Christmas season.doc

2008-12-26 Hello, and welcome to another edition of Life in China, your weekly feature program on China Radio International. Im your host, Ning Yan. Its Christmas season again! So on todays show, first well check out how Christmas has become part of life for Chinese people. And well meet a group of foreigners who enjoy spending their spare time playing Ice Hockey during the bitter Beijing winter. And well be supporting a new group in our society, the 30-something single men and women, labeled the left-over people. Finally, well head to the Northern coastal city of Tianjin and find out how the workers life has been improving in the Binhai district. For all these stories and more, stay tuned to Life in China!Christmas Part of Life for Chinese People This week, people here in Beijing are having a wonderful Christmas. Young people have been enjoying exhilarating Christmas parties, and families have come together for a western dinner. Chinese people may not celebrate Christmas as a religious festival, but they certainly take the opportunity to spend a little time with their loved ones. Du Lijun visited some stores and restaurants earlier this week.Intime Lotte is a big shopping mall in Wangfujing Street, and one of the most famous shopping centers in Beijing. At this time of year, a huge Christmas tree has been put in front of the plaza, and clerks in Santa Claus hats greet customers at the entrance. Gao Sheng, a management staff member, reveals the boost in sales from Christmas. Young people identify with Christmas culture. You know, Christmas, New Years Day and the Spring Festival are the three peak seasons for sales. And young people are the main force that drives Christmas sales. They usually buy clothes or jewelry as Christmas gifts.Chen Lin, from Guangdong, has just bought a Christmas gift for his girlfriend. Weve been exchanging Christmas gifts since we first knew each other. Now, its a tradition for us. Its not about the actual value of the gift, but the expression of love. Receiving a gift on Christmas day is romantic, and will win any girls heart. Christmas gifts are important. But for some people, deciding how to spend the day is even more important. This Christmas, Beijing has provided a rich choice of cultural activities for its residents. There is the Christmas concert of world music masterpieces from the Berliner Philharmoniker, or a show by pop stars called Emotion - Beijing Christmas Night. Party animals go to Christmas parties in the bars. Wang Ying runs a bar named Club Zoom in the Shichahai(什刹海) area. She says they originally only arranged one party for Christmas Eve. Tickets sold out instantly and they had to throw an extra one the following day. The Christmas party is important in our annual plan. The theme of our party this year is Nordic music. Our tickets sold out very quickly. People really like the idea!Chen Zinan is the owner of a western food restaurant called Chef of the Autumn. She says Christmas is a time for family reunions. And her restaurant has been exclusively serving customers who come with their families on Christmas, for the past 5 years. Foreigners were the majority of my customers in the beginning. But more and more domestic customers now come. This is because my Christmas dinners provide a good opportunity for families to spend some quality time together.Thirty-something Zhang Yuan and his family are regular diners here. Christmas dinner is important. My kid asks me to take him to a nice western restaurant several weeks before Christmas.Play Ice Hockey in Beijing Many foreigners have come to China for work and study, and perhaps a little fun. Here in Beijing a group of expatriates have brought with them their favorite game, ice hockey. In the bitter winter days, their ice hockey tournament started a fire among local sports fans. Lin Lin has the details.Almost every Sunday night, ice hockey matches are in full swing at Chaoyang Road Skating Centre. Most players are foreigners working or studying in Beijing, and they take part in the Beijing International Ice Hockey Tournament. Although matches are played for fun and exercise, the competition is fierce. Ray Plummer, from Canada, is one of the organizers. He introduces the players.Everything from teachers to construction managers, to Nokia engineers, some embassy people, some chefs, hotel managers, entrepreneurs, lawyers, lots of students, took a cross section of expatriate society.Plummer has been in Beijing for more than ten years, working as an architect. He says their ice hockey has a 20-year history in Beijing. When they started in 1990 there were only two teams, but as more joined, it grew to five teams and nearly one hundred players. Four years ago, they established the Beijing International Ice Hockey Tournament. Even though its an amateur league, the tournament system is formal. From September to May, every team plays 25 base matches and any extra matches in the lead up to the final. The player with the best performance is selected as Most Valuable Player for the year. Plummer tells more about the system.We have the players come in for training, to play one game, or come over for practice. We want to see if they are good players or not. If they are very good players, we will place them carefully so no team is too strong or too weak. The goal is to have five even-strength teams and a lot of fun on the weekends.In the past, players traveled to other cities like Harbin, Qiqihar, Shanghai, Dalian, and Kunming, to play friendly matches. Their opponents had to be local foreign teams or professional clubs. They also traveled to Korea and Thailand in October for matches. Despite their different backgrounds, the love of ice hockey connects them all. The tournament is non-profit, and every player donates 2,500 yuan, or about 350 US dollars, every year to pay for rent, equipment, and refreshments. To cut expenses, many players volunteer to be referees when they are not on the field. Olivier Rochefort from Montreal, Canada, works as a hotel manager in Beijing. He is a regular after he learnt about it from a friend. Every time he is on the field, his father Pierre shows up in support. Its amazing. Because not only do they have their jobs, but it takes us almost an hour to come here to play for only one hour. We all have to get back to work on Monday morning. Its the love of the game. Its really the love of the game I think.Leftover People Evoke Heated Discussions in China If you are born in the 1970s and are still single, you may be put on the spot in China. Recently, heated discussions about this group of people are sweeping China. People call them Shengnan Shengnv or literally Leftover men and women. Chen Zhe has more.If Bridget Jones comes to China, she will probably find millions of single girls experiencing the same feelings as she does. They are at the right age to marry, want to meet that special someone, but find themselves alone. Xuefei is a thirty-one-year-old lady doing international business in Beijing, single and sometimes lonely. She spends most of her spare time having parties with friends, shopping and watching movies. She neither worries about marriage, nor views it as the most important event in her life. But her friends and family members are busy arranging blind dates for her. Chemistry is hard to build. While Xuefei takes her time to find her Mr. Right, society has classified her into the category of Sheng Nu, which literally means leftover ladies. They were born in the 1970s, and are single. Men in the same situation are known as leftover men. However, Xuefei has her own opinions about this title. I dont think the word Leftover is proper. It doesnt properly describe the facts and gives others the illusion that we are a group of people that nobody likes. Since the living standards and individual rights improve, people become pickier when looking for a life partner. But some other women, such as twenty-seven-year-old college teacher Xiaoxi, dont mind the title. Though Im going to be one of these leftover women, I think the title is acceptable. Its just a descriptive word and describes the feeling of these people in society. Most of my friends dated in college. I didnt do that because my parents expected me to concentrate on study. After I graduated, I found it really hard to find the right person. I need not only emotional attachment but satisfying material conditions and similar family background. Traditionally, people like Xuefei and Xiaoxi were labeled old single youth in China and people thought it was hard for them to find a satisfying spouse. Some people would even hold a biased view on them. Accept the new title or not, both Xuefei and Xiaoxi feel pressure from society and people around them. My parents are very conservative and are worried about my marriage and they introduced me to some men, however, none of them were suitable. When I went home, my neighbours and relatives were all curious about why I was still single. They think I am a little strange.They are not alone. Its estimated that the number of single ladies aged around thirty exceeds 500,000 in Beijing. Most of them have a good educational background, have admirable jobs and live decent lives. Gesang Zeren, a psychologist with Sichuan University explains why there has been a surge in the number of singles in recent years. Some people fear to take the responsibility in the marriage commitment. More importantly, society is developing fast. People need freedom and marriage is considered, by many, to be a form of bondage. They need time and energy to develop themselves. Some of them are seeking an ideal marriage and some people are trying to figure out what marriage means to them. In 1970, the average age for females to get married in China was 20 and it climbed up to 23 in 1980. The figure rose to 24 in 1990 and 27 in 2000. At the same time, males are also getting married later than ever before. Leftover people are considered a social problem in the city of Nanjing and local government is trying to lower peoples standards of choosing a spouse and to help those singles find their companions. Gesang Zeren says this move will cause more problems. People with outdated mindsets think leftover people are a problem and in fact they are not. I think its time to create a relaxed environment for those singles. In the past, people got married at 16, but the situation has changed. If society continues to tell people that its a problem to be single, they will probably rush into marriage simply for social acceptability. That is where the real problem lies. Xiaoxi enjoys her life a lot and when she is alone, she surfs the Internet, watches movies and listens to music.She has many foreign friends who are over 30 and also single. And being an old single youth is not a problem but a lifestyle for them.As the New Year is coming, she hopes she can find her beloved. She says she will wait and a happy marriage is worth her patience. Tianjin, the second largest city in northern coastal China, is home to the Binhai New Area, a special economic zone intended to balance out commercial superiority in other regions in the country. Three decades have passed since the start of Chinas reform and opening-up initiative, and dramatic changes have occurred. For many people in the Area, their lives have never been better. Liu Yan explains whyThe Binhai New Area, a pilot zone of Chinas economic reform and a promising growth engine in northern China, is located in the east of Tianjin and the central part of the Bohai Sea Rim Economic Circle. The area was mostly covered by kaoline soil some decades ago, and few could believe the economic progress it has achieved in the past 30 years. Kong Xiangrui is the eldest son of a five-child family. He recalls everything that happened there as if it were yesterday.Thirty-six years ago, he had to work hard to support his family as a porter in the Binhai New Area harbor.When I first started, I had to try every possible way to earn money to support my four younger brothers and sisters, because our mother was unemployed.But life changed in the late 1970s. In 1978, I remember that my company followed others and started to pay individual wages. With bonuses, my earnings each day were over 1 yuan and my fixed salary was about 70 or 80 yuan a month. That was almost three times higher than other workers.An old-fashioned radio was one of the few home appliances that Kong Xiangruis family owned 30 years ago.In 1981, he married a childhood friend. And by then, they had a small black-and-white television, a radio and a tape recorder. My wife helps me a lot. I always try to spend my spare time with her and our lovely daughter. No matter how exhausted I am, I keep my promise to my family. I love them and they support me.Just like Kong Xiangrui, workers in the Binhai New Area continued to improve the quality of their lives. Ordinary workers now have private cars and apartments.Their work has changed from labor intensive