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 ZT回国找老婆要小心 |
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ZT回国找老婆要小心 -- lenh - (322 Byte) 2005-11-14 周一, 02:58 (4646 reads) |
归去来兮
头衔: 海归少校
声望: 学员
加入时间: 2004/03/27
文章: 121
海归分: 18549
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作者：归去来兮 在 海归商务 发贴, 来自【海归网】 http://www.haiguinet.com
As a freshman at the University of Michigan, Kenneth Yuan should be enjoying his first few months at college. Instead, he's pining for Taiwan.
He spent a month there this summer in a program meant to reconnect the 18-year-old American with his roots. But he slept through Mandarin class and went out as many as five nights in a row, to clubs where he says he "hooked up" with girls.
"I will remember Taiwan as one long, never-ending party," he says.
Notch up another victory for the Overseas Compatriot Youth Summer Formosa Study Tour to Taiwan, otherwise known as the Love Boat.
Every summer since 1966, Taiwan's government has organized and subsidized a monthlong cultural-study trip to the island for kids around the world between the ages of 18 and 23 with roots in Taiwan. This summer's group of 649 students, who each paid $500 plus airfare, took classes in the island's culture and Mandarin language, visited a memorial to national hero Chiang Kai-shek and participated in a range of traditional folk arts.
"I will remember Taiwan as one long, never-ending party."
The program, one small part of Taiwan's effort to sustain its cultural and political identity in the shadow of its giant rival, China, has become a rite of passage for kids who swap stories of lifelong romances sparked at the Love Boat. The moniker, which even the counselors and organizers use, comes from the 1970s American sitcom about finding romance on a cruise, though this extravaganza takes place on dry land.
Memorable evenings like Mr. Yuan's in local nightclubs such as Room 18, Luxy and Ministry of Sound have made the program particularly notorious in the Taiwan immigrant community in the U.S., which numbers about half a million people. Lucia Tseng, 22, from Boston who attended the program four summers ago, reckons that in her subgroup of about 50 students, all but a handful were romantically entwined by the end of the month.
When 19-year-old David Chen arrived in Taiwan this summer, he had a non-Taiwanese girlfriend waiting for him back home. Mr. Chen grew up in Indiana, where the handful of Taiwan families in town all knew about the program. "My dentist met his wife on the Love Boat," he says.
At the opening party, Mr. Chen says, camp counselors put on skits about meeting a love interest. "There were paper hearts everywhere," he says. By the third day, he was involved in a relationship he now describes as "a little intense."
"After I met her, I probably spent 22 out of 24 hours with her, for three weeks straight," Mr. Chen says. As for his Mandarin lessons, "I just kind of stopped showing up to class, because I came back at 3 or 4 a.m. every day."
And for many parents, that is kind of the point. With close ties to Taiwan but raising kids in the U.S., the U.K., Australia and South Africa, they are drawn by the camp's matchmaking potential.
When the parents of Jeff Chieh, now 23, of New Jersey found out last year that their son wasn't interested in Taiwan girls, they approached him about attending the 2004 study tour, calling it a good chance for him to learn about his heritage. In other words, he says, "I got conned into it."
"The first thing my mother asked was, 'Did you meet anyone interesting?'"
His parents filled out the application for him, asking their son only for a passport photo. During the summer, they called frequently to check on his progress.
"They kept on asking me about the girls on the trip," Mr. Chieh recalls. His Taiwan relatives brought him on a riverside picnic with a young woman in tow. Back home, he says, his parents "started talking about how much money she was going to make and that she was going to be a good wife."
Although Mr. Chieh balks at his parents' methods, he concedes they have worked. "Back before Love Boat, I wasn't even interested in Taiwanese girls," he says. "And there in Taiwan, I met a lot that I liked."
Love Boat organizers are hardly oblivious to the intentions of participants, enforcing a nightly 11 p.m. bed check and a demerit system for young men and women spotted in each other's rooms. Yi-hsun Cheng, an official of the Overseas Chinese Affairs Commission, the government body that organizes the program, says the Love Boat nickname is "not a bad thing. You know teenagers are very romantic, and they have a lot of passion."
As for their behavior, she says: "To tell you the truth, I don't know. It's a trust relationship ... We've already told the students what kind of rule they have to obey."
Despite the peer, and parent, pressure, some students take the program as seriously as its sponsors －－ or try to. "It's really a big joke to a lot of people," says Joy Huang, 25, who attended in 1998. "I felt like the odd one out for studying or taking anything seriously."
Yet many parents take the long view. "It's summertime, and they've just finished their finals," says Ellen Jer of New York who sent both her teenagers on the program. "They develop a stronger attachment if it's fun."
Her son, Darren, who attended in 1993, says he doesn't think most parents seek an immediate match, but rather try to "plant the seeds" in their children "so that one day they might marry someone they knew from the program, or a friend of a friend. Chinese parents are crafty. They don't care about the interim boyfriend or girlfriend －－ they care about the end game."
Mrs. Jer says she would rather not know exactly what went on at the Love Boat. But her daughter, Phyllis, now 23, says that when her mom picked her up at the airport, she didn't ask about the classes or the sights. "The first thing she asked me was, 'Did you meet anyone interesting?' " Ms. Jer recalls.
While Mr. Yuan didn't find love on his trip, he's grateful for the experience of mixing with the opposite sex. "It's taught me so much about relationships," says Mr. Yuan, who is organizing a reunion in San Francisco next month for a handful of Love Boat veterans.
"What I learned at Love Boat is probably the best thing I could do before college."
作者：归去来兮 在 海归商务 发贴, 来自【海归网】 http://www.haiguinet.com
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 ZT回国找老婆要小心 -- lenh - (322 Byte) 2005-11-14 周一, 02:58 (4646 reads) - null -- 蔚蓝大海 - (0 Byte) 2005-11-14 周一, 17:42 (295 reads)
- 看到商机：海归网可以开办这个业务-The Love Boat Overseas - youths go looking for romance in Taiwan -- 归去来兮 - (6074 Byte) 2005-11-14 周一, 04:46 (529 reads)
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