China

I had a conversation this week with one of my students from China. She has talked before about her older brother, so I asked her how that fit into China's one child policy. Apparently her father paid two months salary in order to keep her. When her mom wanted to try for another boy, they had to give six months salary to pay off local officials for their third child.

This concept is so foreign to me--having to pay the government for the chance to have another kid. Since some of my siblings are twins, I asked her what the Chinese government would do if you had twins. I couldn't imagine that they could take one from you. Her answer: "Maybe they would take away your TV, or fine you." Some days I really like America.

Another thing that made me smile: apparently China has their legal marriage age set at 22 for women and 23 for men. She assured me that this wasn't a big problem though, because if you needed to get married earlier, you could just pay off a local official to change your age on all of your documents. I think I lost some trust with China over the age of those Olympic gymnasts.