No Country for Poor Men
Lee Russell, foreign correspondent
Maybe marrying for love is a luxury we have because we live in a society that has more than enough. Is that depressing? Maybe it is, depending on where you are standing. Growing up in America I learned that love is the main reason for getting married. Why did daddy marry mommy? ‘Because they love each other’ was the common refrain. Later while studying psychology I learned men choose women based on physical attractiveness and that women choose men based on how well that man can protect them (in today’s terms that means money). In short, women tend to be somewhat materialistic. This is of course, evolutionary. Women don’t want to have children with a man who can’t support them and theirs.
Now I can assure you that from my experience Chinese men are just like American men. We look first at attractiveness and maybe later we’ll have time to puzzle over the minor details. On the other hand, Chinese women differ from American women in that instead of being scorned, a materialistic woman is the norm. She is merely one among hundreds of millions of others seeking the “right” man. And these days in China, the right man is the man with the money. The right man has a BMW. By now everyone has heard of the woman on the Chinese television show If You are the One (in Chinese: Fei Chang Wu Rao) who famously rejected an unemployed contestant by saying “I would rather cry in a BMW than laugh on the back of a bicycle.” She later defended herself by saying that she was just trying to reject the man in a clever way, but the phrase became famous, or infamous, thereafter.
Perhaps it wasn’t the shock value that made the statement stand out. Maybe it resonated more from the fact that this woman had so neatly defined the values of today’s Chinese youth. Either way, I always enjoy watching the show which made her famous. Fei Cheng Wu Rao is entertaining for many reasons. The moderators make insightful comments, and although the government has since stipulated that certain racy or BMW type remarks can’t be aired, the girls on the show still make things interesting. The thing that makes the show different from its counterparts in America is the quick businesslike tone. In American reality TV, we watch unimpressive attractive people develop attraction and romance (usually with multiple people) for whole seasons. The romance, however contrived it may be, is the attraction. In China, however, the popular shows put multiple contestants under the microscope in just one hour. The 24 girls on Fei Chang Wu Rao manage to eliminate men very quickly based on anything from appearance, to interests, occupation, or any other reason they can think of. One can’t help but notice that the most number of girls choose to turn off their light as soon as they learn the man’s occupation.
While the bachelor and Fei Chang Wu Rao both seek ratings through showing us ‘real’ people trying to find ‘real’ love, the former depicts a very western form of fairy tale love, while the latter makes one think of the well-known marriage market in Shanghai. One is filmed in a studio in Nanjing and the other takes place on weekends in People’s Square, but the result is the same: Chinese people are trying to get the best deal they can through marriage. While more and more young people these days are shunning the help of their parents in finding a partner, they are really still following the same rules which have always been passed down. I have a house; I have a car and a good job. Chinese youth, represented quite aptly on shows like these, don’t choose based on feelings or interests. They are using the same shrewd discretion which would make the traditional village matchmaker proud.
The question is, is all of this really a bad thing? After all, cynics have long said that marriage is really just a business deal in the end. Royal families have historically married for political reasons, why should everyone be in an uproar if women in china are suddenly concerned about money? To be absolutely fair, we shouldn’t. The reality which millions upon millions of people in china today face is that there aren’t a huge number of opportunities available to advance. The gap between low class and high class today has literally become your net worth. There are no old gentry anymore, only the newly rich. Perhaps it is depressing to think that the average person in China would be more than content if they could marry someone with more money than them. Or maybe it is naive to think that despite this hard reality, we should still try to put love before all else.
The funny thing is that I always got different advice from my mother and father. My Chinese mother always told me that I needed to get a good job and study harder. That would make me more attractive to women. Of course she was always telling me I should do things to make my resume more attractive too. Maybe she thinks my resume is interrelated with my love life. My American father would just tell me to be myself. If you stick to that game plan, you’ll win out sooner or later.
In my opinion they were both right. No matter how you feel about things, material or immaterial, your opinions are immaterial if you don’t do what makes you happy. If a BMW makes you happy, by all means work hard and get one. If a girl who makes you laugh is your thing, good luck finding her. As for me, if all else fails I can always go on Fei Chang Wu Rao.
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