I am a number and so are you

We are identified as numbers.  If you are a child, it is your college entrance score (SAT).  If you are a man, is your salary.  As my daughter prepares for her final year of high school, her entire life at the moment is defined by what that score will be.

And if you are Chinese-it is worse.  We Americans brag about our sports scholarships to third rate universities.  Because it's free!  If the middle class here cannot even afford tuition at the local state school....then we are truly fucked as a middle class.  It becomes more of a pipe dream, thus making a family with a gifted arm or leg all the more grateful when a 2nd or third tier state school comes calling. 

Another number is the amount of Chinese investment in America has dropped 90%.  To me that simply means there is a 90% less likelihood that China will buy an American company, and take its technology back to China to use against us.  I'm good with that.

As long as the Chinese still own the Waldorf-Astoria hotel, thus even making the President "skip" the place,  I can really care less what the Chinese do in America.  Is it not as if the Chinese owned Kensington Palace?

China Wife went on yet another rant the other night.  I repeated the rant to my buddies and they asked me why I didn't....well I can't repeat it here.  I'll simply be stereotyped as one of those "types" of husband.

What worries me most of all is that my kids see China Wife talking that way, and they maybe, just maybe internalize the belief this behavior is acceptable.  I do my best to convince them it is not.  But I really don't know until they are married, right?

Numbers.....

My wife tells me she doesn't expect to work much later in life.  You see in China the retirement age has traditionally been 50.  Of course if one must truly understand why Chinese Social Security is so stretched, there you go.  Chinese women traditionally live into their 80's for crying out loud, while not inputting any further contributions into the system. 

With Chinese society, it is all about the NUMBER.

My child goes to the number ONE school in America.

I want to live in a MILLION dollar house.

I want my laowai husband to make MORE than a measly six figures.

I want my laowai husband to have TWO jobs.

I want ONE son.

I want new things.

I want TWO sons (because one now isn't enough).

The Chinese are increasingly becoming more and more successful because they simply won't take "no" for an answer.  They are persistent, determined and focused.  But they live for money, and status and the sense of accomplishment it brings.

Well....when I lived in China I averaged a few one night stands a month.   And drank.  And had the time of my life.   But in the end, I felt hollow inside.  A shell with no spirit.  I wanted something else.  My sense of being wanted to climb onto a higher plain.  And it did.

But I do not see this with the People that Populate the Heavenly Kingdom.  I do not.  Their thirst for what their culture regards as "success" drives them to continually chase that number.  And when that "number" is attained, they create another one.  (Give them credit.  They are task oriented.)  

The sad thing? A mountain they themselves have created.   A new number to be conquered.  Nevermind they are the only climbers.  The Chinese do not seek enlightenment.  Because one cannot take a screenshot of enlightenment to post on WeChat.  But one can post a bank balance on WeChat...(it's been done trust me)

If one is not more than a tad self-confident in one's own ability, it is easy, so easy to feel insufficient.  To believe that in order to be successful one must indeed truly climb that mountain that perhaps yesterday did not exist. 

Then one mountain becomes two.  One new thing begets the need for another new "thing".    It is simply more important in Chinese society than in other that I've lived in, to have "things", in order to feel a sense of acceptance within the social group we call The Chinese.   To a higher degree than any other.

That guy had 12 Ferrari’s at his wedding?  I'll have fifteen (If only because fourteen simply isn't an auspicious number.)

China Wife will never be happy with her lot in life.  I now know this.  She will never stop and smell the roses. Not until her parents die and she gets their apartment and she takes over their bank accounts.  China Wife doesn't want sex.  Nor to necessarily play Mahjong. 

She will probably leave America one day when the kids are grown, and float back to the land of sunflower seeds and unending real estate appreciation.  She doesn't want to work anymore. She resents the fact she still "has" to make a living.  As if her kids can just go out and get jobs.  But wait, maybe by then I'll have three of them myself!!

Nothing to worry about there, right?