Sat, Mar 08, 2008 page8

• Johnny Neihu's NewsWatch: Neihu family planning: shag, baby

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  O brothers, where art thou?

  The nation is in the middle of a full-blown crisis of manhood. To paraphrase Lord Kitchener and Condoleezza Rice: "Your democratic entity needs you."

  I'm not referring to the prospect of a metrosexual who's softer than the Andrex puppy winning the keys to the Presidential Office. No, this catastrophe is altogether much more serious. Because, in case you weren't aware, a society that seems eternally obsessed with rankings and how it stands up to the rest of the world (look at Taipei 101 for an example) has just been ranked practically rock-bottom when it comes to getting it up.

  Yes, in news that should make every red-blooded male and fertile female of this land feel ashamed, the government recently released figures that showed Taiwan's fertility rate (the number of pregnancies per year per 1,000 women of childbearing age) for last year fell to a pitiable 1.12.

  That puts us in 163rd place in the world, leaving us just above the sex-starved residents of Singapore (1.06), Macau (1.02) and Hong Kong (0.95). (Is it me, or can anyone else see a geographical and cultural pattern?) Hong Kong's original average was 4.35 but then they decided to omit Edison Chen (陳冠希) from the pool.

  But it wasn't always like this in Taiwan, readers; there was a time when we Taiwanese accumulated offspring faster than Angelina Jolie visiting a refugee camp. In the 1960s and 1970s the nation's ladies were popping out babies faster than they could assemble cheap plastic toys.

  So what are the reasons behind this plummet in procreation, I hear you ask?

  The government seems to think it is purely a financial issue and has issued a White Paper containing 125 measures aimed at boosting nocturnal bedroom activity and offering education subsidies for families.

  Personally, I think you'd be better off giving discounts on sexy lingerie or cheap gym memberships for pudgy husbands.

  But my friends tend to agree with the authorities, with one of the most common reasons I hear for the great Formosan fornication famine being: "It's just too expensive to raise kids." Which, when you take into account the skyrocketing prices of daily necessities these days (betel nut is approaching NT$100 per bag), is quite possible.

  The cost of bushibans -- which many professional parents use as a form of affordable childcare -- is also near the top of the worry list.

  However, I believe all of this comes down to a combination of issues that lie at the root of our inability to impregnate, and some of them are easily solved.

  First on the list is education. There should be less of it. A controversial point of view, you may think, but here's my rationale.

  I'm not suggesting we scrap education altogether; it's just that too many years of schooling can have bad results when it comes to making babies. Educated ladies don't marry betel nut-chewing, Whisby-supping country boys.

  Hence the disproportionately high number of 30-something virgins roaming the streets of our towns and cities. This also forces men to patronize rent-a-wife foreign bride agencies, which is a pity given that there are plenty of attractive local women going spare (I hope Cathy doesn't read this or she'll have me neutered instead of Punkspleen).

  Also, too many of our teenagers are spending their formative years asleep at cram school desks when they could be learning really important life skills fumbling with one another on a motorscooter somewhere up on Yangmingshan (陽明山).

  This is how it was done in my day (well, we were on bicycles back then) -- and we went on to produce the economic miracle. Extra-curricular nookie would also solve the problem of costly bushibans.

  I know I'm showing my age here, but another scourge of the modern world is the computer. Social skills, along with the art of chatting up the opposite sex, have regressed by the equivalent of about 5,000 years since the inception of video games and text messaging.

  All I can do these days is get a monotone grunt out of young Johnny Neihu VI these days as he frantically taps away on his Nintendo PS360 thingy. No wonder he can't get a girlfriend. If I were any more sprightly I'd kick his ass.

  Microsoft head honcho Bill Gates has a lot to answer for, because he's responsible for the creation of zhainan (宅男, "home boys") -- pimply punks who live to sit in front of their LCD monitors ogling images of silicon-enhanced celebrities and doing battle with MMORPG (which, though it sounds like a 21st century sexually transmitted disease, is an acronym for those stroke-inducing Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games). They're scared of venturing out and joining the battle of the sexes.

  I experienced this for myself last week when I popped into an Internet cafe in central Taiwan. Outside it was a glorious spring day, just right for frolicking in the nearest cornfield with your childhood sweetheart (as Cathy and I used to do). Instead, the whole teenage population of this township was secreted away inside this smoky, dusty shithole, too wrapped up in their virtual world to notice the attractive, mini-skirt clad females that strutted past the window from time to time (I certainly noticed them).

  Another problem is that an increasing number of my compatriots are shooting blanks. A March 3 CNA story revealed that more than 25 percent of men in Taipei who were tested in a recent study by the city health department had problems involving insufficient or inactive sperm. Doctors attributed the problem to stress, environmental pollution and toxic food.

  So, no more imported Chinese dumplings, folks, it's time to bring out the water buffalo and go back to working the land in the battle for organic food and healthy jizz. Close down polluting factories and reduce the working week to about 20 hours (which, I understand, is one hour more than the average French worker manages) to cut back on stress.

  And there you have it: a few Neihu-style solutions that will soon have us literally shooting up the rankings in the global "brat race." It's time to stop going to school, take a break from work, go back to nature and, as Austin Powers would say, "start shaggin' baby."

  My ideas may not be good for the economy -- the hot-button issue of the day -- and they will more or less mean a return to the Stone Age in pedagogical terms, but look on the bright side. Soon there'll be more babies crawling around here than a Gaza Strip orphanage.

  And that'll come in handy, because now that the Suhua Freeway has all but been given the green light, we're going to need a few more million souls to populate the east coast.

  That is, if we are to "develop" it the same way as the rest of Taiwan.

  Heard or read something particularly objectionable about Taiwan? Johnny wants to know: dearjohnny@taipeitimes.com is the place to reach me, with "Dear Johnny" in the subject line.
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