Marrying white or right?
A few days later, I saw another friend, 35 years old and also a successful career woman. She and her European husband recently divorced. They have a daughter.
The woman is taking care of her daughter and paying her ex-husband's rent and living expenses so he won't go around and make it clear to everyone that he's not a lawyer, as her mother had told everyone before they got married.
The man does freelance IT work, which did not impress her mother, so the older woman told everyone that her son-in-law-to-be was a successful lawyer. Then the younger woman was caught up in her mother's lie.
It was only when I met the woman, after her divorce, that I learned she had married him for the same reason - to free herself from all the nagging relatives, friends and acquaintances. And to get rid of the feeling that as a Chinese woman she was "incomplete" (bu wan zheng) and "abnormal" (bu zheng chang) because of her age.
Time has changed and Chinese women have changed, especially in big cities like Shanghai. Many are not ashamed of discussing their sex lives with friends. Fewer men (but still a lot) require that their wives be virgins. And some women get married at an age considered really old - above 30.
Many things have not changed, such as the notion that "a woman needs a family to be complete, no matter how successful her career or the rest of her life."
People and society at large expect women to become wives and mothers after they turn 25 and definitely after they turn 30, when they are supposed to live and work for the family, and the family alone. After they marry, especially after they have a child, many women seem trapped, indifferent to their own appearance, and already middle-aged. Because they were pushed to marry so early, they never really got to enjoy their twenties.
Even some very intelligent women, such as those mentioned in this article, find it difficult to endure the constant pressure, unless they avoid all family and friends.
Unfortunately, most Chinese families stay very close together and expect everyone to show up at regular gatherings of family members, when women are typically singled out, blamed and harshly criticized if they are still single. That backward mindset doesn't fit with a country that's enlightened in so many other ways.
I hope that in time, rapid economic development will also mean more progressive thinking that will give Chinese women more freedom to choose when to marry, who to marry, and whether to marry at all.
And I hope that young married women today won't put the same unfair pressure on their daughters that they themselves endured.
Modern movie dream in retro Mingguo street
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