In case you missed the announcement in Global Times, this was it:
“An online forum advocating ‘mistress rights’ has declared March 3 to be Mistress Day, in order to draw attention to their plea for ‘open acceptance in society.’
“Yesterday, the China Mistress Association conducted afternoon ‘festivals’ in various cities across the country to mark the occasion.
“According to San Jie (pseudonym), the association’s organizer, discussion topics will include ‘how to get my man to come to my place every day,’ ‘how much does your man give to you every month?’ and ‘when will he buy me a house and car?’”
Time Magazine comments (March 2):
“After decades in which straight-laced communist mores kept any romance – extra-marital or more conventional – in check, China is in the throes of a sexual revolution…. Many wives tolerate the liaisons, reasoning that as long as their husbands take care of their families, a little bed-hopping is acceptable.
“Nevertheless, fewer Chinese wives may be willing to put up with their husband’s peccadilloes. The country’s divorce rate is at an all-time high, with cheating a main reason for the splits. Detective agencies that specialize in catching wayward husbands are doing a booming business.
“Beyond the personal realm, mistresses have become a political issue. A 2007 government survey found that almost 90% of provincial-level officials convicted of graft in the previous five years had mistresses. One prosecutor from central China, for instance, was convicted of having siphoned off $2 million in government money, in large part to fund his seven-woman-strong mistress habit. It’s a chicken-or-egg question. Did the mistresses come first, leading to the corruption needed to support these latter-day concubines? Or did the availability of illicit cash make mistress-acquiring an attainable an enviable lifestyle choice?
“Some puritanical Chinese Communist Party intellectuals have tagged the increase in ‘little wives’ as just another sign of the excesses of China’s capitalist reforms. But the dirty secret, of course, is that Mao Zedong depended on a collection of young ladies dedicated to pleasuring the Chairman. Most other Chinese simply weren’t as free to indulge as their Great Helmsman. A Chinese friend of mine who once served as a mistress shrugged when I asked about her liaison. ‘Everybody’s happy,’ she said, although she admitted the wife, also her friend, probably didn’t know about the affair.”
A new video has been posted at YouTube about a novel published by Eric Koch in 2000 that takes place in Berlin in 1929 during the Crash, just before Hitler’s rise to power.
Eric Koch’s new book, The Golden Years: Five Stories, was launched on Saturday, March 16. The book is available from the 
