China This Week: Love Is In The Air

China This Week, Feb. 20-26

Want to know about the hottest trending topics in China, you won’t see on TV or newspapers? Follow the weekly updates from U.S.-China Perception Monitor, “China This Week”. We are providing you with the most talked-about topics, most interesting points and must-know information of Chinese culture and society.

1. Love is in the air

Ah, spring. The birds are chirping. The flowers are blooming. Love (and pollen) is in the air.
Young love – what else could be so heartwarming, so smile-inducing, so nostalgic, so…eerie?

Allegedly, two Chinese teenagers were married on February 15 in China’s Guangxi Province. Before you all raise your torches and pitchforks with denunciations of “cradle-robber” on your lips, both Zhang (the groom) and Wu (the bride) are said to be 16 years old and have both dropped out of high school.

Chinese netizens however, feel Zhang looks more like he is 13 years old, probably because of those chubby little cheeks of his.

There is a problem. In China, a man is not allowed to legally marry until he is 22, for women the age is 20. This makes certain things complicated. For example, under the hukou system, if the young family decides to have children before reaching the legal marriage age, they will face fines.

Reactions have been surprisingly mixed as some users say that the young marriage makes it more likely to have five generations in one house, and some argue that if they are really in love, it would be better to just get married early.

Other netizens, according to Zhang, have expressed their shock at the idea that two sixteen-year-olds have decided to get married with their parents’ approval. There was much shock as the decision on the part of the teenagers could be seen as rash.

However, Zhang claims that both he and his bride dropped out of high school before meeting each other, both believing they are not academically gifted enough to continue studies.

Still, others believe that this marriage could be a game the couple is playing (since they are not legally married).

Plus, according to Chinese tradition, wedding guests give a lot of money as gifts during the ceremony, so it is possible that this stunt was a ploy for money:

    2. Bringing back the bacon

Kids, it’s very important for you to go to school. You need to study hard, start a career, and bring home the bacon.

However, if you work hard enough, you can bypass the second step altogether.

A middle school in Zhejiang Province decided to reward their merit students with pork! That’s right, pork!

The students scoring in the top bracket went home with 5.5 pounds of meat. The students scoring in the second bracket went home with 3 pounds.

Some cynics believe that the school may be in contact with a meat processing factory that needs an excuse to get rid of old meat.

However, coming from an American who only received paper certificates in exchange for good grades, the look of happiness on the children’s faces are priceless.

3. Totally original: MateBook

The Chinese telecommunication company Huawei is launching its first dual laptop/tablet product with the incredibly original name (hold your chuckles): MateBook!

Huawei hopes to achieve its $100 billion revenue goal in five years, and in order to do so, the Chinese telecommunications giant is entering the PC market. It already has a large share in the smartphone market worldwide.

MateBook is priced between $699 and $1799. However, because of its lack of innovation, customers are not very interested. Some mentioned that the only thing new about MateBook is its finger print feature which can start the laptop by simply touching it. Which is admittedly pretty darn cool.

4. Hello China, it’s me, Dilma.

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff recently opened an account on the Chinese social media platform, Weibo.

Rousseff is present on a variety of social media platforms including Twitter, Facebook, Vine and Instagram, which have 4.4 million, 2.6 million, 1.8 million and 179 thousand followers respectively.

Besides Rousseff, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, former Australian Prime Minister Kevid Rudd , former French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, and former Israeli President Shimon Peres are all present on Weibo.

You can watch President Rousseff’s video here

By AARON WALAYAT, compiled by YAO SUN on USCNPM