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  3. Love and Money Reshape Family in China Getting married in today’s China is far easier than even four years ago: The couple t

Love and Money Reshape Family in China Getting married in today’s China is far easier than even four years ago: The couple t

admin2010-05-26  42
问题                         Love and Money Reshape Family in China
    Getting married in today’s China is far easier than even four years ago: The couple took a number, waited in line, and said "I do" in just over an hour. The certificate costs about $1.15. Marriage forms no longer ask frightening questions about parents’ history or Communist Party affiliations. Nor must couples seek permission from their "work unit" boss, a major shift from last year. Marriage and public security bureaus are reportedly no longer connected.
    Today, urban Chinese are free as never before to pursue what have become the twin engines of family dynamics heres love and money. In the 200 cities with more than a million people, love and money are dictating historic changes in the traditional family that had already been shrinking due to the one-child policy. Dating and romance are in, living with parents is out, wives and daughters enjoy enhanced roles. A new galaxy of attitudes and values is transforming the basic building block of Chinese society.
Love and money
    Now, for the first time on a wide scale, Chinese may pursue a spouse of their own choosing. Only 2 in 10 young Chinese used to choose their life partner; today, 9 in 10 say they have or will, acc6rding to a China Daily report. Along with this, a discourse of "feeling" and "emotion" that used to exist mainly in elite circles is now heard at all levels, from tycoons to taxi drivers. Shops advertise "passion styles" for cars and kitchens. Romance novels are a rage.
    In the past, couples often did not demonstrate affection inside a strict, loyalty-based family hierarchy. It was better not to, as Harvard sociologist Martin Why to points out, since it might suggest a son’s loyalty was not entirely clear. Couples always lived with the husband’s parents, and in times of argument, sons were expected to side with family elders, not wives.    Sons were dependent on parents. Divorce was discouraged and nearly non-existent. Marriages were arranged among families or inside "work units"; a main criterion was the communist or "revolutionary" credentials of the spouse’s family.
    But now marriage is based on feeling. "I want to fall in love," says Ms. Xin, a 19-year-old student at a shopping mall. "I don’t want to moan forever about money and jobs. Love is first. Other things are important but not first."
    Yet the dreams of young women like Xin can be tempered by economic realities. She’s part of the first generation who must find their own jobs and earn their own wages. This creates some anxiety. Apartments are no longer subsidized; jobs no longer guaranteed. Many parents have no advice for their offspring about a China evolving at a bewildering rate.
    Wealth, it turns out, has caused many urban Chinese to think and behave in ways that don’t always include families. Boarding schools have tripled in the past decade. Extramarital relations have skyrocketed. As the cost of living increases in urban China, many young women, often from outside the city, are subsidized by men.
A new concept: dating
    China has 3,000-plus years of feudal order, guaranteed partly by a stable family. That family is now undeniably changing. Consider these structural shifts: Dating is a new concept, maybe four years old. Before, one never talked about a "boyfriend" or "girlfriend". A special friend was a "partner," and it implied an impending marriage. No longer. In the city, females will ask males out. Young Chinese want to get to know one another. The American "eight-minute date" has just hit Beijing.
    In China’s shift to a market economy, one key marriage player has been phased out: the work- unit boss. For 50 years, the boss was a de facto sergeant inside state-run enterprises. He or she policed behavior among the sexes, assisted with family problems, often helped set up single women approaching the unofficial "spinster" age of 30, and approved all matches.
    Now the work-unit boss no longer approves marriages; the position is disappearing along with state-run businesses.
    Weddings in pre-1980 China were simple, short, and cheap.    Today, 70 percent of the weddings done by Purple House, a Beijing agency, are Western-style -- vows, white dresses, churches, receptions, says Shi Yu.    Mr.    Yu is Purple House’s "master of ceremonies", a combination minister-DJ for the ceremony. Weddings used to cost $ 40. Now ’they easily run $ 4,000 and are a status symbol.
    Once married, Chinese couples are no longer choosing to live with parents at home, a huge change. Some 60 to 70 percent of couples no longer live with parents, and in the reporting for this series, virtually no young Chinese said they would live at home if they could afford not to. One counter-trend is to live a "bowl of soup" distance away - move to within a few blocks. This neatly supplements another new trend: full-time care of children by grandparents.
    The maturing of the one-child policy, combined with the ability of couples to buy their own apartments, is creating its own "empty nest" condition. This means that older people are starting to experience an often terrible new loneliness. China is still a country with respect for eiders. Yet a public-service ad on Chinese TV shows an elderly lady cooking all day. As she sets the table for dinner, the phone calls come one by one: "I can’t make it. Can I come tomorrow?" The ad ends with a solitary figure sitting at a table of food and the words, "Don’t forget your parents"
A sense of acceleration
    That acceleration is reflected in the way relationships are being formed and conducted. Cellphones and the Internet provide the kind of intimacy and instant connection never before possible in China. The nation now has 400 million cellphone users, double the number in the late 1990s, according to 13o Landin, a former executive with Ericsson. Even many migrant workers now carry cellphones.
    In a way not found in the West, young Chinese take their new cellphone liberation and Internet relationships seriously. Text messages allow young men or women, who are often painfully shy, to conduct a rapid-fire dialogue that has its own interpersonal language.
    High tech has made introductions easy. White collar companies now woo recruits by bragging about their weekly singles mixers. Introduction services have cropped up, advertising that clients will "find that tight spouse". One service in Beijing offers four levels of matchmaking possibility, ranging from a $ 25 Web inspection of members to an $ 800 "Gold" membership featuring a party for you with b6oze, balloons, and an "A" list of prospective females. Yet our reporting shows that couples rarely find each other at these places. Rather, it remains friends, alumni, work, and family where marriages develop.
China debates "family values"
    Most Chinese agree the family is undergoing tremendous change. But views on what that means run the gamut. Some feel society is headed for serious disorder due to a loss of values like sacrifice, family loyalty, and fidelity. Others see a better China emerging after a period of shakeout, with greater choice and maturity.
    At one level, the fight is between traditionalists and progressives. Many of the former feel that an avaricious new money culture will corrupt China and send it into uncharted waters. They see women becoming sex objects and couples devaluing each other. They see the years from 1950 to 1980 as a stable period of happiness, when moral values were predominant and families found meaning in serving the state.
    Progressives feel that few Chinese want to lose recent gains like choice. Both sexes are more liberated, they feel. In the past, marriage was limited by family background. Divorce was not allowed, often not even in abusive, dead-end situations.
    Many in China do feel problems with the money culture, but don’t want a return to state dictates in their private lives. They feel that an obsession with grades, colleges, and jobs has led parents to ignore a traditional emphasis on good behavior, modesty, and politeness. They are troubled by studies showing rising levels of early teen sex and recent cases of teens involved in homicides. They want a form of new moral education that teaches a humane social contract.
Many in China feel that an obsession with grades, colleges, and jobs has led parents to ignore ____________.
选项
答案a traditional emphasis on good behavior, modesty, and politeness
解析
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