Illustration: Chen Xia/GT





Living in Shanghai as a foreign exchange student, it's a given that I will encounter cultural differences and language barriers. But as I've been in China for over seven years and speak and read Putonghua almost fluently, I am actually quite confident in both my language abilities and my familiarity with Chinese society and its customs.

Last week I published my first newspaper opinion article for the Global Times, bluntly entitled "Chinese women contradict equality." In 600 words I attempted to address the primary differences between China's "bride price" tradition and the Turkic mehr, both which place monetary values on women being courted for marriage.

But because I tried to distinguish between these two customs, I was immediately maligned by some overly nationalistic individuals in the comments sections of the Global Times' Weibo account. Herein I learned an invaluable lesson about the Chinese that I heretofore had never experienced: no matter how right you think you are, never ever portray the customs of your home country as better than China's!

In Turkey, the custom of mehr - giving a bride-to-be a sum of money or valuables in exchange for her hand in marriage - is practiced mostly among conservative Muslim circles. Though Islamic custom dictates that this money establishes the woman's financial independence from her new husband, many modernists continue to decry the mehr as detrimental to gender equality.

As there is nothing like the mehr in any Western country, it makes Turkey an easy target for global feminists, who say that this custom commoditizes females and therefore reinforces the clichéd belief that all Muslims are anti-women.

But, as I pointed out in my original article, a "bride price" is far more damaging to women's rights, as it is not only practiced by traditional families in the countryside but also some urban Chinese women themselves - especially those in Shanghai - who tend to use China's massive gender gap as justification for putting themselves on the marriage auction block for the highest (wealthiest) bidder.

After my article was published, I was subjected to innumerable cruel comments about my race and religion from incensed Chinese netizens, who took my meaning completely wrong. Many said I must be some poor Turk who blamed Shanghainese girls only because I can't afford them. Among the other disconcerting remarks I received:

"How does a small and chauvinistic country like Turkey dare to comment on China's marriage issues?" "No Chinese women are willing to marry Turkish." "Don't overestimate yourself! Chinese women won't marry Turkish at all!" "Let me ask you a question first: When will Russia destroy Turkey?"

Browsing through all this vitriol, it soon became apparent that a majority of these netizens had not bothered to read beyond the provocative titles on Weibo, but formulated their opinions of me solely based on their initial knee-jerk reaction.

I once thought that the growing popularity of social media among the Chinese meant that their population was becoming more well-read, but now I realize that the average netizen here merely skims the headlines before jumping straight to the comments. The body of the article is utterly meaningless to them.

It was an invaluable sociology lesson for me, one that I never learned in college class or any book. But of even greater irony is that these same patriotic trolls are all probably single Chinese men sitting in some dark net cafe, unable to ever find a girlfriend or wife for the exact reasons that I pointed out in the article that they didn't actually read.

They should have been applauding me and decrying the modern incarnation of "bride price" that has kept them single while continuing to hold back the cause of women's rights. But just because I am a brown man attempting to analyze Chinese women, I instantly became vilified.





The opinions expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Global Times.