When Tom Carter’s guest post arrived about Harlequin Romance Invades China, my first thought was China is doomed.
First, American fast food arrived and now China is having a weight problem leading to poor health and the explosion of China’s Fat Camps.
Then there is America’s car culture, which is catching on fast in a country that doesn’t have the strict environmental pollution laws that exist in the US and rural China is choked with smog.
Now, I learn that romance American style arrived in China as another blow to China’s ability to survive as a civilization. Weren’t the 19th century Opium Wars bad enough?
Eating fast food that destroys bodies, smoking cigarettes, reading Harlequin Romances and driving carbon-spewing cars cannot be a good thing.
Is this how “democracy” is going to make life better for the Chinese?
Since Harlequin romance novels flew into China on collagen-filled lips, attitudes toward love have changed.
“According to Enjoy Reading Era, a Beijing-based cultural company specializing in publishing romantic novels, 1,500 love stories by writers in the mainland were published last year, an all-time high. The company exported 50 romance novels to Hong Kong and Taiwan, while it only imported three novels from Taiwan.” Source: Show China.org
Reading romance novels may explain the increase in the divorce rate in China and the high divorce rate in the US. After all, how can any real man compare to the ink and paper men on the pages of a Harlequin romance?
However, I may be wrong about what the West has exported to China. Thanks to Romance novels, China may no longer need the one-child policy since all those wheezing, unhealthy fat people driving cars instead of riding bicycles or walking will be reading trashy romance novels instead of making love.
This may end China’s population challenge.
In fact, GM and Ford are making huge profits in China as is McDonalds, KFC, Pizza Hut and Starbucks. Even Hooters is in China along with Wal-Mart.
Think of the profits these American corporations are earning to help make the rich richer.
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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.
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That’s a start at least. Chinese has a lot to catch up with in a more modern China. I don’t think they are as naive as the American population, they have strong roots due to their culture America can not beat with anything they have got.
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