Chinese White-Collars Balk at Marriage

H INESE Parents have always viewed their chil- dren’5 marriage as a cru- e ially imP0rtant event· Now，as most households in the country have just one ehild.they do 50 mo化than ever. Whi>e some kids have little trouble obtaining masters’ and doctorate degrees，or landing high- ly一Paid jobs in multinational comPa- n ies，finding a suitable mate 15 evidently a far more arduous task.When their ehild still laeks an aPProPriate marriage Prospeet in his or her late 205，imPatient mom and dad quiekly turn verbal Pres- sure into eonerete aetion.Many Chi- nese eities hold“Parents’matehmaking fairs，”where Parents meet to exchange their ehild’s“details，，with others In the same boat，in the hoPe of findinga mutually aeeePtable PartnershiP.Mutu- ally accePtable，that 15，to the Parents themselves. OPen or Closed? It’5 not just the Parents who care.A 5 ingles’elub ealled Bailingtan in Bei- j ing has also come to the reseue ofthese young loveless souls，albeit for differ- ent代asons.It offers a database ofdates and organized grouP aetivitjes that are aimed at bringing together the perfect Partners，and it has had mueh suceess. It now has more than3，0()0 members， and many a haPPy eouPle will be able to tell their grandchildren that“we met in Bailingtan.” Owner of Bailingtan Li Jingming says，“It seems Paradoxical that in an inereasingly open society，young PeoPle are more closed uP.Many long to find the right Partner for marriage，but they don’t always take Practieal aetion to aehieve this.Our bar 15 the Perfeet Plaee for these peoPle to meet一after all，ev- ery eustomer 15 searehing for the same thing!” L 1 Sha，a 29一yea卜old editor，reeently joined the Bailingtan singles’elub.She obtained her master’5 degree at the age of 25，but still lives ar home with her Parents.A busy job curtails her social life，and she 15 rarely seen outside her omee or her home.Many of her former e lassmates and colleagues lead a similar 1 ife，50 the young lady 15 beginning to wonder if she will ever find a Partner. Li Sha 15 hoPing that Bailingtan ean helP. The Problem has in reeent years be- eome a matter of Public eoncern.Ae- eording to Shanghai’52(X) 4 PoPulation DeveloPment RePort，73.59 Pereent of well一edueated brides in the eity got married at a later age than those the Pre- v ious year. Another survey shows that both Beijing and Shanghai have a single poPulation of more than one million. Y自an Yue，founder and ehairnlan of Horizon Researeh，says that young PeoPle Iiving in big eities have beeome 口，口，.户U.‘.盈甲夕、卜.甘 increasingly isolated from eaeh other， from a romantie Point of view.They have Plenty of work and study friends， but theseot’fer few oPPortunities for love and marriage.A survey earried out last year by China Youth Daily shows that 58.6 Pereent of resPondents attrib- uted their own or their Peers’solitude to 1 imited soeial activities，while another 45.1 Percent and 27.1 Percent resPec- tively blamed overly一high exPeetations and their grueling workload. Lov6 VS Car6Gr It’5 not the first time that this Problem has eome into the sPotlight in Chinese society.In the early 19805，millions of young men and women streamed back to the eities having sPent a deeade in the countryside during the“eultural revolu- tion，’(1 966一1976).All were way Past marriageable age.TO marry them off thus beeame a mission for the whole na- tion一the Seeretariat oftheCPCCentral Committee even eonvened a meeting in 1984 to dlscuss the issue’5 etl乞 ets on thirtysomethings. But whl!e the efl七ets were similar baek then，the eireumstanees were quite d ifferent.Wu XiuPing，vice seeretary general oftheChinaMarriageandFam- 1 Iy Soeiety，noted that comPared with their eounterparts of the 19805，today’s unmarried have mueh better edueation and ineome levels，and they do not ex- peet the government to interfere in their Personal affairs. Wang Jie 15 a dePuty researcher with the Tianjin Aeademy of Socia> Seienees.He believes the eourting diffi- eulties that today’5 youth suffer in many ways refieet the irregularities in t