He wants a wife, of course. But ask what kind of woman he seeks and Duan Biansheng looks perplexed.
“I don’t have any requirements at all,” the 35-year-old farmer said. “I would be satisfied with just a wife.”
His prospects of finding one, he added, are “almost zero.” There are dozens of single men in Banzhushan village, perched high on a remote mountain peak in central Hunan Province — and not one unattached woman of marriageable age.
Photo: Bloomberg
Tens of millions of men across China face a future as bachelors. They are a source of pity, not envy, in a country where having children is central to life.
Duan worries about growing old with no one to care for him. He chafes at the unhelpful pressure to get married from his parents and neighbors. The worst thing of all is the loneliness.
This is the perverse outcome of the country’s longstanding preference for sons, and its sudden modernization. Traditionally, the family line is passed via men. When a woman marries, she joins her husband’s family.
Having a boy is a cultural and a pragmatic choice: You expect him to continue your lineage and support you in old age. The result has long been a surplus of men, because of female infanticide or excess female deaths through neglect. But in the last 20 years, the problem has exploded thanks to the spread of prenatal scans.
Sex-selective abortion is illegal, but is clearly widely practiced.
The normal human birth ratio is 106 males for every 100 females. In China, that has risen to 118 boys. That means 30 million to 50 million men will fail to find wives over the next two decades, according to professor Li Shuzhuo (李樹茁) of the institute for population and development studies at Xi’an Jiaotong University. It is equivalent to every male in the UK dying a bachelor.
Experts have warned that these unmarried “bare branches” pose a threat to social stability. Some suggest that excess men leads to more crime and sexual violence; officials have warned of increased women trafficking. Already, women are kidnapped and sold as wives, as villagers in Banzhushan acknowledge.
Other commentators say that while some women are at greater risk, many will benefit from better treatment due to their scarcity. “We can find no evidence, as yet, for a destabilizing influence,” said professor Therese Hesketh of the institute of global health at University College, London, who has coauthored a paper on the impact of the imbalance.
“This is not about men oppressing women — maybe the reverse. The situation is good for women.”
Poverty is as much to blame for “bachelor villages” as the skewed sex ratio. Women can improve their status by “marrying up”; men are rarely able to do so. Girls born in poor areas leave and outsiders stay away.
“Even though there are girls from this village, and we grew up together, they know they can have a better life outside,” Duan said.
Banzhushan is simply too remote to be a good home, even to its 300 residents. They struggle to grow enough potatoes, maize and rice to feed themselves. Selling wood helps, but incomes are just US$50 to US$60 a year, compared with US$925 for the average rural resident.
In winter, thick snows can cut off the village for two weeks at a time. Conditions here are far better than 20 years ago. The long, steep path to the village has been bulldozed into a road and there is electricity, mobile phone and TV coverage. The government has even built a two-story community center, shining white amid the pines and bamboo.
But these developments have worsened the predicament for bachelors.
It is easier to learn about the outside world and easier to move away, and local improvements have been far outpaced by the rapid changes elsewhere.
“Thirty or 40 years ago, girls from the valley were willing to marry up here,” said Jin Shixiu, 54.
“Everyone was poor and hungry. Transport was bad everywhere. Now the roads down there are better but up here, it’s still the same. Some guys even met women outside, but when they came and saw our houses and how poor we are, they just went away.”
Jin longs for a grandchild — “everyone else is holding theirs” — but says she does not dare to hope for one.
She encouraged her two sons to move to Shenzhen in search of money and wives but her eldest, now 32, is still single.
Even when men become migrant workers, they lack the education to find decent jobs, said the village’s party secretary, Jin Yisong. “It is still very hard to help these men find wives. I really don’t know how to do it,” he said.
Duan’s eldest brother took the rare step of marrying into another village, moving away to join his bride’s family.
The next eldest brother is working as a migrant laborer, but at 40 has yet to find a wife. His sister married a man from a richer, lower-lying area.
Only Duan is left to look after his parents.
“Even if I could persuade them to move down, we wouldn’t have money to build a house or land to grow crops,” he said. “After they pass away I will be too old to get married. I don’t think there’s any hope for me.”
But he does not blame himself, he said. There is little he can do. “Even though there’s pressure, and people gossip behind my back, I don’t see it as really aimed at me. There are tens of us in this situation.”
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