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Hey, it's Gregory, and this episode

0:20

is all about love. So let me confess,

0:22

I love you. Especially

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those of you who have signed up for my sub stack, my email

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0:57

And as a thank you, the first 50

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people that subscribe today get a free NPR

1:02

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1:04

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1:06

of course. And signing up is super

1:08

easy. Just go to substack.com or

1:11

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1:13

for my name, search for Rough Transition. It'll

1:15

pop right up. If you join the chat or

1:17

post a comment, it'll come right to me. I

1:19

will respond. And I would

1:22

love to see you there.

1:32

Wanning Sun is a cultural anthropologist from China

1:35

whose work I have followed for many years. She

1:37

lives in Sydney, Australia, where she teaches at the University

1:39

of Technology. She didn't train as

1:41

an anthropologist, but she kind of fell into

1:44

that field. And not to play favorites,

1:46

but accidental anthropologists

1:49

are sort of my favorite kind. Anthropologists

1:52

initially were quite suspicious of me. They

1:54

just think, oh, she's not really an anthropologist.

1:56

Music to my ears.

2:01

I called up Wanting because she's got this new book out

2:03

called Love Troubles about the love lives

2:05

and heartaches of Chinese migrant workers.

2:08

And she tells this one story in the book that touches

2:10

on a topic I've been thinking a lot about recently,

2:13

love stories. What they reveal about ourselves

2:16

and the place we live in ways that can be hard

2:18

to talk about. So this story,

2:21

it begins...

2:21

Yes, it was in a stuffy room, quite

2:24

stuffy. In a stuffy room in a community

2:26

center in the shadow of a Foxconn factory

2:29

in Shenzhen, China. And

2:31

it was a Sunday, so the workers gathered

2:34

here, mostly men in their 20s and 30s, were on

2:36

their day off. Most of them were wearing t-shirts

2:38

and shorts

2:39

and flip-flops.

2:42

But for this casual, retired group, Wanting

2:44

had some challenging questions to ask. Are

2:47

you married? Or how many

2:49

blind days have you been arranged

2:51

to go to? Do you ever pay for sex?

2:54

Or how much intimacy do you think you can

2:57

enjoy? Have you ever been in love? These

2:59

are the kind of questions that are very, very difficult

3:01

for people to ask. Most of these

3:03

young workers are not married. And unlike

3:05

a previous generation of migrants, who saved

3:08

up with factory jobs and then returned to the village

3:10

to settle down, these workers don't want

3:12

to live a rural life.

3:13

They say, I cannot go back

3:16

to the village, nor can I stay on

3:19

in the city. But their salary is not enough

3:21

to put down roots in the city, by a car,

3:23

by a flat, which is often a necessary

3:25

step to getting married.

3:26

So that feeling of immobility,

3:29

that feeling of being stuck, is

3:32

something

3:33

that previous generations did not have.

3:36

And Wanting says there is a sense among some

3:39

middle-class Chinese that these workers are

3:41

paying a kind of loneliness tax,

3:43

an emotional cost for being the engine

3:45

of China's economy.

3:47

Her previous research had revealed that workers

3:49

feel this burden of having disappointed

3:51

their parents and themselves. So

3:54

she's reluctant to ask them too directly right

3:56

away about their love and dating lives. Instead,

3:59

she asked them if they

3:59

know any good love stories.

4:01

A young man who had until

4:03

that moment was quiet

4:06

and didn't say anything, he stood up

4:08

and he said, I'd like to share

4:11

with you my favorite love story.

4:13

And then he went on to sort

4:16

of narrate in great detail

4:19

the stories of the Titanic, the

4:21

movie Titanic Titanic. Yes.

4:24

So,

4:29

you probably know the 1997 film. I

4:32

love you, Jack. About a poor artist, Jack Dawson,

4:35

who wins the heart of a young socialite, Rose

4:37

DeWitt, on the deck of the Titanic.

4:40

Jack's the hero, but the

4:42

workers telling the story use this one Chinese

4:44

phrase for him. They called him a diaozi,

4:47

translated into Chinese. It's

4:50

a sociological term that

4:52

no sociologist would dare

4:54

to utter the word because it's extremely

4:57

vulgar term. It means

4:59

the pubic hair that you can find

5:01

from a male genitalia. That's

5:04

how abject you are. A

5:05

single pubic hair. That's

5:07

right. Yes, that's right. From

5:10

where they're standing, Jack is a

5:12

single, nasty, totally

5:15

expendable pubic hair.

5:17

People use that word to describe themselves.

5:19

But that word has also been quoted in state newspapers

5:22

as a term to describe migrant workers.

5:25

It's actually explicitly expressed sort

5:27

of belief that the existence

5:30

of a large cohort of sexually

5:32

repressed

5:33

single men may be somehow

5:35

associated with criminality. And

5:38

that in turn is bad for social

5:41

stability, which in turn

5:44

is

5:45

sort of a threat to the political legitimacy

5:48

of the government. The government

5:50

wants more of these workers to go back to the village

5:53

and get married. Chinese state TV

5:55

serves up profiles of factory workers who

5:57

dutifully save up money for years and happily

5:59

settle. down, but when wanting

6:01

talks to these workers, they scoff at

6:03

that love propaganda. Titanic,

6:07

they tell her, is a far more realistic love

6:09

story. Because at

6:11

the end of the film, Jack dies.

6:14

Rose lives. The

6:17

iceberg, it's like the reality

6:19

of class that crashes in and

6:21

puts everyone back in their place. You

6:24

must promise me that you'll

6:26

survive. And never

6:28

let go of that promise. Titanic,

6:32

it's a story usually told as the power of love over

6:34

class.

6:35

But in this community center in Shenzhen, I

6:37

promise I'll never let go. It's

6:40

transformed into a film about the power of class

6:43

over love. And even though

6:45

they identify strongly with Jack,

6:48

they don't necessarily believe

6:50

that in real life that

6:52

they can meet someone like Rose.

6:54

Well when people tell love stories, it sounds

6:57

like what you found is that people are talking about their

6:59

philosophy of the world and their

7:01

faith in the future or their lack of it.

7:03

Yes, that's right. That's

7:05

right. Wanting

7:08

says this was all stuff that she wouldn't have learned if she'd

7:10

asked her original questions. Are you married?

7:12

How many blind dates have you been arranged

7:15

to go to? When people give you a status

7:17

update, they're telling you how things are for them.

7:20

When people share love stories, they're letting

7:22

you see how they maybe hope their lives could

7:24

be.

7:25

These migrant workers would rather see themselves

7:28

not as some sociological

7:30

problem of the government bureaucrats,

7:33

but

7:33

as Jack Dawson,

7:34

who yes lives a precarious life but

7:37

defends that life with more dignity than anyone

7:39

else on screen.

7:40

When somebody asked him, you know, who

7:43

are you? And he basically said, yesterday

7:45

I was sleeping under the bridge. The

7:47

other night I was sleeping under a bridge and now here

7:50

I am on the grandest ship in the world having

7:52

champagne with you fine people. Well

7:54

said, Jack.

7:54

Yeah, yeah. Today on Rough

7:56

Translation, what we talk about when

7:58

we talk about love stories. We have a tale

8:01

about a mother and daughter who fight over what

8:03

kind of love story they are part of. And

8:05

if you are as excited as I am about our

8:07

newest season, Five Years in the Making, we

8:09

have a sneak peek of that season, which

8:11

drops in just two weeks. Stay tuned.

8:14

Rough translation,

8:15

back after this break.

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9:41

A few years ago when Gogo was 24

9:44

and living in her own apartment in Beijing, she

9:46

got a phone call from her mom

9:48

with a login and a password to

9:50

an online dating site. And

9:52

there, Gogo found a profile that

9:54

her mom had set up for her.

9:56

It had her photo, her bio, and

9:59

an inbox. full of conversations with guys that

10:01

she had never met. I'm quite shocked because

10:06

she's using my name. She's misusing

10:08

my name. This

10:10

had been going on in secret for months. Her

10:13

mom set up the account then messaged with guys pretending

10:15

to be her daughter.

10:17

One guy sent a photo of himself playing basketball.

10:19

Her mom had written back, why do those

10:22

shorts look like a skirt? Another

10:25

time a guy said he was going to Turkey, her mom

10:27

said, don't be foolish.

10:28

My mom said, Turkey is very,

10:30

very dangerous right now. How did

10:32

these guys not realize this was a

10:35

mom? I mean, I will never say something

10:37

blacked out. This is like pretending

10:40

what I will say that it's

10:43

totally not me.

10:44

Did you tell your mom, hey,

10:46

take this down? Several times.

10:49

That doesn't work. Sometimes she

10:51

even promised me that I will not do this again.

10:54

But maybe one or two weeks later, she

10:56

said, hey, I found another guy, do you

10:58

want to know him?

10:59

This was just the start of a year when

11:02

Gogo would begin to question who she was

11:04

and what her family and her society expected

11:07

of her.

11:08

The reason we know about Gogo's story is

11:10

that she told it on a podcast in China.

11:13

Producer Jess Jang spent a lot of time listening

11:15

to the show in 2019 when we first

11:17

aired this story. The podcast was called

11:20

Guo Shi FM, which means Story

11:22

FM. It's

11:24

an independent podcast out of Beijing. Listeners sometimes

11:27

call in to share their stories. That's

11:30

how Gogo got on the show.

11:33

And I got curious

11:34

about this podcast because

11:37

there aren't that many places in China where

11:39

people can speak frankly in public.

11:42

When you think

11:42

about China's rise, from one of the poorest economies in the

11:44

world to the second largest, it's

11:47

also meant a huge change in the lives of women.

11:50

Chinese women in their 20s and 30s are

11:53

better educated than men their age. They

11:55

earn a bigger percentage of China's GDP

11:58

than women in North America do.

11:59

And Gogo is part of this trend. The

12:02

way she put it to me was that she was raised in

12:04

a Western way. She moves to college

12:06

without her parents helping her. She

12:09

gets an internship without her parents helping

12:11

her. She moves to do the internship without

12:13

her parents helping

12:14

her. To the big city of Beijing. Right. And

12:16

she says she always felt like her mom wanted

12:18

her to be independent. From her perspective,

12:21

the independence she gave to

12:23

me, this is to make

12:25

me a better person,

12:27

a strong person. Then suddenly

12:29

when she hits the age of 24, she's

12:32

back in China after getting her master's degree

12:34

in the States. And her mom is telling

12:36

her, all this freedom I gave

12:38

you has led you the wrong way. She's

12:41

so much worried about me. She

12:43

thought that I'm so poor. No one is carrying

12:46

me. I have to do all the things by my

12:48

own.

12:49

While Gogo was in the USA getting

12:51

her degree, her mom in China was

12:54

hearing reports on TV, reading

12:56

in the newspaper about this rash of

12:59

unmarried women.

13:00

Women in their 20s and 30s said

13:02

to be too picky, too spoiled to

13:04

settle down. They were called shoungni,

13:07

so leftover women, as

13:09

if there's an expiration date that these

13:12

women have passed. But if

13:14

you dig into the phrase, you find out that what China

13:16

was worried about was not the unmarried women at

13:18

all. It was lots of unmarried men.

13:21

Because the one child policy in China over

13:23

a generation had led to a surplus of young men.

13:26

And too many single men in the country spell

13:29

social unrest.

13:29

And so the Chinese government was

13:31

pushing the message, you women

13:34

have a deadline to get married. I

13:36

heard about that deadline from my extended family

13:39

when I visited China that I need

13:41

to be married by age 25. So

13:44

this is Gogo telling her story on the podcast.

13:50

Her mom is a very persistent

13:53

person. Gogo says there were tears

13:56

and yelling.

13:59

not really used to her mom

14:02

being involved in her life this much. And

14:05

so she thinks, I'm just going to go

14:07

on a few dates, talk to some guys,

14:09

and tell her it didn't work out. So

14:13

she decides to talk to one guy, just

14:16

on text. And she

14:19

casually asks him what

14:21

he does to exercise. His

14:23

answer is, I've already told you, it was on

14:26

my profile. I jog.

14:28

Oh, he was offended that she didn't do the research

14:31

on him. Yeah, yeah. And she decided

14:33

it was like a really aggressive

14:35

answer. She just ignores

14:38

him. His response is, communicating with

14:40

you is just so hard. And

14:44

so her response is, ha, ha, ha,

14:47

ha, yeah, I feel the same way. And

14:50

so then she unfriends him on

14:52

WeChat, after which he

14:55

starts barraging her

14:57

with insults. Who do you think

14:59

you are?

15:01

You

15:04

think because you left the country, you're something

15:06

extra?

15:09

This is just one guy on the internet,

15:11

but it's really upsetting to her.

15:14

She's never done online dating before. Her

15:16

mom basically pushed her into

15:19

talking to this guy. So she

15:21

tries to unregister from that online dating

15:23

site. But it turns out to unregister,

15:26

you need two-factor authentication.

15:29

But the two-factor authentication was with her

15:31

mom's cell phone. So

15:34

she has to convince her mom to unregister.

15:39

Her mom says, I'm so sorry,

15:41

I didn't mean to force you into doing this.

15:46

Then literally days after

15:48

her mom pledges, never again, she's

15:51

on a new site, again making a profile,

15:53

again chatting up guys for GoGo

15:56

to go on a date with. And

15:59

she's asking

15:59

go go, hey, how's

16:02

it going with this guy or that guy?

16:04

Because she has chatted with them first. Yeah, and

16:06

her mom also gives them nicknames. Mommy,

16:09

you should buy a new song. There's

16:11

Xiong Haizi, who comes from

16:13

the same hometown as Gogo. So

16:16

she keeps asking her, how's it going to Xiong

16:18

Haizi? And

16:21

then there's a guy who says he works for JP

16:23

Morgan. He works for JP Morgan. Yeah,

16:25

JP Morgan guy. Her mom figures they're

16:27

both in finance. They'll have a lot to talk about.

16:31

These guys are all in Gogo's social class.

16:33

They went to top universities like she did.

16:36

And her mom is thinking that these points of

16:38

connection are enough. Gogo

16:41

isn't feeling any chemistry with these guys.

16:44

She usually ends things after a few dates.

16:47

But when she complains to her friends

16:50

and to her mom, she realizes

16:52

no one is expecting her to

16:54

be looking for love. Some of my friends.

16:57

I'm very shocked. They also hold such kind

17:00

of opinion that love has

17:02

nothing to do with marriage. Marriage has nothing to

17:04

do with love. These are two separate things.

17:06

Her friend tell her, don't worry about chemistry.

17:09

If your backgrounds are compatible, it'll

17:11

work. They said marriage means that

17:13

as long as his background

17:16

is fine, then you

17:17

can get into marriage. I don't

17:19

agree on this. She

17:23

says, my mom starts asking

17:26

me, what is your problem? What

17:28

is your issue?

17:29

She

17:32

says, I was really close

17:34

with my mom. But because

17:37

I can't find a husband,

17:39

have I fallen so far in my mom's

17:41

eyes? Am

17:45

I lacking?

17:53

When she started this whole thing of online

17:55

dating, she mainly did it to appease

17:58

her mom.

17:59

unexpected or really intended for

18:02

any of these dates to work out. But

18:05

now, after date after date not

18:07

working out, it felt like proof

18:10

that there was something wrong with her. Something

18:13

to be ashamed of.

18:15

So her mom decides she needs

18:18

professional help. She takes

18:20

her to an office in a fancy part of Beijing

18:23

to meet a matchmaker. The

18:26

woman tells Gogo,

18:28

you don't have to wonder if something's wrong with you. There

18:31

is definitely something wrong with you.

18:37

But

18:39

you don't have to be afraid because we

18:42

can help you. We

18:45

have an all-encompassing counseling

18:47

service. It's called the Gold Tier, and it's like

18:50

a group dating mixer with 49 pre-selected

18:58

guys. 49 because 7 times 7

19:01

and 7 is a lucky number in China. And

19:04

for just US$15,000, Gogo

19:07

can join this group and

19:09

have her own coach who will not only

19:11

help her meet her match, but even go

19:14

further than that with this guarantee

19:16

of quality assurance. The quality

19:19

assurance service, they said that

19:21

even if you get married during

19:24

the marriage, if you have any issues,

19:26

the consultant will

19:30

coach you to maintain a

19:33

good relationship. So they'll continue

19:35

to help you. So if you have a fight

19:37

in your marriage about who's taking

19:39

out the garbage, they'll help you solve

19:42

that problem. Yeah, something like that.

19:45

Single matchmaking services are on

19:47

the rise in China. As marriage rates have

19:49

declined, there are more single people.

19:53

And $15,000 is by far not the high price

19:55

point of what these places charge.

21:59

didn't go to the best university. He's

22:02

not a guy with the best background. But

22:04

when GoGo meets him, he's washed his

22:07

car, he's planned the date.

22:09

He doesn't expect her to be the only one showing

22:11

interest, and she doesn't have to work to

22:13

be open. They

22:15

date for six months, they fall in love, and

22:18

he proposes, and they're celebrating

22:20

their third anniversary this year.

22:28

Our next love story, well, it starts with a big

22:30

screen. Arguably the biggest screen for

22:32

love stories in the world? Bollywood.

22:35

Writer and journalist, Moncee Chokese, grew

22:38

up on Bollywood romances of the 90s, which

22:40

featured lovers who crossed boundaries

22:42

of class, but also caste and

22:45

faith.

22:45

And then she encountered a gap between the love

22:48

stories that a nation enjoyed watching... I

22:50

hate you. ...and the rules of love that

22:52

everyone seemed to follow.

22:53

Hindi cinema... ...rewarded

22:57

around like the hopeless romantic.

23:06

Star-crossed

23:12

lovers that crossed these bridges and divides

23:15

to be together...

23:15

I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love

23:18

you. The idea that love is something worth

23:20

fighting for... I love you, I love you,

23:22

I love you. We

23:26

were the young people that were going to change the way

23:28

the world works and things, and we could

23:31

do anything. And

23:35

then in reality, the truth is that when

23:37

you do cross that boundary of tradition,

23:40

you're knocked down and told that actually you cannot do

23:42

this one thing.

23:43

And that thing is getting married without

23:45

your parents' blessing. Exactly, it is the

23:47

act of disobedience. That is, yeah, that's absolutely

23:50

it. The real boundary is crossing

23:53

your parents' will. The real boundary is

23:56

disappointing them. As a journalist,

23:58

Manzi would see upclosures. the potential

24:01

consequences of this act of disobedience. Not

24:03

many years ago, I actually visited

24:06

a village in Haryana where

24:08

I stood inside a bedroom where a young

24:10

woman and her husband were killed by

24:12

the girl's family. They were

24:14

from two different casts. Her family had never

24:16

accepted them. And, you know, the woman who was

24:18

pregnant had been shot to death

24:20

in their sleep for running away five years earlier.

24:24

The walls still carried marks, bullet

24:26

marks.

24:27

But to her shock and her shame, Monsey

24:30

didn't feel about this couple the same way

24:32

she felt for the love stories on screen. You

24:35

know what it really felt like? To be honest, it felt

24:37

like a case of really

24:39

bad luck. It was like

24:41

a victim-blaming moment that you... Yeah,

24:44

yeah, yeah. I wish it wasn't that,

24:46

but that is how it was. You know that this

24:48

is a red line, and if you're going to cross the

24:50

red line, um...

24:53

don't get caught. Monsey's

24:56

reaction surprised her and

24:58

led her on a journey to write a book called The

25:01

Newlyweds, Rearranging Marriage

25:03

in Modern India, exploring what really

25:05

happens when love goes off the Bollywood

25:08

script.

25:09

I kept going back to this moment. Why

25:11

was it just so ordinary? The death

25:13

of these people. Yeah, but it feels

25:15

so unsurprising.

25:22

This question will lead Monsey and NPR

25:24

correspondent Lauren Freyer on an epic journey

25:27

over five episodes. We're going to meet a group

25:29

that offers protection to these kind

25:31

of couples and helps them get married without

25:34

their parents' blessing. But is this group

25:36

everything they promise? This is our new

25:38

series from rough translation called Love

25:40

Commandos, coming out in the Speed

25:43

on July 26th.

25:46

Hey, one more love story before I go, and it's a personal one.

25:48

One of the hardest things

25:50

about this show coming to an end at NPR is

25:52

the possibility of losing the chance to share more

25:54

of your stories. Some of

25:56

my favorite episodes have been

25:58

filmed on the internet.

25:59

have come from listeners. Sometimes I

26:02

feel like a kind of matchmaker, introducing

26:04

you to you. It's really fun. I am super

26:06

proud of the community we've built here. And

26:09

so if you want to stay part of that

26:11

community, get access to new stories,

26:14

new content, be the first to know where we're

26:16

headed next, head over to substack.com

26:19

or the Substack app, as I mentioned. Hit

26:21

Subscribe so I can

26:23

keep you posted on new developments, of

26:26

which there are going to be a lot.

26:28

Thanks.

26:35

Our segment about Story FM was produced

26:37

by Jess Jang and Autumn Barnes and

26:39

edited by Sana Krasikov. With

26:41

help from Karen Duffin and NPR's Beijing correspondent

26:44

Emily Feng. Mastering by Andy Huther,

26:46

scoring from Liza Yeager. And the 2023

26:49

version of this episode was produced by Elena Twarak

26:51

and Ariana Lee. Adelina Lantianis

26:53

is our senior producer. Luis Treas is our editor.

26:56

Liana Simstrom is our supervising producer. And

26:58

our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Our

27:02

theme music is by John Ellis. I'm Gregory

27:04

Warner. Back next

27:05

week with more Rough Translation.

27:22

This message comes from NPR sponsor

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