When Juying attended her son Yangming’s wedding this summer, she was not in a banquet hall or a church but in her apartment. On Zoom, she watched Yangming—3,000 kilometers away in the southern metropolis of Guangzhou—stand next to...
The rooster hadn’t even stopped his crowing when the police arrived at my Uighur host’s courtyard in rural Turpan one early spring morning in 2008. Although they spoke calmly, almost apologetically, the uniformed Uighur officers demanded that the...
Last fall, as China’s lawmakers neared finalizing the country’s first-ever Civil Code, they opened to public comment its draft chapters on marriage and other areas of law. A newly formed coalition of LGBTQ organizations advocating for gay...
“We fell in love but it was very difficult at first,” Xu Jing explains from the courtyard of the Fairmont Hotel in Nairobi.
“If you don’t teach her a lesson, someone else will,” Fei explained during his two-hour “Sexual Assertiveness” session, concluding a week-long tutorial offered by Puamap, a team of “professional” seduction artists, marketers, and makeover men....
When Liu returned to his childhood village to celebrate Chinese New Year, his parents had arranged a familiar and depressing task for him: a series of speed dates. Over a week back in rural Jiangxi province, he met half a dozen potential wives in...
Mei Aisi owes his business to his Internet celebrity, and his celebrity to his wife. Before he met her, Mei, a working-class native of the northern Chinese city of Chengde, didn’t have much going for him. He’d scored poorly on...
How the economic boom and deep gender inequality have created a new industry.
Although women in their 20s are greatly outnumbered by men in the same age group in China, a product in part of the since-abandoned one-child family policy and a cultural preference for sons, they face enormous pressure to marry. Those who do not...
In rural Hunan province, about two hours from the city of Changsha, a young woman named Zhang Meili married a violent man. According to local police, Zhang had trouble coping with her husband’s strong sexual appetite and he became...
On Wednesday afternoon, cheers rang out in the streets of Taipei as Taiwan’s top constitutional court ruled in favor of same-sex marriage, but not everyone present was so overjoyed. The ruling has left anti-gay groups on the island in shock, with...
A Taipei court on Wednesday ruled in favor of allowing same-sex marriage, paving the way for Taiwan to become the first nation in Asia to legalize same-sex unions and cementing its status as a beacon for LGBT rights.
When Buntha left Cambodia to marry a Chinese man, she did so for money, not for love.
Thirty-two years old at the time, and never married, she had few opportunities to earn money for her family in her village in Kampong...
That’s because China’s gender gap remains huge. There were 33.59 million more men than women in China in 2016, according to figures from the country’s National Bureau of Statistics that were issued last month
In June 2015, a couple dozen China-based photographers—some Chinese, some not—founded the Instagram account Eyes on China. Their goal, as member photographer Gilles...
An increasing number of Chinese men are marrying Ugandan women to gain residency and continue their business interests in the country
Keeping a surname is not an expression of marital equality, but of powerful patriarchal values. A married woman continued to be identified by her father’s lineage.
From commoners to renowned celebrities, Chinese bridesmaids are vulnerable to verbal harassment as well as physical and sexual abuse
Rising property prices have been inspiring desperate measures, as frenzied buyers are seeking to act before further regulatory curbs are imposed
One of the greatest fears of Chinese parents is coming true: China’s young people are turning away from marriage. The trend is also worrying the government
Is “I’d rather weep in a BMW than laugh on a bike” becoming the norm?
The decline in marriages means a decline in the kind of spending China needs to drive economic growth.
Being a photojournalist involves reacting to breaking news, a dedication to long-term projects, and everything in between. This month’s showcase of work by Chinese photographers published in Chinese media underscores this range of angles: from...
This month’s Depth of Field column brings the stories of Chinese adoption; the marriage ceremony of Hu Mingliang and Sun Wenlin, a gay couple who filed the first civil rights marriage lawsuit to be accepted by a Chinese court (...
As Chinese women face stigma for remaining unmarried past their late 20s, the boyfriends for rent business is booming.
Chinese women Rui Cai and Cleo Wu gave birth to twins last month, following a successful in-vitro fertilization.
It was ruled on Wednesday, and it was China’s first court case addressing the issue of same-sex unions.
Thousands of Chinese migrants who settled in Africa over the past 10 years now face mounting uncertainty as economic growth slows across the continent and back home in China. While there are no reliable estimates as to how many...
Pictures of the baby-faced couple from Guangxi province in their wedding outfits went viral on social networks earlier this week.
The craze reflects a tendency toward flamboyant gestures—but also how high the stakes have become for the modern Chinese marriage.
China is quickly becoming a nation of singles.
With homosexuality illegal until 1997 and prejudice still rife, gays and lesbians are increasingly joining forces with the help of matchmaking apps
Yang Kaihui—who was killed 85 years ago this month—was the first of Mao Zedong’s three freely chosen wives. (Mao was forced by his parents to wed an older neighbor when he was just 14 but did not consider this a true marriage.) Yang’s dramatic,...
Under Mao, China promoted socialist equality for women, but the market-reform era has left many commodified in a country where mistress can be a career choice.
Xu Zhe decided a few years ago that he wanted to get married and have a baby—typical life plans for a young man in China.
Attitudes towards gay rights are gradually shifting in China. Two decades ago, gay couples could face arrest under sodomy laws.
Maya Hong is a Beijing transplant from a small town outside of Harbin, the icy city not far from China’s border with Siberia. Though proud of her glacial origins and skilled at combating subzero temperatures, over the years Hong, 30, has had to...
Because Han Chinese culture developed in regions where herders and goats prevailed, many think the zodiac talisman must be a goat.
"Parental matchmaking is robustly correlated with lower marital harmony,” says a new World Bank report.
Little more than two years ago, there wasn’t a single recorded case of women trafficked from Cambodia to China to marry. Now, there are more than 150 — and experts expect that number to soar.
After a series of high-profile events highlighting their marriage bonds, China’s president, Xi Jinping, and his wife, Peng Liyuan, now have a song praising their relationship.
Li Yinhe is one of China’s best-known experts on sex and the family. A member of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, she has published widely on sexual mores, women, and family issues. Li also runs a popular...
It is a hot and sticky midsummer day in a small village along the Chang River in the eastern province of Jiangxi. The most popular spot is in front of the local grocery where a few women are playing mahjong as children chase each other around....
China has at least more than 30 million more men than women. As a result, finding a girlfriend there is extremely difficult.
A marriage boom of sorts is underway in China, where a growing number of African men are tying the knot with Chinese women. While these new families are breaking long-held cultural stereotypes, they are also confronting a whole set of new...
Amid spreading prosperity, a generation of self-styled also-rans emerges.
“We didn’t say ‘I love you,’” said Dr. Kaiping Peng, Associate Professor of Psychology Emeritus at the University of California at Berkeley. I’d ventured over to his China office on the campus of Beijing’s mighty Tsinghua University to talk to...
The wedding banquet comes later. For many Chinese couples, married life really begins in the photo studio where, basted in glitter and hair gel, the brides dressed for a debut at La Scala or night out with Fabio, they gaze upon sets so tufted and...
In 1978, there was not a single inter-racial marriage registered in mainland China, according to government figures. But the numbers of Chinese marrying foreigners has gradually risen, with 53,000 such couples tying the knot in...
Most young men getting married in China today are expected to fork out, often providing an apartment, sometimes a car and a betrothal gift, too. Things were much easier when his parents got married four decades ago.
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This week on Sinica, Kaiser and Jeremy are delighted to be joined by Joy Chen, former Deputy Mayor of Los Angeles, and now high-profile author of the book Do Not Marry Before Age 30, a look at the state of...
The raft of criticisms being levelled at the generation of children born in the 80s has very little to do with the actual failings of the young, but is a symptom of the yawning, and unprecedented gulf between young urban Chinese and their parents...
China has tens of millions more men of marriageable age than there are women. Legalizing same-sex marriage would help solve China’s hugely problematic gender imbalance.
According to a survey by Tsinghua University and lifestyle magazine Xiaokang, a total of 2.87 million marriages ended in divorce in 2012, which is a 7.65 percent increase from the previous year.
