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Elderly Chinese re-marry to face old age  

By Peter Harmsen, the Sify News

 November 20, 2003

   

 
Beijing :

When Song Sufen, a retired businesswoman, decided to put an end to 10 years of life as a divorcee, her single biggest concern was what her future husband's grown-up son would say.

Just two weeks with her new family in a cramped Beijing apartment have convinced her that there will be none of the tension and jealousy she had feared.

"My stepson supports our marriage," said Song, who is in her 50s. "He cares about his father and wants him to be happy."

Song is one of the lucky few in a country where remarriage late in life, after a divorce or the death of a spouse, is frowned upon.

Vehement protests from the younger generation are one of the main challenges for Yu Jinghua at her work for Yinxing Marriage Agency, a street-level community service in western Beijing .

"Not all children support their parents' wish to remarry," she said. "They blame them, saying things like, “Look, mom took care of you her entire life, and now all you think about is tying the knot once again.”

The rows can turn so serious that elderly Chinese wind up in court with their own children. That is what happened to Wang Minxin, a 72-year-old in central China 's Wuhan city, who was thrown out of his home by his son after he married again.

But opposition to late remarriage extends far beyond the narrow confines of the family, and there is still something of a society-wide stigma attached to it.

No elderly couple planning remarriage has ever entered Milan Spring Wedding Photo, a studio in Beijing 's bustling Xidan shopping district.

"It's a question of face," said Lu Jie, the studio's manager. "It's a bit embarrassing to remarry if you're getting on in years."

That is all a legacy of pre-communist times, when old people in China got plenty of respect as long as they remained faithful to their spouses, even into death.

"Remarriage late in life used to be a taboo," said Pei Xiaomei, a researcher on old-age issues at Beijing 's Tsinghua University . "The elderly weren't allowed to even think about it."

Despite the power of conservative attitudes, times are changing, and it is estimated that seven percent of all single senior citizens in China remarry sooner or later, at least in the cities.

The trend has been helped by the media, which have reported extensively on a few celebrity cases with all the attention to detail normally reserved for film stars.

When 83-year-old Ruan Yonglan from eastern Hefei city tied the knot and became the oldest Chinese person to find a spouse through a match-making agency, media focus was on her jewellery and her hair, dyed jet-black for the occasion.

The government is quietly supporting this kind of publicity, and it is doing it entirely for financial reasons.

China 's ageing population is reaching historic highs, with seven percent over the age of 65, a doubling from 40 years ago.

Just as this time bomb starts ticking away, the welfare state has collapsed, and state enterprises no longer provide cradle-to-grave care.

Spouses' support of each other has emerged as a practical alternative that costs the government nothing. This pragmatic attitude towards remarriage is mirrored in the way many senior citizens look at the issue.

"Most old people want their future spouse to at least enjoy retirement benefits and have a stable income," said Li Fen, a manager at the Beijing Lanzhu Senior Citizens' Matchmaking Club, a semi-private enterprise.

"They don't fancy the prospect of shouldering too much of a burden together in the future," she said.

Love does not necessarily enter into the equation, as many single seniors mainly look for companionship and financial stability.

Some experts argue the focus on the practical value of marriage is typical of an unsentimental Chinese way of getting by with whatever works.

"It's a question of having somebody to look after you in old age," said Alfred Chan, an expert on China 's ageing population at Hong Kong 's Lingnan University .

"It's unlike in the west, where marriage has to be based on some sort of romantic feeling, so there is a subtle difference."

For all the prejudice and ulterior motives, there are stories with happy endings in between.

At Yinxing Marriage Agency, Yu proudly points to a cluster of full-colour wedding photos on the wall, showing successful matches.

One of them is of a white-haired couple, a former bank employee and a woman who used to run a kindergarten. "They both lost their spouses," said Yu. "And right now, they are on their honeymoon in southern China ."    

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