Chinese grifters posing as brides work the countryside
It's Cold Cash, Not Cold Feet, Motivating Runaway Brides in China (Thanks, Marilyn!)"She called me soon after she left," says Mr. Zhou, a slight man with a tentative smile. He says she asked how he was doing, and apologized for the hardship she had caused. "I told her, 'I will see you again one day....'"
Last December a family friend told his mother that her nephew recently married a girl from neighboring Sichuan province. The bride had three female friends visiting her, who might be interested in marrying local men, said this friend.
Encouraged, Mr. Zhou and his mother met the three girls the next day. After an hour's chat with the trio, who claimed to be ages 23, 25 and 27, Mr. Zhou found himself drawn to the prettiest and youngest, Ms. Cai, who had angular features and an ivory complexion.
He proposed marriage. She agreed, with one proviso: cai li of 38,000 yuan, or roughly five years' worth of farm income. The Zhous agreed, but took the precaution of running a quick background check. Tang Yunshou, Xin'an's Communist Party secretary, said Ms. Cai's identity and residential papers checked...
Meanwhile, Mr. Zhou is still lovelorn. "I feel I can't hate her," says the deserted husband, who is now so depressed his parents have forbidden him to leave the village, as he longs to. "She must have her own troubles."
(Image: Mei Fong/The Wall Street Journal)
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I have heard that in China in the last generation there was a practice of, like, carrying baby girls off into the wilderness and abandoning them. Is this the reason for the imbalance of marrying-age men and women now?
If so, this bride-price thing reflects the classic reason from biology, why equal numbers of males and females tend to be born.
The more infant girls are killed, the higher bride price the surviving women fetch. That price is paid by families with boys. I.e. assuming there are families that kept two boys but killed a girl, husbands are slightly more likely to have brothers from such families, and those brothers are also paying the price.
But the money isn't all. Any genes that positively affected parents' tendency to bear or keep girls, now have an advantage, and tendencies to bear or prefer boys, are being selected against, regardless of how well-off or poor the people involved are.
#1 Futurenerd
Your scenario is correct, but unfortunately the desire for boy children is not a practice of the "last generation". China's one-child policy began in 1979, and since boys are preferred, girls are still being killed off disproportionately. This has entirely predictably led to more men of marriageable age than women. This really should lead to a reduction in population since many many more men than usual will not be able to reproduce (legitimately at least).
All told, it will be interesting to see what happens with china's population in the next 20 years.
There's a documentary (was it on PBS or BBC?) about the terribly skewed men to women ratio in China. The reason for this, as futurenerd says, was the traditional preference to male kids (farm hands) combined with a one child per family policy. People would either abort or kill girls while keeping boys as the only kid in the family.
see also:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5953508
My (Chinese) wife says that the problem is indeed quite serious. There are entire regions that are devoid of anything wearing a skirt; firstly due to the imbalance, and secondly due to the fact that marry-able women head off to larger cities where the choice of men is better. It also does not help the situation that Chinese women are fairly popular amongst us "laowai" (foreign barbarians) ;-)
However, nature, even human nature, always comes to the rescue.
First, the standard of living in rural China is now quite a lot higher than in (rural) Vietnam. Men are heading off wife-hunting to Vietnam, with much success. They don't needs them snotty spoilt Chinese chicks no more ;-)
Second, the greed of Chinese parents to make money, or get other forms of support, from their kids is still quite a major part of society in some more traditional regions. The more parents find out how much ka-ching girls are making, the more girls will be raised, and things will return to balance. Note that it is already illegal for a doctor to inform the parents of the sex of their unborn.
Watching the Chinese one child policy and the traditional preference for boys has been one of my pet projects in watching history unfold.
It's very interesting to see where this is all going and how many unpredicted turns it will take - I never suspected brides would run away with the bride price! My theories usually went along the lines that there would be a rise in homosexuality in China, maybe even acceptance of homosexuals. Or that men would turn to riots and violence. Can still happen.
Until then, run faster, bride!
Preventing Parents from knowing the sex of unborn children doesn't have much impact in a society in which infanticide is common.
This has been coming for a while. The whole dowry thing needs to be dumped. Or the dowry has to become the property of the bride herself, and perhaps deposited in something like a trust fund for her. As it stands, women are too much like chattel.
I'm kind of rooting for these con women. They are turning a toxic tradition on its head. There is a lot of ugliness in it: the killing of newborn babies, the selling of girl children. It is nasty through and through. And if you have a culture in which the normal thing is to sell your daughter, and you expect that cash, well when times are rough you might just as well sell your child into slavery, as a child prostitute. And that is just what happens in places in southeast asia.
I do feel bad for the men who are being ripped off, but this whole system robs women of anything resembling freedom or self respect.
There's so much natter about family values. Ugh. Yuck. Here's how it plays out, family values. You can have it.
And that last poster, that joke about uppity Chinese women. He's making a joke about oppressed women in a culture where they chattel. I do not find it funny at all. The whole business is ugly and tragic and the three "robber brides" are hardly the worst of it.
I hope a lot of women do the same thing. I hope the whole nasty system falls apart.
I really hope the imbalance of men and women in the population causes a the culture to reinvent itself.
And I'm not going to wag my finger at the one-child-per-couple law. We blithely trot along as though we can keep expanding the population. We can't. We'll starve. And if, here in the west, we have resources to keep feeding ourselves longer, that just means we've exported the misery somewhere else.
Some analysis from 3 years ago of the gender imbalance in China.
Interestingly, most hospitals in Canada refuse to tell parents their baby's gender before birth, probably partly to avoid this kind of thing.
This seems to be how the market* corrects itself in this case. Interesting.
*"the market"=one child, boys preferred.
@ #6 Teapunk
I too have been watching the happenings of China in light of the one-child policy. I never considered a rise in homosexuality as a result! I thought more along the lines of violence and riots that you have also considered.
The current situation requires that many men will miss out on traditional marriage and children (or should I say child?) - something they have likely considered and been taught to be the norm and a right of passage that they could expect to enjoy/endure.
It's like a ready-made sociology experiment that never would have passed the ethics committee.
One interesting repercussion of the 'one child policy' that only recently occurred to me that the whole concept of brother/sister/sibling rivalry will become/already is a foreign concept to most of the people in China.
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Never get Chinese to go.
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I'd have to say those women are pretty slick for pulling that off. Props, ladies.
I read a short story last year with one sci-fi writer's "unique" interpretation of the outcome of the One-Child Policy. Intense stuff
I just wish the author didn't translate the names of the Chinese folk in some parts.
Anyhoo... http://futurismic.com/2008/05/01/solitude-ripples-from-the-past-by-david-reagan/#more-3249
I read "posing as bridges" in the title, and by the time I got to the article, I'd constructed an elaborate scenario in my head to make it feasible..
Nerak,
Slick like the bankers who stole everyone's retiremernt fund? Yeah, props..
"Slick like the bankers who stole everyone's retiremernt fund?"
I'd say slick like someone given a disproportionate chance even at *living* and facing massive cultural discrimination, using that same bias to work the system to her benefit.
I'd hardly put that in the same category as a rich, white banker stealing pensions.
I read "posing as bridges" in the title, and by the time I got to the article, I'd constructed an elaborate scenario in my head to make it feasible.
Me too. I'm a little disappointed. My story was better. :)
As a barren woman, I wonder how the Chinese government would treat me -- would I be allowed to adopt from a (girls-only) orphanage? One or more?
That means that China population is 52.4% male and 47.8 female.
World ratio is 51% female, 49% male, aprox.
For reproductive purposes, more female than male individuals in a species is a lot better bet.
Morality aside, Chinese model is kind of contra natura.
Oops, there was a mistake in my numbers. China's male population should be 47.6%, not 47.8%, as I stated.
"Men are heading off wife-hunting to Vietnam, with much success. They don't needs them snotty spoilt Chinese chicks no more ;-)"
I fail to see why, for as bad as chinese women are treated, it is easy enough to find women who are treated worse would be cause for a smiley.
I also don't understand why, after laws passed by men for men lead to a low female survivial rate, you can call the survivors "spoilt" for being a rarity.
There I go again. My bad again. 47.6% *male* population.
Any time there is a large group of unemployed men with no chance of landing a woman, trouble ensues.
@hukes:
China is a big place.
Overall, the numbers may seem balanced. If you look at it by age, however, things are worse. under thirty, M:F ratio is about 1.25. under twenty, that shoots up to 1.4, and the number continues to rise as the age drops.
Doctors aren't allowed to tell the gender, but that just means they have a new source of income, be it bribes, or ultrasound reading lessons.
Since India has a similar population problem, the governments of China and India should work together and engineer a nice large ground war. Killing off a few million of the excess males would balance the population as well as producing more females.
It looks to me like two males in the photo.
I thought that story was going to be about men posing as women and running off with the money--a double con. Although I'm sure somebody has tried / will try this.
What's happening is that they get an ultrasound to determine the sex of the child, then abort if it's a girl. It's quite illegal, but that never stopped anything before.
The same thing is happening in India. It's going to be interesting when the current generation of boys grows up and has trouble finding wives.
the governments of China and India should work together and engineer a nice large ground war.
We'll get Virlomi and Hot Soup on that right away.
What to do with 32 million excess males? Ask Genghis Khan how he solved that little problem. Throughout the world and all through history, war and conquest is the usual answer. The alpha males running things don't want a large mass of potential rivals getting all itchy for a little action.
Again, it should be reiterated that this is not just a "one generation ago" activity in China. Incidents of a skewed male/female birth ratio was the highest it has ever been in 2000.
In other words - do you know 100 chinese families? Well three of them aborted their child in order to have a go at upgrading to the model with a penis.
I'm sorry for the double-comment, guys, but this just really really bothers me. How is this different than, say, killing a child because it doesn't have blond hair, or because it doesn't have brown eyes?
But these ugly tendencies go even further in China. Not only is it acceptable to kill your daughter, but the chinese social code also trumps basic biological self-regulation. When the population density of an animal reaches a certain density, most commonly birth rates will fall in a darwinian bid to maintain population sustainability. This has been seen for humans in Europe and parts of the US...not China. The family values code in that country states that a family should have as many children as possible. Preferably all boys, I suppose.
To me, this is an unparalleled moral, social, and ecologial crisis. There needs to be MAJOR social re-education in China and it should have began decades ago. Children in school should be taught to overcome medieval notions of family values and should learn instead about equality of the sexes and population sustainability. Instead, however, it looks like China will have to learn the hard way.
Um, look at the hands, shoulders, browline, and chin of that bride... that's a dude. Looks like somebody got double taken with that scam.
all sociological arguements aside, I have to agree with OBDAN, the she is totally a he...the shortage of women has left small town chinese men unaware of the significance of adam's apples and manhands....
Blast it! I can't compete. I'm canceling my wedding. I got the ring, but can't find the dress or cake or photographer, etc.
Hey Cory: what's the source of your photo? I, too, think this story could have an additional angle.
The author/photographer's contact info is at the link.
Can we quit with the "that's a dude", "that's a he", etc. nonsense, pullllease?
'Not woman' (in this case a genetic woman) doesn't instantly = man. There ARE other possibilities folks. . . . intersex, various hormone and chromosomal anomalies, transgender, etc.
I am sooooo sick of people playing "spot the tranny" or whatever. And you wonder why so many of us TS/TG go all out on various surgeries and obsessing over their looks and beauty???
The one child policy is pretty famous in the West, but it isn't exactly true any more. From wikipedia:
OTOH, this can still lead to large imbalances in the number of girls compared to boys.
#40
Sounds like pretty strict implementation to me.
Wow, you commenters are pretty heartless. Forget the societal ills BS for a sec, and consider the actual situation. The males looking for wives did not kill the females, their parents may have, but let's not condemn the children for that. I believe I understand your feelings on the matter, and maybe you are hoping that if the situation is so horrible, that it will cause the Chinese to consider their actions a little more, I guess.
However, you cheer for a con-artist that would rip off five years of farming income? That's pretty raw, and I really don't see how it relates, or are you just thrilled to see a Chinese woman screw someone else over?
"There needs to be MAJOR social re-education in China (...) Children in school should be taught to overcome medieval notions of family values and should learn instead about equality of the sexes and population sustainability."
That won't help much because it's not a simple problem of social attitudes.
Chinese prefer boys for a sound, rational economic reason: they can better provide for their parents in their old age.
Chinese, especially outside the big cities, have little in the way of a social safety net they can depend on in their old age. If they have no one to look after them when they are too old to work, they may face exceedingly dire circumstances.
Children are a form of insurance policy or pension, and males are much better suited to that purpose. Females earn less income, and more importantly, in Chinese society, females traditionally take care of their in-laws, not their own parents. I believe there is an old Chinese saying, "Having a daughter is like watering your neighbor's field."
Solving this problem will really require the implementation of a dependable social security system. However, China has an enormous population and is still a relatively poor nation, so ... in the meantime it may be left to "market forces" such as dowries to help re-balance the gender ratio.
@ #42 Prairie Dog
Who exactly are you addressing your comment to? Apart from the people commenting on the gender of the person in the photo, pretty much everyone else seems to be considering the actual situation quite well and commenting appropriately as far as I can see.
The males looking for wives did not kill the females
The guy purchased a woman. After talking to her for an hour. On the basis of her appearance. What part of that is not on your creepy meter?
arrangement marriages are still common. And work.
@xkahn: Yes, the one child policy is strictly enforced in the cities, but there is almost no enforcement in the rural areas, especially as the rural community find ways around it. One way is to not disclose the pregnancy until the child is born and so on. I know of families having eight kids.
Anyway, that's not my point.
If you just bear for a moment with my gross generalisations and possibly politically incorrect thoughts: I am wondering if the above does not perhaps result not only in a gender imbalance, but also an intelligence imbalance. A famous scientist can only have one kid, while a farmer can have many. Again, this is just based on idle rumination and not facts, but I'd love to hear opinions.
I e-mailed the Wall Street Journal author, Mei Fong, who said "No indication the fake bride was a fake woman too :)"
In China, the ratio for under 15s is 113 boys to 100 girls. In those aged 15-65, the ratio is 106 males to 100 females.
113 is higher than 105 for the world average. But not really that high. It's significant, but not enough to cause entire villages to be without any girls. Reading that article, you would have thought that there were 3 boys for every 1 girl born.
Note: even without any selective abortion or infanticide, the natural ratio is not perfectly 1:1. There is a slight excess of boys. In fact, approximately, about 1.05
Never ever think that an imbalance is a good thing for the gender that is a minority. Girls aren't being considered more precious, instead they become even more like a commodity to be traded. With less voices to speak out, less power over their own lives, I see this happening so much in South west Asia right now. While China may have a distinct problem (one child policy, sheer scale), so many other countries and cultures dictate that a woman is only worth the price she can bring, whether it is a dowry, home life or ability to bring more sodding children into the world.
Digilante @ 47: You need to read up on regression towards the mean as it relates to inherited intelligence. And also ruminate on the effect of class on education, as opposed to intelligence.
This practice has already been in play for generations in Los Angeles. It's what gold-diggers do.
@Kieran O'Neill #8
Citation, please? I'm Canadian (live in Ontario), and every pregnant woman I have ever known has been given the option of learning their child's gender before birth.
A few choose not to find out, wanting it to be a surprise or for other reasons, but I have never met anyone whose hospital refused to tell them.
It's time for China to develop the famed Gay Drug. Then everything will be fine.