So I was thinking about the comparison between China and India, in terms of certain social norms.  India seemed much more repressed as a society when I visited there, what witht the prevalence of arranged marriages and the whole flare up over the Richard Gere kiss.  China on the other hand seems much more open, pop bands, cheerleaders, and what not.  
But this week as every week I played a music video before I started the lesson and this one had a scene where a boy kissed a girl and had a girl in a bikini.  Now I teach 14 and 15 and the odd 16 year old so I was really suprised when the scene brought forth a suprising amount of "oh my god" or as they say "oh my gaaah" which can be very funny in its own right.  Anyhoo, after that reaction I went into my lesson about eating out at restaurants and at the end of the lesson asked about whether for dates you go out for cheap or expensive food.  Now these kids all know about boy and girlfriends and a good way to embarress them to be quiet if a boy and girl are talking to each other is to say they need to stop talking to your boyfriend/girlfriend.  Now while I had my first girlfriend freshman year of high school which would have made me 14/15, I figured that maybe they started a little older.  The general answer I got was that they were not allowed to date until after they were at least in college and in some cases after they graduated because it would interfere with their studies.  
See unlike the US, after middle school, which goes until you are 16, high school entrance is dependent upon how well you do on entrance tests, which is one reason why some kids do not care about class anymore they know they don't have the test scores to get into high school.  Same with college, in Shenzhen, a city with 15 million people there is only one college.  Now while I am sure that just like teens back in the US(not me of course but bad teens) they don't always listen to their parents and may have a signifigant other, but it hamemrs home the point I am trying to make which is that for all the ways that Chinese popular culture is mimicking US culture underneath that veneer is a completely different country.