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Chinese Tranditional Marriage

Family is the basic component of society, and husband and wife is the main element of a family. The marriage tie is the closest and longest relationship in the interpersonal relationship.

Every nation has its unique marriage ideas and wedding customs because they have the different environment, history, culture and develpment. Compared with Chinese nation with more than 5000 years of history,

United States just completed his journey of 200 years; it is no wonder that these two countries have the quite different personalities. American society focuses on the individual rights and freedom, while Chinese pay attention to the ethical life and the interdependence relationship.

So relatively, the marriage culture between China and America will be different.

1. The different purpose on getting married

1.1 The Purpose of getting married in China

Chinese people pay attention to the interdependent relationship with their friends and relatives. In their eyes, marriage is not only a joining together of two individuals, but also a union between two families.

In ancient China, parents would choose a wife for their son. On the surface, they seemed to do this for their son; actually, they did this for the whole family.

In traditonal Chinese society, marriage is a family event. When a girl officially became a familys daughter-in-law, the first thing she had to do was to worship the ancestors and salute her husbands family. And from this you can see that traditional Chinese marriage was subject to the interests of the family. The purpose of a man marrying a woman is having a son to carry on his family name, which is his responsibility and obligation.

In today’s Chinese society, this kind of traditional marriage has undergone great changes. young people tend to choose “love first” marriage. But it is still not a simple matter for love to become the primary purpose of marriage in a highly traditional society like China. According to a survey about the quality of marriage conducted by Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences in Shanghai, Guangdong, Gansu and Harbin, one fourth of the subjects got married for the reason of “love”. The statistical results showed that only two percent of the subjects chose to marry because they loved each other so much, twenty five percent chose the marriage because they thought they love each other before they got married, fifty six point five percent got married because they got good relations before they married, and sixteen percent of the people had no feeling to each other before they got married . The survey showed that not all the people geting married because of love, some of them even had no feeling to each other at all when they got married.

1.2 The Purpose of getting married in America

The purpose of getting married in America firstly is for the affection between the lovers to achieve a perfect result. Secondly they want to look for a long-term heterosexual partner to satisfy their psychological and physical needs. Western society attaches great importance to the development of personal independence, and people there have a strong sense of independence and self-centeredness. In western society, individualism is extremely popular, people think marriage is just the combination of two individuals and love is the foundation of marriage. Louis Harris, a well-known US expert in sociology conducted a survey, and the statistic showed that, 83% of American men and women believe that love is the primary element to get married, and 90% of the American people also believe that love is the first condition to maintain a happy marriage . So from the survey, we can see that seeking true love is the most important purpose of geting married for most Americans.

Therefore, we can learn that, to get married in America is the right of individual, and Chinese marriage is more like to fulfill their obligations.

1.2.1 How Chinese People Choose a Spouse

China has a feudal history of more than 2000 years; the feudal ideas attached great importance to kinship. It’s a commom phenomenon that children will rely on their parents until they graduated from school. And parents are taken care of by their children when they are old. “To arrange a match by parents’order and on the match-maker’s word” is the traditional way of selecting a mate, which has been popular for thousands of years.

Nowadays,Chinese young generation are no longer affected by the traditional ideas. They believe that being free to choose a mate is also an important part to realize their self-value.However, due to the influence of Chinese traditonal culture and ethics, today parents still meddle in their children’s growth, and expect their children to develop along the way they have designed for them. In a sense, on the issue of selecting a spouse, parents are still indirectly in power.

There are two impartant traditional standards to choose a spouse in China. Firstly the girl must come from a clean background, and secondly the groom’s family and bride’s family must be well-mached in social and economic status.

Nowadays, Chinese young people’s standard of selecting a spouse does not strictly abide by the principles of clean background and well-matchedness in social and economic status, but is still under its influence. Today most of the Chinese young men will look for a virtuous and innocent girlfriend. NetEase conducted a survey on Valentine’s Day in 2009, which was about Chinese people’s standards of selecting a spouse (NetEase, 2009). There were 38 options designed for the participants. According to the survey, the top three options chosen by males were1 good looking, accounting for 15%; virgin, accounting for 8% and good at cooking, accounting for 8%. And the top three options chosen by females were good looking, accounting for 13%; have the professional skill, accounting for 7% and own a house, accounting for 6%. From the survey we can see that no matter men or women, they all cared about their partner’s appearence and besides, men paid more attention to women’s characters and women emphasized the importance of financial status.

1.2.2 How the American People Select Spouse

Being free to choose a spouse is the most important thing in marriage for American people, who are well-known throughout the world for their “individualism”. The Americans pay great attentions to the development of personal independence, their children have more freedom and equality. They can disscuss questions with their parents, and choose school and job freely. They will leave home to work or take part-time jobs when they are 18. If they still live with their parents when they are twenties, they will be looked down upon by other people.

American people have their own standards to select mates, the most important thing is compatibility, and other elements like family background and education level may probably not be taken into consideration. So it is not rare to see a girl born with a silver spoon will probably choose a boy whose class background is significantly different from hers in the process of looking for her Mr.Right, and the reason can be simple as she is just attracted by his humor.

3 The Differences in the Relationship between Husband and Wife in Marriage

3.1 The Chinese Husband-Wife Relationship.

In Chinese traditonal marriage, the husband is always in a dominant position, while his wife is in a subordinate status. This kind of marriage structure is due to the traditional family division of responsibility, according to which, it is usually the husband who works and the wife stay at home. Husband is the head of family, and undertakes the major economic responsibility for the whole family. And the wife’s main job at home is doing housework, serving her in-laws and teaching her children.

In modern Chinese society, the status gap between men and women in marriage does not seem so wide as before. Today, many women go outside to participate in the social work. Even so, some wives still need to or are willing to depend on their husbands. Many people envy those full-time houswives; they think they have the good fortune to have such a life. But for the full-time husbands, people always look down on them, they think such a man is good for nothing, and so is a useless man.

1.3.2 The American Husband-Wife Relationship

In US, people believe that the husband and wife should be equal. In their own words: “Husband and wife should be equal partners.”

They all find jobs outside and undertake the economic responsibility together. Husbands do some housework and cooking as well, sometimes their cooking skill may be better than their wives.

summary

The reason why Chinese and US have different marriage ideas is that they have different customs and faiths.

Although there are so many differences between China and US, all of them have their own happiness. And people will bless the new couples all the same.

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