Relationships

I taught an English lesson recently with relationships as the theme. One part of the lesson was on various personality traits and things that people might look for in a partner. Having lived in China for a little while now I had a fairly good idea of what would come up and I was not let down. Whilst I wouldn’t necessarily say that dating/marriage in the UK is perfect (the rate of divorce is enough to suggest that people do make mistakes) however one thing that is fairly common is that if you ask someone what is most important in a relationship they will probably say ‘love’ or some variant on this…this is an answer that tends to come up a little less in China. At this point I should say that the lesson I took was comprised solely of women, and this blog concerns women in China – I’ll save the man’s side of things for another day.

For many women I know, finding a man they love is very much secondary to finding a man who is a) dependable b) financially sound and c) of a good family background and social status. If that sounds like it is straight from the 1950s that’s because it is. I personally know many people who will readily admit they don’t love their husband, or even single people who assume that they will eventually marry someone they like but won’t necessarily love. A lot of this springs from the pressure to have a child and conform to the standard family model placed upon people by parents and society in general. Parents in China exert a far greater influence on their children’s life than in other countries (this does not stop when said child reaches their twenties..) which is partly why potential partner’s backgrounds are so important. Whether or not you love someone, more importantly do your parents approve of him, his job, his family and his social status. Being dependable and able to provide a stable income and familial life is often considered to be more important than whether couples love each other or indeed whether they are faithful. There is a strange unspoken thing where men cheating on their wives is not seen as that bad provided he keeps it quiet and it does not impact on how he provides for his family. I realise that this is a very broad statement and I would not want to comment on whether unfaithfulness is any higher in China than elsewhere. What I would say though is that it enjoys more tacit acceptance than anywhere else I have been.

 Many people I have met can be judgemental about things that perhaps would not be judged elsewhere. One of the women in the class I taught for example said that she would not want to marry a man whose parents were not still together. Initially I assumed that she meant a child of divorced parents which whilst I could not agree with, could at least see her reasons. It turned out however that she meant this in a more broad sense, for example if one of his parents had died then for her this would make him undesirable husband material. Upon closer questioning it was because she felt that anyone who was not raised in a conventional family unit would not grow up properly. I can only feel pity for the man who suffers a close family bereavement only to subsequently hear that this has also made him unattractive husband material… One thing that women can get judged on is being single from any age above 28. Most women are expected to be married by this point and the older they get without being married the more potential partners might assume that this is a result of some sort of deficiency on the part of the woman rather than something else e.g. she hadn’t yet met someone she wanted to marry or didn’t immediately want to settle down and have children.

Of course this is not to say that these attitudes are true of everyone, there are plenty of people who do not care about racing into having children in their mid-twenties and plenty of people who are looking for a soulmate rather than someone for whom a man who can satisfy the ‘provider’ role as a husband is quite enough. Yet it is also true to say that these people are still in the minority and whilst in the UK things might not be perfect I think I prefer our attitude to it than that which still holds sway for many people in China.