Yabaolu: Russian-town

Last October, I posted a few pictures from an area of Beijing that I half-jokingly called 'Russian-town,' where shop and restaurant signs seemed boast more Russian than Chinese. Although I termed the area 'Russian-town' as a sort of joke or tease, there is a relatively large Russian population in Beijing and the rest of China. In Beijing, much of the Russian population is centered around the Yabaolu area

Yesterday, The Global Times online Metro Beijing edition ran an interesting story on the large Russian population in Beijing. If you're curious to learn more about the Russian population in Beijing (like I am), you can read the article here.

Please note that the term 'Russian' both in the aforementioned article and in terms of the 'Russian' population of Beijing doesn't only refer to citizens to modern-day Russia, but also includes citizens of countries that used to be apart of the USSR, including (but not limited to) Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Belarus, Uzbekistan, etc.

Anyways, I just thought I'd share that article with you since it related back to something I posted a while back.

Happy Wednesday.

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.