How the Chinese economy makes women mistresses
In our imagination, the Chinese seem extremely conservative regarding the institution of the family. However, those who are familiar with the history of Asia know that adultery has been common there at all times. Modern China is undergoing a transformation of the ancient culture of compulsion. Today, the presence of a mistress emphasizes the social status of a man, and the mistress herself becomes an addition to expensive watches and a prestigious car.
Imagine that you are in the Chinese analogue of the Tsvetnoy department store. Contemplation of fashionable new items, carefully provided by buyers, there will be a group of young girls with thick makeup on their face, dressed in Louis Vuitton and Prada. They are called xiaosan (xiaosan), which literally translates as "little third." In other words, the "girlfriend" of a wealthy married man. Their philosophy is simple: "We have beauty and youth, and this is the most valuable thing a woman can have. Why should we be ashamed of using our main weapon?" The cynical approach of Chinese youth to themselves ensures the prosperity of the Chinese economy - these mistresses there account for a third of the total consumption of luxury goods.
The stories of these girls are similar to one another. Having reached the age of majority, they leave the dysfunctional provincial cities and in search of a better life they leave for megacities: Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Guangzhou and Shenzhen. I remember the film “Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears”, when the heroine Irina Muravyova exclaimed: “Moscow is a big lottery! Here you can win everything, you understand?” But if the girls from the film set themselves the goal of achieving success on their own, then in Beijing young Chinese women go for someone else's prosperity - businessmen, diplomats, businessmen and party members live here. Savvy Chinese women catch the spirit of the times - the number of rich men in China increases every year. At the end of 2013, the country ranked second in the number of millionaires after the United States. In October, Forbes published an article according to which in the period from 2005 to 2010 the number of billionaires in China increased from two to 64 people. Millionaires and even more: according to estimates of the Hurun Research Institute, the number of dollar millionaires in China has reached one million - one for 1,400 people in the country.
Ways to get acquainted with wealthy men seem to be written off from benefits. Someone finds a patron during a part time job as a waitress or hostess at a karaoke bar. Someone is found by agents waiting at the gates of popular universities for the most beautiful female students to sell them a beautiful life as a kept woman of a wealthy employer. Sometimes announcements about casting for the role of mistress are found on the Internet. Accepting a gift from a married man, whether it is a bag, decoration or a trip to Hainan, the girl gives an unofficial agreement to become his "third". Gifts are moral damages for exploitation without further legitimizing the relationship.
The mistress’s “career” ends at 26-28 years of age - then a woman is considered somewhat “worn” for this kind of activity
Xiao-san receives material support, the size of which depends on the city of residence and the status of the patron. In Beijing, xiaosang’s income is about 20,000 yuan a month (a little more than 110,000 rubles), in smaller cities it is 10,000 yuan or even 5,000. They manage money differently: someone pays for their studies, someone sends home to parents . Some put it off for a rainy day: almost all of them understand that such relationships will not go beyond one-time meetings and, sooner or later, they will be alone. It is not customary to divorce in China - many wives know about the extramarital relations of their husbands, but they close their eyes to this. The mistress’s “career” ends at 26-28 years of age — then a woman is considered somewhat “worn” for this kind of activity.
Despite the short term of relations and the scornful attitude towards such women, according to xiaosang, this is better than relations with peers living in student dormitories of six people: they are inept, capricious, they require attention and maternal care. In addition, insolvent. In China, there is a TV show of dating, which is called “Do not disturb me, if your intentions are not serious,” on which one of the participants said that she would “prefer to cry in BMW rather than laugh on a bicycle”.
The fashion for mistresses goes hand in hand with corruption, which is a serious threat to the stability of the state apparatus of China. According to Xinhua, 95% of officials engaged in illegal activities had mistresses. Any scandal around the sales activities of a civil servant is accompanied by a flurry of publications about the millions that he spent on his keepers. And depending on the rank of the official, the number of mistresses can exceed one hundred. It didn’t happen without xiaosan, even when President Xi Jinping called on the people to denounce corruption at all government levels by any means. Abandoned mistresses appeared on the scene and turned into a mouthpiece for conveying information about the officials who had been caught stealing. An example is the high-profile case of Ji Innan, 26, the former mistress of Fan Yue, deputy director of public administration. Upon learning that her admirer is married and does not intend to take her to a registry office, Ji published photos and checks on the Internet, according to which the official clearly lived more than one paycheck: on the first day of joint shopping in the Prada boutique, Fan spent about $ 10,000 on gifts from his beloved. .
Today, "third" girls are becoming a social force that cannot be ignored. Recently, the China Association for Care of Xiaosan page appeared on the Internet, where they discuss various aspects of their “work activity”. Xiaosan call themselves "professional mistresses of the new era" and plan to declare March 3 as their holiday - Xiaosan Day, or Day of the Third. They consider their role “art”: “You must be the one whom he dreamed of at the age of twenty. Periodic scenes of jealousy support the emotional background of relationships, making them more sincere. If you are always sweet with him - he will understand that this is deception” .
In fact, China’s economic policy itself provoked this phenomenon — a too sharp capitalist leap brought the “money-product” format to a new level, where girls became the commodity. In addition, the one-family-one child demographic policy, launched in the 1970s, led to 100 girls being born for 117 boys in China today. The predominance of the male population over the female suggests that in the near future, many men will face the problem of the absence of women free for marriage. In order not to remain a bachelor, men will go out of their way to show a woman their material wealth.
The flip side of the economic leap medal is the commercialization of relationships that undermines the health of society as a whole. The gradual emancipation of the Chinese, supported by the spread of the Internet, brought to the agenda something that had previously been inconvenient to speak out loud and was a personal matter for everyone. It became clear that the scale of the problem went beyond private life. There are too many participants in this field: corrupt officials with unscrupulous businessmen, greedy seducing women and offended wives, luxury merchants and humiliated young people of low means. What ways to solve this problem will be offered by the state, while it is not entirely clear. But it will fight, because hardly anyone wants to be fired because one morning he sees his photos on the Internet in the company of the offended former lover.
Photo: coverphoto via Shutterstock, Anzenberger / Fotodom