Many Chinese college students marry as soon as they graduate.
Gong Yue and her boyfriend of five years are planning to tie the knot just a year after they graduate with PhDs in medical science from Peking University's Health Science Center. Gong's friend Shen Han is also going to marry her classmate boyfriend of seven years soon after they graduate.
Gong and Shen are prospective members of an emerging tribe in China. An online survey by China Youth Daily and Sohu.com found that a quarter of the 1,900 surveyed got married upon graduation, or planned to do so soon after.
The rise of this phenomenon seems to buck the trend that young people today, the so-called "Generation post-80s", have embraced: You must have a career before you can have your own family. "We're not too worried about that. We can do career and family at the same time," Gong says.
She and her boyfriend believe their medical degrees will land them comfortable jobs with relative ease.
Marriage and family counselor Hou Zhimin thinks the new graduates' decision to get married so soon is more a defense mechanism against the pressure of post-college reality.
"Employment and marriage are two rites of passage and young people today find it very difficult to face both after graduation," Hou says.
Moreover, she says, married life can be particularly challenging for those from single-child families.
Since the early 1970s, China's "one-child" policy has aimed to stem the growth of its huge population and as a result, many of the post-80ers grew up with the full attention of their parents and grandparents.
Hou says that such upbringing tends to make today's young people strongly self-willed, "but without the capabilities to match".
The survey found 37 percent of respondents chose to marry upon graduation because they "cherished the pure relationships formed during college".
Hou, who runs a marriage counseling hotline, says cherishing relationships could also mean an unwillingness to let go of long-term relationships that have gone sour.
She says many young people who come to her for advice feel insecure about the idea of marrying. Day after day, the pressure to marry builds up and it becomes a source of frustration and confusion, she believes.
To Shen Han, the issue is straightforward: She and her boyfriend trust each other, live in the same city and need only to marry to round it off.
"The older you get, the more you're shackled by popular opinions such as 'you must have a career before you have a family'," she says.
However, marriage and family research specialist Zhao Yanzhen of the All-China Women's Federation thinks popular opinion is only part of the problem and couples are also constrained financially when they marry young .
"Getting married before getting a job means the couple needs to rely on the parents financially. It's a very real problem," she says.
So real, Zhao believes, that many young women are willing to get married solely for money. As the job market becomes increasingly competitive, marrying into a high-end lifestyle holds a particular appeal.
Of the survey's respondents, one in six stated their spouses' assets as the primary reason to marry upon graduation.
Hou is not surprised by the figure. "People used to avoid bringing up material concerns when discussing marriage but not any more," she says.
A survey by China Youth Daily and News.qq.com found 47.4 percent of the 10,050 female respondents and 39.3 percent of the 8,962 male respondents believe having a house or an apartment is a must for marriage.
In addition, 734 females, or 7.3 percent of the respondents, said they would not consider marrying men without an apartment or a car, while 11.6 percent of male respondents said they would not propose without first owning an apartment or a car.
Gong and her boyfriend are lucky - their parents have already bought them an apartment in Beijing. But with one pre-requisite of marriage in place, Gong says she still wants to wait until she settles into a job. "Right now too many people are getting married, it seems a little crowded," she joked.
Gong might be in no hurry but many post-80ers, or 26 percent of the survey respondents, are itching to get married soon after college because they fear work might leave them with no time or energy to find a spouse.
Hou says in cities like Beijing, it's difficult for a single woman to find a suitable partner after the age of 30. She says this is partly because as you get older and more established in a career, it is harder to find someone to match your accomplishments. This is especially true for women, a lot of whom hold the traditional belief that the husband should be more accomplished financially and academically than the wife.
Getting hitched to someone you have graduated with may seem like a good idea. But Zhao Yanzhen points out that young women who marry straight after college before finding a stable job risk being absorbed with domestic duties and drifting away from mainstream society. "After a while, they find it hard to work again," she says.
Gong agrees many of her peers believe the woman should tend to the "inside" - domestic duties - while the man tends to the "outside" - making money and socializing, as per Chinese tradition.
But Gong is crystal clear on that point. "I don't plan to do all the housework," she says.
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