Fantastic video. Here’s some more indepth perspective on some of the issues touched on, but mostly skimmed over during the report, as of course they only have so many minutes and they also want to get in the cute 'story' aspect.
1. The 户口 (Hu kou)
While China appears to be a homogenous blob to the outside, one measure the Chinese have taken against massive rural -> urban influx is to legally enforce the separation of provinces to some degree.
Imagine it as like every American state having its own ‘passport’, which was determined by which state you were born in (born in NYC, get a NY State ‘Passport’), and restricted where you could live, work, attend government funded schools etc. Of course, not all states are equal, so not all of the 户口s are the same. For instance, Beijing and Shanghai 户口s are much much more valuable than from one of the poor provinces in the north west of China.
This leads to crazy stuff like pregnant women rushing into major cities just before they give birth expressly for the purpose of popping out the kid somewhere he might have a better shot in life later on, and if successful claiming that they need to also reside in said district to look after the kid. The fallout from stuff like this impacts a LOT of people, including the kid’s father, the family’s of both of the parents, the government and legal system that has to sort the whole mess out etc.
And when you’re looking to hook up, which 户口 your potential spouse has is a big deal. More on this in a bit.
2. Cultural bias against daughters
While everyone kind of superficially ‘gets’ the idea that the Chinese ‘like’ sons, the actual logic and ramifications behind it are kind of laughed off as ‘oh that’s just their culture’. It’s obviously a pretty potent force if it can compel parent’s to whack girls by the millions. I’m no expert, but here’s some things to consider:
First, the exaltation of boys > girls is ingrained at a level that is hard to imagine for a Westerner. For instance, the Chinese word for ‘son’ is 儿子 (er zi) and the word for daughter is 女儿 (nv er). Even if you can’t read those characters, just take a second to look at that. Notice anything? Well, the word for daughter could be literally translated as “female son”, or at least that’s the sentiment behind it.
To the Chinese, (traditionally speaking) a son will earn his own place in the world, find a wife, continue the lineage by having children and bring a lot of 面子(lit “face” best thought of as a combination of the English concepts of “prestige”, “honour” and “respectability”) to his parents. A daughter is just someone you’re kind of looking after for a bit until eventually she gets subsumed by marriage into someone else’s household / lineage. This is a generalization, and gradually starting to change, but it’s the overriding mentality built upon thousands of years of history.
Second, pregnancy is a huge deal in China. Not like ‘give up your seat on the subway’ big. No, like a HUGE deal. Mothers of newborns get a kind of privelige called 坐月子 (zuo yue zi, lit: “sitting month child”). After having a baby, a mother will basically not leave the house, not even her bedroom that much, for a month. She will not do anything other than rest and look after the baby, sleep, and go to the toilet. Everything (all her meals etc.) will be provided for her by her family. The reasoning is that post childbirth a mother is vulnerable to getting sick or whatever, and if anything bad happens in the first month of a child’s life to its mother that could have disastorous ramifications for the rest of the family’s lifetime, so every precaution should be taken. There is an industry of women called 月嫂 (yue sao, trans: “postnatal attendant”) that families hire just to facilitate this whole shebang.
Now consider this amount of pressure and cultural expectation when mixed with point number 1 above. Now we’re cooking with gasoline.
3. Lack of retirement support, and reliance on family
China doesn’t really have social security, a pension, or anything like that in any way comparable to America or other Western countries (eg. superannuation in Australia). There are SOME systems, I don’t know the specifics in any great detail, but suffice to say in a country where there’s tons of poverty, a handful of corruption and only 5% flat tax it’s expected you look out for yourself.
This means that after you retire (60 for men, 55 for women IIRC), all you’ve got is any money you have managed to save, plus anything your working-age kids can kick upstairs for you. This used to be manageable, because you could have 4 or 5 of your kids take over your farm, and between them they’d make enough for themselves and to support you and your wife, but with the one child policy that is no longer the case.
Traditionally a Chinese family frequently cohabits, especially after the newlyweds have children and the grandparents retire. Thus, the grandparents can provide daycare for the kid while the parents are out at work. So potentially 2x grandmother, 2 x grandfather, mum, dad and newborn are all under one roof, on 1.5 salaries (see point 4). This can only spiral further out of control, as it’s unlikely the grandparents are all dead by the time the parent’s are getting close to retiring, leaving one kid to manage up to 4 grandparents on top of his 2 parents, plus HIS new wife and kid PLUS the wife’s parents/grandparents!
That’s a lot of mouths to feed.
4. Chinese women in the workplace
Chinese employers are aware that their female staff that get pregnant will be out for a full month after childbirth, and possibly longer (see point 2 above). Lower salaries for women.
Chinese women earn less degrees in STEM fields, as the Chinese legitimately have a meritocracy going on. One of the top universities (the Ivy league type equivalent) Qing Hua University is famed for being the pinnacle of science based degrees, and also for it’s incredibly disproportionate male / female student ratio (by some reports 3 guys per girl in most courses, although this is by word of mouth and not a real study). Lower salaries for women.
As some American places might hire a girl over a guy with equal qualifications as it makes their company look better, the opposite happens in China. Inbuilt cultural stigma for guys > girls. Lower salaries for women.
The Fallout
High priorities for women looking to get married:
•High salary, that can potentially support her direct family as well as his
•A good 户口, related to having a high salary, and also meaning HER kids can be legitimately born somewhere they’ll also have a (better) life. If you don’t live in a city, you’re a rural type guy, this is doubly true as all the local women exodus to the urban centres.
•Social circle / family connections. The Chinese meet their eventual spouses through family friends a ridiculously high percentage of the time, so if you’re parents can’t hook you up (for whatever reason) you’re mostly shit out of luck. The ‘marriage market’ in the vid is a bizarre example, but works on the same principle that operates at an informal level society wide.
Chances of getting a girlfriend at work / uni are very low, and the few brave (or stupid) enough to hit the clubs are facing ridiculous ratios and girls that are glued to their friends and all aware that any guy in a club is scraping the bottom of the barrel. I would not want to be a Chinese guy trying street approach, they would never ever take you seriously.
•Family approval. You might have picked up by now that family is seriously important in China, and so there’s not much “YOLO I’ll marry who I want, I don’t care if you hate my drug dealing boyfriend mom and dad” that goes on. Instead, prospective boyfriends have to be able to win over the girl, and then win over her parents so she’ll give the stamp of approval. They’re checking for the items she’s looking at, but without any fog of ‘who’s this dashing rogue’ over their eyes (Game can’t save you from her father), so you’d better be solid to the core. If they say you’re no good, she’ll listen, and you’re out in the cold again.
If you’re a guy, and you don’t have that checklist on lock, you’re going to get squeezed out by a guy that does, and you’re not even going to get dregs because you’re on the unfortunate side of a massive supply / demand imbalance.
Haha, just throws some light on all the complaints about American women. The grass is always greener on the other side.
1. The 户口 (Hu kou)
While China appears to be a homogenous blob to the outside, one measure the Chinese have taken against massive rural -> urban influx is to legally enforce the separation of provinces to some degree.
Imagine it as like every American state having its own ‘passport’, which was determined by which state you were born in (born in NYC, get a NY State ‘Passport’), and restricted where you could live, work, attend government funded schools etc. Of course, not all states are equal, so not all of the 户口s are the same. For instance, Beijing and Shanghai 户口s are much much more valuable than from one of the poor provinces in the north west of China.
This leads to crazy stuff like pregnant women rushing into major cities just before they give birth expressly for the purpose of popping out the kid somewhere he might have a better shot in life later on, and if successful claiming that they need to also reside in said district to look after the kid. The fallout from stuff like this impacts a LOT of people, including the kid’s father, the family’s of both of the parents, the government and legal system that has to sort the whole mess out etc.
And when you’re looking to hook up, which 户口 your potential spouse has is a big deal. More on this in a bit.
2. Cultural bias against daughters
While everyone kind of superficially ‘gets’ the idea that the Chinese ‘like’ sons, the actual logic and ramifications behind it are kind of laughed off as ‘oh that’s just their culture’. It’s obviously a pretty potent force if it can compel parent’s to whack girls by the millions. I’m no expert, but here’s some things to consider:
First, the exaltation of boys > girls is ingrained at a level that is hard to imagine for a Westerner. For instance, the Chinese word for ‘son’ is 儿子 (er zi) and the word for daughter is 女儿 (nv er). Even if you can’t read those characters, just take a second to look at that. Notice anything? Well, the word for daughter could be literally translated as “female son”, or at least that’s the sentiment behind it.
To the Chinese, (traditionally speaking) a son will earn his own place in the world, find a wife, continue the lineage by having children and bring a lot of 面子(lit “face” best thought of as a combination of the English concepts of “prestige”, “honour” and “respectability”) to his parents. A daughter is just someone you’re kind of looking after for a bit until eventually she gets subsumed by marriage into someone else’s household / lineage. This is a generalization, and gradually starting to change, but it’s the overriding mentality built upon thousands of years of history.
Second, pregnancy is a huge deal in China. Not like ‘give up your seat on the subway’ big. No, like a HUGE deal. Mothers of newborns get a kind of privelige called 坐月子 (zuo yue zi, lit: “sitting month child”). After having a baby, a mother will basically not leave the house, not even her bedroom that much, for a month. She will not do anything other than rest and look after the baby, sleep, and go to the toilet. Everything (all her meals etc.) will be provided for her by her family. The reasoning is that post childbirth a mother is vulnerable to getting sick or whatever, and if anything bad happens in the first month of a child’s life to its mother that could have disastorous ramifications for the rest of the family’s lifetime, so every precaution should be taken. There is an industry of women called 月嫂 (yue sao, trans: “postnatal attendant”) that families hire just to facilitate this whole shebang.
Now consider this amount of pressure and cultural expectation when mixed with point number 1 above. Now we’re cooking with gasoline.
3. Lack of retirement support, and reliance on family
China doesn’t really have social security, a pension, or anything like that in any way comparable to America or other Western countries (eg. superannuation in Australia). There are SOME systems, I don’t know the specifics in any great detail, but suffice to say in a country where there’s tons of poverty, a handful of corruption and only 5% flat tax it’s expected you look out for yourself.
This means that after you retire (60 for men, 55 for women IIRC), all you’ve got is any money you have managed to save, plus anything your working-age kids can kick upstairs for you. This used to be manageable, because you could have 4 or 5 of your kids take over your farm, and between them they’d make enough for themselves and to support you and your wife, but with the one child policy that is no longer the case.
Traditionally a Chinese family frequently cohabits, especially after the newlyweds have children and the grandparents retire. Thus, the grandparents can provide daycare for the kid while the parents are out at work. So potentially 2x grandmother, 2 x grandfather, mum, dad and newborn are all under one roof, on 1.5 salaries (see point 4). This can only spiral further out of control, as it’s unlikely the grandparents are all dead by the time the parent’s are getting close to retiring, leaving one kid to manage up to 4 grandparents on top of his 2 parents, plus HIS new wife and kid PLUS the wife’s parents/grandparents!
That’s a lot of mouths to feed.
4. Chinese women in the workplace
Chinese employers are aware that their female staff that get pregnant will be out for a full month after childbirth, and possibly longer (see point 2 above). Lower salaries for women.
Chinese women earn less degrees in STEM fields, as the Chinese legitimately have a meritocracy going on. One of the top universities (the Ivy league type equivalent) Qing Hua University is famed for being the pinnacle of science based degrees, and also for it’s incredibly disproportionate male / female student ratio (by some reports 3 guys per girl in most courses, although this is by word of mouth and not a real study). Lower salaries for women.
As some American places might hire a girl over a guy with equal qualifications as it makes their company look better, the opposite happens in China. Inbuilt cultural stigma for guys > girls. Lower salaries for women.
The Fallout
High priorities for women looking to get married:
•High salary, that can potentially support her direct family as well as his
•A good 户口, related to having a high salary, and also meaning HER kids can be legitimately born somewhere they’ll also have a (better) life. If you don’t live in a city, you’re a rural type guy, this is doubly true as all the local women exodus to the urban centres.
•Social circle / family connections. The Chinese meet their eventual spouses through family friends a ridiculously high percentage of the time, so if you’re parents can’t hook you up (for whatever reason) you’re mostly shit out of luck. The ‘marriage market’ in the vid is a bizarre example, but works on the same principle that operates at an informal level society wide.
Chances of getting a girlfriend at work / uni are very low, and the few brave (or stupid) enough to hit the clubs are facing ridiculous ratios and girls that are glued to their friends and all aware that any guy in a club is scraping the bottom of the barrel. I would not want to be a Chinese guy trying street approach, they would never ever take you seriously.
•Family approval. You might have picked up by now that family is seriously important in China, and so there’s not much “YOLO I’ll marry who I want, I don’t care if you hate my drug dealing boyfriend mom and dad” that goes on. Instead, prospective boyfriends have to be able to win over the girl, and then win over her parents so she’ll give the stamp of approval. They’re checking for the items she’s looking at, but without any fog of ‘who’s this dashing rogue’ over their eyes (Game can’t save you from her father), so you’d better be solid to the core. If they say you’re no good, she’ll listen, and you’re out in the cold again.
If you’re a guy, and you don’t have that checklist on lock, you’re going to get squeezed out by a guy that does, and you’re not even going to get dregs because you’re on the unfortunate side of a massive supply / demand imbalance.
Haha, just throws some light on all the complaints about American women. The grass is always greener on the other side.