向日葵2005的博客

Liu Yun has spent the Spring Festival, also known as Chinese Lunar New Year, with mixed feelings. “I enjoy the feeling of family reunion during the festival, but I really dread my parents pushing me to get married persistently,” said Liu, 25, a lawyer in Beijing.
Liu is not alone. Many single young white-collar workers found it annoying to deal with their parents pushing them to get married during the festival.
Working in a variety of fields, most of them have one thing in common: they are well above the legal marital age but still unmarried.
Alarmingly, it is estimated that more than 1 million young people now fall into this category in Beijing and Shanghai. The Chinese media even dubbed them the “single wave” – a not-so-young generation that is failing to find love and marriage.
Some sociologists have called the current trend “the third single wave”. There have been two “single waves” since the founding of new China in 1949, they believe. The first wave appeared in 1950, when the first Marriage Law was enacted, leading to a sudden rise in divorces.
Then at the end of 1970s, when the Cultural Revolution ended, swarms of young people that had been sent to the countryside for reforming went back to the cities, leading to another wave of singles.
However, the generation surfing the third wave has become single not for institutional or historical reasons. According to Huang Lin, associate literature professor of the Capital Normal University: “More and more people choose to be single for various reasons. The development of the single wave comes with the reform and opening-up.”
Besides, most of the new single wave people today have received higher education and taken white-collar jobs. heir age ranges from 22 to 38, with most falling between 24 and 30, according to a survey on the marriage situation of white-collar workers by www.love21cn.msn.com.cn and www.love21cn.com.
“Rarely have I seen people get married before 28 since I began working,” said Wu Jin, a 24-year-old journalist at the Beijing News.
Among those singles above the age of 30, there are 50 percent more women than men, according to another survey by Ge Hongbin, a Chinese Literature professor in Shanghai University, who is also the author of a book entitled The Singles Community of Modern Cities.
Although people today have more freedom to choose their own lifestyle, not all singles have chosen their situation.
“I’m not pursuing any trend. I think no-one will get stuck in single life if they’ve met the right person,” said Chen Yong, a 28-year-old banking clerk in Beijing.
His comment is echoed by an online survey of female singles’ life co-conducted by the Beijing Morning Post and Sina, which shows that only 5 percent of the respondents preferred single life to marriage while 57.39 percent wanted to get married before 30. Also, 66.47 percent of those surveyed said they remained single only because they had not found their Mr. Right.
“I have a busy working schedule and limited contact with people outside work,” said Chen Shun, 26, a newspaper advertiser. “I just can’t find the right person.”
In the survey of white-collar workers’ marriage situations by www.love21cn.msn.com.cn and www.love21cn.com 50.2 percent of the respondents also attributed their situation to limited opportunities to meet people outside work. Meanwhile, 14.5 percent choose fierce competition and high pressure as the main reasons for being single, according to the survey.
“You know, living in Beijing is not that easy,” said Chen Si, a 25-year-old office assistant in a foreign company. “I want to devote myself fully to work for my future development, so I can’t be distracted by the relationship thing now.”
Zuo Xiaosi, an assistant researcher at Guangdong Provincial Social Science Academy, said that in developed areas like Southeast China, people are prone to shun marriage because they have to face a stressful and fast-paced life.
Zuo Xiaosi also pointed out that as people become more open-minded, marriage is not the only means to satisfy their needs any more. In other words, the necessity to get married has greatly declined.
Another reason that young people shun or postpone marriage is the continuously rising cost of weddings. It is reported that the average wedding cost in Shanghai this year is around 190 thousand yuan, a sharp rise from 50 thousand yuan four years ago.
“Chinese attach much importance to the house, thinking that one cannot settle down without his own house,” said Wu Jin. “But except for those coming from a rich family, most young people have to wait at least three or four years before saving enough money to buy their own houses.”
To be single or not is a personal choice in a sense; nevertheless the single wave has become a social phenomenon that attracts attention from both the general public and scholars. Moreover, the current “single wave” is a worldwide trend rather than a unique phenomenon in China, according to Zuo Xiaosi.
“It’s not necessary for us to panic over it,” he said. Being single is becoming an accepted way of life in modern cities. It is a natural stage as society develops, according to Zuo, and one that is likely to disappear over time.