Got a burning question? Send it to Dr. No at:  This e-mail address is being protected from spambots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it . Feral ‘til 8 and baptized by fire, Dr. No has been doling out advice and solving problems since 1999. Her areas of expertise include sex, drugs, rock ‘n’ roll, Wesley Snipes movies and outer space, but she can answer pretty much any question. 

Q: I’m a really good-looking guy. I get good grades, have a good job, etc. and overall, I’d say that I’m a really great catch. Only problem is, no girl seems to think so. Every time I approach a girl when I go out they just aren’t into it. What am I doing wrong?

A: Your problem is that you use phrases like et cetera and that you think you’re a catch. And while there’s a chance you might be right and you are a babe, there’s just no way that you’re going to get a girl if she knows you know. I’d bet my Magic Bullet Mixer that what you’re doing when you sidle up to a girl is looking her in the face, squinting one of your eyes and giving her a look that says, ‘Hey, don’t you think I’m a catch?’ What your face should be saying is, ‘You’re the babe-most babe in all the land, and if I spend another minute wasting my time using my eyeballs on anything but you, I will punch a hole through my stomach.’ You’re welcome. 

Q: The other day I went out to dinner with a girl. We had a really great time, but right before the bill came, she went to the bathroom, leaving me to pay for the whole thing. It felt really weird to me. I mean, with the whole women’s equality thing, shouldn’t we be going dutch? What should I be doing? Who pays for dinner? 

A: You do, guy.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, ‘That’s totally unfair and kind of sexist. Shouldn’t we be on equal planes?’ Well, sir, you kind of are. Women are the invisible contributors to fun. You have to remember that they’re spending an awful lot of time and money trying to look really nice for you by paying for $40 bikini waxes and stuff to make their hair smell really good. They also sometimes spend money on washing certain clothes to wear if they know they’re going out with you, even if that means they’ll be spending an extra four bucks mid-week for not even a full load. If you spread it all out, it’s probably pretty close to what you’ll be spending on her dinner for a month and you don’t even really have to shower.

What you seem to be forgetting is that currency is your currency. If you buy a girl dinner, she’ll generally be indebted to you. And that’s a really good thing, because once you have something to hold over her head like that, you can totally get her to do cool stuff, like watch your stupid band or cut your hair. It’s like a tipping scale; the more you put on your side, the more she will, too. Think about it as a mid- to long-term investment; it gains value over time. Just like your money would gain appreciation in a bank, so will your nights out.

It’s really important for the girl to feel all catered to, because she’ll get all power drunk, and a girl that’s any kind of drunk is usually really good for business.

Now you’re probably thinking, ‘But wait, what?! I’m a broke college student. I can’t afford to pay for dinner all the time!’ and you’re right, you can’t. That’s why you shouldn’t take a girl out to dinner, unless you’re willing to pay. In addition, you shouldn’t pay for a girl’s dinner unless you plan on doing it for the rest of your life. The same goes with flowers. Don’t ever buy a girl flowers unless you plan on popping up from behind the couch with a bouquet for the rest of your life together. Buying dinner is like practice for being married. Have you ever seen your dad make your mom pay for her own dinner? No, you haven’t. He pays for it, like he always has. So, you have two choices: either suck it up or find an activity that you can both do for free. I can think of one right off the top of my head, and everyone likes to do that.

For the past few weeks I’ve pointed out that generalizations about China are at best only partially correct and at worst completely inaccurate. This is especially true in culture, development and economics. What is often most surprising to Americans when they first arrive, however, is how inaccurate our generalizations about the views of China’s public are.

From what I’ve seen, these generalizations come from two large factors: the tendency we all have to try to make complex issues simple and the assumptions we make about a society with state-run media.

The first factor, oversimplifying, is a tendency that comes from not realizing the diversity of China’s cultural and economic life. This makes us try to group all of China’s public into only one or two groups. Frequently, we portray China as split either between the rural poor and urban rich, or between the government and the general population. In the case of writers with ideological axes to grind, we portray China’s 1.3 billion people as either a faceless mass of the oppressed or the faceless hoard of a rising threat.

In reality, the views of China’s public are as varied as the views of the American public. The views of a rural farmer are radically different than those of an urban businessman or a local government official. Local conditions and situations shape the views of people here just as much as they do in the United States, and that is something that is often overlooked.

Thinking in terms like “Southern Rice Farmers,” “Big City Businessmen” and “University Students,” is a much better way to understand China than to think only of the Chinese.

The second factor, our assumptions about the Chinese state media’s influence over China’s population, is a larger problem. Many Americans believe that simply because there is a state press in China, and since most Chinese have no official access to other media, the Chinese have no choice but to believe their own media.

This is incorrect. Many Chinese are at least somewhat skeptical of the state media, with a significant number of modern university students being cynical about what is and is not reported. This skepticism also appears in the way some university students view Western media. These students often find our trust in our media reports to be naïve.

Beyond this skepticism of state media, the belief that the Chinese people have no access to foreign media is completely untrue. I know this firsthand. The computer I’m writing this article on is subject to the same censorship as any other Internet access point in China, and I can access nearly anything on Fox News, CNN and The New York Times in English as well as both Taiwanese Newspapers and Wikipedia in Chinese and English. While there are occasions when access is reduced and some topics are blocked entirely, the Chinese public has much more access to Western media than we often believe.

If we fail to look past these generalizations, we cannot ever hope to understand China or its diverse population.

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