Rich women in Beijing can now alleviate marital distress by attending schools like the newly started “Good Wife Happy College,” which has an entrance fee of 100,000 yuan (US$15,687).
The institute claims to educate women on how to save a marriage, including how to prevent the husband from having mistresses. The institute targets the high-end of society, with applicants having to provide notarized documents showing property and income worth more than 10 million yuan.
“Let me tell you this, once you’ve graduated from my institute, you will be well equipped, and mistresses will vanish,” said Fei Yang, the director of “Good Wife Happy College” as reported by China News on Nov. 17.
Fei Yang said, “Compared to similar institutes in foreign countries, where only housekeeping skills such as cooking and flower arrangement are taught, my institute hires mostly psychologists as instructors. We specialize in solving family issues.”
As for the teaching method, Fei Yang said that things kick off with a 14-day stay in a villa where “emotional patterns” are studied in small groups.
The demand for such institutes has risen in China’s big cities in recent years as divorce rates have increased on par with the rapid and rocky growth of the country’s economy.
Keeping a mistress is viewed as a status symbol for a successful man in Chinese society—but it can ruin marriages.
Hong Kong Eastern Daily reports that among the upper classes, many wives face the problem of having to cope with mistresses.
Fei Yang told the Eastern Daily reporter, “When faced with a mistress, many wives go to extremes and it results in divorce. In fact, one needs rationality and wisdom to secure a marriage.”
Wang Qighua, director of a marriage counseling firm in Qingdao City, in eastern China’s Shandong Province, said that he is skeptical if marital issues can easily be solved by attending finishing schools, in an interview with City Post.
“These schools are just looking for profit,” said Zhou Yan, an English teacher at the New Oriental School in Nanjing. “A total rip off.”
The divorce rate in China has been on the rise over the past seven years, with statistics showing that 80 percent of divorces were caused by extra-marital affairs.
According to a June 17 report in Chinese state media, there were 465,000 divorces in the first quarter of 2011, or an average of 5,000 a day. This was a 17.1 percent increase from the same period last year.
Yu Hai, a professor of sociology at Fudan University, said that men are not ashamed of having mistresses, but instead proud. “This not only shows the decline of morality but also the destruction of traditional culture.”
Read the original Chinese article.
