Discussion keeps the world's turning.
This is Roundtable. You're listening to Roundtable.
With myself, young, I'm joined by Steve Hatherley and Dingheng in the studio.
Coming up, we share with you what's brought us sheer delight this week.
Join us for a dose of positivity, laughter, and all things that make our hearts say.
Roundtable's happy place, and ever hit in a shopping bag or a receipt from your significant other, how does financial secrecy compare to emotional secrets in relationships?
We'll dive into the impact of stealth shopping.
Your voice matters, and we would love to hear it in our Heart to Heart segment.
Got a question? Something you're itching to share?
Fire up that voice memo and hit us up at eZED-FM aroundtableatfoxmail.com.
Our podcast listeners can find us at RoundtableChina, an Apple podcast.
Now, welcome to the happiest corner on the airwaves.
Roundtable's Happy Place.
Delivery. Delivery. Delivery.
What is it? Happiness from Roundtable.
So, Steve, what is your happy place this week?
I had a few to choose from, but I'm going to go language study this week for my happy place.
Move to China recently, a brand brand brand new student of the Chinese language, really no background at all.
And so, I didn't know where to begin.
You know, Chinese is quite a difficult and intimidating language to approach for the very first time.
So, I didn't have any idea where to start, but I've heard the advice of a few different people.
And, opinion is where I am going to begin.
And, opinion if you don't know what that is.
If you use your phone to translate something from English into Chinese, and you look at the Chinese translation, under that you'll see some letters that look like English.
And I thought that was the English alphabet.
It's not. It's opinion.
And learning how to read those will teach you how to pronounce things in Chinese.
When you don't know how to read the Chinese, you can read the opinion and follow the tone, there's some little accents there, those are the tones, and then you'll learn how to pronounce things properly.
And for independent study, this is, I think, essential.
So, my happy place is I am in search of a opinion book, hopefully this weekend.
Yes, and that is really a really good place to start.
To get your pronunciation right, standard Mandarin.
Yes. That's really important.
It's almost like the most crucial building block when you're starting a new language.
And, is it okay if we check up on you from time to time and see your progress?
Sure. Talk to me this time next year, please.
August 2025. Yeah, we'll talk.
We'll talk. And, do you come, what's your happy place?
Well, a recent happy moment of mine was when I reestablished connection with a classmate of mine during my high school period.
Well, somehow it was also related to language study.
We haven't met each other for many, many years.
And her first reaction when knowing it was me was, hey, how are you?
English subject representative, you know, you know, in kind of middle school system classes, you have a few students selected as the soul, as the soul called cadres to to be in charge of certain affairs.
In the meantime, for each subject, right, one student will serve as the subject representative who help with the teacher on certain issues.
So, and usually you're supposed to select the best students in this particular subject as the representative.
So back then, I was the best in English and class.
Not necessarily, but I guess I was good enough to qualify for that position.
And I was really amazed, the recently when this old classmate of mine still kept that in mind.
I mean, actually back then, I was serving on another row as well.
I was decadre in charge of the entertainment and show business affairs of the class.
Because on quite the entertainer.
But because on that position, I didn't achieve too many results or highlights.
I guess nobody remembers that to resume of my nowadays.
So really, one thought I have is that you've got to have something that you can be remembered by other people for.
Like in your case, I guess that case later, I hope many people will still remember that you are or you wore the host of Roundtable.
Yeah, you got to have something.
How did you encounter this old friend?
And how did this story of you leading the English group or the English class come up?
I'm wondering. Yeah, it was a very coincidental actually.
Yeah, it was we wore in a huge WeChat group.
And sometimes, somehow I realized about this old classmate.
And yes, it just occurred on me.
We haven't met each other, so it's time to reestablish connection.
And that's fantastic. It's like finding your long lost friend.
And it's great to be remembered by usually it's a strong suit.
It's a feature of someone.
And in the West, there's just that phrase of the class clown or somebody's remembered as the...
Not me. In my middle school yearbook, I was voted best hair.
Best hair. You still have great hair.
No, look, nobody wants that.
You want to be voted like the coolest kid in the class or best athlete.
Not... I was 13 years old.
I don't want the award for best hair.
That's not my legacy. Well, when you're older and when you're voted the best hair, I think you should be very happy about that.
Well, about 65, okay, but not at 13 years old.
Being voted the best in English and being remembered.
That's great. Yeah, I'm very happy that you found your friend again and you guys are back talking and hopefully creating more memories than in the future.
Yeah, exactly. Being remembered for other things such as the English political commentator at CGT and Radio.
Thank you. Thank you. Would you happy play, so yeah?
My happy place has something to do with ballet and art.
Much-awaited annual ballet stars classical ballet gala in Beijing is one of the year's ballet highlights.
And the ballet stars gala return to the national center for the performing arts on August 9th and 10th.
And I was fortunate enough to see the first performance at an affordable price from Jiselle to the...
Sulfz from Don Quixante to Swan Lake from Romeo and Juliet to flames of Paris, the principal dancers and soloists from international ballet companies took the stage and brought its audience to the magical world of fairy tales, literature and contemporary stories told through the ballet dance.
Simyeon Shudin, a principal dancer at the Bolshe way ballet in Moscow and a Kessna Shevztovia, a principal dancer with the royal ballet of Flanders.
They were my favorite pair.
Wow, the best of the best, huh?
Oh, yes, absolutely. And their renditions of Maezne's timeless classic Tais was breathtakingly beautiful, both mournful and moving and deeply talented.
And deeply touching the soul.
But the biggest surprise of the night was Oceol Gugneo, a principal dancer with the Bavarian State Ballet in Munich.
And he was nothing short of divine.
His grand jumps and spins possess an ethereal elegance and a regal presence in an ever exciting repertoire of improvs.
And he is of Cuban descent and he really took the crowd by two minutes.
And then what a wonderful experience.
All of it, the majestic and evocative, exquisite and profound classical music with ballet dance as an art form, maybe internally exclaim.
Then goodness for art, art is a salvation for the soul.
And after a long week of work, I just realized that art is not a luxury.
It is a necessity. It is the light that helps us find our way in the darkness of the human experience.
And I'm not comparing a whole week's work as I went on a Friday evening to the darkness of human experience, but it is just the...
Kind of sounded like you did.
I'm not making it any better for myself, but if you have the time and the opportunity, and I think here in Beijing, we do have this privilege to snatch tickets.
And there are the expensive ones, but I got the cheapest one and managed to get a seat and have this wonderful experience and feel my soul nurtured.
So that is my happy place.
And coming up, could concealing a receipt be as damaging as a secret rendezvous?
Let's see how financial fibs might stack up against emotional indistressions in today's relationships.
Stay tuned. Looking for passion?
How about fiery debate?
Want to hear about current events in China from different perspectives?
Then tune in to Roundtable, where East meets West and understand it is the goal.
This is the hour of Roundtable with myself a young.
I'm joined by Dingheng and Steve Hatherley in the studio.
Ever bought something on a whim, felt a pang of guilt, and then hidden the purchase from your partner.
You might be surprised to learn that you are not alone.
A recent survey by Circuit, a route planner app called the Financial Infidelity Report 2023...
What a title. The Financial Infidelity Report.
I think they got to bogged down by...
Is it called alliteration?
It reveals that two-thirds of Americans living with a spouse have concealed purchases from their partners in the past year.
And the report surveyed more than 1,000 Americans in committed relationships who cohabit with their partners.
With a surge in online shopping, this trend of stealth shopping has become more common.
It's now easier than ever to make a spontaneous purchase and then come up with innovative ways to keep it under wraps from your significant other.
So from sneaky tactics to elaborate cover-ups.
Guys, let's go through some of these tactics.
And also I want to ask, you guys to be honest, have you ever tried some of these innovative cover-ups?
To hide a purchase from your partner, Ting-Hang?
In my memory, I have never...
In my memory. Sounds like you're in court.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have never tried to intentionally cover up any purchases I made.
Actually, in terms of materialistic side of my life, I am a minimalist.
So it's okay. There could be some particular circumstances in which me and my wife are not aware, necessarily, about each other's daily purchases.
But it is not because of intentional cover-up.
It is because both of us believe that we are too mature adults living together.
So at least for some day-to-day consumer products purchases, we are absolutely entitled to make purchases independently on our own.
But in terms of big spanning, there is no doubt that they are...
They must be based on mutual approval and mutual awareness.
Yeah, we're not talking here about buying a coffee after lunch and not reporting it to your spouse.
That's not what we're talking about here.
We're talking about bigger things.
I'll give you a couple of examples that we found online.
One woman told the story where she was entering her home through her back door after a shopping spree and quickly putting her packages inside the closet or perhaps behind a big piece of furniture or even hiding them in the laundry basket.
And then she left them there until her sons and husband went to sleep.
That was one of the funny stories.
There was another... this is even funnier.
There's another woman.
She was hiding her expensive brand name shoes in her son's toy box.
She didn't want her husband to know.
Well, little boys like to play.
So the little boy went into the toy box.
He put on mom's brand new designer shoes and came downstairs and was kind of walking around the kitchen in the big room.
And then the husband noticed the shoes and said, where did those come from?
Very expensive brand. And that's what we're talking about.
But it's not just the ladies.
The men do this too. There was a senior executive at a cable company who would have his custom suits, his shirts and his ties and things like that, sent to his office directly, not to his home.
So then what he would do is he would have the suits dry cleaned immediately.
And you know when you get your clothes dry cleaned, they put the plastic over it and it makes it look like it's old, right?
Then he would bring the dry cleaned new suits home and then nobody would know that they were brand new.
You just assume that that's old clothes.
This is what we're talking about.
Big purchases and hiding the expense, trying to hide the expense from your partner.
Right. So they might be quite expensive, maybe not in costing you an arm and a leg, but that's a different story.
Anyhow, you know that your significant other will not just sort of happily accept that you bought this.
Yeah. You know there's going to be a fight or some kind of quibble.
And that's why this person hides it, right?
Exactly. And the way that they go about it is a little bit different.
The dry cleaning one. That's pretty clever.
That's pretty clever. Pretty clever, I think.
35% according to the survey, 35% just destroyed the packaging.
Others went for the digital cleanup.
22% erased their browser history.
18% promptly deleted any emails like promotional emails that they got from the company.
Perhaps updating them on their purchase.
So they would erase those things.
Digital receipts. Yep.
And then it got even more intricate.
Nearly one in ten would tweak financial records.
Actually go on to the papers or go into the computer files and delete numbers and change them to make it look like the spending didn't happen when in actuality it did.
This is the point where it gets a little bit serious, I think.
You know, these stories sound quite cute, don't they?
But if you're going in and erasing numbers on computer files so that your spouse won't see, then I think you're getting into problematic areas.
Yeah, so I guess it is not just about the purchases you made, the material list excited the purchases, but it's more about this emotional side of hiding something, hiding one aspect of yourself from your spouses, it is about the so called elaborate dance of concealments that follows.
Yeah. And also there's a term for this like stealth shopping, so kind of secretly doing it.
It can really take a toll on relationships.
And according to the same survey, one in four Americans cohabiting with a partner believes that hidden financial behaviors or spending constitute relationship cheating.
Is it, what do you think?
Is it, is it equal to cheating?
Financial infidelity is just as bad.
You think so? I'm asking the question.
Oh, yeah, I feel like that's the case.
Actually, yeah, I discussed it with a few close friends of mine and many of them would come to this consensus that it is equal to emotional affair.
Because it really represents a significant breach of the trust in a serious relationship when your partners are concealed financial activities.
It undermines the foundation of honesty and transparency that a relationship is entitled to.
It undermines the financial stability of the relationship to the point where you can't trust what the other person is going to do in the future.
Right? And if you think, oh, okay, well, I caught you this time.
This time, now I know that you spent this much money on a pair of shoes or a new golf club said or something like that.
Okay, but wait, is this the first time?
Probably not. Is this the only time?
Probably not. Wait, if you're spending money here, what else have you been doing?
Oh, wait, if you've been lying about this, what else have you been lying about?
This kind of situation opens the door to all of those types of questions in the relationship.
Well, do you think that this could have something to do with the amount that's being spent or the sort of how proportionally expensive is it?
Compared to our joint assets.
Let's find the number. Ding-hank, your wife buys something and she doesn't tell you about it.
And the price is 700 yuan.
Are you angry or are you not?
No, okay, the price is 2,700 yuan.
Are you angry or are you not?
No, the price is 7,700 yuan.
Yeah, maybe I would have preferred to know.
And we found the number, didn't we?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that answers your question.
Yeah, I think, doesn't it?
Yeah. Before a certain number, everything's okay, but once you get into a certain area of price, then probably you're going to start to be upset about that.
And some people are actually the argument against that still shopping counts as cheating, typically involves something along the lines that it doesn't carry the same emotional weight as in an affair.
And also we might need to take the context and intention into consideration as well.
So, you know, well, maybe, well, if you know your significant other well enough, then you know that if this is just a one-time thing or if it's a habitual thing, then that becomes a problem and maybe some, I don't know, counseling or real talk needs to happen.
They asked people in this survey, why, what does it say about your relationship, why are you doing this and feeling avoiding, feeling judged or criticized for their spending habits was the top answer in the survey.
They thought that their partner would say, what are you doing spending this much money on a new suit or on a new bag or something like that?
And they just didn't want to hear the answer.
That was answer number one.
Right. And actually this is something that might resonate with a lot of people because I think for most people there's something because it's difficult to escape from the influence of consumerism.
And usually there's something that you're really into and then something that you don't usually splurge on, but it would be great to feel great if you do.
And I actually follow this WeChat public account that's solely about the study of luxury handbags.
And always the top liked comment is my husband supported me in getting this brand name handbag.
Like almost defending themselves.
And then a whole bunch of other sisters are going to say, oh, you got the best husband, not the best handbag.
And I suppose it's just this needs a lot of communication.
It's sure. Whether it's the handbag or it's the golf clubs or it's the new PlayStation or the one thousand and one latest edition video game that this guy's getting.
There's something video games was on the list of the most concealed things that people buy.
But I found that to be surprising because how do you hide a video game?
A video game needs a computer or a console.
So it's obvious that when you're using it that you're going to be getting caught there.
64% in the survey results 64% of people living together said they do hide purchases from their partner 64%.
Here's my next quiz question.
Who spends more on their hidden purchases?
Men or women? Well, I guess it's men.
Well, it's women actually, you know, really?
You think so? Okay. So you think it's women?
I think it's men. So tell us.
It is men. And then spend more.
545 dollars compared to 410 dollars.
Okay. Let me ask you this question.
Who and this is the survey question?
Which group was more excited to hide their purchase?
Meaning they don't feel guilty.
They feel kind of a thrill.
Men or women? I think I know this one.
I think this one is probably, you know, stereotypes run deep.
Because women as women, I think we're brought up indoctrinated in, unfortunately, to very easily feel guilty about things and feeling that maybe you're not enough.
Okay. This is a little bit off topic.
But I think for women, we tend to feel guilty a lot of the times.
And a lot of the times ladies, you don't need to feel guilty at all.
But that's a little bit off topic too.
So what about you think?
I would agree. I would actually agree.
It's men who feel more excited about this kind of a behavior because sometimes, you know, you would hear a lot of men talking about, okay, I lied to my wife.
I lied to my spouse. But it's a benign lie.
It's a good intention lie.
This kind of nonsense. Is it just an excuse, Steve?
83% men were more likely than women to feel excited about hiding purchases.
Women were 15% more likely than men to feel guilty about hiding the purchase.
What you said, the young was spot on.
And this is really interesting because why would anybody feel guilty?
I'm thinking if you burned your own money because as an independent woman, not attached, I just find it strange.
Well, because you're hiding it from your partner, you're not being transparent, like coming home and saying, hey, I bought this thing today, you're not.
You're keeping that information to yourself.
That's where that guilt comes from.
I guess so. But let's say the case scenario could be very different as how people feel about this.
If I earned this money and I feel like I need to hide this from you, that just feels really twisted.
As in the independent financial person's mind.
There's a deeper problem.
And there's another case scenario that is, let's say if financially you two are very unequal.
For example, one party earns significantly more than the other.
I'm thinking if I am a housewife, I would feel so...
I don't know how I would feel to ask for money from the other person.
And if I really want something, do I need to hide it?
I think this goes deeper into the power balance in a relationship.
And it might have something to do with financial learning.
One last question for you guys.
You only have one sentence to answer.
What's the answer to resolving the situation of still shopping and feeling bad about it?
Break up. Addressing the underlying issues like fear of judgment.
It's single. That could be the fundamental pathology behind this relationship.
Let's try to be positive about this open communication set for financial.
Yes, yes. A bit of a drury.
Build trust through accountability.
A lot of things you can do.
And that brings us to the end of today's roundtable.
Thank you so much, Steve and Ding-Hong for joining the discussion.
I'm Ha Young. We'll see you next time.
