the random oracle

So in my efforts to not lose the progress I made in learning Chinese over the summer I’ve started to listen to the podcasts distributed by this website 静雅思听, and I came across this podcast today 没有爱情有善良 (literally “Without love, but with a kind heart”, full text is here).

The synopsis of the story is that a late-middle-aged Japanese man goes to China, where he’s been set up with a Chinese woman in her early 30′s.  They meet and after a few days, the man asks the woman’s family to take her back to Japan.  In exchange, he gives family 5 million yen to buy a new house, and promises to take good care of her, that he’d quit drinking and they’d live a comfortable life together.  Turns out when they get to Japan that he lives in government housing (though I don’t think it has quite as bad a connotation as the projects here) but in any case he’s not rich and he doesn’t quit drinking.  So they live together and for the first few years things are a bit strained because of the language barrier and their financial situation, but bit by bit they start to understand each other.  They have a baby and he does live up to his word about taking care of her and the baby.  He even goes out of his way to help Chinese workers/visitors in Japan who are lost, appreciating how hard it is for them to be in a foreign country.  Here’s the last paragraph:

“希望两岁了，少珍将儿子送入托儿所，自己开始在盒饭店打工。“看看，我爹娘住上了新房子，我们倒住得像贫民窟。我们总也要买自己的房子呀。”少珍笑眯眯的 开始一边照顾儿子一边打工的生活，骑着自行车去盒饭店的时候，少珍感到日本春天的风很柔和，像从前在上海骑车去上班一样。不过现在她心中更安定而温暖，知 道这里有她的归宿，知道她与丈夫间满是关怀的感情。虽然那可以与爱情无关，但足够他们养育希望，过一生了。”

“After Xiwang (the son) turns two, he starts going to kindergarten and Shaozhen (the wife) starts working at a restaurant.  She thinks, “My parents are now living in a new house, but we’re still living like paupers in a cave.  We need to buy a new house too.”  Shaozhen goes about her days happily, sending Xiwang to school, going to work at the restaurant.  She enjoys the soft breeze of the Japanese spring as she rides her bike to work, just like how she once rode her bike to work in Shanghai, except now she’s more content and at peace, knowing that her home is here and that she and her husband will take good care of each other.  Even though it isn’t really love, it’s enough for them to raise Xiwang and live together for the rest of their days.”

It’s a beautiful piece but what was really shocking for me is how different it is from the Western point of view.  I think my first reaction was “poor people”, living a loveless life, just fulfilling society’s expectations and their duties to their parents.  But then again, maybe what we’re taught to value, namely love (of the Romeo and Juliet variety), happiness (often by way of material things), and fulfillment (of the tree-hugging, earth-saving kind, or even the democracy-spreading, Iraq-invading kind) are just as empty and hollow as how we view the values espoused in this story?

I think as outsiders we view the values in this story as coming from (a) tradition, (b) poverty (at least on the wife’s part), (c) lack of better opportunity (on the husband’s part).  But let’s turn the lens on ourselves, where do our values come from?  My guess would be (a) the media, (b) the belief that somehow everyone else is happier than we are, (c) affluence.  The media reinforces this notion of “happily ever after” that seems just within our grasp, even though it has nothing to do with reality; we’re conditioned from childhood to think that it’s possible and indeed that the very definition of happines is to find your own happily ever after.  This reinforces the second point, which is that we see others who have (or look like they have) what we want and we think that “well if they can have it, why can’t I?”  But we do this without taking into account that nothing is as it seems on its surface, and that those we envy or admire really don’t live fairy tale lives either.  And of course being a rich society, we have enough time and leisure to worry about all these (frivolous?) things; maybe we’d all actually be happier if we were a little more appreciative of the simple things in life, like being able to put dinner on the table.

Thoughts?