Softly, softly, catchee monkey: 01 (mainland China)

(from googling)

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"Softly, softly, catchee monkey" is a proverb meaning to achieve your goals gently and patiently, rather than rushing or using force, much like how you'd slowly and quietly approach a monkey to catch it without scaring it away. Popularized by Robert Baden-Powell, it emphasizes that steady, cautious efforts lead to success.

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(For those who might wonder who he was, Baden-Powell was perhaps most famous for having founded the Boy Scouts movement.)

    Yet another blog inspired by the mainland Chinese series I've been watching, set 1977–92.

    The naughty boy and studious girl who grew up in the same courtyard are now at university and a romantic couple.

    The situation at the time in China was:  jobs were practically all dished out by the state, with a tiny number being available in the free market involving foreign companies -- which a lot of Chinese people (in the series anyway) didn't trust would be stable enough to see them through their entire lives, unlike state enterprises.  (The state enterprises then turned out not to be the iron rice bowls they'd come to expect to be able to rely on for their whole lives after all...  Well, in this series anyway.)

    People who were in a romantic relationship (or already married even) might get allocated jobs in different parts of China and end up splitting up because they couldn't maintain the long-distance relationship.

    The young neighbours decide they should get married, as it'll strengthen their determination to be together.

    The young man goes to the teachers' room to make enquiries about how to go about it.

    The female teacher he approaches tells him straight off that undergrads are not allowed to get married (which was indeed the regulation at the time).  (The official policy at the time was to discourage early marriage, in a move to help keep the population numbers down, I think.)  He says he knows, he's just making enquiries.

    She runs through the procedure:  first write a letter asking for permission and hand it in to his section.  It then has to go through all the rungs on the ladder (his section, the college, the university) for approval, rung by rung.  After the university approves, it will issue a letter on the matter with its official stamp on it.  Only then can he go to the Marriage Registration Office to lodge his application, and get the approval from them.

    Just as the teacher's finished briefing the young man, her little son arrives and says the shop's started selling ice lollies, asking the mother to go with him to get one.  She says it's a bit of a trek there and back, and too hot, suggesting they wait until she's finished work so that they can drop by on the way home.

    Ping!  The young man (who has always been enterprising when it comes to money matters, even as a little boy) borrows two thermos flasks from the girlfriend, and heads off on his bike to the shop for the ice lollies.  (The thermos flasks commonly used by mainland Chinese people in this series are for things like broth for hospital patients who can't eat solid food, so they are squat, even wide enough for steamed buns, not narrow like the ones used in the West for hot water, tea or coffee.)

    He comes back from the shop with a selection of ice lollies which he re-sells to the teachers at no extra charge, which earns him brownie points.

    Before long, a few more ice lolly errands later, the teachers are giving him insider advice.

    One says to get the girlfriend to do the same with her section (so that they're both moving it forwards -- in a pincer movement).  

    "Go after dark, it'll be more flexible," another teacher mutters at the side, not looking at him -- a kind of "you didn't hear me say that, OK?".  ("Flexible" presumably because there'll be fewer witnesses around, especially if the visit is accompanied by presents -- to oil the workings of the bureaucratic wheel, another practice which features quite a bit in this series.)

    Yep, they got their marriage certificate.

(mainland China, c.1991)

* Brownie points:  Re-reading this blog to check for mistakes, I see that I'd done a spontaneous word play here without realising it at the time.  The "Softly, softly, catchee monkey" saying has been attributed to Baden-Powell, the founder of the Boy Scouts movement.  Brownie points are generally linked to the Girl Guides founded by his sister Agnes.

** (from googling). Girl Scouts: The most popular theory links it to the Brownie level (ages 6-8) in the Girl Scouts/Guides, who earned badges for tasks, making points for good behavior.