Best of intentions, the most misguided of results

If the Beijing Municipal Commission of Education (or as I will refer to it, the BMCE) has anything to do with it, soon all college students at Beijing universities will be required to take a course entitled, "Mental health for College Students" with a expanded section on 'relationship skills.'

According to the BMCE's plan, students would take a 16 to 18 hour class for one course credit. The course itself would cover nine chapters and follow a recently re-drafted syllabus outlined by the BMCE.

Upon hearing this news, I didn't know whether to laugh at be absurdity of it all or shake at my head at just shake my head at how misguided this entire idea seems.

After all, if love and relationships could be simply defined and outlined in a textbook, there wouldn't be millions upon millions of books, poems, songs, blogs, and even Twitter tags on the subject matter. But while many may wish it were so, relationships and love do not follow any set path nor do they they all fit in a certain mold. Perhaps if it did, then we could all take a class in high school, be done with it and literally move on with our lives.

Unfortunately, that's not how it works. What works for one person does not necessarily work for the next person. In fact, I'd personally argue that love's ability to morph and change according to the people and circumstances around it---much like a chameleon---is what makes it so mysterious and popular topic for literature, music and the like. With this in mind, I cannot see how anyone or any group of people could possibly outline in nine short chapters on what is is the 'right' and the 'wrong' way to handle relationships.

Ah, the things I much rather be doing

..instead of taking midterms.

Splashing around with water with two of
my little cousins.
(Picture courtesy of Maia & Raymond Siu)

To see more photos of those two hard at play, see their blog at http://rayandmaia.blogspot.com/

Ready, Set...Marry??

Some days here in China, I feel like I'm living in the midst of a Jane Austen novel. No, not in the nightly-balls-and-parties-and-touring-grand-English-estates sense, but more in the you-must-get-married-by-X-age sense. As much as I love reading a good Jane Austen novel occasionally, living in a what I like to call a marriage-obsessed culture is a different story altogether. 

To call China a marriage-obsessed culture is not far-fetched. There is a lot of emphasis here on finding the 'right' person, getting married and starting a family, particularly on females here. In fact, the term for an unmarried woman over the age of 27 is 剩女(shèng nǚ) meaning leftover woman. No, I am not kidding, though I wish I was. (If you think 27 is rather young to be disparaging over a lack of husband, at least one of the articles I read on "sheng nu" alleged that a girl becomes a "sheng nu" at after the very young age of 25. Ack.)

The emphasis on marriage is so great that during the Spring Festival/Chinese New Year, many parents and singles headed to the temple fairs for the sole purpose of trying to find a potential marriage match. At the Beijing International Sculpture Park, an estimated 50,000+ people visited the park's love-matching event where parents and singles could consult relationship experts, find potential matches and look at the estimated 5,000 personal advertisements posted by other people looking for a potential partner.

Across town, a similar event at Ditan Park averaged 150,000 visitors per day to it's seven-day match-making event. Outside of the event, more desperate parents unwilling to pay the even entrance fee held signs touting their offspring's accomplishments in hopes of finding them a good match.

In Shanghai, the match-making fervor isn't limited to the Spring Festival. Every weekend, in People's Park in the center of Shanghai, parents gather craning their necks to look at papers posted on bushes touting a potential match's good attributes including background, education and physical traits, all in hopes that the next meeting they arrange for their son/daughter will lead to a good marriage.

The pressure to get married isn't just limited to the heterosexual set either. In Shanghai, in contrast to the open marriage market in People's Park, there is also a thriving fake-marriage market, in which lesbians and gays gather in hopes of finding someone to enter into a fake marriage with. 

And I'm off!

Being the regular blog readers I know you all are, I'm sure you all realize I'm finally now on my winter break. Better late than never, I say.

Two days after my finals, my friend Leslie came to town. This past week, we've been fitting the bitter Beijing cold and wind and visiting Beijing's major sights. And when I say bitter cold...I really do mean bitter cold.

Tomorrow, we're leaving to travel for a total of ten days to Qingdao, Hangzhou and Shanghai. On the 30th, we'll head to Hong Kong, where we'll be spending the Chinese New Year/Spring Festival. I'm excited (as always) to return to Hong Kong to see family and friends again.

Not to mention that Hong Kong is a food lover's paradise and I love food. Plus, Hong Kong's much warmer than Beijing right now.

Since I'll be on the traveling through the 30th of this month, there will most likely be a decrease in blog posts until I reach Hong Kong, at least. I do hope to get some posts up while I'm on the road, but in case I don't, I hope that everyone has a good rest of January!

And for those of you reading in Hong Kong, I hope to see you soon!

If that doesn't look cold to you, you're crazy.
Summer Palace, Beijing

PS. For those of you going through Living-in-Cultural-Limbo-blog withdrawal (which I know is all of you), at least you know when I return, you'll have lots of pictures and things to look forward to. :)

Look!

...It's the newest member of my family: Kaden Leung.

Welcome to the world, little one. I can't wait to meet you in person!

Picture courtesy of Raymond Siu

2010: A Retrospective

(As inspired by another Qi Zhai column in China Daily)

Top 10 Highlights of 2010

(in no particular order)

1. Welcoming the newest (though not for long) member of my family and becoming his godmother.
2. Gathering up the courage (and realizing I'd regret it if I didn't) to jump off the cliff at McCloud Waterfalls with my friends.
3. Meeting (more) people from all across the world that I otherwise might never have had the chance to interact with.
4. Being able to meet up with family and friends I hadn't seen in a while, including a particular family friend who I hadn't seen in over ten years.
5. Starting this blog and actually keeping up with it.
6. Following the San Francisco Giants as they proved the naysayers wrong and went on to win their first SF World Series title.
7. Realizing that there's no 'correct' path to take after college graduation and that it's ultimately up to me to choose what my next step is.
8. Deciding to come to China to study for a year, despite knowing I was bound to feel homesick sooner or later.
9. Starting to get a real grasp on written and spoken Mandarin.
10. And finally, being able to adapt to life in China, although not without some help and some struggles of my own.

Perhaps in hindsight, it wasn't the most exciting year (though my life has never been what people would call 'exciting'), but a good one nonetheless. Now onward to see what 2011 has in store for me....

PS. I'm curious to know what your 2010 highlights are. If you want to share, e-mail me or put them in the comments!

Christmas Weekend

When I decided to come to China for a year, I knew that one of the consequences of my decision was that I was going to have to spend the holiday season far from my friends and family. But I had no idea though just how much I would miss it.

In hindsight, I probably should have stopped reading my blogs for the month of December because I'm sure all of those blog posts and news stories about the joys (sometimes miseries) of the holiday season didn't help me feel any better either. It seemed like while everyone else (well...everyone in the Western world at least), was out celebrating with friends and family, I was trapped in China far from everything I usually took for granted every holiday season.

I actually wrote a post on things I missed about the holidays at home, but stopped short of posting it since I didn't feel like raining on everyone else's holiday parade.

However, before whoever is reading this feels too bad for me, I did not end up spending Christmas weekend alone. As luck would have it (okay...more like a teacher's vacation days would have it), my family friend Ben* and his girlfriend (who are both teachers at international schools in Hong Kong) ended up coming to Beijing the same weekend as Christmas and I was able to spend my weekend with them. Hooray for not having to spend holidays alone!

On Saturday, Ben, Heidi (his girlfriend) and I headed out to the 798 Art Space in hopes of strolling around the galleries. Unfortunately though, most of the galleries were closed for Christmas. Go figure that we end up in the one area in Beijing that actually seems to observe and closed down for Christmas on Christmas Day. Regardless, I was happy to spend time with someone who's known me longer than 3 months for once on a holiday that I usually spend with 20 people who have known me for my entire life.

Anyways, special thanks to Ben and Heidi for letting me tag along this weekend and basically ensuring that I didn't spend the holiday weekend depressed and alone. :)

Taken at the 798 Art Space in Beijing

For those of you who think it's odd to hang out someone you'd classify as a 'family friend', you have to understand for me, it's pretty normal. Blame it on being an only child. Not to mention that Ben and my parents are really good friends (especially our dads), thus making Ben almost a cousin of some sort.