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Fake Plastic Friends; True Love in Modern China

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A contestant on Jiangsu TV dating show “If You Are The One”, shocked China a few years back when she famously said she would rather cry in a BMW car than laugh on the back of a bike. As you have probably guessed, the reason this was so shocking was that it clearly highlighted just how much Chinese society had changed from the not so distant days of its proletariat past.

According to the World Happiness Report of 2017, China is “no happier than 25 years ago”, and notes that, “They attribute the dropping happiness in the first part of the period to rising unemployment and fraying social safety nets”. As inequality continues to rise in China, so social pressures become stronger.

Material wealth is now one of the most important things for which a middle class Chinese person strives, and with that is coming a shift in attitude towards social status. A member of the Nanjing CPPCC Municipal Committee, Hou Xiaodong, was recently quoted expressing his disgust toward a junior high school boy, who reportedly told him that, because the economic strength of his home is better, he will not date girls of a lower economic status.

Appalled, Hou proposed that Nanjing middle schools ought to begin teaching “love courses”, in order to better teach children about how to look at love. The suggestion has some singing his praises and others up in arms. “When it comes to the topic of love, most parents automatically evade; the social attention is not enough, when students are in adolescence, schools have a heavy educational responsibility”, Hou was quoted saying by Shanghai publication, The Paper.

Nanjing No. 5 Senior High School psychology teacher, Yang Jingping, told reporters of female student woes, saying, “What if you were rejected? If you love him and gradually fall out of love,then what?” Yang believes in the importance of her course and hopes for more to open in schools around Nanjing.

Late middle school student, Kate Zhang, talking with the Nanjinger, said, “Perhaps the classes could be good for students, but not more me; I don’t have time to worry about relationships. The girls and boys in my grade have relationships involved around buying things… They are proud to have girlfriends or boyfriends, but they don’t know what love is. Girls will dump boys if they don’t buy them things, they [girls] often demand boys buy them pencils and sweets, stuff like that. I think what they do is childish”.

Su Liao Hua 塑料花 塑料花 (plastic relationships)

“Su Liao Hua” is an Internet phrase that became popular in 2017, it translates as “not true friend”, “fake friend” or more amusingly, “plastic friend”. Kindergarten teacher Elaine Zhou used this phrase when she spoke with The Nanjinger and expressed her frustrations. “Love classes are necessary for middle schools because in this society, lots of people have lots of power They know the power of ‘love’, but don’t know how to use it properly, because they are… ‘leng mo’ (冷漠) or ‘detached’ from love. Their influence on their children is bad, and so in the future, this will filter down. Love needs to be taught to these kids; not just about romance but in all aspects. Su liao sister ships need to be cut!”

“People have lots of power, they know the power of love’’

Early middle school student, Rosamonde Hu, told us, “Love classes are necessary because they can teach us how. In China now, lots of students don’t know how to love. They view their friends as useful, nothing else. In many classrooms, if a student’s parents have power or money, many students will want to make friends with her/him just because of the power”.

Not all are in favour of the proposed love classes, however. The parent of a middle school girl, who wished not to be named, said, “The traditional Chinese concept [of love] has remained relatively conservative after thousands of years of evolution. This makes us unwilling to see the phenomenon of puppy love. Now information has developed, the child’s horizons are opened by a lot of external factors, good and bad. Children are ignorant and when ignorant, if the deal is not good, it is easy to break the bottom line, which for children (especially girls) this will cause harm, and for this, Chinese parents are not willing to see! This of course is the common responsibility of society, schools and families.

“If the so-called ‘love course’ is set up, I am not particularly in favour of it as a parent, that may be because I belong to the conservative group. However, if it is a form of psychological consultation, it is feasible. Setting up a love course, I think, will need good communication between schools and parents, and whether the government allows the opening of such courses is not yet known! Although they can ease the children’s concepts of love, I don’t know whether it will further stimulate the hearts of children that will remain ignorant of the idea, and that worries me.

“There is now a focus on the pursuit of rich, beautiful and handsome partners, which seemingly has no problem, as beauty is in the heart of everyone, and everybody wants to live a rich and stable life, this is not wrong. The point is not to blindly pursue this, while ignoring the most important aspects of as a person’s intrinsic nature. These are the indispensable factors that revolve around the concept of love, can children understand this? Can love classes grasp these basic principals? Is the content suitable for setting up a course in school? This is probably a question that needs to be discussed!”

“Indispensable factors that revolve around the concept of love, can children understand this?”

While the jury is still out on love classes, the rise in class separation and struggle amongst China’s post 90s generation is clear. That which remains emphatically important in the Chinese education scene is academic and economic success. All else is left to the community and society as a whole. Su liao, or fake, relationships are very real and very present in modern Chinese society; they are found in kindergartens, retirement homes and everywhere in between. Can China’s new-found wealth find a way of steering its next generation back onto the path of unrequited love?

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