What you think about Mistress, "Er' Nai" and "Xiao San" ?

Mistress Phenomena in China

 

Shared by one of my friends at Facebook, I found this topic very interesting and no doubt it has grabbed my attention to know more about it. Nowadays, keeping a woman in an apartment is common among wealthy Chinese men. A study by the Crisis Management Centre at Renmin University in Beijing, published this January, showed that 95 % of corrupt officials had illicit affairs, usually paid for, and 60% of them had kept a mistress. Before this, I believe husbands have affairs mainly because broken relationship with the wife, sexual attraction, companionship, excitement, and curiosity. My mum even reminded me not be a vigorous and inconsiderate wife who always nit-pick and speak resentfully towards the husband in the future.

It surprised me when the trend now is just to show-off their wealth and financial capabilities as keeping a woman will cost men up to millions, just like the hobby of playing golf. In their mind, the man is not a “real man” if he as an officer or chief doesn’t have a mistress or girlfriend as in the past dynasties, masculine and manly kings have thousands of concubines. There are gay guys who even hired girls just to pretend as their mistress while in business socializing, shared by James Palmers in his blog. In addition, I couldn’t believe that Shenzhen (one of the district of mainland China) is also expanded as a 'Second Wife Village' for the number of mistresses living there.

However, from the perspectives of mistress, it is somehow different from prostitutes. Mistress in China is similar to a girlfriend or “xiao-san” (third party of a relationship). They do not aim for money as they themselves are young, slender and pretty girls who normally come from rich family. For certain reasons they are voluntary being kept, such as fame recognition, business politics, whistle-blowing, and perhaps true love? Up to now, there are no clear definitions, absolute set of moral or policies in restricting the act of keeping mistress. Plus, since the country does not ban people from getting girlfriends, why should mistress?  

Added by James Palmers again, he quoted Zheng Tiantian’s informal comments: “I’d rather be a mistress than a wife, because you can make much more as a mistress,” Zheng Tiantian is  a social anthropologist at the State University of New York, worked as a karaoke bar hostess for two years in Dalian to research her PhD. Despite the good pay and blur boundaries of banning the act, is it a right or wrong thing to do?

 

For me, I would say keeping a mistress or being a mistress is both not ethical.  Generally accepted as “different” and have “higher social status” than prostitute, there are still no way to investigate mistresses’ motivation thoroughly.  If it is really for the sake of true love, I am agreed with the right to love whoever we want and no matter who he is. However if it is for the purpose of getting sexual satisfaction, monetary and luxurious items, I think that it makes mistress no difference from prostitutes. In fact, a mistress can get a so-called “living allowance” up to $ 1,630 per DAY! , emphasized by James. There are a lot of job opportunities and ways to make our life more meaningful, why depend on a man who betrayed his wife and soon be the next victim?

In addition, cheating, love affairs and adultery are naturally taboos in a marriage especially in Asian countries, just like drug dealers, human trafficker, and loan shark who make out of good fortune but not in an ethical way.  Historically, adultery has been considered to be a serious offense by many cultures and countries. Mistress who involve in adultery is treated as committing a crime and she can be fined or sentenced to death by Honor Killings and/or Stoning (an act of throwing stone till the criminal dies). It has been practicing in some countries like North Korea, Taiwan, Philippines, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia up to now, regardless of the voice of women rights.

  

 

Furthermore, keeping or being mistress is an unethical and wrong-doing due to the involvement of politics and damage of public image. In fact, there are many sex scandals that sacked government officials at one sweep. It is common to see a news headline with “A police chief in China accused of keeping twin sisters as mistresses has been removed from his post” and all. No doubt, the scandal affects their reputation and capabilities in handling government matters. For example, who will still believe and trust a public servant who financially aiding a mistress with his unidentified source of income? On the other hand, some might argue that mistress plays a major role in anti-corruption as they have close relationship and be able to whistle-blow the immoral conduct of officer.

Last but not least, I would say both the mistress and master have no respect to marriage. Marriage is a promise between husband and wife who agree to love, cherish, worship and obey each other. Whoever who fail to fulfill the promise and try to break the promise, is considered unethical and unlawful, especially when the reason behind is to show off the wealth status and masculinity.  Plus, love affairs trigger a person continuous and demanding behavior, it is as difficult as to get rid of smoking and taking drugs because of the fascination towards it. Since so, what is the point of getting married? I believe the consequence is different if the pre-condition is no marriage involve and just keeping a girl-friend like mistress.  

In short, keeping a mistress is unethical for me due to unidentified motivation, inherited culture values, consequence of ill-reputable scandal as well as broken marriage vows. However, even it is a wrong-doing, I believe mistress as a human and might have true love affection to her master, will eventually complicate the matter and it is not as easy as being told to stop the relationship. For those who are in love right now, don’t you think so?

References: James Palmers (2013). AEON Magazine Ltd, “Mistresses are big business in China, where no official is a real man without his own ernai. What’s in it for the girls?”, viewed 18 Oct 2013, < http://www.aeonmagazine.com/living-together/why-young-women-in-rural-china-become-the-mistresses-of-wealthy-older-men/ >

The Dark Side of Tourism

Introduction

Tourism and travelling, is always beautiful terms to describe our dream of visiting beautiful places and running away from our daily routine as well as hustle bustle life. Working in tourism industry is even a “glamorous” and “attractive” job as widely recognized, even by myself. Three years ago, with the passion and interest in geography, culture and economics, I have decided to study Tourism Management, regardless knowing that I might not receive high-paid salary as other job. At first, my resolve was moved and wavered because of the fear of uncertainty. Is Tourism really a career path for me?  Can I make good money out of it? Is it really my interest?       

My doubts are answered after 8 semesters studying here and I don’t regret of studying the course anymore. While finding out my goal and motivation, I discovered and learned more than “what is tourism?” The good sides and of course the unethical sides of tourism that brought up my concern to share them here.

#1 Making profit vs protecting environment

Yes, it is an old grandma story again, but for me, knowing that tourism operators just treated the environment resources as a golden opportunity to make money, money and money, it just breaks my heart…. Think of these, is tourism business still ethical?

• Do you know that an average golf course in a tropical country such as Thailand needs 1500kg of chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides per year and uses as much water as 60,000 rural villagers?
• Do you know that 1 trekking tourist in Nepal can use four to 5 kilograms of fuel wood a day?
• Do you know that in average, passengers on a cruise ship each account for 3.5kg of garbage daily - compared with the 0.8kg each generated by the less well-endowed folk on shore?

Source: Nature Net <http://www.naturenet.net/education/tourism.html>

Just like the case of “The Lemonade Stand” shared by Ms Diana in class, doing CSR and be 100% ethical is just too ideal to apply it in our real life world. By the time we argue over ethical issues, the best way is to do nothing, but, how is it possible?! We need to make living, and while doing businesses, we damage and exploit the natural resources intentionally and unintentionally. Hence, I would say it is very difficult to achieve especially in developing countries like us!

Ironically, as a scuba diver and also an ex-part time worker at dive center, my responsibility is to protect the marine environment and aquatic life. However, I have to admit, due to lack of experience and expertise, divers sometimes do kick off the coral reef unintentionally. Along the travel journey to dive, divers have most probably caused to co2 gas emission, diesel leakage, sewage problem, and grey water waste. Even I found myself in guilty in between completion of the diving course and also the damages I made. So what to do? Stop scuba diving business that contributed to the economy? Stop letting locals and foreigners to visit all the pulaus in Malaysia? It doesn’t work that way…For me, bearing the guiltiness in mind, I will just hope to join “greener” dive package next time when I have more budget as I know, being “green” is not cheap too!       

     

#2 Special interest tourism vs society norms and values

Special interest tourism caters tourists who have extraordinary request and demand such as sex tourism, dark tourism, and euthanasia (suicide) tourism.

In most of the conservative countries like Malaysia, sex is a  opic and is only accepted after marriage. For example, it is unethical to share topic as such in front of underage children and at incorrect occasion, not to say having sex with them. Obviously, sex and LGBT tosm caused a contradiction in these values because child prostitution, human trafficking, infective disease (AIDS, HIV etc), pornography, and sexual abuse issues do actively exist in Brazil, Thailand, Cambodia and Mexico. We might say it is unethicauril to force the child and women into prostitution, however sex tourism saves them from starving and poverty, in lucky cases they get married to their wealthy partner. According to Laws.com, a recent studies show that the Sex Tourism industry generates earnings over $30 billion annually!

Source: Laws.com, <http://sex-crimes.laws.com/prostitution/4-facts-that-you-need-to-know-about-sex-tourism#sthash.PvxTeoH3.dpuf>

In addition, unusual culture hunting and participation in death, haunted destinations and taboos are showing a good example of the conflict between dark tourism and social value. For example, in common social value, we are supposed to respect and must not interrupt the indigenous culture. However, due to curiosity and tourism benefit purpose, people are selling dark tours packages and arranging their own dark itineraries. For example, Hong Kong famous ghost hunter cameraman team “Guai Tam”, have always triggered local aboriginal people’s anger while they are demonstrating their spiritual ceremonies. As a result, they often receive complaints from the audiences and warning from the supernature specialists.

Not only that, euthanasia tourism organizes trips for potential suicide candidate to where euthanasia is permitted. Currently Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Mexico and Oregon (USA) (DeMond S.M. and Gonzalex C. , 2012) have laws allowing certain methods of assisted suicide. No doubt, it is a bright contrast to the traditional mindset of people “No way of encouraging people to die in such way!”  Nonetheless, under some circumstances of law, why not?

Source: DeMond S.M. and Gonzalex C. (2012). When death is the destination: the business of death tourism- despite social and leagal implicaitons, vol 7, no.3-2013, pp.293-306-5, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

#3 Ensuring guest experience vs Tourists Trap

Since semester 1, we are trained by our lecturers to be ethical and make sure we know how to improve service quality and ensure guest visiting experience. On the other hand, we are taught to brainstorm how to “squeeze” additional income from tourists and make them spend more (and of course, this makes them to complain more), which we called “tourists trap”.  It is contradictory huh? Well, it is part of the dark side of tourism.  I have read an interesting book “The Dark Side of Disney” few days ago, come to my surprise, the author described a lot of unethical tourists traps at Disneyland. For instance, vague free gift vouchers given to please an unhappy customer are to be claimed on plane. Yes, you will get a free snack pack when you are on your return flight instead of on-spot claim. Others include inducing customers to buy Full Day Pass that might have to pay for extra services and facilities.

In short, like any other businesses, tourism is not as wonderful and 100% ethical as dreamed of and expected. Despite all these, I find tourism is still very interesting to me and worth of discussion. And perhaps one day, we will find a balance between tourism development and ethics.

     

(approximately 1200 words)