Leftover in China

by Roseann Lake

  “His face is too fat,” she said disapprovingly as she flipped through scenes of them posing playfully in front of a windmill.

  Yanyan zoomed in slightly on her computer screen. “His face is kind,” I said, because I genuinely thought it appeared to be.

  “No matter,” she said resolutely. “Next week we will register at the marriage bureau.”

  The Knot

  Curious to know more about what the process was like, I decided to visit the Beijing Chaoyang District Marriage Registration Bureau. Conveniently located down a side alley across from the city’s largest soccer stadium (Gongti, home of the mighty green Beijing Guo’an soccer team), it is an unassuming office, which, as I discovered to my great surprise, also doubles as a divorce bureau. In fact, after being directed down a long hallway and ushered toward a room with three long, open desks where I hoped to find at least one resplendent couple forking over the 8 RMB ($1.32) necessary for them to deng ji (register as man and wife), I stumbled instead upon a couple in full furor. I quickly deduced from their yelling that they had come to terminate their marriage, but that the husband had forgotten some of the essential paperwork, which meant their separation wouldn’t be possible that morning. His almost ex-wife, needless to say, was not pleased.

  Sensing they could use some privacy, I returned to the lobby and read through a few of the pamphlets on display. One of them was about adoption, and another listed the requirements necessary to register a marriage. In addition to a birth certificate, health certificate, resident’s permit (hukou), and a letter of marriageability from one’s work unit, I was amused to read that in the cases of a Chinese national wedding a foreigner, a letter from the parents of the Chinese partner giving permission for their child to marry said foreigner—complete with the index fingerprint of both parents below their signatures—was also required.

  I meandered back toward the administrative offices and took a seat facing a small open stage with the kind of red curtains you might find at the Great Hall of the People. At its center was a wooden podium decorated with a large bed of red, pink, and white plastic roses in desperate need of dusting. Below them, an electronic sign—the kind one might see at a Yankees game—indicated the date and time. A large red-and-gold mural depicting a dragon and a phoenix meeting in midair loomed in the background, next to an oversize Chinese flag. This was clearly the stage on which newlyweds could take a commemorative photo. Was one included in the 8 RMB fee? I wondered.

  From my seat near the door of the marriage office, I could hear the discordance inside growing louder. Eventually, it tapered, and before I had time to camouflage that I’d been eavesdropping, one of the marriage bureau employees walked out into the lobby with the husband.

  She sat him down in a chair facing the stage as if he were a small child getting a time-out. “Why do you want to get divorced?” she inquired sternly, standing over him and wagging her finger as he slumped in his chair. He looked back at her, completely depleted, wearing the face of a man who’s just been shouted into emotional paralysis by his wife and can no longer process words. He rubbed his head and mumbled something like “We just don’t get along.” The marriage bureau employee leaned in closer and began to lecture him. After a few more sentences, I realized that she was trying to talk him out of his divorce.

  This didn’t entirely surprise me. Until 2001, Chinese people had to ask permission from a leader in their work unit before they could get divorced. I had once met a man who had actually been tasked with signing off on divorces in his work unit for twenty years. “I usually denied the requests,” he said. “Two years would go by, and then they’d be fine.” I also remembered having come across an article on the All China Women’s Federation (ACWF) website, where a marriage bureau employee was being honored for having “saved” approximately 240 couples from divorce. She had a trick—she’d say that the office printer wasn’t working, so she wouldn’t be able to process their divorce papers that day. Many couples, apparently, never bothered to come back.

  The marriage bureau employee was being honored in the article—held up as a model worker, citizen, and defender of morality. This in itself was nothing extraordinary. The Chinese government is no stranger to sussing out model citizens and making heroes of them by using the brawn of its various branches and publications (the All China Women’s Federation website is one of them). The widely celebrated Lei Feng, a likely fictitious solider who died in service (he was rather un-heroically struck dead by a falling telephone pole) has his own national day of remembrance, and is the subject of poems written by Chinese grammar-school students across the country. Generally, “moral heroes” are developed when it’s necessary to raise awareness or shape the public discourse regarding a certain aspect of society. Honoring, I could imagine, might also be on the list of the Aesopian powers that be.

  Having increased by 8 percent per year for the past twelve years—or, rather curiously, nearly the same speed at which the Chinese economy had been growing up until 2014—the divorce rate in China is something the government is likely not proud of, especially in urban areas like Beijing, where it is as high as 40 percent.

  In an attempt to smooth things over, as one marriage bureau employee worked on the divorced-to-be husband out in the lobby, the other tried to calm his soon-to-be former wife. She appeared to be the more vexed of the two, and though I can’t say whether her anger was justified—I didn’t know the motivation for their divorce—her treatment of her husband was far from humane. Storming out of the marriage bureau, she demanded that he go to another bureau to get the papers needed in order to divorce that very day. He agreed, saying that he’d be right back. “I will not wait for you!” she said, slapping him on the head with a stack of papers in her hand. I was humiliated for them both.

  After they left, I took the chance to speak with the two employees at the bureau who’d been handling their case. “Does this happen often?” was my first question to the younger of the two employees, who seemed a bit more likely to open up.

  “Sometimes,” she said. “We’ve had many more divorces recently. In most cases, we try to get them to reconsider.” She went on to explain that it’s her job to inquire as to why a couple is getting a divorce. In some cases, couples refuse to discuss it and ask to be divorced on the spot. In others, they come back three or four times before they eventually make up their minds to stay together.

  Sensing that I was asking questions her colleague shouldn’t be answering, the older of the two bureau employees worked her way over.

  “The couple you just saw should stay together. They have a common hope,” she said, eyes glittering as if she were auditioning to be a marriage fairy. “A seven-year-old son.”

  She told me that this particular marriage bureau is proud to process five or six marriages a day, though she wouldn’t tell me how many divorces. I sensed she was about to launch into a prepared speech, but was saved by a security guard who seemed to need her help with something, and called her away. I tried my luck with the younger employee again, rephrasing my question and instead asking her what the most common reasons for divorce are.

  “Shan hun,” she explained, or “flash weddings”—when people get married after knowing each other for a very short amount of time—are probably the most common reason for divorce. I once heard this term from Zhang Mei, who told me the story of a friend who’d had one. She and her husband had gotten their marriage certificate and were legally man and wife, but before they got around to hosting their actual wedding celebration—the ceremony and the party with all of their extended family and friends—they got divorced because they kept fighting over the plan for their wedding festivities.

  Next on the list were ge ren de wenti, or what we’d probably refer to as “irreconcilable differences.” Jia ting de wenti, or “family problems,” were the third reason she mentioned. “If a couple can get along, but their respective families cannot, their marriage usually does not last very long.”

  Luo hun was another type
of marriage Zhang Mei had introduced me to. Literally translated as “naked marriage,” it refers to a wedding between two (usually very young) people with few assets—no car, house, or other typical prerequisites to marriage. Generally, these marriages are classified as being very romantic, as they’re seen to be more about the couple’s love for each other, rather than the resources each partner is bringing to the table. They were romanticized on Luo Hun Shi Dai [naked marriage generation], a Chinese TV show that premiered in 2011 and scored top ratings, though the general consensus seemed to be that although they sounded nice in theory, few people were willing to put them into practice. “Unless a man spends money on them,” said Zhang Mei, “most traditional Chinese girls won’t be convinced of his love.”

  9

  CARS, HOUSES, CASH

  Happiness lies in contentment.

  —LAO TZU

  Chinese New Year was over, and with little hope that their daughter would soon move back to Harbin, where they could usher her transition into wifehood, Zhang Mei’s parents came up with another plan.

  “If you’re not going to come home and get married, we’ve decided that we’d like you to get married in Beijing,” explained her mother. “To help you with that, we’ve decided to buy you an apartment there. With housing prices the way they are and so many men unable to afford a home, owning property will make you much more of a catch.”

  Zhang Mei responded to the news like a seasoned marriage ultimatum–averting pro. She dutifully agreed that she’d look into prices and get back to her mother with a detailed report. One week later, her mother called again:

  ZMM: Have you looked into any apartments?

  ZM: I did, everything is too expensive. It’s better to wait for prices to go down.

  ZMM: Yes, that’s what we’ve been hearing too. Keep an eye on things though, eh!

  In reality, Zhang Mei hadn’t made a single inquiry. She was hurt that her parents felt the only way to unload her was to set her up with a dowry that would bait a propertyless man into marrying her. Still, the real reason she was determined not to let her parents buy her a place in Beijing went much deeper than a bruised ego. “The only kind of apartment they can afford for me will be way out of the center of the city,” she explained. “It will double my commute to work. Plus, I’ll have to share it with a virtual stranger, because once my parents have gone through all the trouble of buying me an apartment, there’s no way they’ll let me stay unmarried for very long.”

  I thought about Zhang Mei’s current living space. She knew it wasn’t ideal—just a modest room—but it was a reasonable distance from her office and she had the freedom of living alone. She could live by her own schedule, and even stay up late to watch movies if she wanted. The rent was inexpensive enough that at the end of the month, she still had money left over for shopping and hotpot dinner outings with friends. She understood it wouldn’t be suitable as a long-term arrangement, but she’d worked hard to reach this level of independence and seemed keen to enjoy it at least a bit longer.

  Shortly after that first conversation, Chinese media went abuzz with news that the Beijing property market had hit an all-time low. Granted, the low was a very temporary one that lasted only a few weeks, but Zhang Mei’s mother still got wind of it. “Go see some agents this weekend!” she urged her daughter during a frantic phone call.

  Once again, Zhang Mei expertly handled the situation. “Yes, but that price decrease only applies to Beijing residents; out-of-towners like us still have to pay higher prices,” she explained to her mother. This was not entirely true, but China’s system of household registration is so convoluted, there was very little risk of Zhang Mei’s mother ever becoming any the wiser.

  China’s hukou, or household registration system, was initiated in the 1950s. It was engineered as a way of controlling population movement, which was seen as necessary for the new planned economy. The system was so inhibiting that until the late 1970s, people who wanted to relocate needed the permission of local authorities. These days, Chinese citizens can move more freely, as long as they are willing to leave behind public benefits such as health care and welfare, which are only valid in the jurisdiction of their hukou. Transferring a more rural hukou (like Zhang Mei’s) to an urban address could cost upward of 150,000 RMB or US $22,000 on the black market, and is most difficult in top-tier cities like Beijing and Shanghai.

  The quickest route to a hukou upgrade is marriage. If a rural woman marries a man with an urban hukou (or vice versa), the spouse marrying into the urban hukou is entitled to one as well. Like houses, cars, and salaries, the right hukou has also become valuable as a marriage bargaining chip. A man with a Beijing hukou, for instance, can more easily and cheaply send his kids to school in Beijing, and it’s also easier for him to buy property in the city. Though the regulations change often, non-Beijing hukou holders have to prove they’ve lived in the city and paid income taxes for a certain number of years before they’re eligible to purchase property, and the financing options available to them are also less favorable. An urban hukou makes city life a whole lot easier.

  As a result, men with urban hukou are in high demand. If a woman without one becomes engaged to a man with an urban hukou, it’s not uncommon for her to list it as one of his attributes when describing him to her friends. Women with urban hukou (June, Christy), however, are considered to have high standards, as their already elevated residential status means they should ideally find a man with the same. The most disadvantaged in this hierarchy are, once again, migrant men. Their lack of a desirable hukou or city property (Beijing men are presumed to inherit property from their families) puts them in the bargain basement of prospective mates—just the kind that Zhang Mei’s parents thought she could attract. A migrant man with nothing in Beijing would surely be keen to wed a fellow migrant who already owned an apartment in the city.

  To put the logic employed by Zhang Mei’s parents into perspective, it’s helpful to understand that a Chinese man’s desirability as a husband is often measured by three things: a house, a car, and cash . Known as the holy trinity of yao qiu, or “requirements,” some Chinese women (but most often their families) use them as the basis for a marriage partner. Finding a man with these three essentials, however, is increasingly harder.

  The average yearly salary in a city for a young, male college graduate is roughly 72,000 RMB, or $10,000. The average price of an apartment in Beijing or Shanghai is roughly 25,000 RMB or $3,600 per square meter. The average price of a modest car (not counting the 90,000 RMB registration fee required in Shanghai) is roughly 150,000 RMB, or $20,000. Just to be able to afford a seventy-square-meter apartment and a car, this man would need almost 2 million RMB, or $280,000, approximately twenty-eight times his starting yearly salary. Clearly, the numbers for what he earns and for what he is expected to own before marriage simply don’t add up. The struggle average Chinese bachelors face to acquire property prior to marriage has become so prevalent that there’s even a word for it: fangnu. Literally translated, it means “a slave to the home,” and refers not to a woman who is a slave to housework, but to a man who must slave at his job in order to afford a house, and by extension, a wife. In most cases, parents pitch in—and sometimes liquidate their savings—in order to help their sons, but when they can’t afford to, marrying into a family like Zhang Mei’s may be a convenient alternative.

  For Zhang Mei, whether a prospective mate owns a home or not is far down the list of desirable traits in a man. Her ideal would be to jointly purchase property with someone whom she is excited to spend the rest of her life with. In their haste to get her hitched, however, this isn’t even a possibility that registers with her parents, or one they’d willingly consider.

  Wrecking Homes and Feathering Nests

  “Delivery boys and dishwashers can’t fall in love in China,” said Ivy. “It’s simply too expensive.” In her teens, she had fallen in love with a man from her hometown of Chengdu, but she ended their relationship because he was o
f an average upbringing and she wanted a better life for herself and for her family. She left home, went to college, found a lucrative job, and has since maneuvered herself into a comfortable life, with a boost from her male patrons. All along, she has sent generous sums of money home to her parents and has even purchased an apartment in Beijing, though the question of whom she might one day share it with has been increasingly on her mind.

  Ivy always knew that she would one day become a wife. Her parents expected it of her, but she also wanted it. Not for love—she was resolutely convinced that she’d passed that phase in her life—but for stability and the chance to become a mother. “There’s nothing that would make me happier than to accompany my child to study in the US,” she confides to June one evening over dinner. “To give her all of the educational opportunities I couldn’t have. I would love to have a daughter like you.”

  Although it was difficult to imagine Ivy’s transition from mistress to mother and wife, it was becoming increasingly probable. A man just a few years her senior had recently proposed to her. He knows that she’s involved with other men—or, one married man in particular—but he wants them to be exclusive. As a member of China’s fu er dai, or “wealthy second generation,” he is so rich that he once purposely crashed his $800,000 Mercedes into the back of a pretty girl’s Porsche, just because he wanted to get her number. I think it’s safe to say that many Chinese women would swoon at the chance to marry into such formidable wealth. Ivy, however, has reservations.