September 24, 2008
Five hundred 18-year-old freshmen men at Shanghai’s Fudan University had their first shave yesterday in a ceremony celebrating their entrance to manhood. Today’s Yangtse Evening Post put the story in a big front page photo. The newspaper didn’t say if female students had a corresponding womanhood rite.
After shaving, the students also wrote statements on an “announcement wall.” Their visions of manhood reportedly included things like “Let me choose my own life” and “Nobody can tell me what to do anymore.”
Celebrating the passage to adulthood is back in fashion in China many years after being abolished as symbol of backward, feudal culture. Newspapers have previously reported on young adults dressing up in old-fashioned costumes to celebrate their new status. Last year, the Xi’an-based Chinese Business View, organized and reported a Han costume ceremony.
Also on today’s front page is the story of Wang Zhang, the discipline department secretary for Zhengzhou, who called extramarital affairs responsible for decadence among government officials. Wang expressed his views in a lecture to officials attending a government-organized anti-corruption study session.
The subheadline of the article, “A female official had a 500,000-yuan butt job to seduce other officials,” refers to Liu Guangming, the director of State Taxation Bureau of Anshan, [Liaoning]Province. Liu spent 5 million yuan on beatification and cosmetic surgery, including a 500,000 yuan buttocks augmentation, leading the director to be ridiculed as having “the most beautiful buttocks in Anshan.”
Wang was also quoted as saying, “Mistresses of corrupt government officials are essentially the mistresses of power. All they care about is the money and power the officials possess.”
The small picture at the right bottom corner is an alcoholic plow-ox. The owner said that about one year ago he found that alcohol boosted the strength of his ox, making it more efficient at work. Since then, he has fed the ox a bottle of liquor every working day. Now the ox refuses to work before it’s had a drink.
- Yangtse Evening News (Chinese): 500 boys have their shave in a rite of manhood