Couples like Rupert and Wendi Murdoch make sense when you understand the Chinese approach to love.
Part of the reason Wendi Deng Murdoch's "slap heard round the world" made such an impact was that it seemed to suggest "I love my husband," rather than "I love my husband's money"—the latter being the assumption most people would make about any marriage with a 38-year age gap, especially when the older person is wealthy and powerful. In China, the reaction to that slap was no less surprised, but unlike in the West, this was not the first time the Chinese masses found reason to praise Wendi Deng's marriage to Murdoch and his business empire. The first came when she married Murdoch in the first place. It's good to be reminded that all the things we take for granted about how relationships should be approached, about what we should expect from men and love and marriage, about age differences and levels of attraction—as in the case of Wendi and Rupert Murdoch—are mere accidents of life and experience and culture. This is what I learned as a Westerner living and dating in Beijing, at least.
One single woman asserts her independence by celebrating her birthday alone.
I have big plans for my birthday this month. BIG ones. Wanna hear them? OK, I’m gonna sit at home in my pajamas, eat chocolate cake and watch reruns of “The Gilmore Girls.”
Jilted mistress kills herself after losing sugar daddy's attention in cruel competition.
Business was going bad for a Chinese tycoon who decided, in December, to hold a "best mistress" pageant in order to cut costs and eliminate four of his five existing mistresses. Russian news agency Novosti reports that each mistress knew about the others. An allowance and free rent presumably helped to ease their jealousy, but the pageant—for which a modeling expert was brought in to help judge—pushed one mistress over the edge, literally.
And the consequences include inflating rates of STDs and abortions.
Chinese youths are meeting up at bars and hooking up just like Americans. It turns out though that they're familiar with the old in-and-out but are lacking fine details like birth control and disease prevention. The government is trying to remedy this but doing so in a subtle way.
