This is so true in more than one way:
In a mobile society, people have an easy time claiming multiple home towns -- and no one does so more than candidates seeking national office in an election year.
(Must...not...compare...with...German...Politicians.)
Earlier this month, Nicolas Sarkozy made it on top of the FP list of "Most Eligible World Leaders" ("Interests: Anglo-Saxon economic reform, jogging, the United States of America"). Et voilà, here we go:
"I want to say to the President of France: 'Choose me. I will be a perfect wife for you," said Namu - whose full name is Yang Erche Namu - in a filmed internet plea aired by French website aujourdhuilachine.com.
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She is from the Himalayan Mosuo minority near Tibet - a matriarchal people (...)
Apparently, for a Mosuo woman, proposing seems the normal thing to do. Then again:
where the women never actually marry.
Instead, they take a series of lovers throughout their lives and bring up the children under one roof.
The roof of her mother's house hasn't been big enough for Namu, though, judging from this source from 2004:
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[S]he was a 13-year-old running away from a small village in which she felt trapped, and from a mother from whom she was estranged. Few in her tribe expected her to survive. To her people, the world beyond their mountainous home was largely unknown and incomprehensibly vast. Not only did she survive, she thrived, making her way to Shanghai, where a combination of luck and talent secured her a place at the prestigious Conservatory of Music, where she was the school’s first Mosuo student.
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Sounds like an interesting person. Rachel DeWoskin might have thought the same, making Namu the focus of a lengthy article on "the new cultural revolution" (no, really!) for the Sunday Times and claiming that Namu "gave China the right to vote" (to vote a TV idol, that is. For the beginning, don't let it get too ambitious, right?):
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Yang Erche Namu is somehow both a predictable and unimaginable candidate for playing the part of China’s Paula Abdul (the American Idol judge who is a constant source of gossip). She is a model of the conflict between what audiences want to watch and what Chinese censors claim to want to conceal.
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She won’t consider marrying a Chinese man; westerners, she tells me conspiratorially, are “more romantic”. The subject of Chinese women dating anyone other than Chinese men is a fraught one in China. The reasons for this range from historical resentment over barbarian invasions to the gender imbalance in China’s population and concern over the dwindling number of marriageable Chinese women. Namu, by publicly taking herself out of the running, is a PR agent for western men and potentially a terrifying role model.
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An article from the Shanghai Daily (Publicity hound wants to be first lady of France) serves as an example of how terrified some Chinese are. Namu is labeled as a "disgraced talent show judge", and the author doesn't forget to mention that Namu is quite experienced as it comes to be engaged with foreigners:
Yang is also famous for her love affairs with foreign lovers. She married an American, divorced him, had a seven-year romance with a Norwegian diplomat and became an author when she decided to write about her adventures.
If the proposal turns out to be a failure, Namu could then propose to Hugo Chávez (# 5 on the FP list), who is on pair with Sarkozy in terms of divorces.
(Links added)
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The Lancet reports that China - which virtually eliminated syphilis in the 1960s and 70s - is now seeing the disease return with alarming intensity.
It reveals that reported rates have risen from 0.2 cases per 100,000 in 1993 to 5.7 cases per 100,000 in 2005.
Dramatic intervention is now needed, one of the report's authors says.
The study involved doctors from China's National Centre for STD Control in Nanjing and from the University of North Carolina's School of Medicine.
Dr Myron Cohen, a co-author of the report, described the spread of the disease as "fantastically rapid".
This week's podcast features an interview with Dr Miren Cohen from the University of North Carolina, one of the authors of a research article documenting a resurgence of syphilis in China over the past decade. A range of unique biological and social forces are responsible for the latest epidemic.Syphilis rates skyrocket in China (New Scientist)
