What will Shengnu do if they don't get married?

The growing phenomenon of Shengnu in Shanghai just continues to – well -  grow and grow.  No one seems to be too concerned about or even give it much thought.  I think that the only people who really think about it are the girls themselves, their mothers – and me.

I think about it a lot and I often wonder what will become of them when they are older.

Right now a typical Shengnu (The 3'S' Girl – Seventies, Stuck & Single) could be anywhere between 32 and 35 years of age.  I would say that most of these girls are doing jobs where they might be a project leader or supervisor or possibly some kind of management position.  They make serious cash these girls and so in a weird kind of way I can understand why they would reject a lot of guys.  Why should they accept a guy that makes less money than they do?  I wouldn't do it if I was in their expensive shoes.

I think that for these girls there seems to be very little option in terms of marriage for them.  In terms of the 'appealing' demographic available, most of these girls are looking at a guy who is aged between 33 – 40, has his own house (what kind of guy shouldn't have his own house at that age?), makes more than they do (which means generally more than 15k rmb a month, possibly more) and in a senior manager position in a well-known company.  Oh, and single. And Shanghainese.  Gotta be.  Just gotta.

Now, I am not very good at economics or numbers and all of that jiggery-pokery, but I don't reckon there are too many single Shanghainese guys, aged 33 – 40, making a decent amount of wedge with a house in Putuo district waiting for Miss Right to show up and give it a womans touch.  In fact, I think there are very few.  Which means that these girls working as marketing managers or HR supervisors or branding executives etc etc may find themselves single for..........               ever.

And before any laowai males reading this start preening in front of their laptop thinking to themselves, 'well, that's where I come in' – Think again, sunshine, she ain't interested in you and your Uniqlo shirts. 

Shanghainese like Shanghainese.

Which could mean that these poor girls may be without a guy in their life for the rest of their life.  That seems to be the way things get played out here.  If this is so, what will she do?

I think, for her, there will be no real financial situation as such.  I am told that companies just love these 3S girls as they know that it's practically impossible for them to get hitched and so they stay married to the job.  As such they crawl up the corporate ladder and by the time they are 40 they are making serious coin.

Their parents will be long retired by that time and may be in their mid-sixties to early seventies. Possibly still sprightly around the house and so Ms Shengnu goes off to work (willingly, probably, to escape Mum for 9 hours or so), while Mum and Dad do the shopping, clean the house, go through their daughters private things, etc.

When her parents reach an age where they are too old to do the shopping – lets say 8 years later – Ms Shengnu will be pushing 50 and may well be running things in her company plus doing some extra stuff, so making enough where she can hire a couple of ayis to run the house while she runs what she refers to as her life.
It ain't much of a life, but at least she isn't in the same shoes as her cousin with much less luck or intelligence as her.

The kind of Shengnu that will have serious trouble will be the retired Shanghai Princess.  The girl that expects everything to be done for her by everybody around her all the time.

There are many of these girls in Shanghai too – early thirties, no real kind of education, unemployed, basically unemployable and living at home.

Now what will happen to this girl?  She really has a serious question mark over her future.

So, right now she is happily living at home and mum runs around after her while dad goes to work, taking it easy in the build up to his well-deserved retirement.  She spends all day sleeping, texting her mother that she is hungry (spoke to a Shengnu who told me she often does this) or complaining because her father forgot to prepare her toothbrush for her in the morning (spoke to another one who told me her dad squeezes toothpaste on her toothbrush for her before he goes to work).

When she does manage to get up, it's to surf dating sites or online shopping sites or call some laowai (me) and ask to meet them for coffee or something.

That is pretty much it in their fast-paced life inbetween moaning about the fact that there are no men rich enough in Shanghai to make her happy or that she has no money to buy the things she doesn't need.

She doesn't really think about her future.

Now, what if this girl can't trap Mr Right?  What on earth will happen to her?

All her life she has had people running around after her and then – BOOM – she hits 35/36 and things are starting to look pretty shaky on Planet Shanghai.  Mum and Dad seem to be moving around a lot slower and now, cheek of all cheek, they are asking her to help them with things around the house.
She never learnt how to cook or do mundane things like cleaning or going to the shops – that's what mums do, not sophisticated Shanghai girls such as herself.

She starts to push towards 40 and not only is she now doing the kind of job she never thought she would ever do in her life – some mundane mind-numbingly boring job – but her mum and dad seem to be more demanding of her free time too.

This is the end result of the one child policy coupled with a growing economy that grows too fast and the development of Shanghai that takes on conspicuous consumerism and wears it like a glove.  I don't think anyone really thinks of the consequences of this group of females and what could possibly be a grim future for them.

It's a tragedy.