We all want to be loved and cared for. Especially, it seems, China’s Generation Z.
A new study released by China’s Tinder-like app Tantan and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences offers insight into the romantic inclinations of the country’s younger dating pool.
More than 70% of men and almost 45% of women said they wanted to find a partner as soon as possible. For women, “being with the right person” ranked as the number one selection criteria. Though men also cared about finding “the one,” they also seemed more focused on marriage — 30% of men rated marriage as their top reason for being in a relationship, compared to only 18.8% of women.
More than 30% of men rated marriage as their top reason for being in a relationship, compared to only 18.8% of women (image: Tantan)
Love is also the big driver in these groups when it comes to having kids, the study shows. More than half of participants across all genders responded that “only my love would make me want to have kids.”
So who’s going to take care of the baby? China’s new generation seems more progressive on this, and most agree that parents should share the responsibility. Men are more open to the idea of having a full-time parent in the family, either themselves or their partners; but a new generation of career-minded women challenges the idea — only 5% of them responded positively.
Men are more open to the idea of having a full-time parent in the family, while only 5% of women support it (image: Tantan)
Clearly, economic independence has been on women’s minds, and nearly half of those surveyed strongly believed that women should own property prior to marriage.
With the social status of women gradually improving, young people are more flexible on taking up the role of family breadwinner. Traditional norms still play their part, though — almost half of the Gen Z respondents said they’d prefer the husband to be the primary source of income.
China is facing a declining marriage rate. As Chinese sociologist and sexologist Li Yinhe explained in a recent TV interview, Gen Z’s belief in true love and economic independence may help explain those statistics.
“Love has played a bigger and bigger role in marriage, and as feelings change, marriage is no longer the only answer for young people,” Li said. “Women can now earn money and support themselves, so they don’t have to get married […] and sex and marriage are not just for childbirth, so young people can choose to stay together or not more freely.”
As the younger generation seeks independence and shies away from marriage, officials are introducing measures they hope will encourage couples to tie the knot and start families — but the controversy they’ve generated is just another indication that conversations around love and marriage are far from over for China’s youth.
In early January, a traditional tile game from China unexpectedly made headlines after three white entrepreneurs from Texas tried to get in on the action. Their company, called The Mahjong Line, offered a cutsey, colorful take on mahjong sets, which replaced any references to Chinese culture with cartoons and catchphrases, for a mere 425USD, and insinuated that they had “upgraded” the game — predictably kicking off a social media storm.
Netizens called the set “gentrified,” pointing to everything from their implications of “improving” the game to basic design flaws.
What became clear from the controversy is that for entrepreneurs that haven’t done their homework, there’s a lot of nuance to the game of mahjong that can be missed.
So where does mahjong come from, and why has it become a cultural touchstone and essential pasttime — even for people outside of China?
Hazy Origins
Though commonly attributed to the Qing dynasty (1644-1912), it’s still up for debate when — and how — the game to mahjong first came to be.
Some historians believe that Confucius himself invented the game in 500 BCE. Although that hasn’t been verified, the game does owe a lot to the Chinese philosophy of virtues, including sincerity, filial piety, and benevolence. Another group claims that the tiles were invented to combat boredom, when explorer Zheng He led seven ocean expeditions on behalf of the Ming dynasty Emperor in the 1400s. There’s evidence for that theory in some key terminology; for instance, some believe the “tubes” painted on mahjong tiles represent the masts of the boats, while “pong” (“collision,” one of the ways of winning in mahjong) implies two sails colliding.
Most game experts, however, agree that the game evolved near Shanghai in the mid- or late-1800s, and got an upgrade of its own during the 1920s. Later on, the State Sports Commission of China recognized mahjong as an official sport in 1998, and today the World Mahjong Sports Games is also a thing — as well as the possibility of it turning into an Olympic sport soon.
If you didn’t grow up with mahjong in your household, the rules may seem quite complicated depending on what style you learn. Played with a set of 144 titles marked with at least three different suits, the tiles and scoring rules can differ wildly depending on what regional version you play — and there’s one for almost every major area of China’s eastern coast.
Regional varieties of mahjong in China (source: Xianwen Wang et al, 2013)
In some southern areas of China, mahjong is known as the “sparrow game” (máquè, 麻雀), due to the clacking of tiles resembling the chattering of sparrows. And no city is more closely associated with mahjong than Chengdu, nicknamed the “City of Mahjong,” where the locals consider the games an important daily necessity.
From the Streets to the Cinema
In pre-pandemic days, social events and day-to-day street scenes across China would be punctuated with the sounds of clashing mahjong tiles. Four people sit around a table, throw the dice, and draw tile after tile while surrounded by a group of curious spectators — even Bernie Sanders, according to some memes.
The game delivers a great mixture of entertainment and strategy with a dash of Confucian-era ideology and culture.
You can also expect the mahjong sets to be taken out during the Lunar New Year holiday. It’s considered a must-do activity specifically during the Lunar New Year’s Eve celebration; the game symbolizes friendship and family bonds, and embodies the tradition of passing on Chinese culture between generations.
Given the game’s cultural significance, many famous Chinese novels and films have included a mahjong scene. Perhaps the most well-known example in literature is Eileen Chang’s 1979 novel Lust, Caution, which portrays mahjong as the primary entertainment for Shanghai’s rich wives during the Republic of China period. The movie adaptation was directed by Ang Lee in 2007.
More recently, it steered the storytelling in films such as The Joy Luck Club and Crazy Rich Asians.
In the latter, the protagonist Rachel stages a truce over a game of mahjong with her future mother-in-law, Mrs. Young (played by Michelle Yeoh). “My mom taught me how to play,” she offers to Young across the table. “She told me mahjong would teach me important life skills — negotiation, strategy, cooperation.”
Journey to the West
Well before The Mahjong Company’s big gaffe, the game’s inroads overseas have been centuries in the making.
Mahjong first came to the United States via an American named Joseph Park Babcock, a representative of the Standard Oil Company in Shanghai. He imported mahjong sets to the United States, and Abercrombie & Fitch became the first company to stock mahjong sets in stores, selling around 12,000 sets a year. Within the fraught context of immigration and discrimination at the time, mahjong gave Chinese Americans a common cultural bond at a time when other Americans saw them as outsiders.
Meanwhile, mahjong was taking off in the UK, though the British tended to adhere to the original Chinese rules of mahjong and avoided those devised by the Americans (typical).
It wasn’t until 1986, however, that American mahjong rules and tournaments were finally standardized. Amy Tan further cemented the game in popular culture with her novel-turned-movie The Joy Luck Club, which talked about intergenerational conflict within a Chinese immigrant family.
“My father has asked me to be the fourth corner at the Joy Luck Club,” writes Tan in the novel. “I am to replace my mother, whose seat at the mah jong table has been empty since she died two months ago. My father thinks she was killed by her own thoughts.”
In the US, the game has also become a beloved pastime in the Jewish community. Mahjong, or “mahj” as writer Jessica Turnoff Ferrari grew up calling it, has for decades been “a way of life” for a generation of Jewish-Americans — much like it is in China.
That helps explain how it reached Sarah Jessica Parker; in 2018, the Jewish-American actress gushed on Live Kelly and Ryan that she “loves mahjong,” and posted a year later on her Instagram about her new tile set, adding that if “it’s Sunday evening, it’s Mah Jong.”
In China, mahjong is most often thought of as a game for retirees to pass the time and keep their mental faculties sharp. But are young Chinese people getting in on the game?
For some, it’s actually spurned some pretty intense debates (and internalized guilt) about their lifestyles.
In 2019, the question, “Is it a waste of life for young people to play mahjong?” sparked a heated debate on Chinese social media, referring specifically to the game’s addictiveness. In a related post on “China’s Quora,” Zhihu, a user in her 20s wrote that she “felt guilty” for spending four days playing nonstop mahjong while visiting her friends in her hometown. Esteemed sociologist Li Yinhe weighed in in the comments, suggesting that the game is actually a “double-edged sword.”
“On the one hand, it numbs our nerves like opium and makes us reluctant to do anything but to settle for random existence,” she wrote. “On the other hand, it enables us to obtain peace of the soul, to live a leisurely life, and to endure the meaninglessness of life, the painful fact that all mankind and every individual must face.”
But for others, mahjong doesn’t demand that much thought, or guilt — it’s a harmless way to pass the time and make friends. In a three-part story posted to social media site Douban, a user from the city of Changsha recalled bonding with Chinese classmates over mahjong while living in the United States.
“So many Changsha people I know are clamoring for [it], but none of them have mahjong!” laments the writer in his tale, “And online mahjong just isn’t the same!”
On China’s biggest ecommerce platform, Taobao, you can endlessly scroll looking for the perfect all-mechanical mahjong table, or tile sets in electrifying colors that would make those Texan entrepreneurs green with envy.
As a generation of mahjong players reaches its twilight years, it remains to be seen whether the next generation will keep the game alive. One thing is for sure, however — if you crave a hobby with hundreds of years of history that demands strategy, speed, and skill all at once, mahjong will become your new favorite game.
CROSS x TALK is RADII’s live conversation series on Instagram. Hosted by editors and contributors, RADII speaks to creatives and thought leaders about the trends shaping their fields, and shares inspiring stories of creative resilience that bridge cultures.
For the first Cross x Talk of the year, join our editors and staff for a recap of the biggest viral moments, talks, and trends from 2020, as well as what we’re expecting (and hoping for) in the coming year.
RADII’s Associate Editor Adan Kohnhorst will moderate a discussion amongst staff members, where we’ll break down just a few of the many reasons why 2020 is the year we’ll never forget.
As the US, and much of the world, collectively breathed a sigh of relief this week at the inauguration of Joe Biden, a man who was not the incoming (or outgoing) President was getting a ton of online attention from the event. We’re talking, of course, about Bernie.
And as he graced album covers from Kendrick and the Beastie Boys, showed up in The Shining, and popped up in a Hopper painting, it didn’t take long for Senator Sanders to arrive in China, appearing everywhere from street-side chess tables to a conference room with Xi Jinping.
Maybe that’s because he’s more a man of the people. Gentleman Bernie quietly sitting next to a chess table on a sidewalk feels like a better fit. A bit like the closing scenes of The Queen’s Gambit, public Chinese chess tables are a fixture in certain cities and are usually where retired old men hang out.
Or maybe he would’ve been found at a mahjong table. No 425USD mahjong bullshit for The Bern though.
Around this time last year, a photo of a man guarding his village during lockdown went viral on Chinese social media. Naturally, there was a meeting of memes here:
Of course, Bernie can’t complete his tour without visiting Wuhan. Looking indifferent and also resilient, Bernie is seen meditating on the empty Jianghan Lu, Wuhan’s biggest pedestrian shopping street:
Meanwhile, it’s not just Bernie getting a bunch of attention and love from Chinese netizens this week, but also Vice President Kamala Harris. She was recently found to have a “real and not transliterated” Chinese name 贺锦丽, pronounced as He Jinli in Mandarin:
Was surprised to see Kamala Harris has a “real” and not transliterated Chinese name! Dates back to her days running for San Francisco district attorney. (also funny to see Kanye West in Chinese) https://t.co/onkagLtn49pic.twitter.com/vSclEgoKJ4
Eddie Huang, the author, chef, restaurateur, and TV personality has now added director to his long list of titles. The Fresh Off the Boat writer is making his directorial debut with Boogie, a heartfelt coming-of-age story that focuses on a Chinese American teen living in Queens, New York.
In the newly released trailer, set to the sound of the late Pop Smoke’s “Got It on Me,” we see Alfred “Boogie” Chin, played by Huang’s former assistant Taylor Takahashi, a high school basketball star who dreams of playing in the NBA. However, his path to basketball stardom is not easy, as he works to balance his own vision with that of his parents, who want him to get a scholarship to an elite college.
Alongside Taylor Takahashi, the film also stars Taylour Paige, Pamelyn Chee, Mike Moh, Jorge Lendeborg Jr., Perry Yung, Alexa Mareka, and rapper Pop Smoke, making his posthumous acting debut as Boogie’s rival.
Huang said about the film, “this has been the same story I’ve [long] been trying to tell, whether it was like selling sandwiches or writing Fresh Off the Boat.”
“I’ve been very careful with everyone to not present it as an Asian American film,” he said. “I am Asian American, that is what I represent. That’s what I come from. But I’m very much into the intersection of all our experiences. And to me, this is an intersectional immigrant story. This is for all immigrants in America.”
The trailer has drawn plenty of attention, racking up three million views in its first days online.
Actress Zheng Shuang’s intimate personal life has ballooned into a major subject of public discussion in China in the past week, where surrogacy is overwhelmingly viewed as exploitative of women.
Zheng Shuang and her boyfriend Zhang Heng — also an actor — split up in 2019. Zheng claimed her ex owed money for borrowing from loan sharks in her name, and had fled to the US. Zhang, after a period of silence on the break-up, recently posted to Chinese microblogging platform Weibo to denounce those claims, saying he’d gone instead to be with his two young children.
This prompted a firestorm of attention, as Zheng had never publicly appeared pregnant. News outlets dug into the matter, ultimately unearthing the children’s birth certificates. The two children were born less than one month apart, indicating that they’d been born via surrogate mothers (an illegal act in China).
In a leaked phone call from before the children’s birth, Zheng Shuang, her parents, and her in-laws, argue about the future of their surrogate children. The actress is heard complaining, “It’s impossible to abort a fetus when it’s 7 months old. F*ck!”
Zheng Shuang quickly shot to the number one trending spot on Weibo, where users were upset over her eagerness to abort or abandon her children. Soon the discussions around surrogacy had grown far wider than Zheng’s isolated case.
“The moment you choose surrogacy, you are validating the claim that the uterus is a product and that babies can be commodified. When a woman defends surrogacy, she is pushing herself towards hell,” reads one of the most upvoted Weibo comments on the story.
“This issue is so horrifying. It implies to the public that surrogacy is justifiable, and that you can do anything as long as you have money,” reads a comment under the Weibo of Zheng Shuang’s father. “It just goes to show how much influence these irresponsible and unethical public figures hold over our perception.”
The scandal had immediate consequences for Zheng Shuang’s career — brands across the board dropped her as a spokesperson, terminating agreements and deleting past posts. One of the biggest was Prada, which had inked its contract with the star just days earlier.
Since then, Zheng has carefully spoken out on the matter, saying that she’s “saddened” that the details of her personal life were being “exposed to the public with ulterior motives in mind.”
She said that she “followed the law while on Chinese soil, and respected all laws while overseas,” and that she had returned to China after finding out that Zhang had cheated on her in September 2019.
Zheng’s father wrote his own post, calling Zhang and his family “sinister and crafty scumbags.” He called Zhang a serial cheater, saying that he has “indecent” footage of other women on his phone.
“We will take responsibility for the two children. We’re a responsible family,” he wrote.
Meanwhile, Blued, the world’s largest LGBTQ dating app, was choosing the wrong time to launch its surrogacy mediation service. The BluedBaby platform — where service fees range from 400,000 to 1 million RMB (about 60,000-150,000USD) — has been shut down since the Zheng Shuang scandal.
