Normally this kind of thing goes in the sidebar, but this story is incredible. This is part of a translated report from one of China’s most politically liberal newspapers, about chastity confusion in contemporary China. Unlike America, where popular sexual mores and ethics such as those of the True Love Waits campaign often ultimately hang on appeals to right-or-wrong moral absolutes (or the lack thereof), China is historically oriented toward moral relativism; right and wrong are more utilitarian and dependent on specific circumstances. In the current ideological and spiritual vacuum that is today’s China, chastity – at least for women – still matters greatly, but the reasons are depressing. From the article, “Avoid sex to get a better husband”:

‘My parents believe that the most important thing for a woman is to marry into a good family, and losing virginity before marriage is losing competitiveness, which may lead to losing an opportunity of a good marriage,’ said Shen Fan. ‘When my parents got married, my mother was a virgin, which made her morally confident, especially when quarreling with father.’

‘They would be very happy to hear that my boyfriend loves me more than the other way around. The most ideal scenario to them is that he has fallen deeply in love, while I still keep my cool,’ said Shen Fan, ‘they want tangible benefit.’

I encourage you to read the whole article (it’s not long). They link to the Chinese version as well.

This is maybe the best Sexy Beijing so far, all about the public couples’ dancing in China’s parks (a daily sight for us) and different generations’ attitudes toward marriage.

I’m afraid the Macarena ladies of Tianjin just can’t compete with those hip-hop moms in Beijing.

Apparently there are now three genders in China, with the third being a relatively recent addition. Can you guess who? The photo below is what I copied off the board when my teacher explained it.

Keep guessing. I’ll explain in a minute. (Hint: “男” means male and “女” means female.)

In North America, if one spouse looks like a supermodel and the other ‘has a nice personality,’ it looks a little odd and/or suspicious to us. We’ll at least take notice. I can’t think of any marriages off the top of my head that transcend economic class lines. We (North Americans) start practicing for this in the junior high dating scene and keep at it all the way through college; best-friends and boyfriends/girlfriends are sorted and paired according to their relative degree of (imagined) sex appeal. And unlike our professors’ generations, education levels are more even between spouses. It gets a little more complicated after the school years, but the system is set. Generally, we aim roughly for a spouse who’s more or less our social equal.

But in China – according to my teachers – this is decidedly not the way to go, particularly as far as the men are concerned. A man feels the need to be a little higher than his woman, socially speaking. And this brings us to the chart from class in the photo:

• “A”-class males (superior education and prospects, good-looking) prefer “B”-class women (decent education, not bad looks);
• “B”-males go for “C”-women;
• a “C”-male’s best shot is a “D”-class woman;
• “D”-males (poor, rural, no high school education, no prospects) are out of luck.

My teacher just arbitrarily created these particular categories to make a point; she’s not saying that Mainlanders divide their society into four sections. But Mainlanders do typically plot each other on a well-defined social hierarchy; knowing one another’s relative social position is a necessity. Everyone knows where they stand status-wise in relation to everyone around them. This also came out in one of Jessica’s dating discussions with some local university students.

This idea that the man ought to be of higher status than his wife and that his superiority should be routinely affirmed by the methods of social interaction is rooted in the traditional Chinese concept of manhood, which involves (as my teachers described it) him coming home from work, sitting in front of the T.V., and ordering his wife around, who brings him whatever he wants while she slaves away cooking, cleaning, doing laundry, and mothering. She should take orders and serve meekly, especially in front of her husband’s colleagues (when ‘face’ is at stake). They call Chinese-style chauvinism 大男子主义 – “Big-Man-ism” – and apparently Shandong province and Koreans are notorious for this. It’s part of the “feudal” pre-Liberation (1949) sexism that values men more than women (重男轻女; lit. “man heavy, light woman”).

Although my female teachers look down on this chauvinistic attitude, I seriously wonder who would generally be more attractive to the average Zhou Chinese female: a man of equal education and job prospects, or a man who’s a step up. I’m not talking about “gold-diggers” here; I want to know if a higher status male on average commands more genuine masculine attractiveness than an equal status male.

Now of course you ought to realize I don’t know anything about this myself; I’m just passing it along because it was interesting, a little funny, and a fascinating place to start asking culture questions, if you’re into that sort of thing.

The third gender? Women with Ph.Ds. These “A”-class women are so far outside the traditional definition of “woman” and have such trouble finding husbands and realizing the female roles of wife and mother that our teachers joke that they’re like a third gender.

Jessica, who has several desperately interesting posts half-written but who has too much of a life to get them finished, fortunately has friends whose blogs will serve in the meantime. Shannon, one of our English teaching friends, just wrote about their weekly get-togethers with a pile of university students that they call “Girls’ Afternoon Out” (GAO):

For several weeks now I have been meeting with 4 other foreigners and about 15 former students every Saturday to talk about “girl stuff.” We officially call it G.A.O., Girls Afternoon Out, and one of the main objectives of this group is to learn about what it means to be a woman in China, as well as to share with the girls what it means to be a woman in the U.S., Taiwan, or the U.K. Let me tell you, we are all learning a ton! Relationships are different, families are different, the view of a boyfriend/husband is different, what is learned in school vs. learned from movies is extremely different! We are quickly finding out that these girls haven’t had much, if any, education about men and women, sex, or body image. They believe a lot of what they see in American TV shows and movies – YIKES!

To read more about how Jessica and Shannon are corrupting the minds of impressionable young locals, click over to Shannon’s blog.

Click the photo (stolen from Shannon) to see it bigger.

I would so love to be a fly on the wall when they get together!

Behold, the Tianjin rainbow:

It rained last week for two days solid. Makes me miss Vancouver when it does that, and it makes our British friends say, “This is just like England!” I took this photo on the way to class around 8am one morning.

Central Park Marriage Market

A group of us took a little outdoor migrating history lecture today, stopping for lunch in Tianjin’s Central Park, which used to be the main park of the French concession area. Since it was a weekend with fine weather it meant the marriage market was in full swing, and that means crowds of grandpas and grandmas were haggling with… I don’t know what you call this kind of service or the people who offer it.

The people who have all the stacks of papers with eligible young people’s stats deal with grandpas and grandmas mostly, who are trying to find someone their grandchild might like.

This is the third time I’ve been here on a marriage market day, and every time these crowds have been warm, curious, but not aggressive, and that makes them really fun to chat with. All a foreigner has to do is walk over, and ten or so people will gather around and start the usual friendly small talk. Since it’s an older crowd, no one is real keen to practice their English (unlike the university students).

Click these marriage market photos to see them big size. See pictures and descriptions from my first experience with the marriage market here.

Interesting historical tidbit
I learned some more the abandoned Zǐ Zhú Lín church building, which we’ve visited and photographed twice now. It was built in 1872 with compensation money extracted from the Chinese government by the French as reparations for the Tianjin ‘Incident’/'Massacre’ (1870). Foreign and local Catholics used it as a refuge during the Boxer Uprising (1900). It’s been disused since 1958. I noticed this time around that it has trees growing straight up out of the drain pipes on the side of the building.

For Jessica’s birthday a bunch of friends went skating or playing with ice sleds on the lake.

Then we went out for Indian food (oohhh curry heaven!) and ice cream. And then, oh we’re so sad… we all decided we should found a Facebook group: Tianjin is for Lovers!

We went for walk today on the canal. Here’s a many-layered Jessica, with an ice-fisherman in the background. There is a city back there… you just can’t see it for all the “fog.”

Jessica is still sick, but managed to get out for a walk this afternoon. It’s her birthday week, so I’m trying to be a good husband. We’re hoping she’s feeling good by this weekend, when we plan to go with friends and skate on the artificial lake up the road.

Unlike most of you, our year hasn’t ended yet. Normally we’d be starting a new semester, feeling as if another page was turned or mile marker laid down during all the Christmas and New Year’s family festivities. But this time we’re missing that feeling; our rhythm is off. Imagine if it was still last semester for you and the big holidays were still coming up, even though it’s mid-January. That’s what it’s like. For us, it’s the last week of school, and then winter break just begins. The supermarkets are packed with people getting ready for the holidays. It’s weird – Christmas came and went, although in a much less spectacular fashion, and it still feels like 2008 hasn’t arrived.

Anyway, Jessica’s 29 now, and still getting hotter every year!

The bride arrives at the restaurant where the ceremony and banquet of a friend’s wedding were held this last weekend. In this short video you can see – once the smoke begins to clear – that they’re quite happy:

There was a nice ceremony before a huge lunch, with toasting and little “embarrass the bride and groom” games going on during the meal. In one game, I dangled a piece of candy from a string and the bride and groom had to try and each bite it without using their hands. In another game (and this was kind of gross, but funny) they fill up the groom’s mouth with as many candies as they can, and then he has to feed them to the bride without using his hands. Teasing the bride and/or groom is an old tradition, though no doubt the details have changed over the years. The whole event was a lot of fun. The ceremony was much like an American ceremony, except that it included the bride and groom serving tea to the parents, and the bride led a little karaoke sing-along.

Last night I woke up in the middle of the night because I thought Jessica was talking to me. But then I realized she was just talking in her sleep. And then I realized she was speaking Chinese! And this wasn’t just the usual sleep-mumbling; this was loud, full sentences with clear diction just like she was wide awake speaking confidently to a room full of people. I have no idea if it made any grammatical sense or not because I didn’t stay awake long enough to try and figure out what she was talking about.

But next time I’m recording it with the camera’s sound setting and posting it on the blog. How cool would that be?!

Special Super Slogan September
Not only does this month’s slogan come with a free bonus slogan, it even includes free slogan educational material!

Each generation of China’s Communist rulers have defined their leadership with slogans, from catchy to obscure … these are more than just catch phrases — they define the goals of the nation.

The top red banner says:

倡导文明，告别陋俗，爱我家园
chàng dǎo wén míng, gào bié lòu sǔ, ài wǒ jiā yuán
“Advocate culture, bid farewell to vulgarity, love our home”

And the bottom red banner says:

让公共场所净起来， 让城区面貌美起来！
ràng gōng gòng chǎng suǒ jìng qǐ lái, ràng chéng qū miàn mào měi qǐ lái!
Let public cleanliness rise up, so the city’s beauty can rise up! (poor translation… sorry!)

This second slogan in particular has been hung in a lot of places around here lately. I can just totally see Miller lovin’ it if the U.S. government started hanging policy exhortations everywhere as a public service for his benefit! ;)

I’m trying to get one of our neighbourhood’s something-or-other committees (I think this one may be the “Sit around all day eating watermelon and drinking tea Committee”) to give me an old banner so we can cut it up for red karate-kid-style head bands… this Wednesday we’re going with 43 other people (mostly foreigner Mandarin students and some teachers) to cheer on China against New Zealand in the FIFA Women’s World Cup in the spanking new Olympic stadium they just opened down the road. We’re all sitting together, and we’re hoping to get on TV.

A Sunday afternoon by the canal, reading Harry Potter (aloud, in the original British).