Love and Guns

Since the last post was just pretty pictures, and so was awfully easy to digest, I'm going to go on a bit about socio-political issues in China.

First up, guns: there aren't any. The military have them, sure, but ordinary citizens are not allowed to own, let alone carry, guns. As a result, there aren't a whole lot of shootings over here, and would-be murderers have to use less efficient methods of killing - generally knives or swords. A further result is that people here feel pretty safe. I think anyone who thinks that guns are necessary for self-defence should visit China and see how necessary they really are.

Love over here is a much trickier subject. Many people in China still have traditional views on love and marriage, which means that most people marry young and marry once. Most girls will not even have many boyfriends before choosing a husband. Men over here still place a high value on virgin brides, too. Add in to this mix the money issue, which is very closely related to the 'one child' policy, and things get kind of sticky.

China's 'one child per family' policy to help reduce their overpopulation problem is quite well known. However, because the policy is less than a generation old, most people are not prepared for the effects on traditional ways of life. In this case, it is traditional for the children to support their parents when they get old. This is not an issue if you have five siblings, because the burden is spread very thin. However, if you have no siblings, and your husband or wife has no siblings, then the two of you need to support both sets of parents. Add the child in, and that means that a modern family has to support seven people on the income of only two. The older people are certainly not prepared for this, and I think it will be a generation or so before the realities of preparing for your own retirement sink in; in the meantime, you need a lot of money to even think about starting a family.

This means that there is a de facto class division in China; people marry as rich a person as they can, which is generally someone of their own economic strata - except for very beautiful girls, who can often find a rich man to marry. Many people will marry for money rather than love - and will stay married, because you get a bad reputation if you have more than one serious boyfriend, let alone husband.

This attitude is gradually changing; the Chinese teenagers today have more open-minded views about things like the number of past partners, although money is still an issue.

On a completely unrelated topic, Xi'an is much prettier now that the trees are flowering and patches of green are showing up all over the place.