CURATED BY KRISTIN KOWNACKY
China instituted the one-child policy to control their population in 1980. The repercussions of this policy when combined with a cultural preference for sons, has made for an extreme imbalance of the country’s gender ratio. As the first generation of the one-child policy reaches marriageable age, there will be an estimated 40 million bachelors looking for a mate.
FROM MARIE CLAIRE
Yiguo Jin is not home. His wooden door is barred, his windows shuttered. Outside his weather-beaten, rural Chinese shack, a couple of chickens scratch in the dirt amid discarded beer bottles. It’s all a bit forlorn. But nothing shouts “Here lives a lonely bachelor!” quite like the clothesline in Jin’s yard. Its sole contents are a rumpled blue jacket and pants, an old T-shirt, and a pair of tattered briefs.
It’s little comfort, says Jin later in the day when he returns from working in his fields, that there are 68 other unmarried men in his village. That just makes it worse. In the total population of only 284 in Jin’s tiny hamlet in Da Xin township in China’s Hunan province, the number of single women is zero. There hasn’t been a wedding or a new home built here for a decade. “I’m poor and I’m no longer young,” says Jin, who’s 33 and still boyish-looking. “There are so many bachelors that I will never find a girl to marry me…Continue Reading
ABOUT THE CURATOR
Kristin Kownacky is a junior at Flagler College in St. Augustine, Florida, where she is currently working towards a BA in journalism and international studies. It is her dream to travel the world, discovering hidden treasures and writing about each experience. Read her articles on her personal blog, Depart We Now.
Photo by sherattsam
