MeisterEckhart wrote on Mar 29
th, 2022 at 2:03pm:
PZ547 wrote on Mar 29
th, 2022 at 1:49pm:
She told me that her father had retired by 60 and further questioning revealed her parents lived in a Chinese state-owned house which had 'belonged' to her grandparents and which had been handed down to her parents. The Chinese state allowed tenants to pass the houses down generationally and undertook whatever maintenance/repairs were necessary
I wonder what her father did as a day job.
A CCP official, I'd bet.
All property is owned by the CCP in China and is leased to the occupants.
From what she said, he, like her, was a public servant, minor league
She had some funny ideas
One of these involved male baldness. She said a bald man in China, like her father, was respected, because it meant he had worked his brain hard
She also believed that above Australia hovered a 'black hole' which condemned Aussies to fatal skin cancers
When I jotted a phone number down on the back of my hand, she threw a fit, claiming this would give me can-sah
She was extremely moral. For example, when our boss put a fatherly hand on her shoulder, she jumped away from him like a scalded cat, shouting, 'No touch!'. He cringed. Later, when he was gone, she said she'd been engaged in China. Throughout her engagement, her boyfriend was not allowed to physically touch her -- not when holding an umbrella over her while crossing a road, not ever, not even when she rode pillion on his scooter -- no physical touching at all
Her boyfriend went to Canada before she came to Australia. They planned to marry when they'd both returned to China. But after a while in Canada, he'd contacted her to say he'd met someone else. She was stoic, shrugged it off. No compromise in her regarding morality. And of course she chose to return to China of her own accord anyway
In China, her parents considered themselves well-off apparently. Her father after all had retired with his 'brainy' bald head. When she undertook to come to Australia, it was believed by her parents and their contemporaries that she was studying at an Australian university, studying 'computers'
she worked alongside me for almost a year, very nice kid, but her computer skills were restricted to playing around with those little cartoon things (forgotten their name) and using them in mock-up page headers. She wasn't stupid by any means. But reality dawned when she announced her parents were flying over from China to attend her 'graduation'
she was worried sick. Because she'd actually been attending a TAFE in Sydney. And instead of the apartment her parents believed they'd been funding for her, she had been hot-cotting with up to a dozen Chinese kids in a couple of rooms while they all had part-time jobs
So, she could not produce her 'apartment' or her 'university graduation' for her parents. The reason was that although her parents believed they'd been sending her adequate funds, by Australian standards it was a pittance
To save face for her parents, she hired the full graduation gown. I think one of her friends was roped-in to take video of the girl and her family in the quad of Sydney University. And she'd arranged for her parents to spend their time here (few days) in a borrowed apartment. She said the subterfuge would convince her parents her stay in Australia had been adequately funded and they would be proud of themselves and her
At her request, I wrote her a glowing reference re: her time with our employer. She said western references counted for a lot in China. She had zero skills in reality, but was sure the reference would not be closely scrutinized on her return to China. And whatever TAFE had provided her hadn't been worth her attendance, imo
anyway, although her father's lifetime employment by the Chinese state hadn't translated to wealth, it provided him respect (and his baldness helped, apparently). And he'd had his own or his wife's parents state-owned house, which would have been a massive saving compared to Aussie homeowners