http://qz.com/92267/in-a-reversal-of-th ... ir-brides/China’s recent crackdown on luxury goods may be overlooking a wildly popular big-ticket item: brides.
Shanghai grooms typically have to pay their would-be wives a “bride price,” which starts at 100,000 yuan ($16,300). That’s according to a national map (registration required) of bride prices—a kind of reverse-dowry in which men pay a woman and her family in order to marry her. The map, which was created by the Chongqing divisions of Vanke, a real estate company, and Sina’s real estate channel, has sparked debate around the nation about how the bride price tradition reflects an obsession with materialism and makes it hard for young Chinese couples to start families.
Selling daughters has never been more profitable!
But it makes sense. When a woman marries in China, she becomes part of her husband's family, and children are basically parents' retirement security, taking care of the parents when they're old.
I did feel kind of cheap not ponying up money for my wife's family. It's the opposite of the U.S., where the bride's family pays for the wedding. In China, the groom foots the bill. 150 goats, sheep, and cattle sounds like a bargain.
Beijing: A proposed love marriage between an Australian man and his Chinese fiancee is stuck over a hefty dowry demanded by the girl's parents as 'bride price', a custom in several countries.
Su Mo, a young Chinese lady, met her fiance Dyke, an Australian, in Xi'an, located in China's central-northwest region. The couple, after dating for three years, planned to get married in Australia during New Year.
However, as the big day approaches, the two families have found themselves in dispute over dowry, state-run People's Daily reported.
Su's parents have asked for $16,000 as a 'bride price'.
Bride price, also known as bride token, is an amount of money or property or wealth paid by the groom or his family to the parents of a woman upon the marriage of their daughter to the groom.
However, Su said that her fiance had not worked for long and has few savings and explained the matter to her parents.
"To my astonishment, my father wants my parents-in-law to pay the rest of the dowry" she said.
Su's Australian would-be mother-in-law refused to consider the proposal saying "No! No way!," the newspaper reported.
Caught in a dilemma over western parents' independent living and Chinese joint family system, Su said she has no idea how to deal with the cultural gap between a Chinese family and an Australian on education and customs. Even in China, a dowry claim of $16,000 or more is an exception rather than a norm.
http://www.ndtv.com/world-news/chinese- ... and-715779
