Chinese vegetarians?

I wanted to share this in discussion this evening but I didn't get a chance. Its also not really related to today's topic of food and politics, so it wouldn't have really fit in anyway.
I cooked dinner for my language partner (she's a graduate student in economics from Beijing, i help her with english while she helps me with chinese) and I told her that I was vegetarian. At first she freaked out a little because she had cooked for me last week and thought that she might have served me some meat (she didn't). I pointed out that all of the food she had made was vegetarian, and I asked her if people in China eat less meat than Americans. She said in China they really don't make a big deal about vegetarianism. People don't really classify themselves that way. Its just, the mom makes dinner for the whole family, and if the mom doesn't like meat or doesn't cook meat for some reason, the whole family eats vegetarian. She said there are families where the mom just never cooks meat and those families are vegetarian, but they don't go around calling themselves that.
I thought that was really interesting. Not only does it show a cultural difference in the perception of vegetarianism, it also shows a strong control of the mother figure over the diet of the whole family. There's no arguing with what mom cooks.
The cultural difference here where Chinese people don't really make a big deal of vegetarianism is in stark contrast to the U.S. My dad thinks vegetarianism is a disease, and he attempts to stop it whenever he can. I can imagine that you just wouldn't find people like that in China, because people don't seem to really care whether someone else is vegetarian. That, of course, could go both ways. One could argue that it shows greater acceptance of vegetarianism. One could also argue that it shows they don't care as much about the environment because decisions to be vegetarian are based on mom's personal preference, not on environmental, animal rights, or health concerns.