Friday, January 13, 2006
Tuesday, January 03, 2006
Poor Chinese Guys
So on the way to and from Australia, I watched quite a few movies and programs on Qantus' in flight entertainment system: Wedding Crashers, Deuce Bigelow 2, Four Brothers, Transporter 2, Wallace and Grommit, The Office Christmas Party (the British version), and a few others. What sticks in my mind the most is a BBC documentary on the growing gender imbalance in China.
I tuned in late, and I kept missing it on the wraparound (all the programming repeats every 2.5 hours), but the basic idea of the documentary was to follow the life of a young male Chinese villager. When I started watching, he was attending the wedding of another young man from his village. Unlike most Western wedding receptions where you generally see balanced tables, the tables seemed to be packed with guys. Apparently in his village, there are very few girls his age. It's so bad that he has little chance of finding a wife unless he moves to the city. After the wedding, his parents tell him that he needs to go to the city and either return with enough money to attract a wife in the village, or meet a girl in the city. This is a tough decision for his folks, because they are elderly and need his assistance with the farming. They send him off with a grain sack on his back as a makeshift suitcase.
From what I understand, male children have always been preferred in China, so when the government limited couples to having one child in an attempt to control the population, it's no suprise that many parents hoped for a boy. In some cases, infant girls would be murdered so that the couple could have another shot at a boy. More recently, ultrasound is being used to detect female fetuses, so that they can be aborted. Consequently, there is a gender imbalance throughout all of China. The problem is magnified in the countryside, however, because as parents grow old and have difficutly working the land, sons can carry more of the load than daughters, so there is even more pressure to have a son.
Moving to the city doesn't guarantee a mate, since more and more women in the city are becoming educated and would be unlikely to settle for a country boy. Also, some of them are hooking up with Western dudes. The lack of women in some areas has led to a rising number of kidnappings of young girls for brides. The government is trying to crack down on this practice by making it punishable by death.
Some projections show that there may be 40 million more males than females in about 20 years. That means there are going to be a lot of lonely guys...
I tuned in late, and I kept missing it on the wraparound (all the programming repeats every 2.5 hours), but the basic idea of the documentary was to follow the life of a young male Chinese villager. When I started watching, he was attending the wedding of another young man from his village. Unlike most Western wedding receptions where you generally see balanced tables, the tables seemed to be packed with guys. Apparently in his village, there are very few girls his age. It's so bad that he has little chance of finding a wife unless he moves to the city. After the wedding, his parents tell him that he needs to go to the city and either return with enough money to attract a wife in the village, or meet a girl in the city. This is a tough decision for his folks, because they are elderly and need his assistance with the farming. They send him off with a grain sack on his back as a makeshift suitcase.
From what I understand, male children have always been preferred in China, so when the government limited couples to having one child in an attempt to control the population, it's no suprise that many parents hoped for a boy. In some cases, infant girls would be murdered so that the couple could have another shot at a boy. More recently, ultrasound is being used to detect female fetuses, so that they can be aborted. Consequently, there is a gender imbalance throughout all of China. The problem is magnified in the countryside, however, because as parents grow old and have difficutly working the land, sons can carry more of the load than daughters, so there is even more pressure to have a son.
Moving to the city doesn't guarantee a mate, since more and more women in the city are becoming educated and would be unlikely to settle for a country boy. Also, some of them are hooking up with Western dudes. The lack of women in some areas has led to a rising number of kidnappings of young girls for brides. The government is trying to crack down on this practice by making it punishable by death.
Some projections show that there may be 40 million more males than females in about 20 years. That means there are going to be a lot of lonely guys...
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