Appooppanthaadi -47

He is lucky. He has a girl child. I have two boys. I have to really worry about it. This was what one of the employees told about another when we were discussing about the social issues in China. As we all know, China has a strict one child regime. Still, it is possible to have two children, as per the law, if the prospective parents are the single children of their parents. Using this provision in the rule, this man went for two children, but 'unfortunately' for him, both the children are boys 


( This never means that girls are not discriminated against in this part of the world. It is impossible to believe that female feoticides are not taking place here. In one of the documentaries in the government controlled CCTV's English channel, they say the post marital harassments of women in China are on the increase. CCTV is funny, according to the locals. They even edit the weather report. If the temperature is so high, they don't even let it know to the public, for fear that people start restless and it may phychologically affect the effiency!)

We can hardly find a girl or a young woman without coloured hair. The natural colour of hair in China is as black as ours. Girls dye it using different hues. They spend a lot on dying hair. (But take heart, they make up this expense in their clothes!) She sits in the adjacent chair in which a man sits to do her hair in a saloon. There are only a few boys and young men who colour their hair. Perhaps boys are in no mood to enjoy such luxuries here. They have a lot to worry about....

In China, having a boy child is a real cause for worry in the present situation. Sky rocketing real estate prices, rising unemployment problems and increasing living costs make a man's life miserable. As the boy attains adolecense, he has to look for a girl friend first. Then, he has to maintain her and ensure that she never loses interest in him. Everything is a struggle till it reaches the logical conclusion, and that conclusion is only possible when so many blanks are filled up. He has to own a house at first. Then preferably a car. He must definitely have a source of income. In short, he must be a Mr Perfect before he ties the knot.

The apartment in which our company guest house is located is a sub-urban area, around 30 kilometers away from the Beijing airport. This single bedroom apartment itself cost us a rent of around 4000 yuans per month. They provide fully furnished houses that include sofa sets, television, refrigerator, washing machine, air conditioners in all rooms, micro wave oven, water heater, room heater and so on. People who vacate a house here need not hire a big truck to transport their belongings like we do in our country. Of course, the rent we cough up here is too high to afford by a middle class family.

The picture on the right side is one of the big housing complexes in Beijing. There are hundreds of such huge apartments all over the city. These are not definitely like those dreaded "party villages" of Kannoor in Kerala.     Those god forsaken villages of Kerala are no way comparable to these 'party villages' right inside the bastion of communism. These are the abodes of rich and ultra rich people vallowing in every kind of material comforts. 

So many latest model sedans- from Land Rover to Audi to BMW to anything you name are parked all over. There are huge parking space in every housing colonies. These parking lots are invariably constructed underground of the tall buildings. At the same time, we can spot so many poor people roaming around and searching for empty water and beer bottles and other wastages in the trash cans placed on the walkways.

By the way, I forgot to mention one important thing. No where in China, we can see party flags fluttering in the road junctions, traffic islands or on the road dividers. No kind of advertisements, posters and bannrs of political events or agitations can never be spotted anywhere in public places. Anyway, since there will not be any Party Congress or Congress Party here, there need be no advertisements. 


Not even a single road junction has a statue of any important personalities - not even of their supreme leader Mao's. No compound walls, traffic signs, road direction boards are used for pasting advertisements. In a way, people need not know anything. The Leaders know everything. There is no need to waste tremendous energy and resources on bringing information to public.