It’s Chinese after all, but…you know how the Chinese have millions more young marriageable men than they do young marriageable women? You’d think women could have their choice of those young marriageable men, wouldn’t you?
Apparently, according to this video, you’d be wrong.
Zero in on the sections where the very eligible bachelors say why they’re not interested in the girls they’re set up with. And yes, this is Shanghai, so not Beijing or Guangzhou or anyplace else, and the video suggests this is a Shanghai problem more than elsewhere…but why do I doubt that?
So, yes, they have some stunningly beautiful women walking around loose over there, but that “stunningly beautiful” part comes with big-time baggage. The conclusion of the video (and I’m going to spoil it, but you should watch it anyway, it’s interesting to see the slice of life it shows) is that the young (and starting to age and get desperate) beautiful women of Shanghai are a bunch of spoiled little twits who are mercenary little golddiggers at best. They seem to think marriage is about the man keeping them in the style to which they’ve become accustomed, even though they’ve probably gone into debt and can barely house and feed themselves on what pittances they make in their department store or office jobs.
Note the one fellow who very practically points out that the girl only makes 8,000 yuan a month [ETA: 8,000 yuan is about US$1,100] but has fancy clothing and a very expensive name-brand handbag that’s either been gifted to her (probably by another boyfriend) or is a fake. And yet she’s the one badgering him about his job, and his pay, and his car, and his apartment, and his general lifestyle. He shuts her down pretty hard, but you know she learned nothing from his blunt assessment.
I will say that the men, for their part, have unrealistic expectations of these citified farm girls. A couple of them make the point that their families expect them to marry “pure” women. I.e., they don’t have a trail of ex-boyfriends, they are modest, they don’t go out clubbing, they don’t waste money on expensive cosmetics and gym memberships, they don’t have tattoos (and check out the chick they flash on the screen at that point — wow, honey, what a waste of money that must have been), they can cook and clean for themselves, and so forth. Oh, and the one guy made it clear that they had to have filial respect for their parents, which yeah, that’s a big thing in Asian culture, so you go guy.
What kills me is the matchmakers they talk to who are trying to fix these girls up know exactly what the problem is, but they can’t seem to convince the girls that they need to fix themselves and quit being such little bitches who only look at marriage as a way to be “kept” by a man who will be so appreciative that he’ll keep spoiling them for the rest of their lives.
Now, that all said, the real reason I’m posting about this is because it ties directly into the demographic decline the Chinese find themselves dogged by. It’s not just that there aren’t enough babies being born. And it’s not a factor of “too few women, too many men” though that is in fact an actual problem.
The problem (and I can’t believe it’s confined to Shanghai) is that the women are acting like they live in a society that’s the other way around — in other words, a shortage of men rather than a surplus. And the video hints at why that may be the case in the cities — the men come to the city, look at city life, say “no thanks,” and go back to jobs in the countryside. While the girls stay in the city, fighting grimly to keep up the facade of the good life while competing for the dwindling number of men who have the money to keep them spoiled.
Take THAT problem, add it to the “not enough babies” problem they already have due to the old One Child policies, and watch as the Chinese population ages out and craters. As if it hasn’t cratered already — there are plenty of demographers out there who think the Chinese population is a lot smaller than the official numbers would lead you to think.
I feel somewhat sorry for these girls, but in the end the problem is one of their own making. It’s not like there aren’t a potload more men than girls in China, and it’s not like it would be impossible for them to find husbands…except for their spoiled rotten attitude about what they want out of marriage. And the guys are very sensibly walking away from that bullshit.
Again, I don’t know how much credence to put into this video; it’s Chinese, so automatically suspect, but I don’t see why it would be necessary to lie about how critical the situation is — I’d be more likely to expect a coverup, so perhaps there’s more truth here than one would normally expect out of China.
