August 6, 2014
China’s Unmarried Women Speak Out
Photo: Feminspire.
In 2007, the Chinese Ministry of Education published a list of 171 new words that have entered the nation’s vocabulary. Among them was the phrase “Sheng nu” or “leftover woman.”
There is indeed an increasing number of unmarried young women in urban China. The majority of these unmarried women are college-educated with high-paying careers. Generally, they are well-educated women with lavish metropolitan lifestyles. This type of woman may have a cat in her apartment but no husband. This phenomenon is partially a result of China’s rapid transfer to a consumer society in the last two decades.
In rural areas, the male to female ratio is 145:100. The population is predominately male, and the rate of kidnapped women and children being sold to unmarried male peasants on the rise. Meanwhile, in metropolitan areas, the longer a “leftover woman” waits to wed, the stronger familial/societal pressure weighs on her. A woman in her late twenties is already considered a “leftover” in Chinese society. A woman in her late thirties is deemed undesirable and has a severely diminished chance of finding a husband.
Traditionally, the Chinese employ arranged marriage. Because the family unit is of utmost importance in Chinese culture, a single man or woman is an anomaly. When a young person comes of age, his or her relatives are obliged to guide the lonely soul in search of their counterpart.
Today, government agencies have replaced the family as a matchmaker. In large cities, meetings between single men and women are arranged by a diverse assortment of organizations, including labor unions, women’s associations, the civil affairs office, and the youth league. In Shanghai, there is even a yearly marriage fair, where over ten thousand single men and women are offered the chance to seek out their future mate.
Roseann Lake, a Beijing-based American journalist, has interviewed more than 100 “leftover” women in the past two years to collect material for her book on this topic. The interviews have inspired her theater production The Leftover Monologues which provides unmarried women a stage to profess their thoughts on love, sex, and marriage.