Spring Festival: A marriage of mirth and misery

The final dose of morale draining torture ... will be dispensed by ... parents: “Why are you still single?” It’s a ritual of Spring Festival.

“I always wonder why my mother is so keen on me marrying,” my friend says. “I don’t think she herself has a good marriage.”

Her parents live apart, and her mother spends most of her time taking care of her own father.

“On my father’s birthday all he and my mother did was have lunch together.”

She then jokes: “I think grandpa needs to have a talk with his daughter first, to get her to devote more time to her husband.”

Turning serious again, she says: “My mother said she will have a serious talk with my boyfriend during the Spring Festival, telling him to either marry me or to break up with me. I’m really frustrated.”

Other friends of mine talk of similar experiences.

“My father texted me last night at 2 am saying he was so worried about having an unmarried daughter in her 30s that he couldn’t sleep,” a young woman says.

Another friend, in her early 30s, says: “I cannot sacrifice myself to please anyone.”

Her advice to anyone in this predicament: “Let them say whatever they like, and you do whatever you like.”

These three young women are all independent and have a good education and good jobs.

“I reckon I’m now living through the best period of my life,” the woman from Guangzhou says.

“Do you know what’s more important? It’s freedom. I can fully support myself with everything. I enjoy traveling with friends. I don’t need to worry about household chores. I see my boyfriend once a week. He has his own apartment, which is close to his parents upstairs. Usually we have lunch and dinner with his parents and go back to his place. We both like it that way — free and peaceful.”

She sometimes thinks about what married life would mean for her, including spending two hours a day commuting, having to act in a certain way in front of her parents-in-law, doing household chores and cooking.

“No, that’s not what I want. The only thing I see in marriage is trouble.”

With those kinds of thoughts she is apparently not alone, because millions of young people in China seem to be blissfully single. Government figures suggest that of those eligible to marry, about 200 million are single. More women choose to live alone, especially in big cities. Some have stable relationships, and some are looking for their Mr Right. And some enjoy living alone. Presumably many of them are smart, have good jobs and earn enough money to live comfortably.

Yet even though they are as independent in their living as one can be, their parents cannot disabuse themselves of the notion that they need a man, and their children have a certain degree of privacy.

Young men are not immune from overbearing relatives, and many have resorted to paying young women to pretend they are their girlfriends just to get these meddlers off their backs. But that sham can last only so long, until the next big lie has to be told, that the relationship has unfortunately broken up.

So will getting married shut the busybodies up? Not quite.

“My mother keeps on asking me to have a baby,” says a friend who married three months ago. “I’m sure it will be the subject of much discussion over the Spring Festival. That’s what you call life and its pressures.”

As for my friend from Guangzhou, she has a lot to be preoccupied with as Chinese New Year’s Day and those “serious talks” approach.

CAI MENG / CHINA DAILY