as i can remember, among all my friends who got married in the past three years, only one couple ended in divorce. so this news really surprises me - shanghai has one divorce for every three marriages. i just can't believe it.
yesterday afternoon, i watched a dv (digital video) show on tv called MY DAD AND MY MOM (video), featuring the life of an old couple who have lived together for over 70 years. they reveal what a tranditonal chinese marriage is - introduced by their parents, they didn't know each other before the wedding and, after they knew each other, the wife found the husband was not the one she loves. well, so far so bad. but, in the old old days, chinese didn't have the concept of divorce (or more accurately, the wife can not got divorced with her husband), therefore, the wife had to live with the husband together, without talking to him for 3 years!
after that 3 years, she talked to him, and she found he was a man with a lot of things that she likes, and gradually she started to found he was the one she loves, and gradually she found she can't live without this man. they lived together happily for 70 years.
now we are in 2004, we have a popular soap opera on tv - chinese style divorce （中国式离婚）, we can got divorced in 10 minutes, we have more choices and more freedom, we have family and friends more tolerant to divorce, and we have more divorces, more divorces than we can believe.
compared with the old couple, are we better than them or worse than them?
the old couple's 70th wedding anniversary in beijing