In China, weddings are down and bride prices are up

The 30 women sat in wooden chairs, facing each other in a rectangular formation.

At the front of the room was the hammer and sickle logo of the ruling Communist Party, with a banner indicating the purpose of the meeting:

“Symposium of young single women of the right age“.

Officials in Daijiapu, a city in southeast China, had gathered women to sign a public pledge decline high “bride prices,” referring to a wedding custom in which a man donates money to his future wife’s family as a condition of betrothal.

The local government, which described the act earlier this year in an announcement on its website, said it hoped people would abandon them. retrograde costumes and do his part to “start a new civil trend”.

At a time when China is grappling with population decline, authorities are cracking down on a long tradition of engagement gifts to try to promote marriageswhich are in decline.

Known in Mandarin as caili, payments have skyrocketed across the country in recent years – an average of $20,000 in some provinces, making marriage increasingly untenable.

Payments are usually made by the groom’s parents.

To curb this practice, local governments have launched propaganda campaigns, such as the Daijiapu event, in which single women are asked to don’t compete each other asking for the highest prices.

Some municipal officials have imposed ceilings on buildings or even intervened directly in private negotiations between families.

The tradition has met with increasing public resistance as attitudes have changed.

Among the more educated Chinese, especially in the cities, she is likely to be regarded by many as one patriarchal relic that treats women like property to be sold to another family.

In rural areas, where the custom tends to be more widespread, it has also fallen out of favor among poor farmers who have to save several years of income or go into debt to get married.

However, the government’s campaign has drawn criticism for reinforcing sexist stereotypes about women.

Chinese media, when describing the problem of rising wedding payments, have often portrayed women seeking large sums as greedy

After Daijiapu’s act went viral on social media, a wave of commenters wondered why the burden of solving the problem fell on women.

Some have urged the authorities to convene similar meetings for the men, to teach them to be more equal in marriage.

In China, “as in most state marriage policies, women are the central target,” said Gonçalo Santos, an anthropology professor who studies rural China at the University of Coimbra in Portugal.

“It is a paternalistic appeal to women to maintain order and social harmony, to fulfill their role as wives and mothers.”

By targeting women, official campaigns like Daijiapu’s sidestep the fact that the problem is in part the government’s own doing.

During the four decades of the one-child policy, parents tended to prefer sons, resulting in a unbalanced which intensified the competition for wives.

The imbalance is most pronounced in rural areas, where there are now 19 million more men than women.

Many rural women prefer to marry urban men in order to obtain an urban family registration permit, or hukou, which gives them access to better schools, housing and health care.

Poorer men in rural areas have to pay more to get married because women’s families want more guarantees that they can support their daughters, a move that could, in turn, push them deeper into poverty.

“This has destroyed many families,” says Yuying Tong, a sociology professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

“Fathers spend all their money and go bankrupt just to find a wife for their son.”

Officials have acknowledged their limited ability to eradicate a custom that many families view as an indicator of social status.

In rural areas, neighbors may gossip about women getting low prices, wondering if something is wrong with them, according to researchers studying the custom.

The tradition is also linked to ingrained attitudes about the role of women as caretakers in families.

In some rural areas of China, the payment is still seen as a purchase of the bride’s labor and fertility from her parents, the researchers say.

Once married, a woman has to move in with her husband’s family, become pregnant, and take responsibility for household chores, raise children, and take care of in-laws.

However, skyrocketing living costs have exposed gaps in China’s social safety net, so low-income families with daughters can save for unexpected medical bills or other emergencies.

And because fathers live longer, some women charge higher prices as compensation for being children primary caregivers of the older generation, say the researchers.

Sociologists say a more effective way to curb this tradition would be to allocate more funds to childcare and health care for the elderly.

According to Liu Guoying, 58, a matchmaker from Nanchang, the capital of Jiangxi province, famous for bride prices, which can exceed $50,000, As young Chinese people delay or avoid marriage, parental expectations of wedding payments are changing.

Parents, eager for a good start to the marriage, are increasingly passing on the payment to the bride and groom as a gift.

Some parents want their daughters to get married so badly that they are willing to settle for less money as long as future sons-in-law treat their daughters well.

“Have pity on the hearts of the parents of the world,” said Liu.

A new generation of women, more educated than their parents, could also influence the change in attitude towards this issue.

A 2020 survey of nearly 2,000 people in China revealed that highly educated couples were less inclined pay the bride price, believing mutual love was enough.

But even for women like 27-year-old college-going Luki Chan, an opportunity her mother never had, escaping the pressures of her hometown traditions can be tough.

Chan grew up in a mountainous region of Fujian, a province in southeast China where wedding expenses are often high.

Her mother expects to receive at least $14,000 from the groom when Chan gets married, as payment for the money he spent on his studies.

Now, Chan is building her career in Shanghai as a theater producer and is in the process of filing marriage papers with her Taiwanese boyfriend.

Chan fears that when her parents find out, their bride-price demands will prevail.

Chan rejects tradition, which he considers equivalent be sold.

“When I see the patriarchal system that exploits women and misogynistic marriage customs, it makes me very scared to talk about marriage with my family,” she says.

Authorities see luxury payments as an urgent problem that could hamper economic development and trigger social instability.

Across the country, cities are trying to popularize the idea of ​​getting engaged without exchanging money.

This month, local authorities in Nanchang held a free mass wedding for 100 couples to get married at the same time inside a huge sports stadium, with the slogan:

“We want happiness, not bride price.”

The couples wore traditional red and gold Chinese wedding dresses and performed the ceremony in synchronized choreography.

Their relatives watched the ceremony from the stands, with local government officials taking the best seats.

However, in a sign of the persistence of this custom, over the past year dozens of residents across China have complained to local authorities via Internet message boards about exorbitant wedding prices.

In a message last summer, a resident said he was “begging” his local government to settle wedding payments in his rural village of Baixiang in southwest China, where many farmers live in poverty.

Three weeks later, county officials responded that they had sent a team of investigators to question the resident’s girlfriend at her home.

The young woman told investigators that her parents had agreed to marry her off for oneThat’s $40,000 and their pleas to lower the price had been denied.

So far the groom’s family had paid only half.

After “great efforts on all sides,” according to authorities, the bride’s father accepted a payment of about $9,000 and returned the remainder to the groom’s family.

The return took place at the local Communist Party headquarters, with party officials as witnesses.

Officials concluded their report with a message to the couple: “Have a happy life!”

c.2023 The New York Times Society