Caili (China)
| Caili 🇨🇳 | ||
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| Location: China | ||
| Definition: a wedding gift, given in money and assets by the groom’s family to the bride’s ahead of the marriage | ||
| Keywords: China – East Asia – Kinship – Marriage – Dowry – Betrothal gifts – Informal welfare – Money – Influence | ||
| Clusters: Solidarity – Normative ambivalence – Conformity – Lock-in effect – Kinship lock-in – Amoral familism | ||
| Author: Ling Zhang | ||
| Affiliation: Alumna, School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, UK | ||
By Ling Zhang, Alumna, School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, UK
| Caili is a Mandarin Chinese term meaning ‘bride price’, a betrothal gift given in money and assets by the groom and relatives to the bride and her family before the marriage. In rural areas, it is acceptable and associated with customary ways. |
In the patrilocal context, marriage usually means marrying a bride into the groom’s family while marrying her out of her own. The bride is normally given a dowry, money, or property by her parents for the marriage. However, a dowry is not compulsory and often is valued less. Caili has a long history in China (Jiang and Sánchez-Barricarte, 2012), but with the growing Chinese economy, it is becoming an excessive burden for many families. Economic growth itself cannot fully explain the scale and dramatic increase of the ‘bride price,’ resulting also from the gender imbalance in China (Caldwell, Reddy, & Caldwell, 1983; Chen, 2004). Demand for women surpasses supply in the marital market, which entitles females to higher bargaining power (Lv, 2006). In the Chinese culture, parents usually regard finding a spouse for their child as an obligation. The enthusiasm of parents stimulates the request for a higher bride price. Surveys have shown that the bride price is highly related to this type of competition. Bride prices symbolize compensation to the woman’s family losing a potential source of income (this duty to sustain parents is seen also in the practice of Wantoks and Kastom (Solomon Islands and Melanesia)).
The history of betrothal gifts dates to the Western Zhou Dynasty (1045BC-771BC), where betrothal gifts were regarded as a blessing and a symbol of the bond uniting the families of the couple. Since the Han dynasty (206 BC–220 AD) the extravagant spending in ceremonial events, like weddings and funerals, incentivized the practice of pricing wives. During the Tang dynasty (618AD-907AD), betrothal gifts were considered an indispensable dimension of marriages. Once betrothal gifts were accepted by the family of the bride, the union became legally binding (Si and Wang, 2018). The quantity and value of betrothal gifts reflected the families’ wealth and social position.
Since the 1980s, the value of bride prices started to soar in both urban and rural regions. Traditionally, betrothal gifts were three, and over the decades the identification of these gifts changed to include those goods that were socially perceived as the most precious. In a competition to prove their higher social status families grew to include more expensive gifts. Table 1 enlists the three most common betrothal gifts by decade since the 1960s.
Table 2 summarizes the survey conducted by Fu et.al (2018) proving the increasing value of betrothal gifts from 1970 to 2010.
The increasing bride price can be attributed to two main reasons. Firstly, the one-child policy has affected the sex ratio balance, resulting in more men than women born (this practice can be seen also in Montenegro as a result of Selektivni abortus / tuđa večera (Montenegro)). Jiang et.al argued that being less, females have more options to choose from, while men have to compete, also economically, for their spouse (2015, p.218). This demographic pressure is further reinforced by a social one. If they cannot get married by a certain age, Chinese men are referred to by their communities as “bare branches”. In rural areas, a family with a “bare branch” may be rejected by the community. To protect the reputation of the family and continue the paternal line, one of the aims of parents in their lives is finding a spouse for their son. Secondly, the bride prices reflect the prestige and social standing of the wedded families. Higher bride prices might be pursued simply to show off, leading to competition among families. Parents will spend more on marriage expenses to prove their superiority in face of others.
Table 3 shows the bride price in cash in rural areas and the comparisons with the annual household income.
References
Fu, G., Li, Y., & Fei, X. (2018). "The evolution of urban wedding consumption in China since 1970s". Journal of Contemporary Marketing Science.
Gong, X., Qiao, X., & Cong, J. (2018). "Social Lopsided Exchange: On High Bride Price in Rural Areas--Taking Village X, Town Q in Heze County as an Example". In 2018 4th International Conference on Social Science and Higher Education (ICSSHE 2018). Atlantis Press.
Jiang, Q., & Sánchez-Barricarte, J. J. (2012). "Bride price in China: The obstacle to ‘Bare Branches’ seeking marriage". The history of the family, 17(1), 2-15.
Jiang, Q., Zhang, Y., & Sánchez-Barricarte, J. J. (2015). "Marriage expenses in rural China". The China Review, 207-236.
Lv, J. (2006). "An investigation on poverty in the northern rural area in China" [Zhongguo xibu]
Min, H., & Eades, J. S. (1995). "Brides, bachelors and brokers: The marriage market in rural Anhui in an era of economic reform". Modern Asian Studies, 29(4), 841-869.
Si, M., & Wang, J. (2018, December). "Analysis of High Bride Price from a Cultural Perspective". In 2nd International Conference on Art Studies: Science, Experience, Education (ICASSEE 2018). Atlantis Press.
Xu, J. (2019). "Sandajiandebianqian" [The changing pattern of the three main gifts]. http://www.cqn.com.cn/zgzlb/content/2019-09/10/content_7523660.htm