Read the online article by clicking the link below:
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/350257/changing_gender_roles_show_in_latest.html
Read the full artcle here:
Real Men DO Wear Pink
By Karyn Campbell
Published Aug 22, 2007
Fifteen-year-old Hiroshi lounged at the family dinner table in the fuzzy glow of a pastel pink sweat suit -- accented with a sparkling pink hair barrette. Like most adolescents in Japan, Hiroshi was glued to a cell phone -- a metallic pink one covered with bling bling.
A typical teen anywhere in the world, right?
Right.
Except for one thing. Hiroshi is a boy.
The feminine colors are decidedly not worn to make a statement about sexual preference, but the latest fashion craze among young Japanese men.
Masculinity and femininity have never been as wide apart in Japan as in the west. For hundreds of years, the basic garment for both men and women has been a kimono, for example. Even in modern times, gender differences have been limited. A study done in the year 2000 showed that Japanese men and women didn't score differently on a western scale of what is feminine, but the color pink was still reserved for little girls.
The latest craze for pink in men's fashions is part of the changing gender roles in Japan, according to an article in the Washington Post from September 2005. Not only are more women entering the work force, but more men are embracing their feminine sides. There's even a chain of spas for men, called, aptly enough, "Dandy House" where men can get facials, undergo weight-loss programs and get their eyebrows plucked.
The article quoted Marco Shimomura, VP of Dandy House: "Japan has never really stressed the concept of being macho in a Western sense, but what we find now is that men are actively seeking the soft and smooth look that is considered so attractive now. They aren't scared of getting their hairs plucked. And believe me, it hurts."
In fact, the second most popular cosmetics line in Japan is Mandom, which combines the words, "man" and "freedom." The bulk of Mandom's customers are not those with wrinkles and other facial flaws that might need some cosmetic correction, but 15 to 25-year olds embracing Japan's obsession with "kawaii" or over-the-top cuteness.
"Right now, the emphasis is on 'pretty', and nice, delicate men are in style," said Mayu Shimokawa, chief manager of product promotions at Mandom, in an article from China Daily published in August 2007. "Masculine men don't seem as young. Men who fight, men who try really hard and exert themselves seem old and outdated."
In fact, Japanese women find feminine men attractive. "Japan's latest heartthrobs are a far cry from the American masculine ideal of stoic, stubble-cheeked muscle men," the article stated. "Slender, smooth-faced and androgynous stars such as singer-actor Takuya Kimura, or Kimutaku as he's affectionately known, routinely top popularity polls among women, and men in Japan are taking note."
In fact, Kimutaku is the face of Mandom cosmetics. In one TV ad he wears frilled silk pajamas and twirls wavy shoulder-length hair while making faces in a vanity mirror.
In another male cosmetics ad, Actor Shido Nakamura also glances at himself coyly in a bathroom mirror. The married father gently plays with a calla lily while applying lotion under soft lighting.
Even the Yakuza, the Japanese mafia, has softened its image. According to the Washington Post article, members have taken to wearing pink women's sandals and floral-patterned shirts while on their nightly prowls. No one knows why.
Nagami Kishi, head of the Research Institute for People and Corporations, says the trend was caused by the Japanese ethic of overwork prevalent since the post-war economic bubble. When fathers are absent at work 14 hours per day, six days per week, boys are left with the feminizing influence of mamas, sisters and aunties.
"When I was young, we were trained not to cry," said Kishi, who grew up in the late 1930s, "but nowadays, men in their twenties freely express their emotions and cry even in front of women," he added. "Young Japanese men are gentle, shy and sensitive; they've turned into a bunch of . . . mama's boys."
Monday, July 21, 2008
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Landscaping tips for upstate SC and Charlotte, NC
Published at AssociatedContent.com on June 14, 2008
Read the article online here:
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/821959/landscaping_tips_for_upstate_south.html?cat=32
Read the text of the story below:
Just as a lovely picture is enhanced with the appropriate frame, landscaping provides a border to embellish a beautiful home.
Even if you have a small budget, landscaping can add something for all the senses -- greenery for the eyes, blossoms for the nose and water fountains for the ears.
“You don’t have to do it all at once,” said local landscaper Ken Plyler. Your landscape design can be a work in progress. The most important thing, he said, is to have good anchor plants on the corners. He suggested Nelly Stevens or Foster hollies as focal plants. “You need something substantial on the corners,” said Plyler, owner of Ken Plyler Landscaping in Lancaster. After that you can lie out the beds and do even more if your budget allows.
When considering your landscaping plan, first determine whether the space gets morning or afternoon sun. This dictates the type of plants to use. With morning sun, there are more options, Plyler said, since only hardy plants can take hot afternoon sun. If your landscaping space gets that burning late-day sun, Plyler suggested using plants like hollies and juniper. If you are working with morning sun, try dwarf gardenias or spreading yew.
Even if your area is in the shade, you can use a shade-loving plant like hostas. “People like those,” said Plyler. “They come up in the spring with a delicate leaf,” he said, describing the plant. Linda Tominson of backyardgardener.com, points out that plants grow more slowly in the shade so you will want to get large plants. “Plants often grow differently in the shade and some experimentation with size and blooming times are in order,” she said on her Website.
One of the most popular blooms for shady areas in South Carolina are azaleas, according to Clemson University’s Home and Garden Information Center website. However, they don’t do well in heavy shade. Try planting them under pine trees since the filtered shade and acidic soil are ideal conditions for growth, according to the Website. Don’t plant them under trees like maple, ash and oaks with shallow roots since the trees and plants will both compete for moisture and nutrients.
Kip Beam of the Clemson Extension Service said the first thing to keep in mind when choosing plants is accessibility. “I could give you a list of 1,000 plants, but it will do no good if they are not available,” he said. He suggested looking at plants, choosing the ones you like and then cross-referencing them with a book. He recommends “Landscape Plants of the Southeast” by Gordon Halfacre. “I reference it all the time,” he said. The book divides plants by height, deciduous versus evergreen, acid-loving, water-loving, sun or shade plants and much more.
Another excellent reference is the Clemson extension Home and Garden Information Center Website (http://HGIC.Clemson.edu), which contains detailed information on how to plant flowers, vegetables, container gardens, and special gardens that will attract butterflies or birds.
Plyler agreed that many do-it-yourselfers choose the wrong type of foliage. “You can spend a lot of time and expense with plants that aren’t conducive to your particular lawn,” he said.
Another thing to keep in mind are the growth habits of the plants you’re using. For example, many people will force plants with unruly growth patterns into rigid shapes. “You can’t make one plant look like another,” said Plyler. “Each plant has its own beauty.” For example, yellow bells (Forsythia) have a rugged natural shape, but many homeowners round them off like shrubs, forcing them into an unnatural shape. “I don’t want to offend anyone who does that,” said Plyler, but he likes to maintain the natural shape. “The beauty of those plants is the way they grow,” he said. He suggested, instead, choosing a plant like Carissa holly, which is good for shaping.
Another plant that is often forced into an unnatural shape is the Magnolia, he said. Although many people like to cut them high so the trees have long trunks with no branches, Plyler prefers the natural beauty of the low-hanging branches. He pointed out that with such a variety of trees available, it is easy to simply choose a different type of tree with the natural shape you want.
Probably the most important thing to keep in mind when choosing plants is the type of soil they will be growing in. “I had a customer who planted shrubs two years in a row and two years in a row they died, so he called me,” said Plyler. The problem was the soil.
“People don’t consider the type of soil in their lawn,” he said. “You need to consider that before planting things,” he added, mentioning the red clay in this area. “You have to do something to it so plants will look good,” he said. “You can amend the soil.”
Although this may sound complicated, it simply involves adding mushroom compost, topsoil or fertilizer. And that’s what Plyler learned to do when he took a horticulture course at York Tec. “There’s so much to learn to do it the right way,” he said. “It’s been very valuable.”
Plyler’s dedication to his work shows in his customer service policy. Not only does he design and create a landscape, he shows clients how to maintain it as well. “They can pick up the phone and ask any time,” he said. “I could have done the landscaping job four years ago and I still support you.” Just like any artist, Plyler takes pride in what he does. “It’s my work and I would rather it continue to look its best,” he said.
You don’t have to be wealthy to take advantage of the expertise of a landscaper. Plyler works with clients who want a complete landscaping overhaul all at once, those who want the work done bit by bit on a budget and those who just want some advice on a small space.
“Small places are wonderful,” he said. “You can take a small amount of money and make a small place look wonderful.” He even designs balcony gardens for apartment dwellers. He suggests using ivy, which works well in planters, and pansies in the fall and winter. Beam said the Home and Garden Website has a leaflet on container gardening that can be downloaded free. It has general rules of thumb for growing vegetables, flowers or plants in containers outside or indoors.
Planters are not just for balconies, either, according to Plyler, who uses them in his designs. Not only do they allow creativity in choosing the planters themselves, they add variety since the plants can be changed seasonally. “You can stay hands-on even if you have limited time,” he said. Just be sure to add particles that absorb and hold moisture since potted plants dry out more quickly than those planted in your back yard.
Some other special situations that need individual attention are homeowners with pools or small children. For example, when landscaping around a pool, you don’t want anything that looses leaves. “They create a pool maintenance problem,” said Plyler, mentioning a client who had a pool and a crepe myrtle plant. Those with pools should use evergreens that don’t lose leaves in the fall. Another good design element is stones. “They’re wonderful around a pool because the wind won’t pick them up,” said Plyler.
Families with children want to avoid using plants that have sharp leaves or thorns such as barberries and certain kinds of hollies. “They have sharp thorns, “ said Plyler. “I get scratched up when I put them in.”
Although water features are trendy, many people are wary of them because they can attract mosquitoes, said Plyler. Beam pointed out that the water in a birdbath needs to be changed at least one a week so it won’t grow stagnant.
“People install them and don’t take care of them, then uninstall them because they look bad,” said Beam. BT pellets, which kill bacteria, should be used with any garden feature that incorporates water. Beam also pointed out that there are mosquito-eating fish that can be added to garden ponds.
He thinks people may be worried about standing water after last year’s flooding. “We had 50 inches of rain in the first six months,” he said. Small mud puddles turned into large ponds and the BT pellets didn’t work. Rather than using pesticides, which can run off into the soil, Beam said mosquito fish is the way to go. The Home and Garden Website has information on where to get these fish, he said.
Read the article online here:
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/821959/landscaping_tips_for_upstate_south.html?cat=32
Read the text of the story below:
Just as a lovely picture is enhanced with the appropriate frame, landscaping provides a border to embellish a beautiful home.
Even if you have a small budget, landscaping can add something for all the senses -- greenery for the eyes, blossoms for the nose and water fountains for the ears.
“You don’t have to do it all at once,” said local landscaper Ken Plyler. Your landscape design can be a work in progress. The most important thing, he said, is to have good anchor plants on the corners. He suggested Nelly Stevens or Foster hollies as focal plants. “You need something substantial on the corners,” said Plyler, owner of Ken Plyler Landscaping in Lancaster. After that you can lie out the beds and do even more if your budget allows.
When considering your landscaping plan, first determine whether the space gets morning or afternoon sun. This dictates the type of plants to use. With morning sun, there are more options, Plyler said, since only hardy plants can take hot afternoon sun. If your landscaping space gets that burning late-day sun, Plyler suggested using plants like hollies and juniper. If you are working with morning sun, try dwarf gardenias or spreading yew.
Even if your area is in the shade, you can use a shade-loving plant like hostas. “People like those,” said Plyler. “They come up in the spring with a delicate leaf,” he said, describing the plant. Linda Tominson of backyardgardener.com, points out that plants grow more slowly in the shade so you will want to get large plants. “Plants often grow differently in the shade and some experimentation with size and blooming times are in order,” she said on her Website.
One of the most popular blooms for shady areas in South Carolina are azaleas, according to Clemson University’s Home and Garden Information Center website. However, they don’t do well in heavy shade. Try planting them under pine trees since the filtered shade and acidic soil are ideal conditions for growth, according to the Website. Don’t plant them under trees like maple, ash and oaks with shallow roots since the trees and plants will both compete for moisture and nutrients.
Kip Beam of the Clemson Extension Service said the first thing to keep in mind when choosing plants is accessibility. “I could give you a list of 1,000 plants, but it will do no good if they are not available,” he said. He suggested looking at plants, choosing the ones you like and then cross-referencing them with a book. He recommends “Landscape Plants of the Southeast” by Gordon Halfacre. “I reference it all the time,” he said. The book divides plants by height, deciduous versus evergreen, acid-loving, water-loving, sun or shade plants and much more.
Another excellent reference is the Clemson extension Home and Garden Information Center Website (http://HGIC.Clemson.edu), which contains detailed information on how to plant flowers, vegetables, container gardens, and special gardens that will attract butterflies or birds.
Plyler agreed that many do-it-yourselfers choose the wrong type of foliage. “You can spend a lot of time and expense with plants that aren’t conducive to your particular lawn,” he said.
Another thing to keep in mind are the growth habits of the plants you’re using. For example, many people will force plants with unruly growth patterns into rigid shapes. “You can’t make one plant look like another,” said Plyler. “Each plant has its own beauty.” For example, yellow bells (Forsythia) have a rugged natural shape, but many homeowners round them off like shrubs, forcing them into an unnatural shape. “I don’t want to offend anyone who does that,” said Plyler, but he likes to maintain the natural shape. “The beauty of those plants is the way they grow,” he said. He suggested, instead, choosing a plant like Carissa holly, which is good for shaping.
Another plant that is often forced into an unnatural shape is the Magnolia, he said. Although many people like to cut them high so the trees have long trunks with no branches, Plyler prefers the natural beauty of the low-hanging branches. He pointed out that with such a variety of trees available, it is easy to simply choose a different type of tree with the natural shape you want.
Probably the most important thing to keep in mind when choosing plants is the type of soil they will be growing in. “I had a customer who planted shrubs two years in a row and two years in a row they died, so he called me,” said Plyler. The problem was the soil.
“People don’t consider the type of soil in their lawn,” he said. “You need to consider that before planting things,” he added, mentioning the red clay in this area. “You have to do something to it so plants will look good,” he said. “You can amend the soil.”
Although this may sound complicated, it simply involves adding mushroom compost, topsoil or fertilizer. And that’s what Plyler learned to do when he took a horticulture course at York Tec. “There’s so much to learn to do it the right way,” he said. “It’s been very valuable.”
Plyler’s dedication to his work shows in his customer service policy. Not only does he design and create a landscape, he shows clients how to maintain it as well. “They can pick up the phone and ask any time,” he said. “I could have done the landscaping job four years ago and I still support you.” Just like any artist, Plyler takes pride in what he does. “It’s my work and I would rather it continue to look its best,” he said.
You don’t have to be wealthy to take advantage of the expertise of a landscaper. Plyler works with clients who want a complete landscaping overhaul all at once, those who want the work done bit by bit on a budget and those who just want some advice on a small space.
“Small places are wonderful,” he said. “You can take a small amount of money and make a small place look wonderful.” He even designs balcony gardens for apartment dwellers. He suggests using ivy, which works well in planters, and pansies in the fall and winter. Beam said the Home and Garden Website has a leaflet on container gardening that can be downloaded free. It has general rules of thumb for growing vegetables, flowers or plants in containers outside or indoors.
Planters are not just for balconies, either, according to Plyler, who uses them in his designs. Not only do they allow creativity in choosing the planters themselves, they add variety since the plants can be changed seasonally. “You can stay hands-on even if you have limited time,” he said. Just be sure to add particles that absorb and hold moisture since potted plants dry out more quickly than those planted in your back yard.
Some other special situations that need individual attention are homeowners with pools or small children. For example, when landscaping around a pool, you don’t want anything that looses leaves. “They create a pool maintenance problem,” said Plyler, mentioning a client who had a pool and a crepe myrtle plant. Those with pools should use evergreens that don’t lose leaves in the fall. Another good design element is stones. “They’re wonderful around a pool because the wind won’t pick them up,” said Plyler.
Families with children want to avoid using plants that have sharp leaves or thorns such as barberries and certain kinds of hollies. “They have sharp thorns, “ said Plyler. “I get scratched up when I put them in.”
Although water features are trendy, many people are wary of them because they can attract mosquitoes, said Plyler. Beam pointed out that the water in a birdbath needs to be changed at least one a week so it won’t grow stagnant.
“People install them and don’t take care of them, then uninstall them because they look bad,” said Beam. BT pellets, which kill bacteria, should be used with any garden feature that incorporates water. Beam also pointed out that there are mosquito-eating fish that can be added to garden ponds.
He thinks people may be worried about standing water after last year’s flooding. “We had 50 inches of rain in the first six months,” he said. Small mud puddles turned into large ponds and the BT pellets didn’t work. Rather than using pesticides, which can run off into the soil, Beam said mosquito fish is the way to go. The Home and Garden Website has information on where to get these fish, he said.
New Year's Health Resolutions for Mothers and Daughters
Read the article online here:
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/460166/resolutions_for_motherdaughter_new.html?cat=5
Read the full article below:
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/460166/resolutions_for_motherdaughter_new.html?cat=5
Read the full article below:
I don’t know what happened to the healthy lifestyle I used to stick to, but I think it got lost somewhere in the hectic whirlwind of being a working, single mother. However, now, more than ever, I need to get back to eating vegetables and exercising since my daughter is faithfully following my slothful example.
The good news is that it’s easier to make lifestyle changes when you have a buddy and I can kill two birds with one stone by sharing healthy experiences with my daughter. Not only will we both become healthier, but we can spend time together and motivate each other.
Rather than making well-meaning resolutions that will be broken before you start, why not try these eight activities with your daughter to have a healthier year in 2008?
Get moving together every day
You can do something as simple as walking every day after dinner or going for an afternoon bike ride. If your daughter isn’t walking yet, strap her into the baby carriage or invest in a bicycle stroller. Not only will you entertain your bored child, you will spend quality time together and you may even lose some weight. For a change of pace you can stroll through the park, walk around downtown or window shop at the mall (just be sure you walk at a steady pace without stopping for 20 minutes at a time to get the maximum aerobic benefits.)
Sign up for an exercise class together.
Don’t settle for watching her practice ballet or fly on the uneven bars at gymnastics (although these activities are great and she should continue doing them). Find something you both enjoy. My daughter is interested in martial arts and I know some dojos have classes for both adults and kids. You may even be able to start out in a class together, but don’t be surprised when your daughter zips ahead of you in skills. When she does, let her move on at her own pace, but continue going to your own class. Not only will you make new adult friends, but you and your daughter will have something special in common.
Cook together
My daughter is a picky eater and it’s almost impossible to get her to eat vegetables – unless she prepares them herself. One of her favorites is my famous corn casserole which you can make together.
Here’s my recipe: Have your daughter pour two cans of creamed corn and two cans of regular corn into a large casserole dish. Next, add about one cup of grated cheddar cheese. You may want to supervise the grating to make sure that little ones don’t cut their fingers, but most kids love watching the sold chunk of cheese transform into crumbles. In a separate bowl, help your daughter break open two eggs. If a few egg shells fall in, just fish them out before beating them. Pour that into your casserole and stir it all together. You can also add some chopped onion or green pepper if you want some extra flavoring. Finally, get out a box of saltines and crush about two cups of them on top. You child will have a blast doing this part. Melt some butter in the microwave (make sure you let your child push the buttons to program it) and carefully drizzle that on top. Put the whole thing in a 350 degree oven for about 45 minutes and take it to your next potluck gathering. You child will be thrilled to hear people praising this delicious creation that she helped make.
De-stress together
Watch your favorite chick flick. I’ll admit that when they are in pre-school this can be a little challenging, but I enjoyed reliving my childhood through such timeless favorites as Mary Poppins and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Now that she’s in second grade, it’s even more fun as she is beginning to graduate to mild comedies like Look Who’s Talking and My Big Fat Greek Wedding. In addition to busting stress, watching movies together allows you to explore topics with your child like the meaning of family, making good choices, how to handle hard times and more.
There are many ways you can show your child the joys of vegging out in a healthy way. Take her to your favorite bookstore and introduce her to the joys of reading. Most of them have an area for kids to play in and coffee shops for you to relax in even if you don’t actually buy a book. Use the time to find out what’s going on in her life and share a personal story or experience. Have a girls’ night where you give each other facials and pedicures while all the men in the family are gone. Listen to some classical music together. Studies show that classical music is good for children’s brains. Get your little baby Einstein started early.
Take her to a health screening
We’re not talking about bringing her in for your annual pap smear, but why not take her when you get checked for your new glasses? My daughter was fascinated with all the gadgets our optometrist used to peer into my retina and test my vision. Who knows? It may even have sparked her curiosity to work in the health field one day. And don’t forget to keep her up to date on her own immunizations and screenings. Learn what screening tests and immunizations you both need at http://www.4woman.gov/tools/#screenings.
Sing together
When my daughter was a preschooler, I nurtured her fascination with music from the Disney princess movies by singing these songs with her almost every night as part of her bed time routine. Recent studies have shown that music develops the left side of the brain involved with processing language. There is also a link between music and “spatial intelligence,” the ability to perceive things accurately. This kind of intelligence is critical for activities from packing a book bag to solving advanced mathematics problems. You can find the lyrics for almost every song, ranging from popular childhood favorites like Three Blind Mice to today’s latest hits free online. Try lyrics.com for your favorites.
Take a safety quiz together
My daughter isn’t quite ready for this yet, but if yours is an adolescent, visit http://www.girlshealth.gov/safety/index.htm for quizzes on safety in relationships, in cyberspace and on the street. Girls can find out the definition of cyberbullying, why some people are violent and how to get out of an unhealthy relationship by taking quizzes and reading stories geared toward teens. If you do it together, you can discuss specific relationships with your child, ask pertinent questions and listen to her concerns.
Visit a a healthy website for women
Try http://www.4woman.gov/, which was developed by the Department of Health and Human Services' Office on Women's Health. You can discover updates to clinical trials, health highlights for the week and daily health tips. Your daughter can click on http://www.4girls.gov and go to a website focusing on health concerns for adolescents ranging from the safety site mentioned above to teen topics such as body, fitness, peer pressure, suicide, self-esteem, nutrition, bullying, relationships or drugs and alcohol. The interactive, user-friend format will be attractive to today’s My Space generation.
Monday, September 10, 2007
China's one-child policy -- an insider's perspective
Read the story online here:
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/355978/chinas_one_child_policy_leads_to_adoption.html
Read the text of the story below:
China's One Child Policy Leads to Adoption of Thousands of Orphans in the U.S.
A Mixture of Incredible Pain and Unbelievable Joy
By Karyn Campbell
Published Aug 28, 2007
Rating: Currently 4.50/5
I sat in my hotel room in Nanning, China, listening to the cry of a baby in the hallway. Unable to remain still, I was propelled through the doorway. To my right another American woman was rolling film of a Chinese toddler walking toward her new daddy. On the left, an infant wailed as she was assaulted by the chilly air of a western-style hotel in June, the strange smell of foreigners and the unfamiliar cadence of an alien language.
Through the confusion, I heard what I had been waiting for."De Yang," a young man called softly. He stepped out of the room across the hall, holding a 9-month-old infant.I stepped forward, anxiously looking at the baby's face. Did it match the picture I had received in the mail two months earlier? She was sleeping so I couldn't tell about the eyes, but there was no mistaking that rosebud mouth. I had memorized it night after night while looking at her photo.I held out my arms to receive her from the gentle hands of our Chinese guide.
"She's very tired after her long day," he explained softly. I nodded and glided back to my hotel room, savoring the moment I had been anticipating for more than a year. The confusion of giddy parents and frightened children faded like a blurred photograph with a focus on the central figure: Yuan De Yang. A product of the one-child policy.
For our family, China's one-child policy is more than a political phenomenon to be studied dispassionately. It is infinitely important. It's impossible for those of us who are intimately involved with this policy to look at it objectively. As with many things in life, it is a mixture of incredible pain and unbelievable joy.
About 10 years ago, I read an article about Chinese orphanages overflowing with baby girls. In the 20th century, thousands of babies were dying every month because there wasn't enough milk to feed them.
As I read about the history of these babies, I understood how Chairman Mao's policies, including the one-child policy, had actually led to the abandonment of thousands of children, mostly girls, every month. To really understand the one-child policy, you have to start many years before it was even conceived back to the late 1950s, when Mao was in the height of his power. From 1958 to 1960, Mao implemented a program called the "Great Leap Forward." China had always been a populous nation and Mao wanted to use all those people to bring the country into the industrial age along with the rest of the world.
He thought that if China produced a lot of steel, it would develop like the western world had so he put everyone, even farmers, to work producing steel. Meanwhile, the fields were not being planted and harvested. Food was rotting in the fields.
To add insult to injury, Mao knew nothing about metallurgy and he thought that pots, pans and other scrap materials could be melted down in backyard steel furnaces. Unfortunately, the results were worthless "pig iron."
So the Chinese people had iron, but they couldn't use it or sell it. They had grain, but no one had harvested it. In addition, local officials were pressured to report record harvests to justify the Great Leap Forward. These falsified reports were used to determine how much grain would be exported, leaving nothing for the local people. The result: famine. Starvation. The official death toll from famine during the Great Leap Forward is 14 million, but those outside China have estimated it closer to 43 million.
Because of this inadequate food supply and China's traditional problem with overpopulation, a birth control campaign was proposed in 1962, but it was never carried out. Then Mao's next great idea was born: the Cultural Revolution. Anyone with even a minimal knowledge of Chinese history is familiar with this period of time in the 1960s when values were turned upside down. Red Guard students beat their teachers to death with government approval. Intellectuals were sent from the cities to live in the countryside to get a taste of peasant life. These doctors, philosophers and merchants were set to farming: something they were not equipped to do by nature or training. More crop failures. More starvation.
In the 1970s, the idea of family planning cropped up again. China's official position about birth control was, "one child is ideal, two are enough, three are too many." But this wishful thinking wasn't enough to keep the population of China from overtaking the amount of food available. Even those of us who hate the one-child policy have to admit that China had a huge problem. No matter how much food the country produced, its citizens produced too many children. Even with zero population growth, when every couple has no more than two children, there wouldn't be enough food for everyone. Something had to be done to get the population "growth" to negative numbers, which meant that two people had to have less than two children.
In 1979, China instituted the one-child policy which basically limited couples to only one child. In actuality, the policy only applies to the majority Han Chinese living in cities. People from ethnic minorities or those living in the countryside could have more than one child. The first policy was a temporary emergency measure to be in place for five years. But every five years, it is reviewed and carried forward again. The current five-year planning period runs until 2010.
Over the years the policy has been modified and today if both partners are only-children, they are allowed to have more than one child. As always, people in rural areas and minorities are not held to the one-child rule.
The policy has been pretty effective. In a country of 1.3 billion, the population has gone down by 300 million in the last 20 years. Unfortunately, most of that reduction has been in baby girls. While the normal ratio is 105 males for every 100 females born, in China it is 114 to 100.
Most Americans are aware of this. "Oh she's lucky her parents didn't kill her," whispers a strange woman to me in the grocery store.
"They don't like girls in China," comments a cashier as she hands me a receipt.
WRONG! They love girls in China.
It's hard for those of us living in the freedom of American democracy to understand the no-win situation facing prospective parents in China.
Imagine you make $5,000 per year. You work in your parent's neighborhood store, selling vegetables, gum and soap to the neighbors. You have two rooms with electricity during daytime hours when the city government turns on the generators, but you don't have running water.
You fall in love, get married, and like newlyweds everywhere you plan to start a family. Your first child is a beautiful raisin-eyed girl and you fall in love with her as she takes her first breath. You would gladly give your life for her. You know it will be hard as she grows up. Traditionally, Chinese women leave their birth families when they get married. The oldest son has centuries of tradition pressuring him to take care of his parents in his old age. But the responsibility actually falls on his wife, who became a part of his family when she got married. In fact, in some rural areas of China, when the bride marries someone far away, she never sees her family again. Girls have always been raised to belong to someone else's family. You know you will only have her for a few precious years before she is gone forever.
Although your country has a one-child policy, you know that people often have two children. It's a matter of hiding the pregnancy from the local population control authorities, so when your wife gets pregnant again, you are guardedly happy. You and your parents have saved enough money to pay the $10,000 fine - two year's salary - for having a second child. But what if it's another girl?
You have no way of knowing. Ultrasounds to determine sex are illegal in your country, but abortions are free and encouraged. In fact, if your local population control authority finds out your wife is pregnant, she may force her to have an abortion, even up to term. You know people who have been caught and taken to the hospital for abortions. Or worse. Some people have left their newborn girls to die because they don't have money to pay the fine. Others quietly hold a blanket over the little girl's nose, preventing her from taking her first breaths.
As much as you love girls, you simply can't afford another one. Your family has sacrificed money to pay the fine, but only if the second child is a boy. You already have one girl you are bringing up to be a daughter in someone else's house. You can't do it again. What will happen to you and your wife in your old age if you don't have a son to take care of you? Who will care for you when you can't care for yourself? You may end up in the social welfare institution alone, dirty, sick and in pain.
So you send your wife off to visit distant relatives in the countryside. No one there knows she already has a child and she should be safe, as long as she stays out of the spotlight. You take your daughter to the family store with you every day, your heart heavy as you watch her playing in a corner.
When your wife comes back six months later, your heart silently breaks as you watch her get off the train alone. You don't ask any questions. You understand the despair she must have felt when your second daughter was born. Did she cry when she saw the raisin eyes of another daughter? Did she let anyone go with her as she crept through the night to the local market, waiting for daybreak? Did she quickly find a spot in the crowded market to place the basket containing the precious bundle? Did her heart beat with anxiety as she snuck around a corner, watching until someone found the child of her body? Did the tears fall as she sobbed a silent farewell in her heart?
You never discuss it, but you understand all too well when your wife hungrily searches the features of infants in the arms of Westerners, taking them to America forever. You can never tell anyone about your second daughter. It is illegal to abandon a child in China. And the punishment is severe.
And when your wife gives birth to her second official child -- a boy -- you show no emotion as you fill out the paperwork. Child number two, you write without hesitation. You make arrangements to pay the fine and you raise your children: a daughter for someone else's parents and a son for you.
You never talk about it, but you are sure your wife is also dreaming of a raven-haired child living with blonde strangers. You see her almond skin next to a white hand, leading her through babyhood, through school days and into adulthood. You will never forget this unspoken member of your family. You have done the best you could. For the good of China. Through your sacrifice others will live. It is enough. It has to be.
This is the reality of the one-child policy. It's not about 1 million girls who are abandoned in China each year. It is about the one girl who was left in the market on a warm day in September. It is about one birth mother who had to do the unthinkable. It is about one blonde westerner waiting in the immigration line to leave Hong Kong with a nine-month-old girl with raisin eyes snuggled to her chest. It's about one child who will grow up wondering why her birthparents didn't want her.
For the good of China.
I hope so.
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/355978/chinas_one_child_policy_leads_to_adoption.html
Read the text of the story below:
China's One Child Policy Leads to Adoption of Thousands of Orphans in the U.S.
A Mixture of Incredible Pain and Unbelievable Joy
By Karyn Campbell
Published Aug 28, 2007
Rating: Currently 4.50/5
I sat in my hotel room in Nanning, China, listening to the cry of a baby in the hallway. Unable to remain still, I was propelled through the doorway. To my right another American woman was rolling film of a Chinese toddler walking toward her new daddy. On the left, an infant wailed as she was assaulted by the chilly air of a western-style hotel in June, the strange smell of foreigners and the unfamiliar cadence of an alien language.
Through the confusion, I heard what I had been waiting for."De Yang," a young man called softly. He stepped out of the room across the hall, holding a 9-month-old infant.I stepped forward, anxiously looking at the baby's face. Did it match the picture I had received in the mail two months earlier? She was sleeping so I couldn't tell about the eyes, but there was no mistaking that rosebud mouth. I had memorized it night after night while looking at her photo.I held out my arms to receive her from the gentle hands of our Chinese guide.
"She's very tired after her long day," he explained softly. I nodded and glided back to my hotel room, savoring the moment I had been anticipating for more than a year. The confusion of giddy parents and frightened children faded like a blurred photograph with a focus on the central figure: Yuan De Yang. A product of the one-child policy.
For our family, China's one-child policy is more than a political phenomenon to be studied dispassionately. It is infinitely important. It's impossible for those of us who are intimately involved with this policy to look at it objectively. As with many things in life, it is a mixture of incredible pain and unbelievable joy.
About 10 years ago, I read an article about Chinese orphanages overflowing with baby girls. In the 20th century, thousands of babies were dying every month because there wasn't enough milk to feed them.
As I read about the history of these babies, I understood how Chairman Mao's policies, including the one-child policy, had actually led to the abandonment of thousands of children, mostly girls, every month. To really understand the one-child policy, you have to start many years before it was even conceived back to the late 1950s, when Mao was in the height of his power. From 1958 to 1960, Mao implemented a program called the "Great Leap Forward." China had always been a populous nation and Mao wanted to use all those people to bring the country into the industrial age along with the rest of the world.
He thought that if China produced a lot of steel, it would develop like the western world had so he put everyone, even farmers, to work producing steel. Meanwhile, the fields were not being planted and harvested. Food was rotting in the fields.
To add insult to injury, Mao knew nothing about metallurgy and he thought that pots, pans and other scrap materials could be melted down in backyard steel furnaces. Unfortunately, the results were worthless "pig iron."
So the Chinese people had iron, but they couldn't use it or sell it. They had grain, but no one had harvested it. In addition, local officials were pressured to report record harvests to justify the Great Leap Forward. These falsified reports were used to determine how much grain would be exported, leaving nothing for the local people. The result: famine. Starvation. The official death toll from famine during the Great Leap Forward is 14 million, but those outside China have estimated it closer to 43 million.
Because of this inadequate food supply and China's traditional problem with overpopulation, a birth control campaign was proposed in 1962, but it was never carried out. Then Mao's next great idea was born: the Cultural Revolution. Anyone with even a minimal knowledge of Chinese history is familiar with this period of time in the 1960s when values were turned upside down. Red Guard students beat their teachers to death with government approval. Intellectuals were sent from the cities to live in the countryside to get a taste of peasant life. These doctors, philosophers and merchants were set to farming: something they were not equipped to do by nature or training. More crop failures. More starvation.
In the 1970s, the idea of family planning cropped up again. China's official position about birth control was, "one child is ideal, two are enough, three are too many." But this wishful thinking wasn't enough to keep the population of China from overtaking the amount of food available. Even those of us who hate the one-child policy have to admit that China had a huge problem. No matter how much food the country produced, its citizens produced too many children. Even with zero population growth, when every couple has no more than two children, there wouldn't be enough food for everyone. Something had to be done to get the population "growth" to negative numbers, which meant that two people had to have less than two children.
In 1979, China instituted the one-child policy which basically limited couples to only one child. In actuality, the policy only applies to the majority Han Chinese living in cities. People from ethnic minorities or those living in the countryside could have more than one child. The first policy was a temporary emergency measure to be in place for five years. But every five years, it is reviewed and carried forward again. The current five-year planning period runs until 2010.
Over the years the policy has been modified and today if both partners are only-children, they are allowed to have more than one child. As always, people in rural areas and minorities are not held to the one-child rule.
The policy has been pretty effective. In a country of 1.3 billion, the population has gone down by 300 million in the last 20 years. Unfortunately, most of that reduction has been in baby girls. While the normal ratio is 105 males for every 100 females born, in China it is 114 to 100.
Most Americans are aware of this. "Oh she's lucky her parents didn't kill her," whispers a strange woman to me in the grocery store.
"They don't like girls in China," comments a cashier as she hands me a receipt.
WRONG! They love girls in China.
It's hard for those of us living in the freedom of American democracy to understand the no-win situation facing prospective parents in China.
Imagine you make $5,000 per year. You work in your parent's neighborhood store, selling vegetables, gum and soap to the neighbors. You have two rooms with electricity during daytime hours when the city government turns on the generators, but you don't have running water.
You fall in love, get married, and like newlyweds everywhere you plan to start a family. Your first child is a beautiful raisin-eyed girl and you fall in love with her as she takes her first breath. You would gladly give your life for her. You know it will be hard as she grows up. Traditionally, Chinese women leave their birth families when they get married. The oldest son has centuries of tradition pressuring him to take care of his parents in his old age. But the responsibility actually falls on his wife, who became a part of his family when she got married. In fact, in some rural areas of China, when the bride marries someone far away, she never sees her family again. Girls have always been raised to belong to someone else's family. You know you will only have her for a few precious years before she is gone forever.
Although your country has a one-child policy, you know that people often have two children. It's a matter of hiding the pregnancy from the local population control authorities, so when your wife gets pregnant again, you are guardedly happy. You and your parents have saved enough money to pay the $10,000 fine - two year's salary - for having a second child. But what if it's another girl?
You have no way of knowing. Ultrasounds to determine sex are illegal in your country, but abortions are free and encouraged. In fact, if your local population control authority finds out your wife is pregnant, she may force her to have an abortion, even up to term. You know people who have been caught and taken to the hospital for abortions. Or worse. Some people have left their newborn girls to die because they don't have money to pay the fine. Others quietly hold a blanket over the little girl's nose, preventing her from taking her first breaths.
As much as you love girls, you simply can't afford another one. Your family has sacrificed money to pay the fine, but only if the second child is a boy. You already have one girl you are bringing up to be a daughter in someone else's house. You can't do it again. What will happen to you and your wife in your old age if you don't have a son to take care of you? Who will care for you when you can't care for yourself? You may end up in the social welfare institution alone, dirty, sick and in pain.
So you send your wife off to visit distant relatives in the countryside. No one there knows she already has a child and she should be safe, as long as she stays out of the spotlight. You take your daughter to the family store with you every day, your heart heavy as you watch her playing in a corner.
When your wife comes back six months later, your heart silently breaks as you watch her get off the train alone. You don't ask any questions. You understand the despair she must have felt when your second daughter was born. Did she cry when she saw the raisin eyes of another daughter? Did she let anyone go with her as she crept through the night to the local market, waiting for daybreak? Did she quickly find a spot in the crowded market to place the basket containing the precious bundle? Did her heart beat with anxiety as she snuck around a corner, watching until someone found the child of her body? Did the tears fall as she sobbed a silent farewell in her heart?
You never discuss it, but you understand all too well when your wife hungrily searches the features of infants in the arms of Westerners, taking them to America forever. You can never tell anyone about your second daughter. It is illegal to abandon a child in China. And the punishment is severe.
And when your wife gives birth to her second official child -- a boy -- you show no emotion as you fill out the paperwork. Child number two, you write without hesitation. You make arrangements to pay the fine and you raise your children: a daughter for someone else's parents and a son for you.
You never talk about it, but you are sure your wife is also dreaming of a raven-haired child living with blonde strangers. You see her almond skin next to a white hand, leading her through babyhood, through school days and into adulthood. You will never forget this unspoken member of your family. You have done the best you could. For the good of China. Through your sacrifice others will live. It is enough. It has to be.
This is the reality of the one-child policy. It's not about 1 million girls who are abandoned in China each year. It is about the one girl who was left in the market on a warm day in September. It is about one birth mother who had to do the unthinkable. It is about one blonde westerner waiting in the immigration line to leave Hong Kong with a nine-month-old girl with raisin eyes snuggled to her chest. It's about one child who will grow up wondering why her birthparents didn't want her.
For the good of China.
I hope so.
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