100,000 yuan and counting! The price China’s rural bachelors must pay to get a wife
Mainland’s gender imbalance means marriages, especially those between couples in poorer countryside areas, have become increasingly expensive and – in some cases – unaffordable
Life has recently been much more expensive than normal for Zhang Hu, a farmer from a impoverished mountainous village in northwestern China’s Gansu province
Zhang, whose family earns about 60,000 yuan (HK$70,000) each year working in one of the nation’s poorest provinces, has just spent about 170,000 yuan on his son’s wedding, including 130,000 yuan paid to his daughter-in-law as a “bride price” – a traditional Chinese marriage ritual that is still widely practised.
Yet Zhang had to borrow 150,000 yuan to foot the bill, the China Youth Daily reported.
“[The village] is so poor that no woman wants to marry [men] here,” Zhang said. “And the poorer you are, the higher the bride price.”
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As China’s economy has grown to become the second biggest in the world, marriages, especially those between couples in some countryside areas, have become increasingly expensive and – in some cases – unaffordable, according to research and Chinese media reports.