JM Review | When the spitter was flogged: PDL’s “Self-Verification Trap” and “Magic Counterattack”

By Mr. Wang, Jointing.Media, in Hangzhou, 2025-05-09

In Singapore, public spitters get caned—lashes that crack loud, crack hard, crack so resoundingly that even the melon-seed-munching crowd（a Chinese meme for nosy bystanders）falls silent. It’s not that Singaporeans are born with a broomstick up their spines, but they know: for certain ”social incontinence syndromes” (a sarcastic term for chronic bad behavior), sermons are less effective than bamboo whips. Now, Yu Donglai, founder of Pang Donglai（PDL）, swings the legal whip at internet trolls who stage ”weekly fake outrage dramas” , proving Confucius wrong: “If you repay virtue with virtue, what’s left for vice? Repay it with a whip!”

Enter “Mr. Keyboard Crusader” (柴怼怼), who stormed Pang Donglai’s jade counter with his phone, declaring: “Your ¥30,000 jade is worse than a ¥3,000 roadside rock!” His antics mirrored those unemployed uncles in wet markets who scream, “Your cabbage is steroid-pumped!” —except his megaphone was Douyin (TikTok).

PDL threw out a stack of financial statements：20% gross margin on Hotan jade, ¥268 million in taxes paid. Meanwhile, the ”anti-fraud hero” sells ¥19,800 jade bracelets in his livestreams. Numbers don’t lie: the “profiteering” scam melted faster than a snowman in a sauna, exposing the abacus beads (metaphor for sneaky calculations) of ”traffic trolling” .

Forcing companies to “prove their purity” is like demanding a man in a white suit jump into a mud pit to prove he’s never stolen sweet potatoes. To clear its name, PDL published a 328-page Employee Handbook, a 53-page Underwear Quality Report and Profit distribution tables sunbathing in public —a “gut-spilling spectacle” mocking the legal principle “innocent until proven guilty.”

When rumors cost a dime and refutations demand a fortune, business ethics become the clown car of economics.

In Haining(海宁), a knockoff store named “Pang Dou Lai” (胖都来) cloned everything: chubby mascots, free herbal brews, even the “customer service smile”—achieving the artistic finesse of a toddler tracing the Mona Lisa and ending up with “Mona Lisa after dental surgery.” Shoppers flooded in not to buy, but to film “Li Kui vs. Li Gui” (李逵vs李鬼, a classic tale of imposters from Water Margin) skits. PDL’s response? A legal triple combo : evidence collection, police report, lawsuit—all in 72 hours. Cue the Chinese rap battle taunt: “Copy my swag? Catch these lawsuit hands!”

Critics claim Pang Donglai’s model could not be duplicated.—half true. Yonghui Supermarkets spent ¥6 million copying PDL, only to end up with “employee smiles stiffer than mannequins” and The loss rate of fresh produce rebounded from 3% to 5%. Why? Follow the money:

PDL gives 60% profits to employees.

Yonghui stuffs 60% into shareholders’ Gucci pockets.

Forcing underpaid workers to deliver luxury service is like asking starving actors to perform a royal feast—all posture, no nourishment.

PDL’s Cleaners earn ¥9,886/month—double Zhengzhou office Of white-collar workers’ salaries. PDL’s store managers drive cars fancier than Xuchang section chiefs’. This isn’t charity; it’s “Communist Capitalism 2.0″: every ¥1 wage hike generates ¥3.2 in sales. Yet other companies ironically chant ‘Learn from PDL’ while reducing their employee handbooks to 21st-century indenture agreements. Little wonder their mimicry stops at token gestures like complimentary tea, utterly missing the essence of human capital leverage.

The impending Private Economy Promotion Law will finally tighten the noose on those keyboard warriors whose taps inflict corporate harm—a development that evokes Wang Xiaobo’s ‘silent majority’. For years, some businesses clung to the naive creed of ‘purity will prevail’, only to find their pristine reputations splattered like a Pollock painting by digital mudslingers. PDL’s ¥5 million lawsuit and Douyin’s removal of 29 defamatory videos aren’t corporate muscle-flexing, but a codification of jungle rules for the commercial wilderness: Question my jade, but don’t falsify my ledgers; scrutinise my service, but don’t forge my tax filings.

Some Internet celebrities always use “freedom of speech” as a shield, but forget that the true meaning of freedom is “not harming others”. Just like caning in Singapore is not for demonstrating violence but for demarcating the boundaries of civilization. When PDL lashed out at the rumor-blenders with the legal whip, what he shattered was not just a few traffic bubbles, but also a warning sign in the muddy online ecosystem: Spitting is prohibited here. Violators will suffer for half a year.

The secret to PDL’s success ultimately hinges on two principles: prioritising product quality and equitably distributing profits among employees. This logic, as straightforward as primary school arithmetic, baffles those who obsess over calculus-level complexities while neglecting basic addition. Imitators, ever keen on shortcuts, reduce service excellence to staged photo-ops and profit-sharing to hollow pledges—only to retreat in disgrace when consumers, voting decisively with their feet, greet their efforts with scornful derision.

Ultimately, business is inherently a “stupid” profession. You give your employees real money, and the employees show eight teeth to the customers. You spread the profits in the sunlight, and consumers deposit their trust into your account. And those “smart people” who rely on staged accidents to gain traffic will eventually understand a truth: the whip may be late, but it won’t be absent forever – after all, the punishment in a society ruled by law is much more painful than the cane in Singapore.

PDL’s lawsuit against the rumor-mongers is not only for himself but also for the entire business environment. If there is no cost to spreading rumors, all enterprises will fall into the “self-proof trap” – the more honest you are, the more likely you are to be attacked. If staged fraud can be profitable, then business competition will degenerate into a vicious circle of “who has the lower limit”. PDL’s approach is equivalent to setting up a warning sign in the commercial jungle: “Here is the rule of law. Anyone who fraudals will be punished.”

Edited by Wind, Youdao and DeepSeek

Photo by Sacima | Old railway station in India （2024）

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