Apr 18, 2009
In China, white man loses mojo
By Kent Ewing
HONG KONG - As if formerly high-flying Western bankers and financiers haven't suffered enough, now there is an additional indignity: Chinese women have lost interest in them.
According to two recent nationwide surveys by the matchmaking website hongniang.com, mainland women keen on finding a foreign partner plunged from 42% to 16% over the past year.
For that dramatic decline, you can blame the financial crisis, which has made Western society - especially its male avatars - look unstable to Chinese women considering their romantic (which tends to be intimately linked to their financial) future.
The decline of the white man's mojo had been evident in Hong Kong since the handover from British rule in 1997, with dating services reporting that it is rare these days for Chinese women in the city to seek a Western partner. While the British ruled and ensconced themselves in posh homes on Victoria Peak and other exclusive areas in Hong Kong, there was often a cachet attached to dating a Westerner, especially an Englishman.
But that era has passed, as has any sense of Chinese inferiority. Economically, Hong Kong, a city of seven million people, caught up with its Western counterparts well before the handover. Using the Atlas method of calculation, Hong Kong's per capita income as of 2007 was US$31,610, according to the World Bank.
By contrast, despite 30 years of scintillating economic growth, most of the 1.3 billion people living on the mainland, where per capita income stands at US$2,360, are still waiting for their pot of gold. Still, per capita income figures can be misleading in a country as big and rapidly developing as China. Poverty abounds in the countryside, but China's club of millionaires is growing faster than in any other country in the world. Its cities, especially in the east, are booming and creating a huge urban-rural income gap.
Urban women, the same ones who used to hanker after Western men, are sharing in this boom. As their economic boats rise with the general tide, they are also becoming much pickier about the mates they choose.
Mixed marriages, which reached 400,000 last year, had been on a steady rise in China until the US subprime mortgage crisis started a global financial meltdown that has turned a Western partner into a poor prospect in the eyes of many Chinese women. Not only do the hongniang.com surveys show the number of women seeking a foreign mate has dropped significantly, but approval of such unions has also fallen by 20%.
While all this should be good news for Chinese men, their prospects also don't look terribly bright. China's one-child policy, coupled with a traditional preference for male children, has created a gender imbalance that will leave already choosy Chinese women even choosier. And, no matter what choices those women make, 32 million Chinese men face a future without any hope of marriage, according to a study published online last week by the British Medical Journal.
An army of scholars is busy contemplating the possible social consequences of this prodigious lonely hearts club of mostly only-child males - and so far their collective conclusion is that none of them are good.
Meanwhile, the sudden jilting of foreigners tends to confirm a long-held Western stereotype of Chinese women as gold-diggers who would not recognize love if it hit them in the face. If you take a broader perspective, however, there are clear reasons for this cold-hearted materialism that go straight to the heart of the big social challenges that China faces in the 21st century.
With no viable health care or social security system in place, there is little room for love when women are planning a future. Indeed, while they may well recognize the emotion, they would be foolish to act on it.
Life, marriage included, is all about earning and saving in country where a serious illness or accident could leave you and your family penniless. Moreover, while Chinese women have made great advances in education, they still face commonplace discrimination in employment. A rich husband often remains their best option for financial security.
Of course, a woman would have to be an urbanite to even start thinking like this, or to care about surveys launched by the likes of hongniang.com. More than 50% of Chinese continue to live in the impoverished countryside - but they dream of the good life in the city and, as China's relentless urban migration continues, many of their children and most of their grandchildren will be city dwellers.
Will future generations be as materialistic as their forbears in matters of the heart? Of course, they will - until, that is, people no longer have to worry about squirreling away most of their income to pay for education, health care and retirement. This propensity to save rather than spend has become a headache for economic planners now that increased domestic consumption is needed to compensate for shrinking Chinese exports in the global economic downturn.
Despite government prodding to act more like their profligate consumer counterparts in the West, the Chinese are unlikely to relinquish their status as the world's biggest savers until they feel more secure about the future. And Chinese women show no signs of dropping their view of well-heeled men as the best possible insurance policy for that future. Love is a luxury they can ill afford.
Certainly, there are also many in the West (both men and women) who size up their prospective partner's wallet before they consult their hearts. In the 19th century most Western women were even more pecuniary in their marital outlook than Chinese women are today. Read just about any European novel of the time to confirm this view, with the work of English writers Jane Austen and George Eliot (the pen name for Mary Ann Evans), among others, standing out.
Ultimately, what everyone in China needs is a system that offers some assurance of financial security. Then they can feel free to wax romantic.
Beijing's long-awaited release last week of a 13,000-word government blueprint on health care reform should help to ease this collective sense of insecurity, but it is also a reminder of how dicey medical care is in China today. Even public hospitals are routinely guilty of price-gouging in the runaway capitalism that has infected the country's medical sector, leaving basic health care services unaffordable for the poor and a reach for the middle class.
The new scheme aims to make basic health care and medical insurance available to every Chinese citizen by 2020. How such an expensive and ambitious plan will be implemented, however, remains a huge question mark.
Until that and many other questions are answered, the Chinese will continue their cautionary habit of saving for an uncertain future, and personal relationships will be grounded more in economic reality than emotional attachment.
In the end, the Chinese economic experiment may also be an experiment in love - yet another reason to hope that it succeeds.
Kent Ewing is a Hong Kong-based teacher and writer. He can be reached at kewing@hkis.edu.hk.
http://forums.delphiforums.com/sunkopitiam/messages?msg=27155.1
Showing posts with label marriage. Show all posts
Showing posts with label marriage. Show all posts
Friday, April 17, 2009
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Dr Lee Wei Ling - Why I choose to remain single
Why I choose to remain single
Sun, Apr 05, 2009 - The Straits Times
My parents have a loving relationship, but I knew I could not live my life around a husband
By Lee Wei Ling
My father became prime minister in 1959, when I was just four years old. Inevitably, most people know me as Lee Kuan Yew's daughter.
My every move, every word, is scrutinised and sometimes subject to criticism. One friend said I lived in a glass house. After my father's recent comment on my lack of culinary skills, another observed: 'You live in a house without any walls.' Fortunately, I am not easily embarrassed.
As long as my conscience is clear, what other people say of me does not bother me. Indeed, I am open about my life since the more I try to conceal from the public, the wilder the speculation becomes.
My father said of my mother two weeks ago: 'My wife was...not a traditional wife. She was educated, a professional woman... We had Ah Mahs, reliable, professional, dependable. (My wife) came back every lunchtime to have lunch with the children.'
Actually, my mother was a traditional wife and mother. She was not traditional only in one respect: She was also a professional woman and, for many years, the family's main breadwinner.
One of my mother's proudest possessions is a gold pendant that my father commissioned for her. He had a calligrapher engrave on the pendant the following characters: 'xian qi liang mu' and 'nei xian wai de'.
The first four characters mean virtuous wife and caring mother. The second four mean wise in looking after the family, virtuous in behaviour towards the outside world.
My mother lived her life around my father and, while we were young, around her children. I remember my mother protesting gently once about something my father had asked her to do.
'It is a partnership, dear,' my father urged.
'But it is not an equal partnership,' my mother replied.
The partnership may not have been exactly equal at particular points in time. But over the years, especially after my mother's health deteriorated after she suffered a stroke, my father was the one who took care of her. She clearly indicated she preferred my father's care to that of the doctors', in itself a revelation of the quality of his care.
He remembers her complicated regime of medications. Because she cannot see on the left side of her visual field, he sits on her left during meals. He prompts her to eat the food on the left side of her plate and picks up whatever food her left hand drops on the table.
I have always admired my father for his dedication to Singapore, his determination to do what is right, his courage in standing up to foreigners who try to tell us how to run our country.
But my father was also the eldest son in a typical Peranakan family. He cannot even crack a soft-boiled egg - such things not being expected of men, especially eldest sons, in Peranakan families.
But when my mother's health deteriorated, he readily adjusted his lifestyle to accommodate her, took care of her medications and lived his life around her. I knew how much effort it took him to do all this, and I was surprised that he was able to make the effort.
If my parents have such a loving relationship, why then did I decide to remain single?
Firstly, my mother set the bar too high for me. I could not envisage being the kind of wife and mother she had been.
Secondly, I am temperamentally similar to my father. Indeed, he once said to me: 'You have all my traits - but to such an exaggerated degree that they become a disadvantage in you.'
When my father made that pendant for my mother, he also commissioned one for me. But the words he chose for me were very different from those he chose for my mother.
On one side of my pendant was engraved 'yang jing xu rui', which means to conserve energy and build up strength. On the other side was engraved 'chu lei ba cui', which means to stand out and excel.
The latter was added just for completion. His main message was in the first phrase, telling me, in effect, not to be so intense about so many things in life.
I knew I could not live my life around a husband; nor would I want a husband to live his life around me. Of course, there are any number of variations in marital relationships between those extremes. But there is always a need for spouses to change their behaviour or habits to suit each other. I have always been set in my ways and did not fancy changing my behaviour or lifestyle.
I had my first date when I was 21 years old. He was a doctor in the hospital ward I was posted to. We went out to a dinner party. I noted that the other guests were all rich socialites. I dropped him like a hot potato.
In 2005, while on an African safari with a small group of friends, one of them, Professor C.N. Lee, listed the men who had tried to woo me. There were three besides the first. Two were converted into friends and another, like the first, was dropped.
I am now 54 years old and happily single. In addition to my nuclear family, I have a close circle of friends. Most of my friends are men. But my reputation is such that their female partners would never consider me a threat.
More than 10 years ago, when there was still a slim chance I might have got married, my father told me: 'Your mother and I could be selfish and feel happy that you remain single and can look after us in our old age. But you will be lonely.'
I was not convinced. Better one person feeling lonely than two people miserable because they cannot adapt to each other, I figured.
I do not regret my choice. But I want to end with a warning to young men and women: What works for me may not work for others.
Many years ago, a young single woman asked me about training in neurology in a top US hospital. I advised her to 'grab the opportunity'.
She did and stayed away for eight years. She returned to Singapore in her late 30s and now worries that she may have missed her chance to get married.
Fertility in women drops dramatically with age, and older mothers run the risk of having offspring with congenital abnormalities.
Recent studies show also that advanced paternal age is associated with an increased risk of neurodevelopmental disorders in offspring, such as autism and schizophrenia, not to mention dyslexia and a subtle reduction in intelligence. Men can also suffer from diminished fertility with age although there is wide individual variation.
I would advise young men and women not to delay getting married and having children. I say this not to be politically correct. I say it in all sincerity because I have enjoyed a happy family life as a daughter and a sister, and I see both my brothers enjoying their own families.
Dr Lee Wei Ling
The writer is director of the National Neuroscience Institute.
http://forums.delphiforums.com/sunkopitiam/messages?msg=26020.1
Sun, Apr 05, 2009 - The Straits Times
My parents have a loving relationship, but I knew I could not live my life around a husband
By Lee Wei Ling
My father became prime minister in 1959, when I was just four years old. Inevitably, most people know me as Lee Kuan Yew's daughter.
My every move, every word, is scrutinised and sometimes subject to criticism. One friend said I lived in a glass house. After my father's recent comment on my lack of culinary skills, another observed: 'You live in a house without any walls.' Fortunately, I am not easily embarrassed.
As long as my conscience is clear, what other people say of me does not bother me. Indeed, I am open about my life since the more I try to conceal from the public, the wilder the speculation becomes.
My father said of my mother two weeks ago: 'My wife was...not a traditional wife. She was educated, a professional woman... We had Ah Mahs, reliable, professional, dependable. (My wife) came back every lunchtime to have lunch with the children.'
Actually, my mother was a traditional wife and mother. She was not traditional only in one respect: She was also a professional woman and, for many years, the family's main breadwinner.
One of my mother's proudest possessions is a gold pendant that my father commissioned for her. He had a calligrapher engrave on the pendant the following characters: 'xian qi liang mu' and 'nei xian wai de'.
The first four characters mean virtuous wife and caring mother. The second four mean wise in looking after the family, virtuous in behaviour towards the outside world.
My mother lived her life around my father and, while we were young, around her children. I remember my mother protesting gently once about something my father had asked her to do.
'It is a partnership, dear,' my father urged.
'But it is not an equal partnership,' my mother replied.
The partnership may not have been exactly equal at particular points in time. But over the years, especially after my mother's health deteriorated after she suffered a stroke, my father was the one who took care of her. She clearly indicated she preferred my father's care to that of the doctors', in itself a revelation of the quality of his care.
He remembers her complicated regime of medications. Because she cannot see on the left side of her visual field, he sits on her left during meals. He prompts her to eat the food on the left side of her plate and picks up whatever food her left hand drops on the table.
I have always admired my father for his dedication to Singapore, his determination to do what is right, his courage in standing up to foreigners who try to tell us how to run our country.
But my father was also the eldest son in a typical Peranakan family. He cannot even crack a soft-boiled egg - such things not being expected of men, especially eldest sons, in Peranakan families.
But when my mother's health deteriorated, he readily adjusted his lifestyle to accommodate her, took care of her medications and lived his life around her. I knew how much effort it took him to do all this, and I was surprised that he was able to make the effort.
If my parents have such a loving relationship, why then did I decide to remain single?
Firstly, my mother set the bar too high for me. I could not envisage being the kind of wife and mother she had been.
Secondly, I am temperamentally similar to my father. Indeed, he once said to me: 'You have all my traits - but to such an exaggerated degree that they become a disadvantage in you.'
When my father made that pendant for my mother, he also commissioned one for me. But the words he chose for me were very different from those he chose for my mother.
On one side of my pendant was engraved 'yang jing xu rui', which means to conserve energy and build up strength. On the other side was engraved 'chu lei ba cui', which means to stand out and excel.
The latter was added just for completion. His main message was in the first phrase, telling me, in effect, not to be so intense about so many things in life.
I knew I could not live my life around a husband; nor would I want a husband to live his life around me. Of course, there are any number of variations in marital relationships between those extremes. But there is always a need for spouses to change their behaviour or habits to suit each other. I have always been set in my ways and did not fancy changing my behaviour or lifestyle.
I had my first date when I was 21 years old. He was a doctor in the hospital ward I was posted to. We went out to a dinner party. I noted that the other guests were all rich socialites. I dropped him like a hot potato.
In 2005, while on an African safari with a small group of friends, one of them, Professor C.N. Lee, listed the men who had tried to woo me. There were three besides the first. Two were converted into friends and another, like the first, was dropped.
I am now 54 years old and happily single. In addition to my nuclear family, I have a close circle of friends. Most of my friends are men. But my reputation is such that their female partners would never consider me a threat.
More than 10 years ago, when there was still a slim chance I might have got married, my father told me: 'Your mother and I could be selfish and feel happy that you remain single and can look after us in our old age. But you will be lonely.'
I was not convinced. Better one person feeling lonely than two people miserable because they cannot adapt to each other, I figured.
I do not regret my choice. But I want to end with a warning to young men and women: What works for me may not work for others.
Many years ago, a young single woman asked me about training in neurology in a top US hospital. I advised her to 'grab the opportunity'.
She did and stayed away for eight years. She returned to Singapore in her late 30s and now worries that she may have missed her chance to get married.
Fertility in women drops dramatically with age, and older mothers run the risk of having offspring with congenital abnormalities.
Recent studies show also that advanced paternal age is associated with an increased risk of neurodevelopmental disorders in offspring, such as autism and schizophrenia, not to mention dyslexia and a subtle reduction in intelligence. Men can also suffer from diminished fertility with age although there is wide individual variation.
I would advise young men and women not to delay getting married and having children. I say this not to be politically correct. I say it in all sincerity because I have enjoyed a happy family life as a daughter and a sister, and I see both my brothers enjoying their own families.
Dr Lee Wei Ling
The writer is director of the National Neuroscience Institute.
http://forums.delphiforums.com/sunkopitiam/messages?msg=26020.1
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