Pandapassport Blog - Life in China
From Dalian, China --- "What are those wacky Dongbei-ren up to today?"
Monday, June 12, 2006
A Tale of Two (Chinese) Titties: Where are all the ladies at?
Ok, sorry. I've just been dying for an excuse to use that title. The first part anyway...
I mentioned a few weeks ago about how when I was flying back to Canada, there were a lot of couples bringing back adopted Chinese babies on my flight - I think at least 7 in total on one plane. But I was reading this article entitled China: Too Many Men, and it made me ask myself - How many of them were girls? And for the life of me, I can't remember seeing any boys in the bunch.
There are, supposedly, 120 men for every 100 women in China. One of the major reasons for this is that sons are traditionally preferred in China, since "it is sons, not daughters, who usually take care of their parents in old age." My Chinese teacher once told us during a lesson that in rural areas, many families feel they need a son to help with the heavy workload on the farm. There's also the question about carrying on the family name to be considered as well.
Well, if anything, this population imbalance definitely produces a market for shows like The Bachelor here in China.
**Note: By the way, has anyone seen this new reality show called Flavor of Love? It's like The Bachelor, but the bachelor in this case is none other than Public Enemy's Flava Flav! That's re-tahded...
Anyway, back to this boy-girl imbalance topic... I did some scholarly research on my own. I searched youtube - which for anyone who doesn't know, is a site where any regular Joe can publish a video on the net. I was curious to see what a search for CHINA + ADOPT would produce. I figured that there would be a ton of proud parents showing off videos of their beautiful new babies. And there were. By the way, congrats to all these families on their new additions.
The point of my experiment: Let's see how many of these babies were girls.
Search results: 36 videos. Here are the first names, which I will list just to show the boy/girl ratio:
Note: I hope I don't infringe on anyone's privacy by listing these first names.
Matthew
Shen
Sarah
Gracie
Aveleen
Tamlyn
Stephanie
Mackenzie
Catherine
Gwendolyn
Alexandria
Mischa
two daughters (no names given)
Kaara
Sophie
Olivia
Emma
Jacob
Zoe
Gwen and Ben
Kiah
one daughter (no name given)
Maia
Harriet
Isabel
daughter (no name)
Final Score: Girls 24, Boys 4
So, are "unwanted" baby girls still a problem in China? Will the "too many men" problem be solved anytime soon? I'm not saying nuthin'...
You be the judge.
By the way, for those of you who came to this site looking for hot asian chicks,click here.
Sorry. Try here. It has dwarves and everything...
Tune in next time, when I once again put the cart before the horse, and write an article just so I can use a title... :)
Tags: pandapassport, adoption, adopt, china, chinese, baby, babies, girls, society, population, life, blog
I mentioned a few weeks ago about how when I was flying back to Canada, there were a lot of couples bringing back adopted Chinese babies on my flight - I think at least 7 in total on one plane. But I was reading this article entitled China: Too Many Men, and it made me ask myself - How many of them were girls? And for the life of me, I can't remember seeing any boys in the bunch.
There are, supposedly, 120 men for every 100 women in China. One of the major reasons for this is that sons are traditionally preferred in China, since "it is sons, not daughters, who usually take care of their parents in old age." My Chinese teacher once told us during a lesson that in rural areas, many families feel they need a son to help with the heavy workload on the farm. There's also the question about carrying on the family name to be considered as well.
Well, if anything, this population imbalance definitely produces a market for shows like The Bachelor here in China.
**Note: By the way, has anyone seen this new reality show called Flavor of Love? It's like The Bachelor, but the bachelor in this case is none other than Public Enemy's Flava Flav! That's re-tahded...
Anyway, back to this boy-girl imbalance topic... I did some scholarly research on my own. I searched youtube - which for anyone who doesn't know, is a site where any regular Joe can publish a video on the net. I was curious to see what a search for CHINA + ADOPT would produce. I figured that there would be a ton of proud parents showing off videos of their beautiful new babies. And there were. By the way, congrats to all these families on their new additions.
The point of my experiment: Let's see how many of these babies were girls.
Search results: 36 videos. Here are the first names, which I will list just to show the boy/girl ratio:
Note: I hope I don't infringe on anyone's privacy by listing these first names.
Matthew
Shen
Sarah
Gracie
Aveleen
Tamlyn
Stephanie
Mackenzie
Catherine
Gwendolyn
Alexandria
Mischa
two daughters (no names given)
Kaara
Sophie
Olivia
Emma
Jacob
Zoe
Gwen and Ben
Kiah
one daughter (no name given)
Maia
Harriet
Isabel
daughter (no name)
Final Score: Girls 24, Boys 4
So, are "unwanted" baby girls still a problem in China? Will the "too many men" problem be solved anytime soon? I'm not saying nuthin'...
You be the judge.
By the way, for those of you who came to this site looking for hot asian chicks,
Sorry. Try here. It has dwarves and everything...
Tune in next time, when I once again put the cart before the horse, and write an article just so I can use a title... :)
Tags: pandapassport, adoption, adopt, china, chinese, baby, babies, girls, society, population, life, blog
8 Comments:
Dalian Info-Search
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One correction, and correct me if you know differently. Chinese women don't take the man's name when they get married. This is according to Mags, whose parents avoided the issue by having the same last name ... and she might avoid it by having a Chinese name (which I could take from her) and an English name (which she could take from me).
The "wanna male" thing is becoming a very "countryside" thing nowadays I think. Inner-city, career-minded individuals want a girl because it's cheaper in the long run (man's parents have to buy the house, the wedding, etc.).
Just to say hi!
But if you look at those videos, you can see that they were all published in the last year.
That tells me, that this problem is not history, but it still very real today.
24 girls. 4 boys.
Those 24 girls may come from the countryside.hehe