People’s Daily: “Japanese girls want to marry Chinese”

Never ones to miss a chance for unintentional comedy, the boys at The People’s Daily this week are engaging in a little Freudian wish-making with an article that reads like it was cut straight from The Onion.

(The last line alone is priceless.)

Nowadays, there is a popular saying among Japanese girls that goes “What we want is Chinese food and men, not French lovers or American houses.” This means Japanese girls have lost their interest in French and American men.

In Japan, men from China are becoming more popular with Japanese girls. More than 1,500 Japanese girls married with Chinese men last year, an increase of 30 percent, which is the highest in history.

A representative from Japan’s China information research institute told the reporter that the quick development of China’s economy and Chinese people getting richer are the most important reasons for Japanese girls changing their appetites. Also because Japan has more women than men and Japanese men compared to Chinese men are generally less capable when it comes to being both a considerate family man and a breadwinner.

Today’s Japanese men feel much more inferior compared with men from China because they found what they are lacking

The historical record for December 16, 2009: Wu Zetian and An Lushan

December 16 is an interesting day for Tang history.  On this date in 705, Empress Wu Zetian died in Luoyang at the age of 82 sui.  Founder of her own dynasty, the Zhou, and a strong wielder of personal power throughout the latter half of the 7th century, Wu Zetian is one of the more complicated figures in Chinese history.  Variously labeled a despot, a usurper, and power-hungry bitch who had no problems with stepping on or over her own children to get what she wanted, other historians regard her time in power as one of great prosperity, equal perhaps even to the reigns of Tang Taizong and Tang Xuanzong.  Frankly, I think the negative aspects of her rise to power have been  a bit overstated, traditional Chinese histories tend to be unkind to women who seize power, and the late 7th century was a time when society became more complex, trade expanded, and culture flourished.  So….maybe she doesn’t completely deserve the rap she gets.

Of course fifty years later the Tang Dynasty faced a different kind of crisis, when An Lushan, a Tang general of Sogdian/Central Asian ancestry, launched a rebellion against the dynasty on December 16, 705.  Those

日历

December 2009
M T W T F S S
« Nov   Jan »
 123456
78910111213
14151617181920
21222324252627
28293031