Love has long been a "required class" for university students, no matter what their department. "Required," perhaps, but also a "private" class. Teachers have always kept silent on the subject, while textbooks contain not a word about love.

If love were an egg, how would you keep it safe? （photo by Pu Hua-chih）

In September last year the Department of Sociology at National Taiwan University (NTU) formally initiated a course entitled "The Sociology of Love." How did the course professor "talk love" to the students, and how did the students resolve for themselves the issue of love in today's chaotic society?

The classroom was jammed with 108 students, along with reporters, and a number of foreigners auditing the class. The launch of the "Sociology of Love" course had already caused a stir both on and off campus, and when the professor began to "talk love" to the students, he ended several thousand years of scholastic silence on the subject.

"Cowardly" Confucians

Sun Chung-hsing, the NTU sociology professor who became the first lecturer on the sociology of love, jokes that China's Confucian scholars were always "cowardly" on the subject of love. Most people sense that China's classical literati, with their tradition of "conveying truth through writing," regarded romantic love as a subject that was beneath their dignity to address. In the experience of Tseng Chao-hsu, professor at National Central University's Department of Chinese, that attidude still applies. Tseng has researched the topic of love for many years and has authored a number of works on the subject, yet he is still regarded in some quarters as pursuing an "unscholarly discipline."

In spite of the raw passion of the poetry in the 3000-year-old Book of Songs, Neo-Confucian scholars of the Song dynasty stiffly read these love lyrics as encomiums on the virtuous qualities of royal consorts. Throughout history, the great thinkers have avoided addressing love as a topic. At the beginning of the Christian era, however, the Roman poet Ovid wrote: "If anyone among this nation does not know the art of love, let him come read our poetry!" In his dialogue Symposium, the Greek philosopher Plato discussed various possibilities regarding love, treating homosexuality with respect and expressing the belief that love formed by a meeting of souls is superior to love founded on physical attraction.

Love's killer?

How did Sun Chung-hsing come to make the "cause" of love his personal mission?

"Is The West Chamber a romantic love story?" asks Sun, about the classic work of Chinese literature. "No-I view [the male protagonist] Student Zhang as a total lecher! Aren't the 'gifted scholars and fine ladies' of the book simply versions of today's young 'dudes and babes?'" The Chinese notion of predestiny in human relations originated because there was only limited opportunity for meeting partners in olden times, but waiting for a predestined match these days-waiting passively for someone to catch you-is unhealthy and 'fatalistic!' Chinese people say that conjugal love is when married partners respond to each other with kindness, but how can you "pledge yourself in repayment for the goodness of another?" Love is above such things-it can't be a mere means of rewarding kindness. . . ." How come this "love professor's" ideas seem geared towards decon-structing traditional notions of love? Is he actually "love's killer?"

Sun Chung-hsing doesn't go out of his way to deconstruct love, but he emphatically avoids dressing love up in a suit of ready-made concepts. In class, therefore, he uses methods of discussion and questioning to introduce the development of views about love in China and the West, the love lives of ancient philosophers, and love and gender, while also taking in such topics as love and marriage, and love and commercial consumption. Sun has the students divide into groups and report on issues that perplex them. Each student is also required to submit a notebook that records, in some form, episodes from their own experience of love.

Sun explains: "People ask me if emotions can be viewed intellectually. I don't think that taking my class means that love will be perfect and happy for you, but I do hope that it encourages students to 'actively' examine love as they experience it, learning how to assess and how to solve problems." It is the same, feels Sun, as the way that practicing calculus problems naturally improves the ability to solve such problems.

"Episodes of love" notebooks

In one class activity, two rows of students stand separated according to gender, facing each other across the classroom. The "presenter" runs up to Girl Number One and says: "Come on, tell me secretly-which one do you fancy?" The students are enacting a television show designed to introduce new couples. They are curious as to why, in today's open society, there are more and more such shows on the TV, and why it is that male participants show off their wealth and physique while female participants are seen baking cakes, reading and playing music.

One of the other groups has interviewed pop fans for a discussion on the psychology of "idol worship," and another performs a radio call-in show, generating discussion of emotional disputes involving "the other man/woman." Other topics include "loving a younger man"-is it shameful for a female student to become involved with a boy who is her academic junior?-and, how to define "best friends of the opposite sex?" The true stories that emerge through these discussions touch on the personal concerns of the participants. One in particular, Hsu Pei-chi, a student from the department of veterinary medicine who is taking the class as an elective, feels the course enables her to "make contact with others on a deep level."

Some of the students choose to keep a written diary, while others make diaries of photographs. When love has passed, what is left behind? Stacks of the thickly filled notebooks crowd Sun Chung-hsing's office. A male student encloses nearly 30 letters from his correspondence with a pen-friend during summer vacation, recording the mutual respect and consideration between them, and the development of their affection. One bright girl has collected mementos of every significant moment from her relationship, including the straws from when she first drank bean-milk with her partner, the tie and ribbon that they exchanged as tokens of love, a fallen leaf and two movie ticket stubs. Says one of the students, a girl from the Department of Psychology: "I thought that the relationship had faded into the past, but putting together material for the notebook made me understand that stories from my past had in fact become part of my life." Sun Chung-hsing maintains absolute confidentiality about the "episodes of love" assignment, and moreover makes no comments and gives no grades on the submissions. Like diaries, the notebooks cannot be evaluated for merit. The important thing is that they encourage "self observation."

Keeping your egg safe

The class becomes even more unusual after the notebook exercise, when students are each assigned to carry an egg with them for a whole week, 24 hours a day. Chen Yi-chun from the Department of Sociology names her egg "Springtime," and takes it shopping and to TOEFL classes. By the end of the week Chen feels that "Springtime" is the most beautiful of eggs, and is even capable of getting angry. At one point Chen's mother, seeing her girl carrying a brocade pouch with her at all times, asks: "how much money are you keeping in there?"

Some of the students keep their eggs safe inside glass jars, or little boxes, or tea canisters, while others consider containers a nuisance. Some simply put their eggs in the refrigerator for the whole week, and one male student breaks his egg while carrying it in his pocket. Virtually everyone asks: "What do I do if the egg breaks?" Some bring the fragments of their broken eggs back to class, but one student asks: "If the egg gets broken, isn't the right thing to get another one?" Sun Chung-hsing answers: "There's no right and wrong-because you are the ones carrying the eggs!"

When the seven days are up some of the students want to give the eggs back to Sun, while others claim to have developed an affinity with their charges, and wouldn't return them even if the teacher asked. Some suggest selling the eggs to a breakfast cafe and some want to bury their eggs in the name of love. From possessing their eggs, to parting with them, the students' responses show their different ways of thinking.

In the classroom the students are drilled on love and self, but outside they are working with "live ammunition." The great majority of the younger generation in today's rapidly changing society lead "bohemian" lives in their studies and pursuit of knowledge. Lin Ching-su, who teaches at Wen Tzao foreign languages college, notes that members of the older generation may maintain the outward forms of love, but for today's freedom-loving young people the problem is that "true love is hard to keep up."

Ko Ching-ming, a professor in NTU's Department of Chinese, remarks: "They aren't concerned about everlasting love, only about making sure that they know love at least once." People today have plenty of opportunities for coming into contact with others, with the result that they have "a longer time in which to choose, but expend less effort" on nurturing their relationships. Ko believes that it takes time for a person to profoundly enter and bond with the life of another person.

Making love on-line?

A girl in the class recounts the story of her bold foray by computer into cyber-relationships: "He said he wanted a one-night stand, and asked if I wanted to be his bit on the side!" Other lurid and flirtatious suggestions seen on screen include: "I really want to make love with you," and "Urgently need a man's loving embrace." Some people encountering each other on-line do agree to meet in person and take the relationship further.

In today's unsettled times the craving for love is stronger than ever. Since true affection takes time to nurture, however, many settle for lust instead. In China, the rallying call of the May 4th Movement-"Give me liberty or give me death"-helped to liberate both love and lust. Although love was supposed to fulfil people's desires in "both body and soul," it seems that the physical variety of fulfilment has since taken priority.

Li Yuan-chen, who advocates the idea that women should have autonomy over their own physical desires, says: "Today's youth may seek the freedom to have one-night stands, but how is that different from the ancestral tradition in which marriage partners meet for the first time on their wedding night? Both cases are extremes which go against human nature." It is neither normal to blindly deny physical desire or blindly pursue it. According to Cheng Pei-kai, history professor at Pace University in the US: "Excessive application of a principle is not freedom, it is simply another kind of internalized system."

Cupid's arrows continue flying regardless. In the old days there were many restrictions on relationships, including concerns about family status and the taboo on marriages within the same clan. Today, in contrast, modern Taiwan witnesses its first homosexual wedding. "That is how tolerant what we call 'civilization' is!" says Ko Ching-ming.

As the semester draws to a close all the students in the Sociology of Love class get a uniform grade. Whether concerned about knowing love at least once, or about attaining everlasting love, the true meaning of "free love" is listening to your own genuine needs and making responsible choices. The same is also true of Sun Chung-hsing's personal mission in the "cause" of love.

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Students on the Sociology of Love course report to the class on their personal observations. (photo by Diago Chiu)

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"Episodes of love" notebooks, recording the joys and sorrows of love. No grades were given for this assignment, which aimed to focus the students' attention on their own experiences. (photo by Diago Chiu)

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If love were an egg, how would you keep it safe? (photo by Pu Hua-chih)

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LOVE, FRAGILE, HANDLE WITH CARE! The different methods that students adopted to take care of their eggs showed their different approaches to life. (photo by Pu Hua-chih)

LOVE, FRAGILE, HANDLE WITH CARE! The different methods that students adopted to take care of their eggs showed their different approaches to life. （photo by Pu Hua-chih）