Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/5/84; site ssc-vax.UUCP Path: utzoo!decvax!tektronix!uw-beaver!fluke!ssc-vax!fuji From: fuji@ssc-vax.UUCP (Glen T Fujimori) Newsgroups: net.singles Subject: Interesting article Message-ID: <482@ssc-vax.UUCP> Date: Fri, 17-Jan-86 20:33:50 EST Article-I.D.: ssc-vax.482 Posted: Fri Jan 17 20:33:50 1986 Date-Received: Mon, 20-Jan-86 21:34:48 EST Distribution: na Organization: Boeing Aerospace Co., Seattle, WA Lines: 145 [...] Here are some interesting tidbits that were sent to me to be posted... his uucp address: ihnp4!convex!smu!leff (Laurence Leff). There will be a series of these items as the original file was too large to be posted. I hope these will start some stimulating discussions... ..start of forwarded text.. Wall Street Journal, Friday October 4, VOL LXXVI No 68 In Today's China, Road to Romance Begins at the Bank Those Seeking a Spouse Focus on Paycheck, Occupation of Each Prospective Mate By Amanda Bennett Canton, China - When a sad-eyed 36-year old Communist Party official went looking for a wife, he filed his requirements on a card at a marriage bureau run by a trade union here. "She should have enough money to support herself -- and some surplus," he wrote. "I don't want anyone who works in a crematorium, or in a coal-selling store, or a girl involved in street cleaning ... unless she's a party official in an environmental department." Deng Xiaping brought romance back to China when he took over the country's leadership. Courting couples, liberated from the puritanism of the Cultural Revolution, snuggle down in public parks after dark, ponder life nad love, and moon over Western films like "Love Story." But behind the starry-eyed romance is the glint of steely-eyed reality. Deng Xiaping and his band of reformers have made it quite clear: There is nothing wrong with getting ahead. And since marriage is one way of doing just that, more and more people are seeking sposuses with high-paying, high-status jobs and turning up their noses at those with proletarian pursuits. Wealth, or the prospect of it, is a powerful aphrodasiac. "Nowadays, it is common for young people to stress economic factors... to seek material benefit and to follow fashion in choosing a partner for marriage," sociologist Zhang Minjie writes in the journal Sociology. Surge of Acquisitiveness. meanwhile, the surge of acquisitiveness sweeping China after three decades of socialist self-sacrifice leaves even the lowliest of couples scrambling to keep up with the Zhangs. They spend wildly on furniture, clothes and lavish wedding trips. Expensive consumer goods, once an almost unheard-of luxury, have become almost a necessity for newlyweds. "Before, when no one had anything, if you couldn't provide anything it didn't matter," says a 29-year old taxi driver struggling to impress his bride-to-be. "Now, if you don't provide, you don't get married." Marriage in China has always been an intensely pragmatic matter. Here, where the complex networks of guanxi-personal relationships-still greases the workings of society, pressure from family and friends to choose the right spouse is intense. One survey of 462 couples in Tainjin, near Peking, showed that only 8.4% had married the partner of their own choice. In the 1940s, the ideal marriage was an alliance with a wealthy merchant family or with an intellectual clan, both of which groups dominated Old China. In the 1960s, during the Cultrual Revolution, the pendulum reversed sharply. Wealth, education and breeding were a disgrace, humble orgins a glory. In the era's egalitarian fervor, people rused to marry peasants or workers. It wasn't unusual in those days for people to abandon, or denounce, spouse with upper-class backgrounds, rather thaan themselves risk criticism, beatings or even death. Bottom of the Heap. Today Mr. Deng's policies have swung the pendulum right back, and the masses have returned to the bottom of the marriage heap. Last yar, Zhang Shuying, another Chinese sociologist, identified four occupations especially unattractive to potential marriage partners: construction, maintenance, street cleaning and railway building. One gatekeeper at an airon and steel mill in Canton felt the full force of the prejudice. He finally had to turn to a matchmaking service when he found that his pedestrian job and inadequate housing were deterrents to find a mate. But even with the service, he met with failure. "It seems to me wthat he woemn are fussy," he says, "Some complain that I live too far away, and some complain of my job." He puts in a plea for love: 'They should face reality and emphasize mutual affection rather than trying to find an intellectual, or someone highly paid." (He didn't want his name used because he was ashamed of his plight.) When late last year, Prof. Jiang, the sociologist, studied 723 of the lonely-hearts advertisements that are popping up in Chinese newspapers, he turned up a startling trend. "Hai-lu-kong has become the foundation of marriage," his article concludes. That three-character advertising abbreviation translates into three requirements, overseas relatives, property confiscated during the Cultural Revolution that has been returned, and an apartment ready to be moved into. He even discovered some people promoting themselves by claiming that "they come from a capitalist family." Some have to stretch far to find such connections. "I have an aunt working as a manager in the White Swan hotel" - a sophisticated joint-venture hotel - a Canton teacher notes on the application registered with the Canton marriage burea. Family and friends aren't shy about assessing the economic advantages of their loved one's catch. One Peking teacher in his mid-50's reports a common question to young couples: "How many legs does your marriage stand on?" The "legs" refers to legs onpieces of furniture, and an answer of fewer than 36 - or a bed, a table, four folding chairs, a cupboard and two armchairs - is an embarassment. While a decade or more ago, country folk would speak of the "four things that go round" - a bicycle, a watch, a fan and a sewing machine -- as prerequisites for marriage, now city folk, in a pun on Deng Xiapoing's economic program, talk about marriage's "four modernizations" a television set, a washing machine, a stereo and a refrigerator. Last year, the Peking Daily reported that 68% of a sample of newly married couples had bought television sets or tape recorders in preparation for marriage and that such upscale behavior was costing dearly. The average couple surveyed by the newspaper spent the equivalent of nearly $660 setting up their household; such spending had increased by over $40 annually over hte previous three years, the paper reported. Of course, when expectations are thwarted, the results can be painful, as the divorce trial of a chemical worker named Song and a schoolteacher named Zhang attests. As the Peking Daily recounts, they were married after Mr. Zhang discovered that Miss Song had parents in Hong Kong. They went ot court when her parents refused to help him leave China to study. "I very much wanted to go abroad to go to university," he told the court. "It's the only reason I got married." In a piece of "Advice to Young Comrades," the Peking Daily concludes: "You have to be careful of those who masquerade as gentleman and use marriage as an opportunity to advance themselves." ..end of forwarded text.. -- ----- Glen Fujimori Boeing Aerospace, Seattle, WA (206) 773-7408 ihnp4!uw-beaver!ssc-vax!fuji -----