China’s Bride Price Dims Men’s Hopes
May 5th, 2010
Scott Tong and I recently had a spirited discussion while speeding back to his office in Shanghai in a taxi late one hot afternoon. Scott is China bureau chief of National Public Radio (USA). We talked about how the bride price in China is increasing all out of proportion to reason. The bride price is the increasingly gratuitous dowry young men are expected to give to young ladies with whom the men would like to wed. Now, on top of cash amounts upwards of tens of thousands of US dollars, men in the countryside are expected to also have a flat already bought; some women even expect their mate-in-waiting to already have invested in a car. Scott told me about the research of Columbia University economist Shang-Jin Wei. Wei found a direct correlation between higher rates of savings in families with young men who needed marrying off compared to those without.
Other Chinese have confirmed the dismal state of being an average Chinese family – or, more challenging, a family in the country-side – when it comes to paying a bride’s family off. One Suzhou taxi driver, already married to a woman from Shanghai – lamented that, “Chinese men have only one chance at happiness, while Chinese women have at least two.” I asked him what he meant. He explained, “Chinese men have to pay the dowry to the woman’s family and buy an apartment before they marry. Afterward, the man has no money. The woman, though, has the man’s money and then, if they divorce, can get another dowry. The man, though, can only afford to get married once. After that, never again.”
Pity the Chinese suitor.
Further reading: WSJ
Related posts:
The Market Value of a Daughter
“Straying Cows” Still Unable to Meet Bachelor Demands
May 6th, 2010 at 5:43 am
Bill, the situation for men and the bride price is absolutely correct.
However, the situation of men having only “one chance at happiness” is only for the poor. For the low/middle class, this is their dilemma.
However, for the wealthy, it can sometimes be the opposite. Wealthy men have all the money they need to go and get married again. However, their wives are often left to raise the child by themselves, and very few Chinese men want to marry into an “instant family”. For these women, their chances of remarriage are very small, while they’re cashed-up ex’s go looking for greener pastures.
May 8th, 2010 at 1:55 am
Given that chinese culture is so male dominated, girls are not taught to earn their way, they are taught to marry their way. With that in mind, is the situation really any surprise? This is directly the fault of chinese culture, so in reality those men have no one to blame but themselves.
May 8th, 2010 at 3:27 am
Jason;
Your point is well taken about wealthy men. It’s easy to tell here in China the married guys with their girlfriends from the married guys with their wives: the married guys are smiling and polite when they’re with their girlfriends! ;-’) And you’re right: Chinese sensibilities and (at least) American sensibilities about “instant families” are diametrically opposed: Americans more readily adopt the children of other marriages than do Chinese. Perhaps because divorce is so much more prevalent in the States, and perhaps because of a different take on “blood ties”, given that most Americans are “mongrels” (in the best sense of the word) anyway.
May 8th, 2010 at 3:33 am
Hi, Outcast;
What you say seems born out by the number of men (Chinese and Western) in China who are quite shocked after marriage to find the go-get-’em, career-minded Chinese woman they had married suddenly quits her job, starts shopping with the single income streaming into the new family, and hangs out with her girlfriends – I guess, waiting to have that single child. Not sure, though, if the younger generations are playing mahjong like their mothers and grand mothers.