Happy Lantern Festival!

[cashew]

It is officially the last day of New Year's!

Sweet dumplings! Lanterns! Uh...apparently also traditionally the day when Chinese girls are finally allowed outside the house to go meet guys. This is why a bunch of romance poetry is written about lanterns, because girls get one day of freedom to scope out potential love interests.

It's honestly shocking how the Chinese population managed to grow at all during the imperial era... (Hint: they had marriage laws that punished families for not making enough babies. Again, I'm very glad all that shit is behind us now. Except for how there's a few crazies left in government who want to bring back those marriage laws to counter the current population decline and it's like...wow. Glad they're still fringe at the moment. For now. 🤞)

(OT: I wish rulers would figure out that the way to deal with population decline is to import more immigrants. Like...FFS, there's so much labor that we could be bringing in.)