would be soon ruined.
He only got 3 replies for this post. It seemed nobody was paying much attention to such a small uploader.
On July 3, he complained about stomach ache twice, saying that the pain was so bad that he couldn’t sleep.
On July 31, he shared a piece of good news, saying that “I didn't realize that I already had 100 fans, This is a good start.”
In the following months, he kept on struggling with his health condition, while trying to keep up with his live streaming or video creating.
On Nov. 8, he said that he had lost consciousness for 2 hours. He didn’t know what had happened, and decided to do a medical examination on the following day. “I hope to resume live streaming soon.” He said at the end.
On Nov 12, he said that he was hospitalized. “I don’t know when I will have the operation. I hope I will be OK.”
On Nov 18, he said that his surgery was done. So far so good, “I hope there won’t be any nasty scars left.”
“My Heart Pains Me More”
On Nov 21, he posted a photo of what seems to be his hospital bill, and said that “Alas, my wound seems to hurt less after the surgery, because my heart pains me more…”
People later were amazed to find that Mocha bought his medicine pill by pill. Each pill only cost him 1.84 yuan, which is only 28 US cents. It seems he was too poor to buy an entire bottle of the medicine.
The bill also shows that he had paid 4000 yuan as up-front payment, and had a balance of -2049.34 yuan, which means he owed the hospital more than 2000 yuan. It seems the hospitalization has cost him more than 6000 yuan, or nearly 900 US dollars. Maybe that's why he said his heart pained him more. He was heartbroken to have spent so much money, and worried how he could pay it back.
He was discharged from the hospital on Nov 25. But on Dec 17, he posted a one sentence post: “Let me cherish the few days that are left for me…”
“I’ve Never Had Dumplings. Strawberries Are Too Expensive”
Dec 21 is the Winter Solstice Festival. It is a Chinese tradition to eat dumplings on this day, especially in northern China. Mocha wrote on this day, “Seems everyone is eating dumplings today. However, I’ve never had any dumplings at the Winter Solstice Festival in my entire life.”
On Dec 28, he said, “I really want to eat some strawberries. I've been so sick recently that I throw up whenever I eat.. I want to eat strawberries so badly. Unfortunately, they are too expensive.”
On Dec 31, 2020, he posted his last post, saying that “Yet I am still sick and lying in bed. Sad.”
From then on nobody knew what happened to him.
Died Alone in His Rental Room
On Jan 10, his landlord called him, as it was the day for him to pay the rent. But nobody answered the phone. Then his landlord realized that the light in Mocha’s room had not been turned off for four consecutive days, and something must have gone wrong.
So the landlord went to check and found Mocha had already died.
Nobody knew the exact date or cause of his death. The best guess is that he died around Jan 6, 4 days before his landlord found out about his death.
As to the cause of his death, some say he was starved to death, some say he died of diabetes complications due to lack of money to buy insulin. Some also say the reason why he had diabetes in the first place was because he had a very unhealthy food structure, as he always ate cheap instant noodles and didn’t have enough nutrition.
No matter whether he was starved to death, or died of diabetes complications because he didn’t have money to buy medicine, we can say he died of poverty.
The Irony
The irony is, in 2012, at the 18th National Congress of the CCP, “lifting the entire country out of poverty by 2020” was set to be a strategic goal to achieve.
So, toward the end of 2020, up until now, the CCP has been making a big fanfare about its “poverty alleviation” achievement. As late as on Feb 15, Xinhua published an article: “Xi Focus: Xi's article on poverty alleviation to be published”
The last sentence of this article goes like this: “The fundamental purpose of the Party is to serve the people, the article says, adding that cadres at all levels should often ask themselves whether they have been wholeheartedly working for the people.”
Famous After His Death
I think that’s why Mocha’s death has caused so much attention and sensation on the Chinese Internet. Mocha had only accumulated about 200 fans when he died. After his death, however, the number of his followers reached 1.95 million. People feel for him, as there are so many more Mochas in this country, and anybody could be the next one. Like the “Little Match Girl” depicted by Anderson, Mocha’s death is a big slap on the CCP’s face, and a denunciation of the CCP’s big lies about “lifting the entire country out of poverty, and “ building a moderately prosperous society in all respects” in the first half of 2021.
Rich Chinese Vs Poor Chinese
I am not sure how many people in the West have been impressed by how rich some Chinese people are. They buy luxury properties, luxury goods all over the world, their kids buy luxury cars with cash and then race them on American roads. The CCP is throwing money all over the world through its Belt and Road project, Confucius Institutes, etc. Everybody must have read or heard stories like these.
So many people in the West are convinced that the CCP must have done a great job in terms of making Chinese people rich, or creating a lot of wealth for the Chinese people.
But unfortunately, the rich Chinese who throw out money like mad all over the world are only from maybe the top 1%, or 5% of the CCP’s inner circle. Hundreds of millions of people, especially people in rural areas, are just like Mocha. They were born in poverty, live through poverty, and die in poverty, without the outside world knowing anything about them.
If Mocha were not an uploader at Bilibili, if some fellow uploaders who happened to have larger followings than him had not exposed his death on the internet, we wouldn’t have known anything of this modern day, Chinese version of the “Little Match Boy”.
His post on Dec 28 saying that he wanted to eat some strawberries so badly didn’t draw any attention or any replies when he posted it in his last days of loneliness and sickness. Replies only started to pour in starting Jan 19, after the news of his death was spread widely on the internet. Now this post has received 24 K replies, all saying how upset they are to see such a small wish from this boy couldn’t be realized before he died.
At the same time, people also feel so helpless. They know they couldn’t do much to help, or change Mocha’s fate.
Well, that’s the story of our “Little Match Boy” Mocha for today. I hope next time when someone tells you what a great job the CCP has done to lift Chinese people out of poverty, you can tell him the true story of Mocha you heard from me today.
That’s all for today. Thank you for watching. Only truth can set people free and change the world. So please do subscribe to my channel, and help me spread the word. YouTube has kept on unsubscribing people from my channel, so please do check if you are still subscribed from time to time.
Thank you, see you soon!
2/17/2021 *
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