Cô dâu mới đáng giá bao nhiêu?

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bride prices follow a moral logic as well as an economic one. Indeed, the poorer a prospective groom, the higher a bride price his family is expected to pay. Conversely, the higher a groom’s family’s status or wealth, the lower the bride price.

This helps explain why Bai refused to pay the bride price sought by his prospective in-laws. As a doctor, he not only possesses higher economic status than his neighbors and relatives, but also is renowned (nổi tiếng) for his moral reputation of benevolence and uprightness. Although his prospective in-laws’ request was not out of line for a typical match, considering Bai’s position in the village social hierarchy, the bride price should have been below average. For Bai to agree to a higher price would be an embarrassment (nỗi xấu hổ).

...Bai, a doctor who runs a clinic in a largely rural county in northwestern China, is recognized throughout his home region as an honest and kind man. Over the past 20 years, he’s treated colds, delivered babies, and made regular house calls to elderly patients. He may not be as wealthy as some of the local businesspeople, but he is solidly middle class and his reputation was widely perceived as an asset for his son on the local marriage market.

That theory was tested in 2016, however, when Bai’s son met a local woman on a blind date. The pair quickly became engaged, but their plans hit a snag when the woman’s family requested a bride price of 180,000 yuan ($26,000). The problem wasn’t the sum — it was about average for the area and well within Bai’s means — but the message it sent. “I definitely could have afforded it,” Bai later told me in an interview. “But if I agreed to the price, people would definitely have laughed at me.”

Bài trước: Hôn những nỗi nhớ ngút ngàn