Caring
- 2017-02-21
There are a few reasons to why men are single anywhere in the world. In China, it truly is for the larger male than female population. My wife, a local, told me that when she was born her dad wanted to exchange her for a male baby in that hospital. This clearly demonstrates how locals have got what their parents wished for. Well, this also shows that my wife had more choices than her male friends did 
Curious
- 2017-02-20
Yes, I thought I had kinda recognized him, but was not sure cause he was very thin at the time.
FTinPRC
- 2017-02-20
Nicholas Cage in "Knowing".
Curious
- 2017-02-20
Is it your photo FTinPRC?
FTinPRC
- 2017-02-20
I've had three weddings. I enjoyed each of them.
The marriages, not so much.
Men cannot understand the 'experience' of being a bride. I would suggest that weddings have little to do with the often harsh reality of marriage, in much the same way that high school and college graduations have little to do with education, Oscars and Academy awards have little to do with film, and winning elections has little to do with governing.
Brides feel a sense of joy that, as you say, has been culturally and commercially instilled in them since they were little girls.
I don't believe that marriage is an outdated institution or will ever become one. Each marriage, like everything else, ends. And every marriage is the unique dynamic of two unique individuals.
Most people crave companionship and fear change. Marriage is merely one of the stories we tell ourselves to console and/or delude our-self about the nature of human existence.
Arthur
- 2017-02-20
"They can skip their first divorce".... Very funny.
Which brings me to a tangent that a poster mentioned a few months ago (Fifi, maybe?): How can young "normal" people in America, who are all the time exposed to stats about the high rate of divorce (60% of couples divorce within 3 years - everybody knows that) and whose parents, teachers and friends are divorced, but still max out their credit cards to pay (with their parents) $50,000 for a fairy tale wedding. And then they borrow to buy furniture and for the down payment on the house, KNOWING - or they should know - that the odds of them divorcing within 3 years are 60%. Those fairy tale weddings (with the $10K princess wedding dress and the castle covered with roses in the background) are just that: A fairy tale: Marriage does not make you happy ever after.
Of course the wedding industry is a powerful mythology generator. Same for the fashion shows and magazines. And mostly the education that baby girls start getting as soon as they are born: They are right away dressed in pink and soon their toys are dolls and doll houses. We understand all that programming. But we have to realize that the young Chinese who still believe 100% in marriage (because their parents do, as you wrote) are not too far away in terms of naivety from our American kids (even big tough kids like the Marines who go kill overseas as much as they like, fall for that, head first).
My feeling is that it will take another full generation in America for people to fully start realizing that marriage is an outdated institution. If conservatives stay in power 8 years, make that two generations. But in China, it might take as much as 3 generations. What is your prognostic?
FTinPRC
- 2017-02-20
Cultural change always lags economic change, but in China the disconnect is enormous.
Chinese parents literally were raised, educated and married in a different world than the one in which their children live. Chinese parents had little difficulty finding a spouse and buying a house. Marriage was not an 'expression of love'; it was a social family contract.
My university students have NO ONE who can advise them about the issues they face now in contemporary life regarding sex, love and career. They receive plenty of worthless advice about how to live in China in 1980 from parents and teachers.
They are stressed and confused. Their modern personal 'values' are in conflict with their filial piety.
Fortunately, their lives are economically superior to what their parents struggled to achieve. ALL Chinese college students graduate. ALL get jobs. ALL female students get married. But yes, the young men are often unable to marry while they are in their twenties. By Western standards, that is a good thing; they can skip their first divorce.
A poster mentioned about the same thing here a few weeks ago: FTs teach to more and more young Chinese men who have a hard time finding a girlfriend and then a wife.
China has many millions more men than women, a hangover of the country's one-child policy, which was overturned in 2015, though its effects will last decades more. The gender imbalance is making it hard for many men to find a partner – and the gap is likely to widen. By 2020, it’s estimated there will be 30 million more men than women looking for a partner. In his book, The Demographic Future, American political economist Nicholas Eberstadt cites projections that by 2030, more than a quarter of Chinese men in their 30s will not have married.
The problems for men in finding a partner are most acute in poorer rural areas, made worse by long-held traditions that the husband must be able to offer a decent level of financial security before he can secure a wife. “If men want to get married, the future mother-in-law will request that he first buys a house before discussing the next step. It's one reason why house prices have been so strong in recent years,” she says. But this financial burden on men is also making it harder for many women to find a partner. That adds to the issue, with large numbers of men, partly because of the financial costs of marriage, are opting to marry later. And when they do settle down they are often looking for younger women. Age gaps of 10 to 20 years or more are common in Chinese marriages.