Emotional Advert About China's 'Leftover Women' Goes Viral

Emotional Advert About China’s ‘Leftover Women’ Goes Viral

Asia • April 2016 • Views: 4,435

An advertisement centred around “leftover women” in China has gone viral, provoking an emotional debate about single women in the country.

The issue of unmarried females, often stigmatised as “sheng nu” or leftover women, has long been a topic of concern in a society that prioritises marriage and motherhood for women.

Called the “Marriage Market Takeover”, the four-minute long documentary-style video was commissioned by Japanese beauty giant SK-II.

More: Emotional advert about China’s ‘leftover women’ goes viral

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3 comments

wheat-dogghazi-mailgate Apr 13, 2016 • 10:06:58pm

Thanks for paging this! i was going to do it, but other things got in the way.

China is in the middle of major societal change vis a vis gender roles. There are more men than women. Meanwhile, women are now more likely to attend college than before, and many want to start careers afterward and not get married right away. But, men in China prefer to marry “down” — that is, they don’t want their wife to have a higher educational level or status than they. So, China now has a growing number of highly educated and/or highly successful single women over age 25 who have either resigned themselves to being single or who just don’t care to get married. They don’t necessarily want to “marry down,” and their parents certainly don’t want it, either.

Instead of adjusting their expectations in a mate, Chinese men are holding to the traditional “marry down” behavior by seeking wives (or stealing them) from the countryside or importing them (as in, paying traffickers) from Vietnam or North Korea.

The new two-child policy will help, but not right away.

Ironically, a Japanese company developed this advert. Japan has much the same issues regarding sexism.

William Lewis Apr 13, 2016 • 11:28:14pm

Well educated and interesting women? How scary… Would that I were able to meet them.

And yes, the Japanese’ own sexism makes for a brutal irony.

wheat-dogghazi-mailgate Apr 14, 2016 • 9:43:41pm

re: #2 William Lewis

Well educated and interesting women? How scary… Would that I were able to meet them.

And yes, the Japanese’ own sexism makes for a brutal irony.

Some of my former students in China are facing this kind of pressure now, as they approach 30. Some acquiesce to parental demands they marry someone the family finds for them. Others just resist and stay single, while living far enough away from the parents to avoid the constant nagging.

The pressure is on both men and women. Single people over a certain age are considered weird or abnormal, and perversely find it harder to find a mate as a result.

Another recent development in China is the “tongqi” issue — women who marry gay men only to discover after marriage their mate is not straight. There’s a hashtag now on Sina Weibo with people coming out as single and LGBT.
bbc.co.uk

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