Research Topic

     There were many cultural differences I noticed reading the autobiographies of the students from Qingdao. One that really caught my eye, though, was one pointed out by Ivy (Liu Jilin). She asked me if America had the conception that Chinese women seek men who don't have parents.

     I personally have never heard of this stereotype, but it made sense to me once Ivy explained to me that relationships in a Chinese family are very sensitive. She said that a man must treat his parents and siblings with priority over his own wife. She shared an old saying with me: "Brothers are as indispensable as handsome and fit, but the wife is like a coat."

     I think this is interesting because in America, it is common that a husband and wife relationship will be more important to the couple than the parent realtionships. I was wondering how society would view a man who did not fulfill his obligations to his parents. I think it's different how he is supposed to take care of his parents until they die. I would think it'd be difficult to balance all of this in life.

     A man in China has a lot of responsibility to his parents, and I think it is interesting how this tradition has worked out with the one-child law. According to CNN:

"A long history of son preference, particularly among the Han majority, has led to female infanticide and the neglect of daughters in some parts of China. But in recent decades, the spread of cheap ultrasound (enabling sex-determination in early-mid pregnancy) and easy access to abortion courtesy of the government's one-child policy, has led to the widespread abortion of female fetuses."

 

 

      Now there are too many men in China. With the one-child rule, they were trying to control the growing population. With too many men, though, there will not be enough women for all the men. This could potentially create a different kind of population problem.