ReviewHow sex and love in China has changed: from sexless arranged marriages to online dating
- Author Xinran Xue spoke to four generations of women from the same family in China about love, relationships and marriage
- From a woman who never had sex with her husband of 60 years, to her grand-niece who dates multiple men online, she shows how much has changed
The Promise: Love and Loss in Modern China, by Xinran Xue (trans. by William Spence), Bloomsbury, 4/5 stars
Author and journalist Xinran has written a number of non-fiction books about women in contemporary China, but in her latest book she goes back in time to examine the changes in love and marriage since the Republican era.
Much has been written about political, social, and economic changes in China since before the 1949 communist takeover, but few authors apart from Lynn Pan – who explored the common notion that love originated in the West before it arrived in China – have taken an intimate look at Chinese women’s private lives spanning four generations.
Xinran came up with the idea for The Promise: Love and Loss in Modern China after a friend told her about a woman named Red who, despite having been married for more than 60 years, never consummated her marriage. Shocked, Xinran went to her mother with this story. Her mother didn’t seem surprised and said to her daughter: “Many couples only talked about love; they never had experienced it or did anything about it.”
Red’s story led Xinran to think about enormous changes in China during the past century, but from a romantic standpoint, and whether people in China really didn’t experience love.