[This is contributing to a rapid decline in the number of births in China. There were 15.2 million live births in China last year, an astonishing 2 million fewer than the previous year, according to official statistics released last week.]
By
Anna Fifield , Liu Yang and Wang Yuan
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A
woman takes a picture of red lanterns ahead of the Chinese Lunar New Year
at
a park in Beijing on Jan. 24. (Wang Zhao/AFP/Getty Images)
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BEIJING
— Spare a thought for the single Chinese woman
this Lunar New Year holiday.
The remonstrations over their unwed status
and the pressure on them to get married are so intense that some of these
“leftover women” — the name for women not married by their late 20s — are
searching for ways to avoid this family badgering.
Some are asking their bosses for extra work
during China’s biggest holiday, which falls on Feb. 5 this year. Others are
inventing boyfriends.
But still, the pressure mounts. Hospitals are
reporting a spike in young people seeking treatment for anxiety.
“I was so afraid last year that I didn’t go
home. I don’t want to go home this year either, but there’s no way to avoid
going back,” said Emily Liu, a 31-year-old who works at a state-owned
enterprise and will return to her hometown of Dalian next month.
“My
parents say, ‘Your classmates have children, you don’t even have a boyfriend,’
” she said. “This is the only topic when I am back home, and they even mobilize
all the relatives. The pressure is too great.”
Women are considered “leftover” in many parts
of Asia if they haven’t married by their mid-20s.
But China’s economic gains over the past few
decades and the creation of a huge middle class have led many women to pursue
careers instead of getting married early. Or at all.
This is contributing to a rapid decline in
the number of births in China. There were 15.2 million live births in China
last year, an astonishing 2 million fewer than the previous year, according to
official statistics released last week.
The Chinese government, concerned that this
is creating a demographic time bomb as the population ages, abandoned its
one-child policy several years ago in an effort to encourage bigger families.
Despite the fact that there are about 33
million more men than women in China, the result of a preference for boys exacerbated
by the one-child policy, it is the women who are considered “leftover” rather
than the men.
Just as the government campaign to nudge up
the birthrate has yet to show much progress, the government — and parents —
haven’t had much success in encouraging young women to get hitched early. The
number of weddings in China has fallen for five years straight. There are 200
million single adults in China.
Now, some companies are joining the effort to
change that.
They are encouraging female staff to date
and, maybe, tie the knot.
Two companies that run Song Dynasty Town, a
tourist attraction in Hangzhou, south of Shanghai, have given an extra eight
days’ holiday to their single female employees over the age of 30, specifically
so they can date over the New Year holiday, the peak season for blind dating in
China. That will give them a total of 15 days off.
If any of these women get married before the
end of 2019, they will receive double their usual annual bonus.
The companies say they are offering this
“dating leave” as a sign of how much they care for their employees.
“Some of our staff are quite busy with work,
so we think it’s a good idea to give them some extra time for dating,” said the
companies’ human resources manager, Huang Lei.
Elsewhere in Hangzhou, a middle school is
offering teachers two half-days of “love leave” each month.
About 40 percent of the school’s teachers are
unmarried, so the school introduced the “love leave” to help them, the
principal told local media. For both genders, married teachers without children
can also apply for the time off as “family leave” or “happiness leave.”
Some single women are intrigued by the idea —
even as some commentators online have complained about discrimination against
single men.
“It’s good for some employees who are too
busy to date,” says Peng Mei, a 38-year-old officer worker in Chengdu. But she
sees other benefits. “Or they can simply take the leave and use it for vacation
since the company doesn’t require the details of the dating.”
She did wonder, however, who the women were
supposed to be dating on their days off, because men weren’t being given time
off, too. (China is socially conservative when it comes to same-sex
relationships.)
Many single women over the age of 25 dread
the idea of returning home for the holiday and being hectored about being
single and enduring relentless matchmaking efforts. Some 85 percent of 26- to
30-year-old singletons say their parents have urged them to hurry up and get
married, according to a survey last year by Zhenai.com, a popular dating site.
Shen, a 25-year-old woman from Ningbo who
asked that only her surname be used, went to great lengths to avoid this
browbeating: She spent a month photo-editing 10 pictures to show herself with a
famous actor called Liu Haoran.
She sent them to her parents, presenting the
young man as her boyfriend. They were overjoyed.
Then she saw that one of her father’s friends
had posted about the news on WeChat, the ubiquitous social media app.
“Last night, I dreamed that my daughter was
married. I cried so much and woke up for several times,” Shen’s father said,
according to his friend. “I’ve started practicing the speech for my daughter’s
wedding day.”
When Shen saw the post, she was overcome with
guilt and admitted on Weibo, China’s answer to Twitter, what she’d done. Her
confession struck a chord with millions of singles in the same position.
Her parents, clearly missing the point, told
her not to worry about the fabrication and to just get on with blind dating,
Shen told Pear Video, a popular short-video platform, after her messages went
viral. The video was watched more than 200 million times in the 24 hours after
it was posted.
A 35-year-old woman with a doctorate,
identified only as Dong, was also trying to avoid her parents and their
nagging. She’s not only a “leftover woman.” She also falls into the category of
“three highs” — high level of education, high level of income and high age.
She’s sick of being “besieged” by relatives
and other busybodies over the holiday, so she hoped to escape into her job,
Dong told the Qianjiang Evening News in Hangzhou. She asked her boss to let her
work over the Lunar New Year holiday.
Her boss declined her request. She had
more-urgent business to attend to, he said. He is about the same age as her
parents and clearly sympathized with them, not with his employee.
“Escaping won’t change the reality. You can
solve your problems only by confronting them,” Dong quoted him as saying. “The
holiday is a good opportunity for socializing and you should try to meet more
people, keep your eyes open, take the initiative to reach out, and you’ll
probably find your Mr. Right.”
Turning on the television won’t necessarily
provide respite. Many popular dating shows involve parents on the stage
choosing potential spouses for their children.
A new show that debuted in Hunan province
this week, called “Meeting Mr. Right,” shows fathers watching videos of their
daughters going out with men and commenting on their dating techniques.
A popular reality show with a similar concept
— moms and dads commenting on footage of their daughters — showed parents
urging their daughters to marry 23 times in the space of three episodes,
according to a count by the Beijing News. The program was “producing anxiety,”
one TV critic said.
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