Were Baby Dragons Born in September 22 2016
Many Chinese believe Dragon babies destined for greatness, but infant booms have unintended consequences
Those born under the Dragon sign are said to be more than imaginative, creative, confident and persistent, according to the Chinese zodiac
A boy was born to Taiwanese parents in Florida in January 1977 just before the Twelvemonth of the Dragon turned into the Year of the Serpent in the Chinese zodiac. As the family unit story goes, the boy's father decided to name him Dragon as a upshot.
The md said, "You tin't proper name your son Dragon! He's going to be raised in the United states of america. He'southward going to be fabricated fun of!"
"Then my dad thought about this and said, 'I'll add a 'y' to the name and he'll blend in, merely similar all the American kids, like Johnny and Freddy,'" says Dragony Fu, who's at present 44.
And while Fu might have been a surprise to his parents — they already had two daughters, the youngest viii — it is no surprise that there is a Chinese infant boom in the Yr of the Dragon, the just Chinese zodiac sign that does non represent to a real beast.
The Chinese regard the Dragon equally the well-nigh auspicious sign in the 12-year zodiac cycle and believe Dragon babies — supposedly more than imaginative, creative, confident and persistent — are destined for greatness.
"Chinese people regard themselves as descendants of the Dragon," says Paul Ng, a feng shui master in Toronto, ane of the Canadian cities where the baby boom has been observed.
The Dragon represents Mainland china
"The Dragon is the totem of many animals combined together. He has the body of a ophidian, the scales of a fish, the horns of a rhino and the mouth of a king of beasts. All these powerful creatures' features are institute inside the dragon….
"The Dragon represents Cathay, and if you lot look at China's geography, all these mountain ranges practice look like dragons."
Demographer Daniel Goodkind, at the time a doctoral student at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, traces the Dragon baby boom back to just 1976, despite the thousands-year history of the Chinese zodiac.
"When I did my fieldwork, I interviewed some feng shui guys … because I thought that maybe (they) were giving parents this communication. But they didn't know what I was talking about. They looked at me like, 'Are you crazy? Why are yous asking me this question? It doesn't relate to what I do,'" says Goodkind.
He offers several reasons for why this phenomenon has developed. Modernistic contraceptive methods became more widely available. Parents began to focus on kid quality instead of child quantity. The world was coming out of the 1973-74 oil crisis only in fourth dimension to conceive for births in 1976, a Year of the Dragon, and Chinese communities outside Mainland People's republic of china may have tried to create or revive Chinese traditions that were under threat on the Mainland during the Cultural Revolution.
At that place'southward a lot of uncertainty near the future, and the Chinese zodiac helps people decide whether they are gear up to have a child, Goodkind adds.
His enquiry shows that roughly 25 per cent more babies were born among the Chinese populations of Singapore and Malaysia during the 1988 Year of the Dragon compared with the previous year.
In response, Singapore, 3 quarters of which is ethnically Chinese, opened nine new master schools — schools, not classrooms — to accommodate 4,000 of these children. But the number of extra children born that year was closer to 9,000.
This has led to problems that, ironically, mean Dragons are not always more successful than those built-in under other zodiac signs.
Instead of being more prosperous, a recent study from the National University of Singapore finds that Singaporean Dragons of Chinese descent have an income that is 6.3 per cent lower than would be expected had they been born under a different sign.
These Dragons are also less likely to be admitted to the more prestigious universities and less probable to be employed in the college-paying formal sector.
The report gives two reasons for this.
Get-go, Dragons are less prepared for university. Even though universities increased the number of places they made available during the years when Dragons were to enter them, Dragons' marks were below standard — possibly because later on-school tutoring centres did not aggrandize to adjust them.
Second, there is increased contest in the labour market.
That has had implications for the non-Chinese minority in Singapore, too. 1 quarter of Singapore is made up of indigenous Malays, Indians and other groups that do not follow the Chinese zodiac. Their salaries also went down by 3.half dozen per cent if they were born in a Dragon year.
And there's another timing quirk in Singapore: Singaporean men must serve ii years of war machine service, which means they usually enter university and the labour marketplace with Singaporean women born in the Year of the Horse.
Tan and her colleagues find that Chinese Equus caballus women (pardon the phrase) in Singapore earn 3.2 per cent less than Chinese women born under other signs. Singaporean Chinese Horse men, who are not faced with increased contest, do not suffer a similar destiny.
Goodkind says the Taiwanese government, so alarmed by its 1976 Dragon babe smash and the havoc it wreaked on finding teachers and shuffling them across grades as Dragons progressed through school, launched a "Recall 3 Times" campaign in the run-upwardly to the 1988 Year of the Dragon. The entrada highlighted the increased infant mortality during the previous Year of the Dragon and told parents that Dragons were no smarter and no more successful than those born under other signs of the zodiac. (Past one measure out, Dragons ranked ninth among the 12 signs.) Notwithstanding, there was an 8 per cent spring in the number of babies born in Taiwan in 1988.
But these paradoxical outcomes – at to the lowest degree regarding educational attainment – are not universal.
Researchers notice that in Cathay, Dragons born in 1988 had higher university entrance scores and were actually more likely to graduate from university.
In Hong Kong, Dragons spent more fourth dimension studying math and had higher marks in the subject. Researchers couldn't say whether that was considering of greater competition amid students, more than parental investment in Dragons' education in books or after-school tutoring centres (perchance every bit a response to this greater competition), or simply the presence of classmates who were more motivated.
And Chinese-American Dragons are more educated than their non-Dragon Chinese-American peers, although researchers say that is probably related to their family unit background — Dragons were born to mothers who were college earners and more educated than other Chinese-American mothers.
This doesn't surprise Ng, the feng shui primary, who says that other things are more important than simply being born during the Yr of the Dragon.
"There is no one sign that is the best or the worst considering you cannot just expect at the twelvemonth of nativity. Y'all have to combine that with the calendar month, the mean solar day, the hour, and the place of birth. The yr of nativity only gives us some indications near the person's personality," he says.
"Dragons tend to be very creative but they can be carried away, too. They imagine too much, failing to put imagination into practice. Information technology all becomes empty dreams….
"I find more than successful Snakes than successful Dragons. I call up the word is 'practicality.'"
In fact, each month is itself associated with a zodiac sign, and Dragons born in April are double Dragons, who tend to get pessimistic when things don't go their way; information technology is better for Dragons to be born in September and December, says Ng.
Any the reason, Dragons' prosperity is not guaranteed.
This could have implications in Canada, too.
The York Region Commune School Lath comprises four districts, two of which serve Markham — just nether one-half of which is ethnically Chinese — and Richmond Loma — more than a quarter of which is ethnically Chinese. Those two districts saw a roughly 16 per cent jump in the number of children born in Dragon yr 2012.
The other two districts, where roughly viii per cent of the population is Chinese? Just a six per cent baby blast.
That'due south roughly 1,000 extra students in just one schoolhouse district.
And School Commune 38 in Richmond, more than half of which is Chinese, saw a 12 per cent jump in the number of students built-in in 2012.
(These are numbers for the unabridged student population, not just the population of Chinese descent; such numbers are not collected by school districts.)
You can't name your son Dragon!
Of course, these are just trends and statistics. Each Dragon babe charts his or her ain fashion through life, and Dragony Fu credits his parents for letting him develop his own interests.
"I was not a straight-A student. I was fine and information technology made me experience like I was able to be myself more — in that where I am now, I didn't demand that amount of force per unit area because I could observe my interests and develop a career."
Fu pursued those interests all the way to the Massachusetts Constitute of Engineering science, where he completed a post-doctoral fellowship. Today, he is an associate professor of biological science at the Academy of Rochester in Rochester, N.Y.
And perchance his parents were wise not to fully heed their physician's advice about their baby's name, unknowingly helping their son achieve the success he was "fated" for as a Dragon.
"When I was a kid growing up, I did not similar my name. I wanted to change it. Why couldn't I exist a John?…
"Fast forward to where I am at present…. My name has definitely helped me stand out…. I'chiliad applying for a chore along with 500 other applicants. Peradventure my merit is equal to (that of) many hundreds of (other) people simply maybe my name stands out. I think it has helped me in means I don't know near."
The next Year of the Dragon starts in February 2024. If you share this cultural preference, it might be time to start planning for your own baby Dragon or, perhaps, babe Dragony. And even if you don't, it might however be time to plan for what others might be planning.
Source: https://nationalpost.com/news/world/many-chinese-believe-dragon-babies-destined-for-greatness-but-baby-booms-have-unintended-consequences
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