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China Elevator Stories
1980 or The Year That My In-Laws Tied The Knot
What was dating like for my in-laws?
19/04/2014
Ruth Silbermayr
Author
On a Sunday afternoon in Shenzhen in February 2014, while I am pregnant with our first child, my husband and I sit in our living room, drinking tea and chatting. My in-laws have gone to the market, and we enjoy some alone time. When they return, we are still sitting on pillows on the floor, drinking tea and talking about this and that.
The following day, my mother-in-law confides to my husband: “When I saw you two sitting in the living room yesterday, drinking tea and chatting with each other, I was a bit envious. This is something I never had. If only I could be young again today.”
In 1980, my father-in-law had just returned from the army, while my mother-in-law had come back to the city from the countryside, where she had been sent to do hard labor. Two years earlier, China had introduced its Reform and Opening Up policy. In the early 1980s, my in-laws were around the same age I am now—in their mid-twenties.
They were working at the same company at the time, and a colleague offered to introduce them to each other. They both agreed to the suggestion, met, and tied the knot shortly afterward. My husband was born in 1981.
My in-laws didn’t have tea and conversations on Sunday afternoons, and their marriage surely had its ups and downs. But they were determined to endure hard times together. Or, as my father-in-law puts it today: “We were introduced to each other by a coworker, but this doesn’t mean we were not allowed to say no to marrying the other person.”
Do you think it’s better to be young nowadays?