Leftover in China

December 1, 2017
A revealing look at some of the women who are changing the way China operates.For thousands of years, the woman's role in China was to marry young and produce and raise offspring. In today's China, that tradition remains deeply embedded, so much so that women find themselves torn between two aspects of their culture: they want to honor their heritage and please their parents by marrying and giving them grandchildren while also seeking a higher education, a well-paying job, and, ultimately, independence. Using numerous interviews and solid research, Economist Cuba correspondent Lake, who used to be based in Beijing, provides a timely, behind-the-scenes look at several women who are currently straddling the marriage/nonmarriage line, women who have reached their 30s and are therefore "leftover"--i.e., beyond a suitable age for marriage and childbearing. The author studies the role of mistresses in Chinese culture and the way foreigners and foreign educations have both helped and hindered Chinese women. She also examines the extreme effect the one-child policy had on the country; during a 30-plus-year period, millions of female fetuses were aborted, leaving fewer women available for possible marriage. Furthermore, one-child girls were pushed to succeed as if they were sons, a situation that has created tension when these women do succeed. Throughout the narrative, the author explores themes of marriage and traditions and the challenges these new, educated, sophisticated Chinese women face as they search for possible mates at work, on dating sites, and through blind dates arranged by their parents. Lake expertly explains how many Chinese men don't want wives who are well-educated and high-achieving, making it even more difficult for successful women to find life partners.A solid debut book providing intriguing insights into the current state of China's sociocultural system.

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December 11, 2017
Lake, an American journalist who lived in China for five years, explores dating and marriage from the perspective of single Chinese women in their mid- to late 20s who are well-educated and financially successful. Known as sheng nü (literally, leftover women), their unmarried status is due in part to shifting demographics that resulted from four decades under the one-child policy. In the past, couples living in urban areas were more likely than those in rural areas to raise daughters, while rural families counted on sons to tend their farms (and were therefore more likely to undergo sex-selective abortions). Consequently, there are more 20-something women than men, and the women tend to have had more resources growing up and have more education and experience in the globalized economy. In addition to supplying plenty of sociological data, Lake includes the personal stories of women she met while working in China, such as Zhang Mei, who considers hiring a fake boyfriend to take home for the holidays, and Ivy, a woman who prefers to date married men. Lake takes a refreshingly optimistic approach to this subject, discussing the ways that Chinese culture can be recalibrated to better encourage and appreciate these young women. The result is an invigorating account of China’s rapidly changing culture, told from the perspective a particularly unique segment of the population.

January 1, 2018

Journalist and producer Lake (the Economist) collects stories from Chinese coworkers and friends to illustrate the state of marriage and singlehood, and their connections to China's economy. Full of anecdotes and hard data, this work examines the effect the country's previous one-child policy has on the culture of marriage and how that culture is often at odds both with women's individual career aspirations and the country's ambitions to increase their power as a world economy. Lake posits that rather than pushing marriage and family life on both the men and women in China, the country would fare better should it support women in their careers and work to remove the social stigma of women who are not married by age 25. In pursuit of her point, Lake gives the microphone to Chinese women, providing their stories as evidence to her thesis. With excellent flow and organization, this book proves its global relevance with a commitment to drawing comparisons to other countries and looking forward to China's future. VERDICT An interesting read for the layperson and a useful book for scholars of everything from gender studies to economics, opening up Chinese culture in a way that is engaging and informational.--Abby Hargreaves, Washington, DC, P.L.

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 1, 2018
Fun fact: Chinese women now account for more than two-thirds of the 124 self-made female billionaires on the planet, with one, Yang Huiyan, the youngest and the richest in Asia. Yet for all that, Huiyan and others like her are pejoratively known as leftovers, women who either choose not to marry or who have been shunted to the slow lanes of the marriage race due to their urban, professional lifestyles. Thanks to China's controversial one-child policy, new generations of women reaped the largesse once bestowed on preferred male children, resulting in better-educated, upwardly mobile women who enjoy their newfound status, even as they struggle to appease their parents' wishes for them to fulfill more traditional roles. Based on a five-year stint as a television reporter in China, journalist and producer Lake presents an intimate yet wide-ranging examination of this economic and cultural phenomenon, a book that sparkles with personal revelations as well as important social and cultural details.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)