Chinese Little Girl With Bangs
Adam Makin
Last October, China ended its 35-year-old policy of restricting most urban families to one child. Commonly referred to as the "one-child" policy, the restrictions were actually a collection of rules that governed how many children married couples could have.
Fong explores the wide-ranging impact of what she calls the world's "most radical experiment" in her new book, One Child. She says that among the policy's unintended consequences is an acute gender imbalance.
"When you create a system where you would shrink the size of a family and people would have to choose, then people would ... choose sons," Fong says. "Now China has 30 million more men than women, 30 million bachelors who cannot find brides. ... They call them guang guan, 'broken branches,' that's the name in Chinese. They are the biological dead ends of their family."
"Right now China has a dependency ratio of about five working adults to support one retiree. That's pretty good, that's a very healthy ratio. In about 20 years that's going to jump to about 1.6 working adults to support one retiree," Fong says. "The one-child policy drastically reshaped the composition of China's people. So now they have a population that's basically too old and too male and, down the line, maybe too few."
It means a lot, economically speaking, because a lot of families still don't have any kind of a financial security, so losing one child is basically a pension plan, so that's one thing. For the Chinese, culturally speaking, the continuance of the family line was very important, so when you die without any issue you are basically violating all sorts of duties to your ancestors, which is very important. ... Chinese society is still very family-centric even if it's just a small family size, you're not considered fully an adult until you are married, and you're not considered complete until you have a child, and when you lose that child, you fall quite far down the societal totem pole.
Today in Chinese context there's a name for these people who have lost their only child, it's called shidu, and it means, "parents who've lost their only child." And for parents who are shidu, some of them find it hard to get admitted into nursing homes. Some nursing homes won't take them. They say, "You have no progeny to authorize treatments or payments or anything, so we'd prefer not to admit you." They also have difficulty buying funeral plots for the same reason. Who is going to service the maintenance costs of your cemetery down the line? So these are very sad issues.
They would have some certain exceptions, because they found that they could not make everybody keep to that one-child rule without allowing for certain exceptions. So you could technically have a second child if you had a certain job that was hazardous, like if you were a coal miner or a fisherman. You could also have a second child maybe if you were one of China's minority tribes or if you lived in a rural area and your first child was a girl and they recognize that a lot of people want to try for sons. But the end result was that with all of these exceptions coming down the line, a lot of people didn't really necessarily know what the rules were, so it was very easy to contravene them and be fined for them.
The one-child policy drastically reshaped the composition of China's people. So now they have a population that's basically too old and too male and down the line, maybe too few. So the too old issue is that right now China has a dependency ratio of about five working adults to support one retiree. That's pretty good, that's a very healthy ratio. In about 20 years that's going to jump to about 1.6 working adults to support one retiree, and that's because that big population boom that we talked about, that big cohort of people are all living longer and getting older and therefore hitting their 70s, 80s and 90s, so by the time 2050 comes around one in four Chinese people will be a retiree.
The entire population of retirees in China would be the third largest nation in this world, if they were to form their own country. So that has nothing to do with the one-child policy, that's just a function of people living longer and growing older, but the problem is then you have this very small working cohort to support that, and that has everything to do with the one-child policy. You just drastically shrank the number of working adults who support this huge, aging tsunami and that's the problem going ahead.
But later in the 1990s, technology made it easier for people to do all these scans and companies like General Electric made these scanning machines that were portable and small enough that you could go from village to village and you could determine the sex of your fetus ... for as little as $10 or $20, so people would just have an abortion instead of carrying a child to full term. ... The Nobel economist Amartya Sen estimated there were about 100 million missing women, women that were never born or killed or aborted across Asia.
Let's say you were born after 1980 in a big city, chances are you probably don't have a sibling. And if you're a girl and you don't have a sibling, you don't have to fight with your sibling for resources. So your parents will want to send you to college. They won't be debating a question of whether they should spend the money on your brother or yourself; it's all for you. So imagine this scenario replicated a million times over and the end result is urban women born after 1980 achieved way more than any other generation before them.
When the Communists first came into town, the parish priest started to feel uneasy about his fate not knowing how the intruders would act. During each day that passed, he paid keen attention to every din or commotion that transpired outside the church as he knelt in prayer inside. He was on edge expecting to be executed at any moment.
Just a day after the unwelcome band of soldiers arrived, someone paid him a visit. Thinking it was the police, he was struck with terror. Could this be his end? But contrary to his worst fears, the man at the door turned out to be cordial. As they conversed in Chinese, he was told to proceed with his daily routine. As they parted, his guest accepted a cigar, bowed and eventually left seemingly contented.
Days, weeks and months passed without any untoward incident. He would run into soldiers in the streets but they would only look at him with a straight, cold face but not without a dose of curiosity. Once, he felt perturbed when a certain inspector dropped by to see him.
The inspector announced to the shocked schoolchildren that sweeping and drastic changes would be implemented from then on. In one fell swoop, the fearsome commander and his cohorts began tearing down the crucifix, holy pictures, blackboards and statues from the walls and laid them on the desks.
In a stentorian voice, he barked orders at the terrified children to put the articles in a box and to take them to the toilet while he threatened them with his handgun. In spite of the harsh treatment, the children resisted but eventually complied reluctantly.
Then the soldiers rushed on to the tabernacle and forced it opened with their revolvers. The tense crowd watched in silent disbelief. The inspector seized the ciborium, took the lid off and scattered the Hosts on the sanctuary floor.
A non-commissioned officer then entered the scene who spoke with the inspector. They reached an agreement and the inspector submitted to higher authority. The crowd was told to disperse leaving the little girl alone in the communion rail.
But alas, the day of final reckoning arrived. As the little heroine went through her daily pious exercise one morning; knees bent, hands folded and absorbed in deep prayer, the church door behind her burst open. Tumultuous screams stirred the air and a shot rang out.
As the priest hurriedly looked through his peephole, he saw the pallid little girl crawl agonizingly along the floor as she reached a Host to receive Holy Communion. When the soldier drew near to check on her, she tried in vain to pull herself up and to fold her hands. Instead she fell on her back and hit her head on the floor with a thud. The little Chinese girl-martyr lay dead motionless on the floor. For a moment, the soldier stood hesitant not knowing what to make of his deed and its fatal outcome. Finally, he turned around and stormed out of the church.
The moving yet harrowing scene left the priest in a state of shock. While he pondered on that painful experience, his prison door opened and the same soldier went in to announce that he was free to go.
Fortunately, the priest still had time to give the little martyr a decent burial. As he left the cemetery and walked along the road, a man approached and invited him into his car. He dropped him off at the border.
Alongside these rhythms echoed a unique linguistic symphony, where many notes struck were Chinese nicknames. The Chinese term of endearment, the affectionate calling of someone's name, held more than just a literal meaning, making it an important aspect in building connections and relationships, whether with a romantic relationship for a Chinese girl or boyfriend or platonic relationship.
This simple act metamorphoses into a rich tapestry of affectionate phrases, humor, and cultural identifiers in China. These names, or nicknames, are a significant part of the Chinese language's richness.
This article will explore some of the most popular Chinese nicknames and understand their ubiquity and relevance in Chinese culture's grand scheme, akin to the many dialects forming the Chinese version of a linguistic symphony.
In Chinese culture, referring to your boyfriend by a special term of endearment can create a deeper bond and express your affection. Chinese nicknames range from romantic to playful, each carrying a unique sentiment. Interestingly, the literal meanings of these nicknames often have a deeper or different significance in a relationship context.
You'll find incredibly sweet, affectionate, or humorous terms when it comes to Chinese nicknames for girlfriends. Many Chinese nicknames for a girlfriend highlight the most cherished traits, creating a unique, intimate language between the couple. It is also not uncommon for a Chinese nickname to be a variation of a traditional Chinese name.
c80f0f1006