Ready, Set...Marry?? Part II

Marriage. I don't think I've given the topic of marriage much serious thought as I have this past year. Granted, this is perhaps at least in part due the fact that more and more people I know from high school and college are getting engaged/ married and the age gap between those I know who are engaged/married has become increasing smaller, or in some cases, non-existent.

Taikang Lu, Shanghai

Not to mention that I've recently celebrated another birthday (hello, 23) and while I'm still very young, I have to admit it doesn't sound nearly as young as when you say you're 20/21/22.

But mostly, I think the real reason why this subject has really pestering me lately is largely due to the environment around me. As I mentioned in the blog post before this, "Ready, Set..Marry?" China has quite the obsession with young people getting married, particularly before the age of 30.

Even in the classroom setting, this mentality has wormed itself into the curriculum. I remember last semester, the topic of marriage was often used in examples explaining grammatical structures and concepts. For instance, when explaining the term 连 (lián), which grammatically is used similarly to the word "even" or "already," our teacher used the example of "她连45岁没有结婚, " （tā lián 45 suì hái méi jiéhūn） which translates to "She is 45 years old and still hasn't married."

Another time, while trying to explain the grammatical usage of the word 才(cái), which is roughly used similarly to the word "finally" in English, our text book stated, "她35岁才结婚" (tā 35 suì cái jiéhūn.), which translates to "She finally married at 35 years old." Why the teachers and the textbooks couldn't come up with different examples using time or meals or anything else is beyond me.




Those two instances are hardly the only two examples of the marriage and weddings being used as examples to explain grammatical concepts in class. In fact, for a while in our class, for whatever reason, I noticed marriage and weddings were used nearly every day to explain different topics. (No, marriage was not one of our vocabulary words.) While I didn't particularly care either way that marriage was being brought up in class so often, I did think it was interesting just how much this one topic came up in class. The prevalence of using marriage as the default example for explaining grammatical structure is very indicative of how emphasis mainland Chinese culture puts on marriage these days.

Socially, in our class outside of the curriculum, there is a lot of talk of marriage too. Granted, most of us are in our twenties, when the topic of love, relationships and marriage is often comes up in conversation. However this topic has come up with even more fervor recently since one of my classmates has recently announced that she will be getting married next year to her boyfriend/fiance. This announcement lead to an interesting discussion about marriage and what age people get married in various countries. According to a one of my classmates from Kazakhstan, many people in his country are married at age 18, though this could also be in part due to the fact that people in Kazakhstan have a lower life expectancy (most only live to see their 60s). 

In addition, the other day at lunch with some of my classmates, my classmate from Kyrgyzstan asked me and another girl in my class when we planned to get married. My instant response was to laugh at the question. It just seemed so absurd to me. After all, who am I to predict the future. Not to mention that most days I hardly feel old enough to be a college graduate let alone married. But of course, that's just me and my own psyche.

While I might feel to young for the grown-up world of marriage talk, many my age apparently are not. One of my friends who is 27, Chinese-Australian and has been living and working in Beijing for the past two years commented to me once that he feels like all the girls in China are too desperate. All the Chinese girls he feels he meets here always are looking for one thing and one thing only--a wedding ring. Wanting to get married eventually is one thing, but he feels that their desperation is so apparent that he senses it immediately.

This desperation is very unfortunate. Not only does it (I imagine) probably turn off any potential "suitors," but chances are these girls are attractive, smart, well-educated people that could be harnessing their energy to do many other (more productive) things aside from desperately searching for any semi-suitable husband.

Sadly though this emphasis on marriage isn't only limited to my experiences in Beijing. While I was in Hong Kong having dim sum with some relatives, my aunt was pestering one of my cousins (not her son) about when he was going to get married. My cousin is in his thirties, has a good job and is a genuinely nice guy, but he hasn't (to my knowledge) found the right person. In my opinion, so long as he is happy with his lot in life that's all that really matters. But according to my aunt (whom I love, despite our disagreements) feels like his life isn't fulfilled unless he has someone to share it with. While we were able to respectively laugh it off at dim sum and I know my aunt was speaking with the best of intentions, I couldn't help but feel a bit bad for him since I'm sure this isn't the first time someone has said something similar to him.

As for me, I just hope that my aunt never feels compelled to have the same conversation with me, whatever it is I'm doing with my life at that point. Though when the time comes to join the ranks of the "sheng nu," I'll make sure to do it proudly.

And yes, I give you permission to hold his post against me on my 27th birthday if I seem to be feeling otherwise.