Ready, Set...Marry??

Some days here in China, I feel like I'm living in the midst of a Jane Austen novel. No, not in the nightly-balls-and-parties-and-touring-grand-English-estates sense, but more in the you-must-get-married-by-X-age sense. As much as I love reading a good Jane Austen novel occasionally, living in a what I like to call a marriage-obsessed culture is a different story altogether. 

To call China a marriage-obsessed culture is not far-fetched. There is a lot of emphasis here on finding the 'right' person, getting married and starting a family, particularly on females here. In fact, the term for an unmarried woman over the age of 27 is 剩女(shèng nǚ) meaning leftover woman. No, I am not kidding, though I wish I was. (If you think 27 is rather young to be disparaging over a lack of husband, at least one of the articles I read on "sheng nu" alleged that a girl becomes a "sheng nu" at after the very young age of 25. Ack.)

The emphasis on marriage is so great that during the Spring Festival/Chinese New Year, many parents and singles headed to the temple fairs for the sole purpose of trying to find a potential marriage match. At the Beijing International Sculpture Park, an estimated 50,000+ people visited the park's love-matching event where parents and singles could consult relationship experts, find potential matches and look at the estimated 5,000 personal advertisements posted by other people looking for a potential partner.

Across town, a similar event at Ditan Park averaged 150,000 visitors per day to it's seven-day match-making event. Outside of the event, more desperate parents unwilling to pay the even entrance fee held signs touting their offspring's accomplishments in hopes of finding them a good match.

In Shanghai, the match-making fervor isn't limited to the Spring Festival. Every weekend, in People's Park in the center of Shanghai, parents gather craning their necks to look at papers posted on bushes touting a potential match's good attributes including background, education and physical traits, all in hopes that the next meeting they arrange for their son/daughter will lead to a good marriage.

The pressure to get married isn't just limited to the heterosexual set either. In Shanghai, in contrast to the open marriage market in People's Park, there is also a thriving fake-marriage market, in which lesbians and gays gather in hopes of finding someone to enter into a fake marriage with. 




In China, homosexuality is still a new concept. Many people say they are not acquainted with a gay person and think for someone to identify themselves as gay, something must be wrong with that person. For most of the homosexual community, the attitude towards homosexuality seems similar to the one in the United States military: "Don't ask, don't tell" (though this is slated to change in the US soon---hopefully).

This attitude coupled with the emphasis on marriage and families in China puts homosexuals in a tight spot. As a result, several months ago Shanghai's largest gay website, inlemon.cn, started holding marriage markets where eligible gay men meet eligible lesbian women in hopes of finding someone to enter a fake marriage with and perhaps even start a family with, mostly in hopes of pleasing their traditional families back at home.

Now before I continue bashing China's obsession with marriage, I will concede a few things. I understand, (being Chinese myself and having been raised in a Chinese family) that Chinese culture is largely based around the family structure. That compounded by the fact that most young Chinese people nowadays are only children means that a parent's hope for grandchildren and the continuation of the family line is completely focused on their one child to get married and have a child of their own.

On top of that marriage and a child is the basis for one's social, familial and sometimes even professional standing. As an interviewee said in a Slate.com article on Shanghai's fake-marriage market, "In your job, in your social life, and for family gatherings, you need to bring a partner. It's hard to do these things alone in China." Coming from that perspective, it's no wonder so many young people in China feel pressured to get married.

Arguably finding a person to marry anywhere is hard enough; however, in China, marriage also still handled a bit like a business transaction. It's not enough for two people to care enough for each other to consider having a life together, but they (mainly the male) should also ideally be well-educated, well-mannered, decently well off, and own both a car and an apartment to really be considered an eligible match. With standards like that, I wonder how anyone in China is married at all.

With standards concerning wealth and marriage constantly nipping at their ankles, no wonder most Chinese people consider themselves unhappy. In a recent survey by China.com.cn, only 6% of Chinese people identified themselves as happy, with many saying wealth and "psychological pressures" being the main reasons for unhappiness. Another survey just on the health of young people in China found that an overwhelming 70% of people in their late twenties to early thirties are unsatisfied and have negative feelings. Of those who said they were unhappy, 22% said they were lonely. While one could argue those surveyed are simply being selfish and their attitudes at least partially indicative of growing up in a China's new ever-growing new capitalist economy, I can't help to think that if there was less emphasis on wealth and marriage (and the fact that the two are inevitably linked), young people in China would be more likely to identify themselves as "happy." After all, at the end of the day happiness is only what you definite it as for yourself--not what others claim happiness may or may not be.

As for how China's marriage obsession has affected my own life here, read the next blog post a.k.a. Ready, Set...Marry?? Part II.