Yahoo! News reported that more than 24 million Chinese men of marrying age could find themselves without spouses in 2020. In our previous report, we also found it is tremendous stressful for Chinese men to find a wife and get married.
On December 8, 2009, an article in Tencent posted a formula for pre-marriage cost in six major China cities. The formula covered the cost of buying a house, house decoration, home appliances, furniture, a car, a wedding banquet, the honeymoon and the cost of gift and dinner, etc. during the love period before wedding.
Picture from Flickr
So, here are the top six cities
The winner is: Shanghai – 1.4 million yuan (USD 205k)
First runner up: Hangzhou – 1.27 million yuan (USD 187k)
Second runner up: Beijing – 1.06 million yuan (USD 156k)
Third runner up: Guangzhou – 1.04 million yuan (USD 153k)
Fifth place: Shenzhen – 848k yuan (USD 126k)
Sixth place: Nanjing – 700kk yuan (USD 103k)
The average salary of a college graduate is about USD 6k per year. Men in their late 20s, early 30s (latest statistics showed that in Shanghai the average age of male and female who registered for marriage in 2009 to be 32.05 and 29.38, respectively.) can make about USD 30k-50k per year. The marital cost is definitely not a small feat.
How The Numbers Were Derived
To be fair, these numbers may not be comparing apple to apple. However, they are compiled based on typical expectation of each city, which could be different from city to city. Take Shanghai as an example (all in yuan):
1. An urban house over 1000 square feet:1 million
2. Middle-class house interior decoration in this house: 150k
3. Household appliances 100k (partially afforded by the bride’s side)
4. An ordinary car 100k
5. Hosting a wedding banquet might earn 5k by receiving red envelopes from relatives
6. Honeymoon in Hong Kong or Southeast Asian countries 12k
7. Expenditure on eating out, gift, traveling during two years of dating 43k
8. Marrying a sweet woman: priceless!
Women are worried but won’t lower their standards
Another report issued by three government bodies based on 2 million questionnaires said 41.2 percent of bachelorettes worried they couldn’t find a life partner and 44.1 percent of bachelorettes wouldn’t lower their standards even if they failed to meet the Mr. Right. The report also revealed that parents would meet their daughter’s date first before setting them up for the first date. For the parents, they consider possession of a house as important as personal qualities. That was how the joke came out that there was the steady demand of bride’s parents that boosted housing prices.
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