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A Chinese Octomom (via surrogates)


Brainsample

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Video --

http://news.yahoo.com/video/world-15749 ... 43377.html

 

I wonder if they're VF converts?

 

Quote

http://www.komonews.com/news/national/C ... 32348.html

 

BEIJING (AP) - The photo was undeniably cute: a studio portrait of eight babies in identical onesies and perky white cotton hats, sporting an array of expressions from giggly to goofy, baffled to bawling.

 

Intended as an advertisement for the studio, the photo grabbed a different kind of attention: In a country that limits most couples to one child, many Chinese were amazed to learn that a couple had spent nearly a million yuan ($160,000) and illegally enlisted two surrogate mothers to help have the four boys and four girls.

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As long as they support themselves and don't try to skin the taxpayers, they can spew out kids like they were fly larvae and/or ask german sheperds to carry their kids by the 8ths in 9 weeks and then crap them out, IDK. As long as its them to pay for it all.

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After reading the article, it seems like this was an accident and they weren't actually aiming for this many kids. Chinese law allows multiples with no penalty, but this is an interesting case because multiple women carried these babies. One thing here that's better than Octomom though is that there were never 8 fetuses inside one uterus. Twins and triplets definitely carry some risk and almost guarantee premature birth, but it's still a million times safer than eight. I wonder how they will celebrate birthdays and if they will group the kids by birthmother, even if it's subconscious. I hope that the parents don't give preferential treatment to the ones that the bio mother carried.

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I understood that the government would pursue this and would hold the hospitals and providers accountable as a violation of their law.

My concerns about this are that people will exploit these specifics to moan about how evil China is in this respect, but in a way to do more of the "Look how great we QF people are, better than everyone else and especially better than the Chinese." They can combine the different troubling aspects of the situation to advance the QF agenda. The American and Western centrism of QF will turn this example into a propaganda fest, and it's already a sensational topic. It's a society that does have a problem, IMO, with free expression and paternalism of the State. It will be interesting to see if and how this plays out in the QF/P world.

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There are a number of things that are problematic about the one child policy here in China, but also a number of things that I hear people saying about it outside of China that just don't seem to be generally the case, and appear to apply to the exception more than the rule. It is completely possible to have more than one child here, for instance, completely legally. The catch? You have to pay a fee that will cover that child's educational and social costs. The fee varies based on where your hukou (family registration) is. So if you live in, say, Beijing or Shanghai, you're probably going to be on the hook for a pretty significant amount of money. If you're from Fujian, where the one child policy is enforced in a very lax way anyway, you won't pay much (and may not pay anything). It's also very common where I am, in southern China, for families that can afford it to go over the border to Hong Kong or go to Macau to have their second (or even third or fourth) kids- if the kid has a Hong Kong or Macau passport, the family isn't in violation of the one child policy. I personally have met tons of families with more than one child here- lots that only have one kid, too, of course, but a lot of families here don't really want more than one, in part because they feel it's preferable to have one kid and funnel all of their available resources into sending that kid to the best schools, the best cram schools, getting them music lessons, whatever.

The article mentions the tendency of rich families here to just do whatever the hell they please, counting on either their money or their guangxi (social or political connections) or both to smooth things over, and I have absolutely found that to be the case. In my work, it's not unusual to encounter Chinese students from rich families who have gone to the U.S. and gotten picked up for driving without a license, drunk driving, et cetera who are shocked to discover that it can cause problems for them when they try to return to the U.S. later on, because here in China, they've always been able to do pretty much whatever they want with no consequences. This has historically been the case; it's not a new thing at all, and there are a lot of traditional sayings that refer to the whole guangxi phenomenon. The laws here are very flexible and unevenly enforced, largely because if you have the money, you can buy your way out of any issues, and because cops and other people charged with enforcement are hesitant to really hold people accountable, because you have no way of knowing what connections someone might have and what problems they may cause for you later on if you, say, pull him over and give him a ticket. It can make it really maddening to live here sometimes, because the attitude is frequently one where everyone is out for number one and screw the other guy, because no one's going to take care of your interests but you. I also think this could be building into something really ugly; there's a huge gap in wealth, most of the laobaixing (literally the "old hundred names," basically the Chinese equivalent of Joe Sixpack) are keenly aware of the reality of how things work here and the fact that they're missing out on a lot, and I think that when the economic bubble finally bursts, things are not going to be pretty.

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interesting article and AWESOME post FaustianSlip. Thanks for the better understanding of how China works :)

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There are a number of things that are problematic about the one child policy here in China, but also a number of things that I hear people saying about it outside of China that just don't seem to be generally the case, and appear to apply to the exception more than the rule. It is completely possible to have more than one child here, for instance, completely legally. The catch? You have to pay a fee that will cover that child's educational and social costs. The fee varies based on where your hukou (family registration) is. So if you live in, say, Beijing or Shanghai, you're probably going to be on the hook for a pretty significant amount of money. If you're from Fujian, where the one child policy is enforced in a very lax way anyway, you won't pay much (and may not pay anything). It's also very common where I am, in southern China, for families that can afford it to go over the border to Hong Kong or go to Macau to have their second (or even third or fourth) kids- if the kid has a Hong Kong or Macau passport, the family isn't in violation of the one child policy. I personally have met tons of families with more than one child here- lots that only have one kid, too, of course, but a lot of families here don't really want more than one, in part because they feel it's preferable to have one kid and funnel all of their available resources into sending that kid to the best schools, the best cram schools, getting them music lessons, whatever.

The article mentions the tendency of rich families here to just do whatever the hell they please, counting on either their money or their guangxi (social or political connections) or both to smooth things over, and I have absolutely found that to be the case. In my work, it's not unusual to encounter Chinese students from rich families who have gone to the U.S. and gotten picked up for driving without a license, drunk driving, et cetera who are shocked to discover that it can cause problems for them when they try to return to the U.S. later on, because here in China, they've always been able to do pretty much whatever they want with no consequences. This has historically been the case; it's not a new thing at all, and there are a lot of traditional sayings that refer to the whole guangxi phenomenon. The laws here are very flexible and unevenly enforced, largely because if you have the money, you can buy your way out of any issues, and because cops and other people charged with enforcement are hesitant to really hold people accountable, because you have no way of knowing what connections someone might have and what problems they may cause for you later on if you, say, pull him over and give him a ticket. It can make it really maddening to live here sometimes, because the attitude is frequently one where everyone is out for number one and screw the other guy, because no one's going to take care of your interests but you. I also think this could be building into something really ugly; there's a huge gap in wealth, most of the laobaixing (literally the "old hundred names," basically the Chinese equivalent of Joe Sixpack) are keenly aware of the reality of how things work here and the fact that they're missing out on a lot, and I think that when the economic bubble finally bursts, things are not going to be pretty.

That is a pretty awesome summary of how China works. I'm a second generation Chinese and have gone back frequently to visit family. I hear a lot of what you say from my relatives and family friends. Interesting tidbit about rich Chinese students who don't realize their bad behavior have consequences here in the US. It makes sense that spoiled kids would be in for a culture shock when they misbehave here LOL.

I would also like to add that a lot of Chinese people I've spoken with are astounded by how anyone could afford more than one or two kids. The cost of rising a child in urban China has skyrocketed in the past 20 years. Cram schools, tuition, music lessons are just one small cost of rising a child. I see my adult cousins still being coddled by their parents. They have apartments paid for, free childcare provided (as in, grandparents are doing the rising), money provided for the grandkids. Some of my cousins, who have far less buying power than I, who are in less secure jobs than I will be at (after graduation), have more disposable income than me. It's because the parents have paid off their mortgage and have paid for their from preschool to college education. Life is sweet for some of them.

It's shocking even to my parents the extent Chinese parents will now go for their only child. No wonder many now can't imagine rising a second or third child. While the QF crowd are borderline neglectful with their 10+ brood, the Chinese parents, with their only child, carry the idea of helicopter parenting to a new level. I think that's a big reason the Chinese mom with 8 kids is so shocking to everyone. The expectation of providing for your child is just so high that most couples can't imagine funding for more than a couple, if even that.

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This explains a lot about the Chinese system. I have a Chinese-Canadian friend/acquaintance, (recently married a Chinese-American and living in a major US metro area,) who has basically had all expenses paid by his wealthy Chinese father all of his life. The family business was in Hong Kong, and when it reverted to the Chinese from British control the family emigrated to Canada. Throughout his life this friend has been gifted by his father, a BMW including upkeep and major repairs from two accidents, a condo in the most expensive city in the US, a US education through a terminal degree free of loans, many lengthy vacations including two months traveling through Tibet and many trips to China, designer clothing, two wedding ceremonies, one in the US, one in China, the list goes on. This man had everything in terms of large, big picture expenses, but never had any pocket change or pin money.

Currently, my ex-husband and this man are traveling in China conducting some type of business -- selling Western amenities, (like cable t.v.,) and the prospect of a US college education. Weird.

edited to fix riffle

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I see my adult cousins still being coddled by their parents. They have apartments paid for, free childcare provided (as in, grandparents are doing the rising), money provided for the grandkids. Some of my cousins, who have far less buying power than I, who are in less secure jobs than I will be at (after graduation), have more disposable income than me. It's because the parents have paid off their mortgage and have paid for their from preschool to college education. Life is sweet for some of them.

Oh, don't even get me started on that one. It's not at all unusual for unmarried children here to live with their parents into their late twenties and even thirties, if they marry particularly late. Once they get married, well-off parents will often provide a house (sometimes more than one- real estate investment is big here). When kids come into the picture, the grandparents will raise them for weeks, months or years at a time- you see a lot of young Chinese couples who immigrate to the U.S. either ship their kids back to live with the grandparents until they're school aged or getting grandma and grandpa to come for a "visit"... which not infrequently turns into people overstaying their visas and/or basically living in the U.S., staying for six months, coming back to China for a week or two, then heading back for another six months.

I personally encountered a case where a woman whose daughter was studying in the U.S. had spent something like eight of the last twelve months there (!). When asked what exactly she was doing in the U.S. for so long, she said, "Well, my daughter is only a child, so I have to be there to cook for her and take care of her!" This "child" was twenty years old. Some of it is just a cultural difference, but as YPestis says, a lot of it is a factor of "little emperor syndrome" and parents taking helicopter parenting to ridiculous extremes.

When you merge the helicopter parenting, do anything to give your kids the edge factor and the, "I'm rich, so I can do whatever I want," attitudes, you get the phenomenon of parents who go to the U.S. and either drop their children off with relatives to attend public school free of charge (ironically, Chinese people consider the U.S. educational system vastly superior to their own, for various reasons) or buy houses and stay (or, if the kids are older, leave the kids there) for as long as their visa will allow, making occasional trips back to China to stay in status. These people are not the laobaixing, they're very, very wealthy people who could afford to either put their kid in private school and get them a student visa or pay for a top flight education here in China without needing to resort to bending/breaking U.S. immigration law (and stiffing the school districts in which their kids are attending school). It's pretty nuts.

There are a lot of things that I think are admirable about China and Chinese culture, but the way everyone seems to be out for number one all the time, screw the rule of law or any sense of inconveniencing yourself because it's the right thing to do for the greater good is very, very frustrating sometimes. People seem genuinely shocked if you confront them in cases like the above with, "Wow, uh, you know that's completely illegal, dishonest and immoral, right?" Because hey, if you're looking out for your kids and managing your money wisely, so what could possibly be wrong with that? That isn't to say that every single person in China thinks this way, but I would say that you encounter it often enough that we're not talking about a statistical anomaly.

In some ways, I find it reassuring in the sense that a lot of these kids, who will presumably grow up to be China's elite, are going to be totally unequipped to function as adults when their parents have shielded and babied them well into their late twenties and beyond. It's a weird reversal of families like the Duggars that we discuss here, but with similar results: how is a completely sheltered person who has been raised to do exactly what their parents tell them, educationally and professionally speaking, had every expense met, et cetera going to operate independently? I went to grad school and shared a flat with a number of students from mainland China, and while they seemed to study hard, they were incapable of/unwilling to do anything besides that. They never cleaned up after themselves, couldn't be bothered to wash a dish, left the kitchen in a shambles... they were spoilt, pampered and rich, and I remember thinking that if these were the people who would be leading China in twenty years, maybe the West wasn't in so much trouble, after all.

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When you merge the helicopter parenting, do anything to give your kids the edge factor and the, "I'm rich, so I can do whatever I want," attitudes, you get the phenomenon of parents who go to the U.S. and either drop their children off with relatives to attend public school free of charge (ironically, Chinese people consider the U.S. educational system vastly superior to their own, for various reasons) or buy houses and stay (or, if the kids are older, leave the kids there) for as long as their visa will allow, making occasional trips back to China to stay in status. These people are not the laobaixing, they're very, very wealthy people who could afford to either put their kid in private school and get them a student visa or pay for a top flight education here in China without needing to resort to bending/breaking U.S. immigration law (and stiffing the school districts in which their kids are attending school). It's pretty nuts.

There are a lot of things that I think are admirable about China and Chinese culture, but the way everyone seems to be out for number one all the time, screw the rule of law or any sense of inconveniencing yourself because it's the right thing to do for the greater good is very, very frustrating sometimes. People seem genuinely shocked if you confront them in cases like the above with, "Wow, uh, you know that's completely illegal, dishonest and immoral, right?" Because hey, if you're looking out for your kids and managing your money wisely, so what could possibly be wrong with that? That isn't to say that every single person in China thinks this way, but I would say that you encounter it often enough that we're not talking about a statistical anomaly.

In some ways, I find it reassuring in the sense that a lot of these kids, who will presumably grow up to be China's elite, are going to be totally unequipped to function as adults when their parents have shielded and babied them well into their late twenties and beyond. It's a weird reversal of families like the Duggars that we discuss here, but with similar results: how is a completely sheltered person who has been raised to do exactly what their parents tell them, educationally and professionally speaking, had every expense met, et cetera going to operate independently? I went to grad school and shared a flat with a number of students from mainland China, and while they seemed to study hard, they were incapable of/unwilling to do anything besides that. They never cleaned up after themselves, couldn't be bothered to wash a dish, left the kitchen in a shambles... they were spoilt, pampered and rich, and I remember thinking that if these were the people who would be leading China in twenty years, maybe the West wasn't in so much trouble, after all.

While what you describe pertains to very wealthy, elite Chinese, the same phenomenon is happening in more modest homes. All of my cousins come from average families, yet they still get their apartments paid for, children completely cared for, education all paid for. There's family cohesiveness, and then there's an unhealthy dependency. My parents, having lived in the US for the last two decades, appreciate the American method of letting kids set off on their own. I think the bigger issue isn't the rich, coddled children of China's elite (because what country doesn't have those?), it's that so many "normal" Chinese is raising their children this way. Only time will tell what that means for the future of the country.

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I liked the man's comment about children not being pets. I think multipules would be difficult and higher order ones impossible for parents to care for on their own. All the information about China is very interesting.

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So the moral of the story is that human behavior is pretty typical. We have our written, formal rules which we defend at great cost, and then we have the unwritten rules that are fluid and serve our purposes. China has a rigid, one child policy which they enforce when they feel like it and ignore it when it suits them. They have to say that they will investigate and adjudicate (if that's the right term), but they will do what works for them and wink at what will be in their best interest to wink at. Money talks and BS walks.

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I suspect this lady may get the book thrown at her in spite of her money, because now the story has hit the international news, which means a loss of face for the Chinese government. They're pretty touchy about any insinuations that corruption is a problem, rules are unevenly enforced, et cetera.

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While the Chinese parents take child-rearing to an extreme (remember the Yale professor's book about being a "Tiger Mother") I know a lot of American parents who could put out a teensy bit of effort. Seriously, I grew up in an area where the people just let 'em grows up with predictable results.

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My son worked for a large international company in Hong Kong for 3 years and was absolutely shocked at the infantilization of his young Chinese co-workers. My kid left home at barely 18 to attend university first in another Canadian city and then abroad and was 22 when he was hired on in Hong Kong. He'd been very independent for some time. His Chinese contemporaries were well educated and from solidly middle class to upper class families.

These young adults ALL lived at home and the vast majority were only children. Mom and Dad did everything for them - cooked meals, did laundry, outfitted their wardrobes, paid all bills, bought cars etc. They rarely had social lives and instead went home after work and spent their time playing computer and video games or shopping at the mall on their parents' dime. Their desks at the office were covered in plastic figurines of Hello Kitty and anime characters and they dressed in goofy fashions you'd see on 13 years olds in North America (ie - the women with their hair in little-girl pig tails carrying cartoon character backpacks and wearing wild coloured knee socks). This drove the upper managers, mostly Brits and Aussies, crazy. And as much as they tried to talk to them and enforce a more professional atmosphere in the office, these kids just didn't get it.

My son also found it fascinating that, while most were fairly competent at their jobs and were well educated and "book smart", when presented with any situation that required thinking "outside the box" as it were, they were completely flummoxed. They had never had to problem-solve anything on their own since their parents micro-managed all apsects of their lives and this translated over to their work environment. They could solve any ultra-complex mathematical question but ask them to brainstorm a problematic abstract situation and they were completely lost.

A very interesting, complex culture.

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While the Chinese parents take child-rearing to an extreme (remember the Yale professor's book about being a "Tiger Mother") I know a lot of American parents who could put out a teensy bit of effort. Seriously, I grew up in an area where the people just let 'em grows up with predictable results.

Agh.

Ok, so I'm going out on a limb here.

BUT! Amy Chua is ethnically Chinese. But she was raised in America, the child of a Philippino-Chinese family. She's a cultural hybrid. The quintessential cultural hybrid.

The way she raised her kids? You could call that Asian-American, or Chinese American.

But Chinese? No. Hell no. Emily and Sophia, with the Jewish father and the Phillipno-Chinese American mother had a Chinese upbringing? Comeon, No, no, no, no.

Chinese people in China are raise their children in a "Chinese way". Ethnically Chinese people in born and raised America may identify as Chinese, but they do not give their children 'Chinese' upbringings. Those kids had a throughly cross-cultural upbringing.

We (and Chua) might like to call it Chinese (for reasons we can explore in other posts but for the time being, i'm just going to leave that as a statement) - but what about it makes it Chinese other than it was delivered by a woman who identifies as, and who we identify as Chinese?

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