Why can't pretty women like us find the right partners?
That was the question which kept coming up when a group of women in their
late 20s gathered at a recent reunion of senior middle school friends in
Nanjing, capital of East China's Jiangsu Province.
They have good jobs and look reasonably good, they mused, so why are they not
among the ranks of Chinese women who traditionally should be married or even be
mothers by now?
The current trend of adults remaining unmarried in Chinese cities is
considered to be the third since the People's Republic was founded in 1949. The
first in the early 1950s and the second in the early 1980s.
"Well-educated, financially-independent women and poorly educated men with
low income make up the largest portions of the single adult population, and the
two groups will find it most difficult to get out of that situation," said Wang
Zhenyu, sociologist at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
The women have been criticized for being too picky and having abandoned
traditional Chinese values to become too "globalized" but they feel they're just
doing what they need to do to build an intimate "strategic partnership" with a
man.
"Life is such a long and difficult journey that we have to be choosy in
finding an interesting 'book' to read comfortably on our way," said Tracy Shen,
a 29-year-old office manager of a French company.
Shen parted with her boyfriend on the eve of their wedding because his
parents insisted on living with the couple after the marriage. She said her move
was justified because she was paying a larger share for their apartment.
"I know that traditional Chinese families are like that, having two, three or
four generations living under one roof. But I simply cannot accept the 'buying
one and getting two free' policy, and I don't think many girls of this
generation would say yes to that," she said.
"For my right 'book,' I am willing to wait a little bit
longer."