‘Son, forget marriage, just come home ...’
Print Edition
A MOTHER in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou took out a full-page advertisement in an Australian newspaper promising to stop badgering her son to get married and begging him to return home for the Spring Festival.
On the front page of the Chinese Melbourne Daily was the following:
A Letter to My Son Peng:
We’ve called you many times but you didn’t answer.
Perhaps you’ll see our message here. Your father and I will no longer urge you to marry.
Come home for Spring Festival, please.
Love
Mom
The Chinese language newspaper, which has a circulation of 18,000, didn’t identify the mother but said a man surnamed Miao booked the ad on her behalf.
It said Peng had studied in Melbourne and found a job in the city after he graduated.
His parents repeatedly urged him to get married when he visited them in Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong Province. But the constant criticism over his failure to find a wife led to him breaking off contact when he returned to Australia after his last visit.
His family had been unable to reach him and decided to publish the appeal in the newspaper.
Online sympathy
A black-and-white full-page ad on the front page costs about A$2,800 (US$2,460) on a weekday. The ad was published on Tuesday.
The open letter sparked wide discussion on Chinese social media sites.
An Internet user in Guangzhou said he was afraid to go home as neighbors would sneer at him, calling him useless because they said that other men could find wives so why he couldn’t do the same.
Some even complained about the fact that romantic attachments were not encouraged or even prohibited at many schools in China.
A sina.com user in Shanghai said she was not allowed to have boyfriend at school, but after graduation she was expected to get married in a matter of months and have a child soon after. “After that, your mission is accomplished and they will no longer bother you,” she said.
One comment on sina.com suggested the son might have a boyfriend in Australia while others sympathized with both mother and son.
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