Home » Opinion » Chinese Views
Obsession with economic convenience may lead to marital discontent, failures
Print Edition
LAST week, a colleague asked me if I had watched “In the Name of People,” a TV drama series that is being much talked about lately. No, I had not watched any TV drama for a long time. But I could not help marveling that a TV drama can be so popular, especially given the number of such dramas being churned out on an average day, and in this era of WeChat.
The theme of the drama, anti-corruption, likely provides part of the answer. Given the overwhelming public support for the ongoing anti-graft drive, it might not be too hard for such a drama to keep its grip on the audience.
A clever playwright can draw copiously from the court records, many of which are likely to be more dramatic than the creation. Fallen officials often find themselves caught in the web of emotional entanglements, and this provides ample room for imagination.
One review of the drama I came across on Monday via WeChat was titled, “In the Name of People suggests obliquely different kinds of marriages today — which category do you find yourself in?”
There is the marriage of a provincial Party secretary, a professor-turned-official who, in the eye of his colleagues, has all the appearance of an ideal marriage, while, in fact, he has divorced his wife long ago, and now lives with a young woman residing in Hong Kong after a shotgun marriage. The façade of marital felicity with his (former) wife serves to flatter his public image.
There is a city Party secretary who wants to divorce his wife for fear her unscrupulous thirst for money might stand in the way of his career. But the wife refuses to split until the moment she flees the country after being investigated for taking bribe.
Then there is the marriage of convenience of a man who sought the hand of a woman, who was 10 years older than him, in the hope of advancement. He succeeded, becomes disillusioned, and is consoled by a younger mistress. There is also a man of easy circumstances who flirts a lot but is pathologically afraid of committing to marriage, until towards the end of the drama.
Ideal marriage
A truly ideal marriage is represented in the case of a couple, both employed in the disciplinarian sectors, who enjoy the wedded bliss and are mutually supportive in the acquittal of their professional duties.
“All happy families are like one another; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” wrote Leo Tolstoy at the beginning of “Anna Karenina.”
In the case of some officials, their power enables them to derive tremendous benefits for themselves, and their spouses easily become accomplices. The shady dealings they are participatory to accustom them to deception, which can also be practiced on their spouses.
The marriages that fall within our common experience might not be so dramatic, though humble persons in humble settings have their own ambition, frustration, and weakness. Thanks to their circumstances, they are not exposed to so many temptations.
A couple of weeks ago I visited a friend from Beijing. He impressed me as being happily married with a gentle, loving and dutiful wife, who also willingly took charge of all household chores despite being a career woman. I felt obliged to lavish praise and admiration. As an added virtue, he mentioned that “my wife never asked me for money.” Both of them had their own personal salaries at their disposal, and invested them in portfolios of their choice.
Obviously the friend cited this circumstance as superior to the prevailing practice of some husbands having to surrender their salary (cards and all) to their spouses. Frankly, I cannot fathom how it is technically possible for a family to have two sources of income independently managed.
One usual indictment of traditional marriage is that a wife’s reliance on husband for sustenance rendered her dependent. The irony is, if the spouses were not dependent on each other, much of the cohesiveness of marriage would be gone.
I know of some well-off urban men and women, refined, successful by every description, except they seem to be wary of entering into matrimonial alliance. Brought up as only children, some of them have lost the ability to administer to the welfare of others, to say nothing of sharing life, purse, or even poverty or privations with another person.
When marriage is conceived of more as an economic convenience, or accident, rather than a lifelong bondage, it can be only precarious, for it is always short of its ideal. In the case of an economic arrangement, a spouse is reduced to the level of opportunist, forever on the lookout for a better deal. The intimacy, so often assumed for a matrimony, easily becomes transitory, as with all other human relationships.
A “till death do us part” commitment can be easily disrupted in exchange for the right to purchase another flat, or secure cheaper mortgage loans.
If marital bliss is the highest reward available to a man of good conscience, then some misguided officials, in being deprived of marital felicity, must have been more sinned against than sinning.
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
