A Chinese woman recently sparked controversy online after claiming that she has spent the last 12 years of her life trying to raise enough money to ensure that her brother finds a bride.
It’s no secret that securing a bride in China is harder than in most other countries. One of the unexpected effects of the Asian country’s notorious one-child policy was gender inequality. For decades, many couples, especially in rural regions, aimed for boys, turning to sex-selective abortion and even infanticide to make sure that their only child was a boy.
Males were strong enough to work and more likely to be successful enough to look after their elderly parents later on in life. Only that created a serious gender inequality in China, with more bachelors for every single woman, which makes it very difficult for men to secure a bride. So in some cases, their families offer them financial support, to increase their chances of finding a suitable bride.
But to truly understand the need for financial support in what is considered a matter of the heart, we need to talk about ‘bride price‘. This longstanding Chinese tradition of the groom’s family having to offer gifts to the bride’s family in exchange for her hand has changed significantly over the last few decades. In the ’60s and ’70s, modest gifts like bedding were the norm, then in the ’80s it was household electronics like TVs and refrigerators, but since the economic boom that started in the 1990s, things escalated to the point where bride prices are now paid in cash, cars and houses.
Bachelors from poor families have such low chances of finding a bride, that some regions are resorting to importing young women from neighboring countries, but some families are so determined to see their single men find a bride the old-fashioned way that they sacrifice their own lives in the process. Case in point, a 33-year-old woman from Anhui province, in eastern China who reportedly dedicated the last 12 years of her life to making sure her brother has enough wealth to secure a wife.
The unnamed woman told Miaowen Video that she had been running a small restaurant specializing in Chinese pancakes with a monthly turnover of 100,000 yuan ($14,000). But instead of using the profits on herself over the last 12 years, she had invested in a 129 sq meter home and a new car for her brother, and she had also gifted him her restaurant…
Source: Oddity Central