Calling out Tofu Dreg is a crime in China

It's more than halfway through 2025, but more than ever, I receive and find videos about tofu drag constructions in China, which is a decade, two decades old question, and it still hasn't been solved. After a night of rainfall, the railings collapse. And here is a close-up video of a different set of rails. There's tears here. They turn into a dangerous situation if someone leans on it. Now, this man decided to work out on the roof of his building, and he came across these rock slabs, and he wanted to pick them up. And it just turns out, well, it's filled with foams in the middle. Dude just did a handstand after exposing tofu drag. Crazy. Even Chinese cookwares got tofu drag in it. Now, this tofu drag construction, it's basically shoddy constructions, lack of proper materials, cutting corners. So, obviously, the quality is really bad. It's really a mindset. I've come to realize it's a way of life for the corrupt in China, of course. And by the means of corrupt, it's like a very big portion of the country, because, you know, you got to make the money, right? And so this news is, I think, both hilarious, but also kind of sad. Recently, some of the Chinese cities in the south have been dealing with the mosquito virus called, I want to get the name right, Chikungunya virus. So there's a mosquito eradication campaign, for example, in the city of Foshan, which is in Guangzhou province. Now, aside from this harrowing, cloudy situation of medical mists to try to get rid of the mosquitoes, they did something really strange and dumb. They tried to seal the sewers, the drains to prevent mosquitoes. I mean, it kind of makes sense on paper, considering that mosquitoes are water, you know, they like to nest in the water or, I don't know, lay their eggs in the water. So blocking the sewers seems like a good way to stop the mosquitoes, right? Well, except they did this during a heavy rainfall season. So you can imagine not having proper drainage means flooding. It's like the smartest, dumb decision making I've ever seen. But that's just how it is in China. You know, you get the orders to do something, everybody does it, right? And then everybody does it collectively, and you end up with these things. And also people don't seem to question it or want to question it, considering that they did this during the pandemic too, and the lockdowns. And apparently in China, if you question tofu dreg construction, the police could detain you. And this is exactly what happened to this furniture shop owner. He made a comment online in one of the videos. So he typed 12 simple characters. Still doing tofu dreg work, standardized signs. And that was all it took for the local police to brand his action as provoking trouble and picking quarrel with the authorities. And basically, he got detained for five days because of a single comment. Now, the evidence here, right, is just simply one reply to his comment and six likes. In other words, seven people took attention to his writing, and that was enough for him to pick quarrels and provoke trouble. And he, of course, refused to accept it. After he got detained, he tried to sue the local government, and he lost. Appealed to the appellate court, lost again. Basically, both of the situations said that he was damaging the reputation of the government. Because, you know, in China, the courts are part of the government. They're controlled by the party. So there's really no, like, judicial independence. But also at the same time, because the local officials that were there, they had control of everything. So it wasn't until that these officials were purged when he finally won his lawsuit. That was two years later at the Hunan Provincial High Court, ruling the fact that it was unclear, the evidence was insufficient to detain him. Obviously, the punishment, wildly inappropriate. But that's after him spending hundreds of thousands of money, like the amount of yuan on legal expenses. So he got compensation. Yes, but it was like 2,500, which is far not enough compared to how much he had spent and the damage he suffered. Also, I find this kind of sad because he later tried to demand 98,000 yuan in emotional compensation. So I don't think he's going to get the money, or maybe he'll get a little bit more, but not that much. But it just shows you, like, what I mean, right? Rather than addressing the solution, they just say, we'll detain you for speaking out the truth. And then once you do, you know, have the ability to fight back, because not everybody wants to sue, right? Not everybody has the money for that. If you want to fight back, sure, we'll drag it on for two, three years. And then by then, you know, we'll give you something. We won't say no, but it would just not be enough. Two years, three trials, endless traveling, all because he questioned a phenomenon that's very much real, tofu jar construction. So if you want, I guess the quickest way to lose your freedom, temporarily or maybe permanently, is to question the quality of your walls. Obviously, addressing the situation takes too much money and time, and they won't do that because you can't pocket that money. And that's why a lot of people in China use VPNs to scale the firewall, because that's how they can both see real news, but also deliver these material and videos to the outside world so that people like us can talk about it, which is why a good VPN is so important. And I've got a great VPN for you today. This is TPOS VPN. 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When it rains, the roads are immediately destroyed. And you see that people are exposing these cracked roads, not because they can't be used, but simply because maybe these were even built just a year ago and they've already broken down. Here's an interesting one. A bridge road cracks and underneath it is filled with sand. Normally, this is okay. But then again, this is China, right? You don't know what the layering situation is. Could it be all sand filled till the very bottom of the bridge, then it's just like a thin layer of concrete? Then that becomes very dangerous. And that's where these type of things, you get exposed online and people are like, yeah, it's a normal procedure. But no, it's not really a normal one because they can cut corners and they don't tell you what exactly the compositions are for these roads and bridges. And that's why sometimes after rainfall, you have bridge collapse in China or you have a lot of the situations where the entire building starts to fall apart. Now, rather than addressing the issues there, like this example from August 10th, a town in Guizhou province, this guy, his name is Guan Fu, he spoke out about a 200 meter dirt road in front of his home that's been left unrepaired for years. On sunny days, it's full of dust and when it rains, it turns muddy and dangerous. And that's obviously especially dangerous for children and the elderly. Despite reports repeatedly being made to the town, no one has fixed it. Instead of fixing it, the village secretary is threatening them to delete the videos that they posted online. A lot of these so-called homes are targeted for poverty alleviation units, right? Just so that they can say, these people, they've been lifted out of poverty, they have a home now. But that home is so run down, it's so basic or even sometimes it's just like a mud house. But they still count that in the data, right? So they basically fool you to go in and then use you as a data point and then you're abandoned. There's also these type of fake and fool you scenarios in rural farms like this video here. So these are some of the projects to bring water into the rural villages. Actually, the more areas you have for farming, the more these chances of these projects because they're a good money grabber. So what happens is obviously you see here, it's all for show. The pipes aren't connected to anything underground. But once you submit that project, you get a lot of money and kickbacks. Similarly, with these so-called model construction projects for the farmland, it's supposed to be top of the line, but it's just shoddy constructions too. And this type of situation can happen in bigger cities or relative to the smaller towns. These are called relocation homes. Essentially, what happens in China is they try to gentrify an area, they kick these people out, demolish their existing places. Now they promise you compensation, right? But the compensation either is in a form of monetary payment, obviously not enough to afford a property, or it's in a form of a relocation home where they assign you a new unit, right? You hear this from CCP shows a lot. They say, oh yeah, they give you houses and stuff. The government will demolish your existing place and put you in a new place. But these new places are often done by a local government construction team that do a very terrible job or they're cutting corners. So these relocation homes end up being terrible in quality. For example, this one built by China Construction's Third Bureau in Wuhan. Just a light poke by hand, a large hole can be made in the wall. The exterior wall cement is also peeling off. And after this video was posted to Douyin, it was maliciously reported by that construction bureau and forced to be taken down. These look very nice on the outside, completely filled with the facilities and amenities that you need for the community. But again, the actual quality of the construction is just terrible. Sometimes after the rain, the bottom is hollow and the base is washed away from the flood. And this video here is from a 3 million yuan luxury mansion in China. It's the same story, just terrible quality. So whether you're really, you know, you're somewhat rich, somewhat poor, or somewhere in between the middle class, you can always encounter tofu drag construction. It's just whether that gets to be reported publicly or you get to post about it, that's a whole different story. Thank you so much for watching this episode. Hope you enjoy the content. Let me know your thoughts in the comments. And if you haven't subscribed or like this video yet, please help us do so. And it will greatly be appreciated to spread this video on YouTube. And also consider checking out TPAS VPN because it's a great experience for you to secure your internet activity. All right, thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.