What is one of the first things you did as soon as you came of age? Most youngsters want to get their driving licence as soon as possible.

"From now on you are not getting another penny out of me!" my father told me after I had got a Saturday job at the age of 14 and three months. That was fine by me, his measly financial contribution to my social life was not helping me to get into the local disco, or go to the cinema with my friends. From the time I received my first pay packet for 8 hours work, I knew I could do anything with financial independence. From that point on my mother could not criticise me for wasting my pocket money, I had none. From that point on I was spending my own hard earned money. When I asked her if I could go on the school trip to France she told me I could – if I paid for it myself. I could, I was a working woman, or at least a working teenager. I could do anything. Of course at that time when she told me that if I needed money I should go and get a Saturday job and stop being a parasite draining them of money, which doesn't grow on trees, (why do parents say this? At the age of 14 I knew exactly what grew on trees and didn't need it explaining to me what didn't grow on them.) She didn't call me a parasite but I could tell by the tone of her voice that that is what she meant. Hence I went off muttering dark threats under my breath along the lines of "You just wait until you are old, even if you beg me for money you won't get a penny out of me", and got a job, 8 hours per week in a clothes shop. It was the making of me.

When I tell my Chinese friends stories of my childhood they really can't understand how I now support my parents' decisions. They did exactly the right thing. I learned that if you need money you have to work for it. Whilst I was using my parents' money I was quite happy to waste it, but once I had to work hard for it, I didn't want to waste it and so it taught me the true value of money – it is ok to waste somebody else's money, but not your own!!

As Chinese parents micro manage their children's affairs, every new purchase is minutely examined. Li says that every time she goes home, her grandmother looks into her bag to see what is new. "How much did you pay for this?" she demands each time. Li has now learned to say 10 rmb, even if it was several hundred. If she doesn't she will never hear the end of it. Needless to say her grandmother is under the mistaken impression that Tianjin is a very cheap city where everything costs 10 rmb. If she ever comes here…….

What is one of the first things you did as soon as you came of age? Most youngsters want to get their driving licence as soon as possible. How many of your Chinese friends can drive? My friends tell me that they can't drive because they can't afford to buy a car. However when I got my driving licence, I could not afford to buy a car either, but I wanted at least to be ready for the time when I could. Actually I think my friends have no intention of achieving this piece of independence, their fathers can drive them to where they want to go.

Xiao Hong commented that the recent badly polluted skies must remind me of London. When I reacted in fury, the sky is one of the things I miss most about England, she said "London is the foggy city because of the pollution isn't it?" "How can you stand there and talk to me about pollution? Tianjin is the foggy city, not London. Anyway, how do you know what the sky is like in London?" Oh everybody knows that, someone told me." I wanted to shout at her "Was it Charles Dickens who told you?" but I didn't know how to say his name in Chinese. "Don't listen to what other people say, come and see for yourself if you don't believe me" I invited her. When I invite my friends to come to England with me, most just dismiss it out of hand and won't even bother finding out what they have to do to come. They think it is much safer to stay here – plus some of their parents would never agree.

One friend who was complaining that her mother was driving her crazy as she kept fixing her up with blind dates, found the love of her life and married him. Now she is a fully fledged blind date supporter and keeps telling our other friends "I thought my mother was wrong but she was absolutely right. From now on I am going to listen to everything she says". Now she has a husband, surely she should be taking his opinion into account. Why am I worried, her husband is not complaining, it is just accepted here.

My friends tell me they are willing to do what their parents say as they have more life experience, they have lived longer and done more things. Is this necessarily true? I don't think so, maybe their parents have been married and brought a child up, but this doesn't mean they have more experience. Some of my friends' parents have hardly ever left their home town. I can definitely say that my parents do not have more experience than I do, except for the getting married and having kids part, that is.

Let's get this straight, most Chinese people are not actually struggling for independence from their families, they actually like the fact that the important and not so important decisions are made for them, thus they don't have to take responsibility for any failure incurred, plus they have the protection of mutually shared interests. I don't encourage my friends to oppose their parents, if I did and they regretted it, the responsibility would be laid squarely at my door. I have a bad reputation amongst my friends' parents, I am a wild foreigner who came here without parental permission, my parents didn't want me to come. "I am grown up, they can't tell me what to do" I tell my friends. "What has being grown up got to do with it, you should still listen to them, they know more than you" they say. For the few that do want to take their own steps in their own world, they will face parental resistance. Very few Chinese parents are willing to let their children hold the reins to their own lives. The ones that are fortunate enough to have such understanding parents are to be envied.

Many people have attended a university far from their home, but after they graduate they will come back and still be subject to their parents' authority, even after they get married. The ones that want to break free from parental restraint will only do so…..if their parents agree.