Modern Romance in China – Part 1/2

December 10, 2010

There is a saying in China that, “Where there’s love, there is a way.”

However, for some, it isn’t that easy. High paid white-collar jobs in China are demanding and leave little time for romance.

However, with western style romance novels and romantic movies leading the way, hearing the word “love” is becoming common but there are other challenges to overcome.

Although China’s open economy has made many people rich, “love” is still a hard word to say since most Asians are more reserved than westerners are.

“Romance Chinese Style” is a film by first-time director Maggie Gu that takes a close look at the romance industry in China that is helping to overcome this shortage of time and abundance of shyness.

Al Jazeera English reports on Maggie Gu’s film and looks at on-line dating, blind dates, double dates, and speed dating that have become popular in China today.

Since China opened to the West, it is a country in a hurry. Where cars replaced bicycles, fashionable outfits replaced Mao uniforms, the pursuit of romance replaced Party loyalty.

Along the way, in 2007, China’s first speed dating club opened its doors.

In fact, speed dating originated in the US, but the idea traveled to China where for a small fee speed dating takes place over the Internet leading to digital love.

This service allows busy members of China’s growing upper-middle class to meet potential mates, and since many Chinese find it difficult to express their feelings freely, there are new schools where these wealthy professionals discover how to express themselves in the language of romance.

Go to Modern Romance in China – Part 2

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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.

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Exporting Western Romance to China

December 8, 2010

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.

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

The New Year Migration in China

December 4, 2010

We visited China and traveled during one of China’s national holidays in 2008. 

My sister and her youngest daughter went with us. 

Both are evangelical Christians and mentioned they didn’t believe in China’s one-child policy. I heard this more than once but after they arrived in China and experienced that migration, both became quiet about the one-child policy.

It was so crowded at times, it was as if we were swimming through a thick sea of people.

After that, I said the next trip to China would not be during any of China’s national holidays.

In fact, to deal with this migration, inhabitat.com says, “China has released a massive rail development program, which will expand the high-speed rail service to 42 more high-speed lines by 2012.”

This Al Jazeera report is about China’s annual New Year Migration of 2010. For readers who haven’t been to China, this may be your only chance to experience a taste of what it is like to live in a country with more than 1.3 billion people.

Tony Birtley of Al Jazeera, reports from a train heading south from Beijing to Hebei province.

Birtley says, “Welcome to the Chinese New Year and to the world’s biggest annual migration.… There’s something like 2,000 people on this train and you can hardly move.”

The rail system in China barely managed to move the average 220 million people traveling home to celebrate the Chinese New Year with family.

It is possible that a passenger will have to stand for a trip of 16 to 48 hours to reach their destination.

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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.

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

The Virtue of Saving Money

December 3, 2010

Hung Huang, one of China’s four Opras and the CEO of China Interactive Media Group, the host of TV talk show Crossing Over and one of the top-five most popular Bloggers in China wrote a post for the New York Times Economix Blog about why the Chinese save so much. She thinks the Chinese save out of fear.

I don’t agree, because China is not unique when it comes to Asians saving money. Galbi Think.org says, “Savings rates for East Asian economies averaged about 35% of GDP.

Another study reported by All Business.com says, “The fact that the saving rate of rural households (in China) is considerably higher than that of urban households even though their income levels are so much lower is surprising.”

Not so surprising. I married into a Chinese family and I’ve come to believe the Chinese can out frugal anyone. The less earned, the more the Chinese save.  All it takes is saying no to buying frivolous junk and eating out when the money isn’t there.

In fact, I found the comments to Huang’s post to be more convincing.

Melvin Chin says, “Asians, including Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans, are predominantly brought up with the concepts of frugality and saving from very young.… Saving teaches them to be proud of what is accumulated, enjoy the fruits of abundance, and cherish the habit as a virtue.”

B. Ray says, “The strong family connection is the reason for Chinese to save. It is the same in Taiwan. Almost every elder person I know saves for their descendents.”

Fei says, “Simply look at the generations of Chinese who live in North American, you’ll find out that the majority of them still maintain a lifelong enthusiasm of saving … because saving is a habit that’s deeply rooted in the Chinese culture.”

If all Asian cultures are so good at saving money and are all collective cultures, what does that say about the West and North America’s individualistic cultures?

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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.

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar. 

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Selfish, Narcissistic Children

December 1, 2010

A friend forwarded a link to me of Dr. Mark J. Perry’s China’s Single-Child Adults Too Selfish for Marriage?

It appears that the question mark indicates Dr. Perry is asking a question of his virtual audience. Here’s my answer.

Dr. Perry sites an NPR All Things Considered report by Louisa Lim’s Lightning Divorces Strike China’s ME Generation.

Lim says Beijing has the highest divorce rate nationwide, with 39 percent of all marriages ending in a split.

One Beijing woman, Cheng, tells Lim of her six-month marriage that ended as fast as it started. She blamed the divorce on belonging to the generation of spoiled singletons, known as the post-1980s generation.

One answer may explain the change in China’s divorce rate is that eight years ago, a married couple needed permission from their work unit to divorce. Today, couples have the freedom to divorce without asking.

However, Dr. Perry, a professor of economics and finance in the US, seems to think that the upsurge in China’s divorce rate is because of the selfish and narcissistic generation of spoiled one-child children in China.

My question is how does China’s one-child generation compare to the US’s self-esteem generations?

A study by the Pew Research Center, in association with Time magazine says that 44% of Americans age 18 to 29 say marriage is obsolete. Forty-one percent of the next age group (30 to 49) says the same thing. Source: Washington Post

This pretty much covers America’s self-esteem generations since that method of child rearing began in the late 1960s.

Data from a US Census report says about 50% of first marriages in the US for men under age 45 may end in divorce.

In fact, China National News reports that one in five marriages in China ends in divorce — that’s 20%.

The interesting fact is that there has always been exemptions in China’s one-child policy, and the rules are changing all the time.

China’s 56 minorities, which adds up to more than one hundred million people, have no restrictions to the number of children a family may have and many rural Chinese may have two children due to the need for more hands on the farm.

Recently, due to changes in demographics, married couples in Shanghai that grew up as one-child, may have two children, and anyone in China may have more if he or she can afford to pay the fine, which means many of China’s rich and famous have started a trend by having an average of three.

It appears that China may easily reverse any damage the one-child policy may have caused in much of urban China, but the US seems stuck in “self-esteem” mode no matter what research shows us about the trend to grow up as a selfish narcissist when raised this way.

In 2001, the New York Times reported there were three withering studies of self-esteem released in the United States, all of which had the same central message: people with high self-esteem pose a greater threat to those around them than people with low self-esteem and feeling bad about yourself is not the cause of our country’s biggest, most expensive social problems.

Discover how some Avoid China’s “one-child” Policy

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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.

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

Leave a Comment » | America, American culture, China, Chinese Culture, cultural differences, family values, parenting | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

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