Gender stereotypes are alive and well in China.
When I asked my first-year students to write a TV commercial for a favorite product, the girls picked shoes, clothes and cosmetics. The boys chose cars, computers and video games.
When it comes to male-female roles at my university, it often feels like the 1950s. Girls stroll around the campus holding hands, while boys are so addicted to video games that the school cuts off power in their dorms at 11 p.m. so they won’t stay up all night playing “Call of Duty.’’
And it’s not just the students. Most of the married women teachers I’ve met complain that their husbands don’t do anything except work and watch TV. They say they do all the cooking and cleaning, take their of the children and arrange all the activities.
“My husband is so lazy,’’ one of them complains. “He won’t even put his dirty dish in the sink.’’
Memo to Pat: I always put my dirty dishes in the sink.
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Courtesy of my neighbor and fellow teacher Toni, here are a few more strange English names used by Chinese students: Assassin, Scorpion, Angry and So-So.
