Right Bride Price
The Chinese culture provided for the provision of bride price to the woman’s family during the marriage day. The prize was a sign of the man ability to take care of the newly wedded bride. The period before the introduction of the one child policy within China the men and women population was almost equal. The one child policy brought sex disparity where people took to modern technology in determining the gender of the child to be born. The technology allowed women to abort the girl child with the aim of giving birth to a boy child. The abortion of the girls was mainly contributed by the society belief that the boy child would provide security to the parents during the old age. The scarcity of women in the society contributed to men lack of women to marry. The Chinese society took the scarcity as a way to improve on the bargaining power during the handing over of the betrothal prizes during the marriages.
One child policy has brought the ratio of men to women into 107:100. The ratio means out of every 100 women born there are107 men. The men in the society have to work hard to improve their probability of getting the right woman. The men competition will make women and their families to pick the man who has the highest probability in providing the best bride price. Women in the Chinese community like to get married to men who hold their own homes and are economically stable (Louisa, P.3). The men in a bid to show their economic stability move forward to offer enormous bride prices for the bride. The Chinese culture on the need of men being financially stable makes it a role for the man to pay whatever bride price asked.
The Chinese one child policy has led to people within rural China to drown girls on birth date. The families in rural areas have their culture on the need of giving birth to the boy child intact. The killing of the girl child gives the family a chance to try to get another child who might be a boy. The preference of the boy child is high in order to provide labor to the family. The families believe once the girl child is married she leaves to the groom's home leaving their parents alone. Culture dictates that men should provide continuity to the family lineage, and a family without a male child is finished. The cultures on the need of a boy child have been abandoned by the urban society. The communist party tried to educate people on the equality between male and female children in the society. Families in rural areas that have a male child are held with higher status within their region. The male child families start to prepare the bride price for their children early after their birth (Louisa, P.3). Girl children not killed within their region during their births are abandoned in hospitals or roadsides. The abandoned children die out of lack of cares that contribute to enormous deaths of female children.
One child policy within China was introduced at a period when technology was taking a toll in the world during the 1970. The discovery of ultra sound technology and safe abortion means are things to blame for the scarcity of girl children and rise of bride price in China. The ultra sound equipment was used in medicine to get the images of the child before birth. The pictures would depict whether the child was male or female. Parents who held to the myth of superiority of the male child would abort female children within the medical facilities. The communist party had banned doctors from releasing details about the sex of the child to parents during the ultra sound scanning. The multiple abortions of female children are the cause of the rise of bride price because of the scarcity in women (Louisa, P.3).
Chinese economy has grown tremendously in the twenty first century. The growth in the economy is attributed with infrastructure development and education improvement of the people. The education improvement makes the bride’s parents demand high prices for marriages of their daughters. The high bride prices may include cars and houses that depict the modern society living standards (Louisa, P.3). Men who lack the necessary wealth result to loans in order to get married to their preferred female counterparts. The prices existed in olden Chinese culture but were not high because families asked for prizes concerning the prevailing economic conditions. The vast borrowings are supposed to finance the wedding that should display all form of modernity. The traditional wedding prizes were cheap because it involved only food, but changes have brought photographers and video shooting in weddings. The growth in China attributed to industries such as coal mining has contributed to rise in bride price. People working and owning those mines are willing to pay any price for a bride (Louisa, P.2).
Religion in China
China is a republic populated by people from different religious groups such as Islam, Christianity, and Buddhism (Ben, P.5). The Chinese community has a number of people who are atheist. People from different religious groups have practices that are contrary to the modern scientific means. Some religious groups are blamed for preventing members of their congregation from attending hospitals. The government is trying to eliminate believes such as religion healing people or liberating them from miseries. The government has experienced multiple uprisings within the Tibet regions that are concerned with religion.
The Chinese people are superstitious about colors making them choose colors for every event. The Chinese people are superstitious about the white color and its symbolism. The color is associated with death, and white flowers gifts among traditionalist are disrespectful. Persons attending events such as a wedding or parties are told to avoid the white color. The color effects can be proved scientifically not to hold to cause of death as seen by multiple Chinese societies.
The Jade stone is seen as a sign of good luck to the holders. The spirit is believed to bring good fortunes such as wealth. People fearing evil spirits within the Chinese culture believe getting hold of the stone will help them win over evil. The government aim in eliminating such a superstition is to make people believe that they need to work hard in order to earn. The holder of the stone believes that if its color turns dark, they will gain richness automatically. Scientifically such events do not take place, but it is a taboo held in the society. Paling of the jade was believed to bring misfortune to the society such as poorness. Superstition like such would make people not work hard but wait for religion to solve their every problem.
Persons are superstitious about people who owe them debts. Men who are owed money take their life at the doors of their debtors in order to make them suffer. The taboo dictates when the man hangs himself at the door the culprit; the culprit will proceed to the police station to admit their crime. The escape of the culprit from the police will lead to the ghost of the dead to haunt him or her for the rest of the life. The haunt by the spirit is believed to lead to the culprit to take their life. The superstition is a deterrent to people seeking help from the police administration when wronged. Modern research within the Chinese people has shown such believe is not practical. The superstition is blamed for multiple people within the rural regions of China taking their life to punish those who wrong them. The education is supposed to educate people on the modern judicial mechanism developed by the state.
The other retrogressive superstition is where the daughter in law takes her life a symbol of getting away from the harsh rules of the mother in law. The Chinese culture provided for marriages without any form of divorce or separation. Separation or divorce led to the girl being disowned by her own family. The girl’s options out of a marriage were taking her life as a way of showing vengeance. The husband’s family was supposed to compensate the girl's family because of the cruet. The communist party aims at educating people of different ways of addressing marriage feuds such as domestic violence. The culture of girls taking their life originates from the Chinese culture that depicted a woman to be part of the husband’s family after marriage.
The religious worship of ancestors is still practiced in modern Chinese culture. People believe men and women who died still exist in the spirit world watching the living. People offer such things such as libations to the dead to help them or to be offered protection. People take gifts and place them on the tombs of the dead. This superstition has been widely blamed on people believing that the dead members of their family lineage dictate their future or present. The communist party believes this is retrogressive to the country and may lead to people not work in achieving their goals in life. People have refused to leave their ancestral land in order not to leave behind the spirits of their dead ones. The scientific explanation disapproves of possibility of people gaining favors from the dead (Ben, P.6). Science dictates a man fortune and the environment and issues dictate misfortunes.
Chinese people who have fears about the future go to the seers to be told what the future holds. Persons who visit such place are told life is prearranged on birth. The Chinese believe that life is prearranged is blamed for some people taking their life or accepting their miserable living standards. People asked not to take medication eventually dying because God prearranged their life. The seers charge money from people who visit their shrines. People sell family property to raise the enormous amount of money demanded by the seers. The eradication of such believes will make people work hard to improve their living standards in the modern world.
Government in Modern China
The government in the Chinese region has metamorphosed multiple times with the rise of kingdoms to the leadership by Communist parties. Metamorphosis has been experienced in granting to freedom of press and speech within the region. The communist party has curtailed the freedom of speech where sites such as facebook are restricted to members of the country. Radicals in the country are killed by the government as a way of stopping them from spreading their ideologies and believe to the world. The lack of freedom among the Chinese people is blamed for multiple uprisings within the communist state in trial to resist the harsh government rules. The government has increased the tax burden on the local occupants within China, which reflect negatively on the economic growth developed by the Communist party. The heavy tax burden is a reflection of the olden Chinese culture that used tax to forcefully take property from the peasants.
The Chinese communist party had fear of social media introduction. The government developed policies to force people to include their real name during registration as a facebook user. The government provided people with options of using social sites developed within its regions such as the Sina Weibo. The government had the ability to control locally made social media websites. Sites such as Twitter and facebook were seen as weapons of spreading European ideologies in the Chinese regions. The government after sometime allowed people to use the foreign sites in restricted regions of the country. Worldwide governments believe Chinese governments sometimes blocking contents believed to be anti-government monitor the sites. The government has encouraged its departments to set up social media portals to inform the public on their activities. The creation of the portals is a sign of improvement but the government maintains strict measures on what should be posted on those sites. The government has been blamed of providing wrong information on the portals, which is misleading to the international community and the locals.
The press is another media channel that has grown within the Chinese region in its freedoms and spread. The Chinese press was believed to gain approval from the party’s headquarters before making any report public (Louisa, P.49). Press houses that did not observe such rules were closed or fined by the government. The government in the modern world has lessened such acts but resulting to other means to gag the media in its objectivity and openness in reporting about atrocities happening in the region. International media houses have reported of places where journalists are bribed by the state keep quiet on certain issues. The contentious issues widely affecting Chinese reporting is on matters relating to the coal mining. People control the mines with government control, and accidents on the mining are misrepresented to the members of the public. The government either gives a figure below the number of the dead people in order to avoid criticism from the international community. The bribery to the members of the press is widely spread within the region leading to the members of the public to wonder on the existent of free press within China. One of the wide case was a journalist from the China Commercial Times was reported to receive bribes from the government officials in order to cover up the death of 32 people.
Chinese economy has transformed which meant that the locals would have improved living standards. The Chinese people had been made poor long ago by the whopping taxes charged by Lords and militias (Louisa, P.231). The government has tried to eliminate taxes that are unfavorable to the people. The situation has not improved so much with the records showing the Chinese people are second highly taxed people in the world. Sale of property by the peasants included multiple taxes sometimes making it hard for people to transact business. The Chinese government is blamed for increasing taxes through policies making 35.5% of the total GDP of the country be financed by the taxes in the year 2008. The taxes are making people experience high prices in products such as food. The high taxes are not noticeable by people outside the country who see China as a nation on the growth path through the development of its manufacturing industry. The rise in the tax burden is making it hard for the peasant to own property within the country because the biggest share of their income is consumed by the taxes. The government taxation is seen to be biased because rich corrupt individuals within the state are able to escape the taxation measures. The tax at some point is not spent to improve the living standards of the people, which were the same case scenario in the traditional Chinese country. The communities are not able to air their grievances to resist the heavy taxation because of the curtailment of their freedoms by the state.
References
Ben, B. China says aims to banish superstition, promote knowledge.
Edger, S.(1938). Red Star over China. New York: Modern Library.
Louisa, L. (2013). For Chinese Women, Marriage Depends on Right 'Bride Price.
