S.S.G.H.

One of the cultural lessons that I have learned in class bears some repeating here, and could be a building block for a small enterprise. One of my classmates is staying with a young Chinese couple as part of her educational stay here in Shanghai. She mentioned to me one day that the husband does everything for his wife; he shops for the food, he prepares it, he cleans the dishes afterwards. When they are out shopping together, he carries all of the bags. Curious about this, she brought this observation to her afternoon class (she takes an additional three hours per day to learn more language as well as cultural insights). Her instructor replied that in Shanghai, married men do all of the work. Astounded, and envious I think, she also asked our morning instructor if this was her experience as well. She replied that indeed it is true, and that all she has to do is sit back and get fat!

This made me think about what kind of potential this might have for women all over the world. I suddenly thought that with a little capital to find a set of offices with classrooms, and some Shanghai men willing to become instructors, that I could open the Shanghai School for Good Husbandry. I think that there are many women who would send their mates to learn a little something from these guys. We could have classes in the early part of the morning, demonstrations in the late morning, and perhaps some local outings in the afternoon. I'm still working on this, so I'm not sure what kind of time period to consider and what to charge. The largest wrinkle might be finding reasons why the men would want to go to that kind of school. All minor details.

{this is an offshoot of many conversations between CD and I about "good husbandry", and so I take the time to give credit for the germ of the idea}