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China Elevator Stories
“I saved my father a lot of money by marrying in 2012”
I chat with a massage therapist in Siping.
10/06/2015
Ruth Silbermayr
Author
It’s March 2015. I’ve been dealing with back pain from constantly carrying my baby son, so I decide to visit a massage therapist in Siping. The therapist, who is blind, strikes up a conversation with me.
He asks, “What’s the dowry if you marry in Austria?”
I reply, “We don’t really have a dowry, at least not anymore.”
He responds, “That’s great. When I got married in 2012, the dowry was 120,000 Yuan and an apartment. Nowadays, it’s 320,000 Yuan and an apartment. Prices have skyrocketed in recent years. And that’s just in Songyuan, where I’m from. Prices are much higher in bigger cities. I saved my father a lot of money by marrying in 2012 and not later.”
I ask him, “Where did you meet your wife?”
“We met at our workplace in Shenyang. We have the same job,” he says.
He shares that he has a two-year-old son, and we start talking about raising kids.
He asks, “What are your plans for your son’s education? Will you send him to school in China?”
I explain, “We plan to send him to primary school in Austria.”
He nods and elaborates, “Chinese schools ask a lot from children. My friend’s child leaves for primary school at 6 in the morning and comes back home at 6 in the evening. She then has to do homework assignments until 12 at night. On the weekends, she has to take private lessons and finish even more assignments. There’s no time to play or meet up with friends. If I were you, I also wouldn’t send him to school here.”
He continues, “Our son just started going to kindergarten. His grandmother was afraid that the other kids would hit him, but we thought it would be good for him to be with other children. When someone hits him, he’ll tell the teacher, and the teacher will do something about it. He’s playing there all day, so I think it’s fine.”
After a while, he asks, “How many kids are you planning on having?”
I reply, “Probably two. How about you? Do you plan on having another one?”
He shakes his head, “I don’t think so. One is enough. We can’t afford to have more children. Raising children is expensive. We have to spend more than 1000 Yuan a month just for milk formula.”
Would you send your kids to school in China?
This is part of the series ‘Conversations with Locals in China,’ where I share conversations with Chinese people on my blog.