Chinese Marriage in New Generations: Materialistic or Frank Practicality?

“I’d rather be crying in a BMW than smiling on the back of a bicycle” said one woman (Ma Nuo) on If You Are the One, the most popular in a new crop of Chinese dating shows. The show has since come under government censorship for polluting the malleable minds of Chinese young people with open gold-diggers or bai jin nu.  (Confession: I listened to Kanye West to set the mood for writing this article.)

Many think that Chinese marriage is becoming more and more materialistic. I’ve been told that despite all other qualifications a woman will lose face if her boyfriend or husband doesn’t have a house, car, AND a promising job. They must not be right out of college… With more young people and more competition for jobs come longer hours and less time for dating. One recent post on Baidu cuts to the chase,

“I’m 25 years old, looking for a boyfriend. I want you to have an apartment and car. The apartment has to be built after 2000 and the car has to be better than a minivan.”

Another popular TV reality program is just called “Don’t Bother Me Unless You’re Serious.” And let’s not forget Miss Luo’s demanding leaflets. Michael, a 26-year-old freelance artist, says he has given up on Shanghai girls because he doesn’t “have any sugar.”

The ‘marriage market’ in People’s Square provides another prime example of frankness about relationships that many Westerners find crude (and sometimes appalling). Grandparents and parents of busy career men and women gather at the park on weekend days and post papers with their progeny’s height, weight, education level, monthly salary, and dating history for females and the same minus weight and plus the ownership of a car and house for males. I think the papers look sort of quaint decorating the bush branches with hand-written characters. Quaint and efficient. We don’t even have to waste time talking if your son makes under 3000 RMB/month.

A concerned mother collecting information for her son's potential wife.

This past week, I attended author Mina Choi’s book talk at Garden Books in Shanghai. Her presentation of Shanghai Girls: Uncensored & Unsentimental roused an international audience with nearly equal gender representation. Girlfriend Lanlan told Choi and Choi told us stories upon stories of Shanghai girls marrying foreign men thirty years their senior and the quick transformation observed by their friends from an 800RMB/month lifestyle to perfect spoken English, perfect hair and makeup, and a foreign passport. When her ambition outgrew the starter boyfriend or starter husband, the Shanghai girl upgraded. The Western men in the audience were the most outraged by the book, citing true love and ethics. Most of them were married to or dating Shanghai girls. One American girl said she didn’t think that gold digging was a new thing she just thought Shanghai girls were “much better at it.” Choi seemed to take the stance that these girls were simply being practical, using their best assets to move up in society.

While hair color no longer gives away financial status in major Chinese cities, money seems to matter as much or more to girls as they think about marriage. One student worries that his college girlfriend won’t marry him if he doesn’t land a certain salary right out of college while another’s family disapproved of their daughter dating someone with a major that wasn’t Econ. At first exposure these ideas sound shallow (and somewhat ridiculous) to the romantic Western ear but in all honesty we talk about the same things. We just whisper. Maybe we’d be happier if we were more transparent about what we wanted, like a Shanghai girl.