In the Integreted English class, Miss Li had a discussion with us on "love and marriage" after showing us a movie on the theme of it. She posed few questions about how do we define love, what is a marriage means to us and whether we want to tie the knot in the future. I haven't given much profound thought to "love and marriage" before, however, I think they are worth talking and taking account of, so I asked my friend Lance for his opinions on the topic when we met on Fright evening.

     I asked what his choice is if he had the chance to inherit a fortune of two billion Us dollars on condition that he must get married at once and has children within five years. His answers surprised me at first but then I understand, he believes in true love but not really a wedding type, which means he probably won't be married in the future and he made it extremely clear without hesitation that he didn't want kids. He said that he had shouldered enough responsibilities and certainly didn't want more, he just wants to spend the rest of his life freely without fetters. We may find it hard to agree with him but it is indeed the typical North-European attitude towards love and marriage.

     Lance told me that people from North European country like Norway, a majority of them don't want to get married and have kids at all, some will only have one kid in their late 30s or 40s and others may just adopt one, so there exist s serious negative population growth in North Europe. I think his view is similar with that of the Russians. When I was in Russia, I saw most parents with kids under five years old are in their 40s and some newly married couples seem to be in their 30s. I can tell from conversations with few Russian people that their views of love and marriage differ greatly from those of Chinese people. They hardly take marriage very seriously and they don't consider it as a new start in life with more responsibilities to bear, instead, they hold that marriage is just a formality, if two people truly love each other, they can be together without secular shackles, when they never feel for each other any more, they just be apart and find another Mr or Miss Right. My friend from St. Petersburg told me that parents of his classmate are never married for 24 years and they just keep the relationship of lovers instead of couples. While in China, people value families and children, they attach great importance to the "human condition" and think highly of passing on the genetic materials. Sometimes, they may sacrifice a lot to endure unhappiness and resolve conflicts in an effort to protect the family and the kids.

    The slogan of North europeans is "love freely" while that of the Chinese is"love responsibly". As for me, I firmly believe in true love but I prefer leaving things the way they are. Why not let nature take the course?