This book reviews the presentation of conjugal relationships in Chinese culture and their perception in the West. It explores the ways in which the act of marriage is represented/misrepresented in different literary genres, as well as in cultural adaptations. It looks at the gendered characteristics at play that affect conjugal relationships in Chinese societal practices more widely. It also distinguishes between the essential features that give rise to nuptial arrangements from the Chinese perspective, looking at what in which Sino and/or Western mentalities differ in terms of notions of autonomy in marriage. It excavates the extent to which marriage is constituted in forms of transaction between female and male bodies and asks under what circumstances wedding ceremonies constitute archetypal or counter-archetypal notions in pre-modern and modern society. Authors cover a range of fascinating cultural topics, such as posthumous marriage (necrogamy) as an ancient and popular folk culture from the perspective of Confucian ideology, as well as looking at marriage from ancient to present times, duty and rights in conjugal relations, inter-racial and inter-cultural marriage, widowhood in Confucian ideology, issues of legitimacy in marriage and concubinage, the taboos surrounding divorce and re-marriage, and conjugal violence. The book serves to revisit the cultural connections between marriage and various art forms, including literature, film, theatre, and other adaptations. It is a rich intellectual resource for scholars and students researching the historical roots, cultural interpretations, and evolving aspects of marriage as shown in literature, art, and culture.

A stunning memoir of an intercultural marriage gone wrong When Susan, a shy Midwesterner in love with Chinese culture, started graduate school in Hong Kong, she quickly fell for Cai, the Chinese man of her dreams. As they exchanged vows, Susan thought she'd stumbled into an exotic fairy tale, until she realized Cai—and his culture—where not what she thought. In her riveting memoir, Susan recounts her struggle to be the perfect traditional "Chinese" wife to her increasingly controlling and abusive husband. With keen insight and heart-wrenching candor, she confronts the hopes and hazards of intercultural marriage, including dismissing her own values and needs to save her relationship and protect her newborn son, Jake. But when Cai threatens to take Jake back to China for good, Susan must find the courage to stand up for herself, her son, and her future. Moving between rural China and the bustling cities of Hong Kong and San Francisco, Good Chinese Wife is an eye-opening look at marriage and family in contemporary China and America and an inspiring testament to the resilience of a mother's love—across any border.

Although commonly associated with patriarchal oppression, arranged marriages have adapted over the centuries to changing cultural norms and the lived experiences of men and women. In Arranged Companions, historian Weijing Lu chronicles how marital behaviors during the early and High Qing (mid-seventeenth through mid-nineteenth centuries) were informed by rich and complex traditions and mediated by the historical conditions of the period, during which marital affection was celebrated as a basic ingredient of an ideal marriage. Lu finds public representation and private communication of marital affection in personal records, including poetry, biographies, letters, and memoirs. During this unique historical moment, ideals of marital companionship and love came to fruition while social changes also created new tensions for couples and extended families. Offering surprising revelations about conjugal relations during this time of change, Arranged Companions raises provocative questions about the cultural construction of intimacy and the meaning of a “happy marriage.”

This Handbook advances research on the family and marriage in China by providing readers with a multidisciplinary and multifaceted coverage of major issues in one single volume. It addresses the major conceptual, theoretical and methodological issues of marriage and family in China and offers critical reflections on both the history and likely progression of the field.

As state control of private life in China has loosened since 1980, citizens have experienced an unprecedented family revolution—an overhaul of family structure, marital practices, and gender relationships. While the nuclear family has become a privileged realm of romance and individualism symbolizing the post-revolutionary “freedoms” of economic and affective autonomy, women’s roles in particular have been transformed, with the ideal “iron girl” of socialism replaced by the feminine, family-oriented “good wife and wise mother.” Problems and contradictions in this new domestic culture have been exposed by China's soaring divorce rate. Reading popular “divorce narratives” in fiction, film, and TV drama, Hui Faye Xiao shows that the representation of marital discord has become a cultural battleground for competing ideologies within post-revolutionary China. While these narratives present women’s cultivation of wifely and maternal qualities as the cure for family disintegration and social unrest, Xiao shows that they in fact reflect a problematic resurgence of traditional gender roles and a powerful mode of control over supposedly autonomous private life.

The book focuses on the past traditional roles of women and also identifies direction of change,rate of change and the causes of change in women's status.It hasalso been pointed out that these recent developments in the status of women may become the future sociology of changing sex roles in the developing countries and may recast marriage and family in new and different molds.