[It’s that time of the month again! If you feel like you’re missing any context about China, or there are things you’ve always wanted to know, feel free to ask your questions here, and I’ll do my best to answer them! Thank you guys for all of your support! You have no idea how much I appreciate all of you!]
Under the hashtag #Tradwives seems to be trending in America, a blogger writes, “This tag made me realise that our people’s understanding of American culture is very different from actual mainstream American culture. Of course, this isn’t something wrong with Chinese people. After all, when America spreads its culture around the world, of course they only emphasise the attractive parts. But if you’ve really gotten to know American culture, especially among traditional white people, whether they have money or not, whether they live in New York high rises or Long Island mansions or a big rural village in the south, you’ll find that:
Their family values is practically feudalism with an American spin compared to China’s.
Just before Obama’s time, American mainstream society still thought that in middle-class or higher households, women shouldn’t have to work. At least, they don’t have to get a super competitive job. A lot of middle class white women are like China’s “professional wives”. From the moment they were born, they’ve been learning “ladylike classes”. Even in university, they’ll major in art or history or something. Basically, nobody expects her to find a job. Even if they did get a job, it’s just to pad out their resume, meet more people, and marry well.
I’m not saying that all middle class white women are like this. There’s plenty of them who still work full time, but they still go into less competitive fields, like primary school teacher, or secretary, etc. You can see this in a lot of TV shows, from older ones like The Marvellous Mrs. Maisel, or Charlotte in Sex and the City, or even most of the upper middle class married women in Gossip Girl. Look at their professional career, and you’ll see that they haven’t held many real jobs.
But even though they don’t plan on working, upper class ladies still have to go to a good university, because that’s where you find wealthy guys. Average rural peasant girls are different. If they qualify for scholarships, then fine. If they don’t, then they go to community college, or just get a high school degree, and immediately marry, have kids, and devote themselves to housework, or just help out with family business. Redneck families in the rural south see plenty of 18, 19-year-old marriages.
Oh, also, it’s American custom that the bride pays for the cost of the wedding, whether she pays for it herself or her family does. And since labour is really expensive in America, weddings are really expensive too, and Americans are typically really bad at saving money. A lot of normal families go bankrupt marrying off their daughters. It’s even worse if their daughter demands a dream wedding.
After marriage, a lot of women either stop working or go part-time. Why? Because they have to take care of their family. Labour is expensive in America, and population density is very low (most people move out to the suburbs once they get married, so that kids have more room to play). So normal families, even relatively well-off middle class families, can’t afford to hire nannies or maids the way Chinese families can. In China, if you don’t want to clean up your house, you can easily get a maid service to do it, but that’s very rare in America. And forget nannies (unless you’re as rich as Trump). Everyone’s seen American houses on TV. It’s very big, two floors, big lawn, have to drive into the city to buy groceries. And America likes to bill you for everything, like utilities, so you really need a person to manage household finances, and usually, that’s the wife.
After getting married, most women will have 2-3 children. Some even have 4. Very few people just have 1. “Only child” is a slightly negative term in America, like they think kids like this have a lot of problems. Like, I think they see only children the way we look at the youngest son with three older sisters, you know? Like, there’s something up with that family. So most of them have two kids. Gender doesn’t really matter, but just one kid isn’t good enough.
Because America doesn’t have any federally mandated paid maternity leave, all maternity leave is either state law or benefits in a large company. It’s not very common at all. And American grandparents don’t help with the baby and you can’t afford a nanny, and you get taxed a lot if you’re dual-income, so women, especially local white women, mostly stay at home to take care of the kids. By the time both kids are in kindergarten, 5-6 years will have passed.
What about after the kid starts going to school? Can you go back to work? Sorry, American culture also has another accessory—it has very strict, high standards for what qualifies as a “good mother”. Like, this standard is absolutely ridiculous to me, sometimes. Like, schools will have events every other day, demanding that you bring a cake, and you have to hand make this cake to show your love, or else you’re not a good mom. You can’t even get away with buying an expensive cake from a master chef…
Or, every time your kid goes out to socialise, you have to bring gifts or food, and you have to hand make all of these too, you can’t hire someone else.
Not to mention throwing birthday parties for the kids.
Basically, if you want to be a “good mom” by American standards, there’s no way you can work at the same time too.
Of course, aside from qualifying for a “good mom”, you also have to qualify for a “good wife”, like keeping the house spotless, tasteful decorations and fresh flowers everywhere, your husband’s clothes are always freshly laundered and ironed…
Yeah, America is totally a feudal society.
Of course, a lot of white women dare to be housewives for a reason. The biggest one is the tax system. Your husband’s income and assets are very transparent. So long as you’ve been married for a while or you have kids, if you divorce, not only can you get half his stuff, but you can get a substantial alimony and child support payments. Your standard of living won’t decrease much from when you married. Child support continues until your children come of age, and alimony can be even worse. If you’ve been married for a while, then you get alimony until you get a full-time job or remarry. (Of course, alimony isn’t just from men to women, but it’s mostly men paying it.)
That is to say, so long as you marry a decently wealthy guy in America, being a housewife really is a job, and it probably paid even more than being a civil servant (depending on how wealthy your husband is). Even if you quit, you can get substantial unemployment benefits.
Of course, there’s nothing you can do if you married someone poor, but why would you do that anyways?
In China, none of that exists. You can say that’s a bad thing, but at least for middle class people, I feel like Chinese women are much more “independent” than American women. For example, almost nobody is raising their children to be a professional housewife who isn’t capable of working at all and has to rely on a man.
But this kind of daughter is everywhere among American middle class households. This means there’s a lot of female competition among middle class American people. How bad does it get? Even Ivanka had to change her religion to please her rich husband, and her only special treatment was that she got to keep her own last name after marriage, instead of taking her husbands…
Like, really. Who is the more conservative country here?”
Comments say, “Competition is getting so bad among American middle class professional housewives, especially since society is changing. Everyone’s ideal marriage partner is closer to a comrade they can fight back to back with. It used to be that middle class professional housewives’s preferred husbands were doctors, lawyers, and engineers, and some wanted to marry up to change their social standing. But most just want to find someone who makes roughly the same amount of money as they do, and just reduce the stress of life and the risk of layoffs and economic downturns.”
“I follow some overseas bloggers, and they buy all the cakes they bring to their daughter’s party, and nobody has a problem with it.”
“I had this feeling watching Friends. Like Rachel and her sisters were educated to be tradwives. Monica too. They just want to get married and be a good wife and mother. They’re all from middle class or better families. And the only child Chandler got made fun of a lot for not having siblings.”
Sina News writes, “Morning of the 1st of April, in a community in Chongqing, a woman threw a child out of a 22 story window, and then attempted to throw another child out.
In the video being passed around the internet, a child is dangling out of a high rise window while clinging to a woman. There’s another kid standing next to them. In another clip of the video, the woman throws a child out of the broken window.
According to the local police station, these events were true. Currently, the woman who tossed the children have been taken in by the police and is under investigation. According to insiders, this woman threw her children after having a fight with her mother-in-law.”
Comments say, “Why doesn’t she jump herself? Nobody’s stopping her.”
“Why would you make the children pay for shit the adults did? What an irresponsible family.”
“Oh my god, I can’t imagine how much trauma this other kid must have T_T”
“My mom made fun of the gifts my boyfriend brought when he came over to visit the first time.
Background: My boyfriend is from Meizhou, and I’m from Chaoshan.
He said he wanted to visit me, and his parents misunderstood and thought he was going to see my parents, so they bought a bunch of gifts at the store for him to bring over. He felt too awkward to refuse so he took them over. My family already kinda disapproved of him, and now they’re even more against him once they saw these gifts. They’re all telling me to break up with him ASAP.
I want to ask Meizhou Hakka people, would you really give this kind of gift to your girlfriend’s family when you’re meeting them for the first time? Is this just a regional culture thing?”
In the picture of the gifts, it looks to be a variety of snacks (candy, beef jerky, dried mushrooms, goose feet).
Comments say, “Would you laugh when you saw a bunch of snacks? XD”
“This isn’t a bad gift for classmates or friends, but why would he think this was appropriate for his girlfriend’s parents?”
“He’s this flippant about meeting your parents for the first time? My family’s pretty poor, from a small town, but I would at least bring a case of Moutai, a carton of cigarettes, a case of fruit, a case of milk, a case of sausages, and a case of something else. If you don’t value your girlfriend’s family, even on the first meeting, why would they marry their daughter to you?”
“All three of my friends refused to help me.
My Xianyu account [Chinese Craigslist] got banned, so I wanted to borrow a friend’s phone number to register a new one. Pic 1 is with my gaming buddy, Pic 2 is with my childhood best friend, and pics 3 and 4 are my highschool friends.
I thought they’d agree right away, but I got turned down by three people at the same time, and now I feel bad. Even my roommate that I’ve only known for half a year was willing to help me out. And I’d helped these guys plenty of times in the past too.
Can you guys tell me what’s going on? Am I just really unpopular or something?”
Friend 1: “No.”
OP: “Why?”
Friend 1: “Why can’t you just use your own?”
OP: “I need multiple accounts to file a complaint on this guy. Why can’t you help me?”
Friend 1: “You should go find someone who already has a Xianyu account, because I don’t have one and I don’t want to get one. I’ll never use it.”
OP: “K.”
OP: “Lend me your phone number. Help me out.”
Friend 2: “My phone is broken.”
OP: “[Attempted to call but didn’t get through.]”
Friend 3: “I’m in class! That scared the shit out of me!”
OP: “Once you’re done with class, send me your phone number.”
Friend 3: “…what do you want with it? I don’t wanna.”
OP: “I”m not doing anything bad.”
Friend 3: “What about your roommates? Wouldn’t it be easier to ask them for help?”
OP: “I need a new account. My account for banned.”
Friend 3: “No. You don’t need a new account to file a complaint on someone. Why can’t you use your roommate’s?”
OP: “You could’ve just said no.”
Friend 3: “You’re asking for help. I’m just trying to come up with a solution. Instead of asking me, you should ask your roommates, since they’re closer.”
OP: “K.”
Friend 3: “Don’t tell me you don’t get along with your roommates so they refused to help you.”
OP: “Just go back to class. They already helped me out.”
Friend 3: “K, we’re good then.”
Comments say, “You’re complaining about people on Xianyu, and now you’re on weibo complaining about your friends.”
“Are you asking people for help? You’re demanding it.”
“Every phone number’s registered to someone’s national ID these days. Who the hell would lend you their number? What if you did something illegal with it?”
CCTV news is also reporting on the women who threw her children out of the window. There’s no new information, except a confirmation that the 3-year-old who was tossed out has passed away.
A discussion on fruit:
“Bananas are a very aggressive fruit. You can add like 15 different fruits to your blender, but if you throw in one banana, then it’s a banana smoothie.”
“I feel like anything with a 香 (xiang, “fragrant”) in its name is like this, like bananas, cilantro, mushrooms, red toon…”
“Dragonfruit: What did you just say?””
“We’re talking about flavour, not colour.”
“What if one of those 15 fruits was jujubes?”
“They’re the alphas of the fruit world.”
“But if they’re unaffected by the flavour of any other fruit, wouldn’t they be betas instead?”
“What if there was also durians?”
“Durianana.”
Feidian News is also reporting on the little kids who were tossed out of a window. Nothing new in it that wasn’t covered before though.
A tiktok video of China’s version of latte art:
Comments say, “I’m so curious, how do they do this!? It’s so amazing!”
“I’m just curious what it tastes like? It looks so pretty!”
“It’s sesame paste, almond paste, and walnut paste.”
I've been waiting for another one of these FAQs (thanks for doing these btw)
What I've been really curious about lately is the current state of the humanities (namely literature) in Chinese universities. What do they study and teach? What's the environment like in that sector of academia for students and instructors? I wasn't a humanities student in college. Here in the states, the general attitude among people is that it's frivolous and impractical, so I can't imagine what the perception of that field is like in China. Especially seeing so many posts about people just struggling to survive there
Thanks again
Some questions about Chinese historical dramas:
Why are there always all these refugees around? Were there a lot of refugees historically?
How come you always see New World crops in these dramas, long before the Columbian Exchange? At first I thought it was just a mistake, but it happens so frequently that it seems like it must be a conscious decision, and sometimes it seems like they're deliberately going out of their way to draw attention to these crops.
Why is everyone always falling off cliffs?
In some of the dramas, there's things about various harem members getting larger or smaller amounts of money and competing for the higher allowances/rewards. But what can she possibly spend the money on? She can't leave the harem, men aren't allowed in, and I can't imagine there were a lot of female merchants back then. How can she possibly buy anything?