Editor's note: The following was translated and edited from the Chinese web portal iFeng's online "Blog Weekly" magazine (《博客天下》), who for their 100th issue asked 100 different celebrities and other notable personages to name one Chinese social norm that deserves to be broken. Last week, we posted the first part of this series, which can be found here. Below is a sampling of ten more responses, along with the person who offered it and their reasoning behind it.

1) How about not constantly asking me when I'm going to get married?
"Can the old lady who lives upstairs please not always ask me when I'm going to get married? Can my married schoolmates please stop trying to set me up with their idea of Mr. Right? When are women going to get to stop listing "marriage" on their happiness bucket list? When are we going to start actually respecting the decisions of others? Every woman on earth has the freedom to choose whether to get married or not, just like everyone has the freedom to choose between eating the next meal or skipping it. It's a basic freedom endowed to everyone."
- Bu Weilan (writer)

2) Walls. I hate them.
"I really hate walls, the imperial-looking kind you see encircling universities and government buildings. I wish we could just gradually phase them out."
- Yang Shupeng (film director)

3) We should give the people more rights; give them only benefit instead of harm
"I have two wishes for this year: First, that the globalization of civil law reforms reach China, and gives Chinese citizens the same litigation rights enjoyed by other countries who have rule of law; second, that our legal system enacts laws that can check the judicial non-action that's common among public security, prosecution, court and state security authorities. The average citizen's biggest complaint about our legal system is that these authorities too often dismiss cases or refuse to file them altogether."
-Jia Fangyi (lawyer)

4) BDSM should not to be confused with sexual violence
"In my field of research, one misconception we really need to deal with is the one about the sexual preference known as BDSM (Bondage / Discipline / Sadism / Masochism). Too many people confuse it with sexual violence, which is a total misconception. In reality, BDSM is a luxury item of sorts. It is a pinnacle of sexuality. It is a creation of human sexuality and sexual lifestyles. It is a new kind of human interaction. It is a game enjoyed by a small minority of those who understand human physiology and psychology and pleasure. It is the ultimate sensual experience."
-Li Yinhe (sociologist)

5) Authorities need to work on their fear of "bad news"
"Whenever a nation or society gets to the point where every one of its members has grown accustomed to lies and untruths—to the point where it isn't even considered shameful anymore—that's when you've got a real crisis on your hands. Emperor Qianlong may have been one of the greatest in Chinese history, but he weakened himself in later years by shutting out bad news and only listening to the good. His last recorded poem was about triumph and optimism, but we know that time to be one of the most dark and chaotic in Chinese history. It's as if no one wanted to break the bad news to an old man. Ultimately Qianlong died without hearing the truth, and China descended further into turmoil…"
-Ma Yong (historian)

6) Overtime pay should be given when due
"It's gotten to the point where we should stop thinking of 'not getting paid for overtime' as a labor issue and start thinking of it as a criminal issue. Supervisors who don't pay their employees for overtime are criminals! They should be doing hard time for that!"
-Lai Bao (writer, dramatist)

7) Just because you're alive doesn't mean you have to climb the ladder
"So, a soldier who doesn't want to be promoted to general is a bad soldier? Bullshit. There's nothing wrong with having ambition, but is it such a crime not to? Sayings like 'Man struggles uphill, water flows downhill' (人往高处走，水往低处流) seem to be telling average people: 'You're flawed! Your very existence is regrettable!'"
-Li Juan (writer)

8) The sky's not going to fall down if we let people speak
"I wish we could relax the restrictions on Weibo topics a little bit. I'd like to see less error messages like 'We're sorry, your content is not suitable for public posting.' (此微博内容不宜公开). They should really just let everyone speak."
-花总丢了金箍棒 (well-known Weibo user)

9) I don't want to be a descendant of the dragon, got a problem with that?
"I wish that others would stop identifying themselves as 'descendants of the dragon' (龙的传人)—a clichéd term implying that we are the embodiment thousands of years of Chinese history and culture. If people continue regarding themselves as such, I don't want to be a part of it."
-Cao Kou (writer)

10) Do we have to pretend to be idiots in front of our leaders?
"In today's world, we're always supposed to support our leaders. Everyone knows what all the problems are; everyone understands what's going on. But for some reason we're supposed to pretend that we don't in front of the people in charge? Does it have to be like this?"
- Li Quan (musician)

Source: ifeng
 

Related links
Crowdsourcing Change: Public Figures on Social Norms China Should Break (Part 1)
China Speaks: Top Weibo Posts from Politicians, Businessmen and Academics
Survey: Young Chinese Netizens Express Surprising Political Opinions

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Keywords: Chinese social norms Chinese public figures opinions Chinese breaking bad habits