Logic of the Chinese "gold digger"

(Sorry I've been away so long....Shenzhen VPN troubles。。。the price of using Google)

People complain all the time about Chinese women.   They complain about their materialism and gold digger qualities.   Yet Chinese women are only a by product of their  society.   There is a logic as to why the Chinese Woman now has the reputation of a materialistic, agenda driven Woman.  So we cannot just say these women themselves are evil bitches content on taking your money and leaving.

There are two main reasons why Chinese women are the way they are today:  their mom and Chinese men.  Below is my very clumsy attempt at an explanation.

(Now here I will mention that the unspoken theme that makes all this possible is the lack of opportunity in China today for women.   They can stay in the village, become a factory worker, or do something else.  But make no mistake it is this lack of upward mobility within Chinese society for the female that is the hidden hand in driving the economic behavior of the young Chinese female today.)

One forgets that most of China is still from a peasant background.  That is, the family is from a small village.   Just because you see a beautiful woman in a city, dressed well, does not mean she was born and raised in a city.  Why is this important?   She still has a provincial way of thinking.  Further, as all Chinese(wrong or right), like to complain about, China is a poor country.  

We laowai just don’t see it.  We laowai like the cities.  We like our subways and our convenience.  We don’t like travelling beyond our comfort zone. 

The most important person in the Chinese girls’ life is her mom.   The sway and influence this person has on the daughter is total.  This mother is much less educated, more provincial, and less sophisticated than her daughter.  She is undersexed.   Her knowledge of MEN in my view is pathetic.  She has typically married her first boyfriend, and herself lives in an unhappy marriage.(if she is still married).  Thus she is unlikely to see marriage as an avenue of happiness and companionship as much as she is to see it as a means to an end.  In short, she is not always very enlightened.  (The grandmother also has a strong role.)  Her sole purpose is for her child to get married, and have a child.  The daughters educational achievement, career goals, are never a focus.  

There is very little banter such as,

 “What do you want to do when you grow up?”

“What will you study in college?”

This is very much where the mother’s provincial way of thinking comes into play.

Taking into account the “poverty”of the family, and the lack of economic prospects, a peasant girl’s mom will tell her to marry a rich man.  Or “to find” a rich man.    They will stress the importance of money as a form of economic security.    The mother in my view(controversial I know), will spend very little time on the “means”, as much as on the “result”.   This is why there are so many, many prostitutes in China.    It’s an economic decision on the part of the girl, whose entire life and way of thinking has been molded by the goals indoctrinated  to her by her mom.   Marriage goes out the window because it precludes them from making money.  

Have you ever seen a young, well dressed woman walking down the street with her mom?  Have you ever noticed the generational differences between the two?  One has short hair, no makeup, the other is ready to hit the club.    The young kids today are growing up fast, because they have to.   That’s life in the big city.   Alot of these women are not even high school graduates.    Raised by their mom, their main focus is economic security at all costs.  This is their first priority.   And right or wrong,  mom has told them that economic security is the sole purpose of life in China.

Now the men. 

The men do not help things.  They actually in many ways make it worse.  Their pickup skills are rudimentary at best.   Their lack of sophistication only encourages the woman in her behavior.   Their agenda is so straightforward as to encourage the coarse behavior of many women today.  However, it is here we cannot forget that the Chinese woman needs no persuasion.  She is a willing partner in this social contract.  The man merely serves as an avenue for obtaining what she has been told to seek out.  The man gives her face, an excuse to acquiesce to his needs.   

“Of course, I’m acting this way, look at his car!” 

 In the beginning the man has the advantage.  He is usually older, and more experienced.   Especially here in good ole Shenzhen.    A daughter from Hunan coming to the big city, or from Sichuan doesn’t stand a chance.    The smart ones won’t work in a factory 70 hours a week when they can sleep in and window shop.  However, with just a few years of experience the Chinese woman is now ready to leverage her key asset: EQ. 

Again I raise the specter of emotional intelligence.  Maturity.   Chinese women have harder lives than the men do here.  Thus they overcome more, and are thus more mature.  My personal opinion is this makes them more wily.   Some will say manipulative.   This is an advantage most of them will have over men the rest of their lives.   For an off the wall, example, I find that Chinese prostitutes are some of the more keen observers within Chinese society. 

It doesn’t help that Chinese men do not know how to chase women.   Their lack of sophistication leads them to be direct.   They want a new steady, sex partner.  Subtlety is not part of the Chinese Male’s persona.  They shower women with expensive meals, gifts, and cash, to obtain this goal.    They have nice cars.  However, while the female may be a willing accomplice, her goals are more longterm than that of the Man.    This is where her EQ comes into play.   Which may lead to her being kept as a mistress.   

Do not forget that for thousands of years, it was socially acceptable for a man to have a multiple wives/mistresses.  It was a sign of status until only a few generations ago.  Does one change thousands of years of culture within 60 years?  The only difference now is that the woman has more power than she did than.  The sad thing is once a woman obtains her goal she has now learned that there are even more men out there willing to deliver material benefits in order to achieve his social needs.   So I ask, how does this encourage the Chinese Female to not act materialistically? 

What the Chinese woman has working against her are two things:  age and competition.  As a continuous stream of younger Chinese girls enter the cities from the countryside, the earlier arriving girls are simply less desirable.   Their wiliness makes them less attractive.  They become  a harder fish to catch.  By then a sad trend has shown itself:  The number of surplus women(over 25 and over)in China that suddenly find themselves single and alone. 

This is why you find so many older Chinese women nowadays who’ve never been married.  Why have they not gotten married?   They were too busy being kept at a younger age by a married man!    They were too busy fending off clumsy attempts of Chinese Men, to ever think marriage would be a difficult thing to attain.  

Perhaps many of them also understand marriage in China can be a hollow satisfaction at best.   They know their man will simply stray at a later time anyway(like the guy keeping them before did for them).    It is these same women, jaded from their personal experience, that shun marriage. 

I have a friend with a 24 year old girlfriend.  He is in his 40’s.   She is a college graduate.  In his opinion, she is a rare find;  gorgeous, smart, sexy, her own career.  Very capable.   She’s run the numbers: being kept isn’t for her.  However, he knows the clock is ticking against him.   She spends all her money on clothes, and has nothing in the bank.   She travels on business a lot.    She has a lot of male friends, and in her job she frequently mingles with the other sex.    

She is constantly being asked out.   Of course they have no clue about her foreign boyfriend.   She’s admitted to him that a Chinese boyfriend could never tolerate her lifestyle.  He thinks it’s only a matter of time, though, before she wakes up and realizes there is an easier way.    Her parents are a thousand miles away.  How would they know?

Finally, one day she simply asked him,

“If we were to marry, how long would you wait before you cheated on me?”

She nonchalantly mentions that the Chinese Male spends thousands of RMB on her in night clubs, when he’s away.   This jokingly makes him nervous, but he isn’t willing(or even capable) to compete.     He has children that need a college fund.   So he’s seriously thinking of cutting his losses and moving on.  He’s noticed her increasingly cavalier attitude towards him.   Better to take the initiative now and cut her loose on amicable terms before he finds out something the hard way.   Oh he’ll find another one.   But he’s getting older, you see.

Now imagine you are a Chinese male, and are in his position?  If the Chinese Girl will act arrogantly this way towards her foreign bf, how is she gonna act towards you?  What if you are also from the countryside, and lack the means “to compete”?   What do you do?   How can one approach the Chinese Female?  

It’s not pretty, and it’s not fair.  But it’s life in China today.  And there is a logic to it.