love at renmin

After getting back from clubbing at 4 am yesterday (see post below :D), I happily slept in today and woke up at noon. My day was consumed by 4 hours of KTV of entirely Chinese songs -- exactly one of which I could actually sing. But it was fun trying to follow along and read the (traditional!!) Chinese characters fast enough to keep up with whoever was singing. And now I might go learn a few songs for next time :D

We visited Renmin University, another fairly good college in Beijing, with a friend of a friend who goes there. Over dinner, we learned all about love and dating at Renmin.

• You know how we joke about sketchy grad students at undergrad parties? At Renmin they take that to a whole new level - they have scheduled parties on Wednesday and Saturday, the sole purpose of which is for PhD students to find girlfriends. Male PhD's pay a minimal fee to enter the party, girls of any age go in for free, and everyone's happy. Right?
  
  (Tracy and I politely declined an offer to go to the next one.)
  
  
• If a guy likes or is dating a girl, it's tradition for him to make a heart out of candles in front of her door on her birthday. A heart of lighted candles...aww..how cute.
  
  
• If a guy wants to tell a girl he loves her, he takes her out to this grassy field on campus at midnight (when no one was around, it was explained) to tell her. Apparently it's a popular place to declare love.
  
  At Beida, there's the pretty Weiming Lake in the middle of campus that serves the same purpose. We tried to think of an equivalent place at Stanford, failed, and concluded that maybe no one ever told anyone else they loved them at Stanford :( how sad.
  

I don't think we really have any traditions at Stanford regarding dating, in fact, unless you count Full Moon on the Quad, which I don't. I wonder if it's cultural, or because it's Stanford. On the other hand, maybe I'm just ignorant, so do enlighten us if you know of any such traditions at our lovely school.