Just a few quick links from over the weekend while YJ gets Sunday dinner on. Best part about pingfang living? Al fresco dining…May to October.
For those of you who don’t have a high-school aged Chinese student living with you (or missed the mothers chain smoking by the side of the road) this weekend is the gaokao, the annual battery of tests that determine whether a particular student will get into the college of their choice and face a future of fulfillment and promise or instead wind up a miserable failure, openly mocked by family and family friends as they descend into a never-ending shame spiral of disgrace and limited options. Seriously, great fun!
Two biggest worries for 2009? Cheating and the flu. That and the possibility of some 17-year old kid snapping like a twig and stating to gnaw off his own foot while waiting for his test booklet.
Speaking of youth under pressure…the kids of today should feel fortunate that the competition has been thinned a bit by three decades of the One Child Policy, which is all good if you’re taking a college entrance exam with a strict quota system in place but not so much if you’re an eager young bachelor in China’s rural areas. Human nature being what it is, and this being China, it should hardly come as a 10,000 volt shock that a number of scams have popped up to take advantage of these poor lovelorn souls. Whatever the benefits of slowing China’s population growth, and there are some to be sure, the side effects of such a massive experiment in social engineering are only now starting to show, and an increase in bride price, the trafficking of women, and prostitution are, I suspect, just the tip of the iceberg in terms of OCP hangover in the years to come.
Finally, be sure to check out Liang Jing’s essay on The China Beat, “The Historical Bafflement of the Chinese People.”
I accept that cultural radicalism takes some of the blame for the disasters of the last century, but fail to understand the actual proposals of cultural conservatism. Will cultural conservatism be able to succeed where cultural radicalism has failed? Such simplistic thinking is disturbing.
It’s a fascinating and provocative read.
