Tag Archives: agony uncle

Chinese students and a foreign agony uncle

Posted on 2011-09-02 by Ralph Jennings

Ralph Jennings is a journalist who has contributed advice columns to the Beijing-based 21st Centurynewspaper since 2000. I was working at the China Daily eleven years ago. One day, during an editing shift,  a colleague suddenly popped up beside my desk and said the … Continue reading →

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Can of Cold Blue Crush with extra ice

Posted on 2010-04-01 by Ralph Jennings

An introverted personality can be a Chinese undergrad’s worst classmate. It follows only-child students to college from homes where parents discourage conversation and from middle schools where teachers forbid the same. In college they suddenly want dates but don’t know where to start. Some guys dump ice on the hots for a girl:

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Rich-poor gap: Poor pays?

Posted on 2010-01-18 by Danwei

Ralph Jennings posts a letter he received when he was working as an agony uncle for a Chinese newspaper: “I’m a freshman at a university in Nanjing. Recently, some of my roommates’ parents went to see them with a lot of new clothes and food.”

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Dorm storm: Share and beware

Posted on 2009-11-27 by Ralph Jennings

Ralph Jennings posts a letter he received when he was working as an agony uncle for a Chinese newspaper: “Last term, a student was killed by one of his roommates because of disputes when playing cards.”

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“I don’t want to be compared! We are different!”

Posted on 2009-10-28 by Ralph Jennings

Letters to an agony uncle: A mother can be trouble enough. She insists on study over play. She’s always hounding the kid to pass some test. She censors dates and mates. But add to that a failure, minor as it may be, that sparks Mom’s sense of do-die-or-be-killed competition.

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