According to the magazine China Philanthropist, "forced marriage" is probably a new challenge added to the "three new big mountains" (housing, medicine and education pressure) of today's younger generation.
These parents have racked their brains to get their children married as soon as possible. A new term called "Chinese forced marriage" appeared on Baidu Encyclopedia, defined as "the use of threats and violence by parents to force their children into marriage".
More than 70 percent of adults have been forced to get married by their parents, and 86 percent of those between 25 and 35 years old who are single are under the greatest pressure, according to a survey by the Health and Sports Developmental Center of the Working Committee for the Care of the Next Generation.
Among these people, there are many single Christians, one of whom is a documentary director, Geng Haiyang. He started inadvertently and then spent 10 years recording his aging parents' compulsory annual Spring Festival program - marriage pressure. Shortly after the end of the 2021 Spring Festival, he publicly shared his autobiographical documentary "Flight of the Honeybees", which focuses on forced marriage.
Recently, Christian Times, a Chinese Christian newspaper, invited Geng to share his observations and analysis on the phenomenon of forced marriage during the Spring Festival, which is unique to China.
When it comes to forced marriage that has become a hot spot, a point of difficulty and pain in this era, Brother Geng believed that this kind of pressure was common to both Christians and non-Christians, and it is a very widespread phenomenon.
"I think these people are divided into urban and rural categories. Because some urban parents are relatively liberal, older urban unmarried young people are likely to face less pressure from their families to get married. But older unmarried young people in rural areas face greater pressure to get married", Geng said. "Parents tend to have traditional views and knowledge about marriage. They often compare their views with peers around them or in their hometowns. On the other hand, they do believe that getting married and having children is a task that everyone should experience and accomplish. They believe that certain things have to be done as soon as one clocks a certain age.
At the same time, he found that there are a growing number of older single people in the church, including those in their 30s and 40s and even those in their 50s who have never been married.
In this regard, he analyzed two main reasons, "First, people's standards have risen, and a spiritual standard has been added to the secular standard; also, the ratio of men and women in the church is unbalanced. Most of the sisters are highly educated and financially independent, and the number of brothers is relatively small. Some brothers are generally lowly educated, such as junior high school, senior high school, delivery men, Didi drivers, senior cooks at canteens, hairdressers, etc. Under such circumstances, it is difficult to match, spiritual communication cannot be carried out ."
"Secondly, everyone is immersed in the widespread nature of the Internet, including online, offline platforms, especially the ones online, WeChat groups and so on; without really having a deeper understanding of a person, many people are in the state of fleeting observation, and some people enjoy this feeling. Two people who are seriously considering marriage need more contact and need to get along. However, people today lack the opportunity to contact each other, many people are indoors, many people have social phobia, lack opportunities to meet and discover each other's strengths.
He claimed that the hardest thing about forced marriage was that it was hard to talk to your parents, you could only listen.
Over the past decade, Geng had faced constant pressure from his parents to get married, which caused him to suffer anguish many times. In the face of forced marriage, he conceived many people were miserable.
"When I came home for the Spring Festival one year, my parents started talking about it as soon as I walked in. After a few words, I felt very uncomfortable. That kind of aggressive feeling made me want to turn away. I didn't want to stay in the house," he shared.
"Even if you tell your parents that you will take marriage to heart, they will still not feel okay about it. They would mention that all my classmates and playmates they knew were married, while I am still single. However, I think these people have no reference value because everyone's situation and life direction are different. Marriage is conformity, but each individual is a special case." Geng shared the difficulty of communicating with his parents. "I tried to communicate with them and tell them, 'Don't pay attention to other people, just pay attention to me. Because you don't know what I'm doing now, and you can't know what's going on in my heart. You don't know what I have encountered in the city, my work, and my life.' But they still don't understand, they don't understand."
"In front of my parents, I listened most of the time without many refutations", he said helplessly. "Even then, my whole body became numb. I wanted to put the forced marriage thing behind me and put an end to it, so I ended shooting and edited the film ‘Flight of the Honeybees’."
The profound reason behind forced marriage during the Spring Festival was rapid urbanization, he added.
In the documentary, Geng, in addition to forced marriage, focused on the hometown where he was born and grew up. He also recorded the local conditions and customs of many rural societies, trying to show the real "rural China" in this era, from his perspective.
"It has been twenty years since I left my hometown. A lot of rural ideas cannot be accepted, or at least integrated, but can only serve as a bystander." He said “Currently, with the development of society, more and more people come from the countryside to the cities. Most of us have an interlaced feeling of ‘the hometown we can't go back to’ and ‘the city we can't stay in’. Because the vast majority of people have moved from the countryside to the cities, they live a relatively modest life. After decades of struggle, one may not be able to get ahead.”
He shared that behind the phenomenon of forced marriage during the Spring Festival, he now pays more attention to the topics of "rural China", "the process of urbanization", "the changes of urban and rural society", especially the societal problems of "left-behind old people" and "left-behind children", which are prominent societal problems in the process of urbanization.
He added, "Urbanization is happening too fast and is doing more harm than good to the rural areas." Brother Geng listed two points: Firstly, the mentality of the rural people becomes too impetuous and they want to accumulate wealth quickly, which makes them more and more utilitarian. Secondly, there are many left-behind children and elderly people, and the divorce rate is also high."
"The process of urbanization has also created a serious problem of betrothal gifts in rural areas. I read a news report that some people who get married in some places have to buy a house and a car in the city, plus an additional bride price of at least 1.8 million yuan, which is a lot of money for people in the rural areas." He went on to add, “The move of factories from cities to rural areas also causes pollution. Traffic jams have also become very serious in rural areas. The household registration system, the Joneses (peer pressure), some contradictions between families and so on. The issues cannot be listed one by one.”
From rural China and urbanization to a conversation about forced marriage and the generation of our parents, Geng said: "Many people have affection for their hometown, but it only lasts during childhood. Feelings for parents need to cross one another’s personal boundaries to have a better conversation with them."
During the years of forced marriage, Geng agonized over his understanding of marriage. He advised older, single Christians to have a proper understanding of who they are when it came to marriage.
"Figure out who you are and what's right for you. If both personalities, interests, hobbies, etc., are similar, and of the same category, they can get talking. The other category is complementary, to make up for each other's defects, and achieve success together.”
He went on to share his thoughts on marriage, "My understanding of marriage is that two people grow and move forward together. From one point of view, one person is in many ways not as good as two people growing together in God because it is difficult for one person to discover his problems. The purpose of marriage is to fulfil God's plan for you to become complete as a son, husband, or father, or daughter, wife, or mother, so that he or she will be more complete, just like the heavenly Father who loves us. Two people in a marriage will be in harmony, remind each other, and help each other to move forward, only then can it be God's definition of a happy marriage."
Brother Geng mentioned that over the years, he had seen many pastors in the church give advice like, "Wait for God patiently." Some of the obedient sisters did not get married until they were over 40 years old. Some of the brothers and sisters in the church even left the church because they could not find a suitable Christian to marry.
He acknowledged that some pastors of the church were concerned about the marriage of brothers and sisters, but that was of little effect. "There are pastors in some churches who are concerned about brothers and sisters getting married, and there are pastors who organize fellowship activities across churches. However, we do not think that there is so much to gain."
He urged the church to be more proactive in helping single Christians. "I think the pastors of the church should not be too conservative in their approach to marriage but should pay special attention to these people and see to their needs so that they can get married," he said. "The church can organize more activities and create opportunities for people to get to know each other under the supervision of the pastor", he suggested. “In such matters, the church pastors need to pay more attention, because the pastors can help and guide people to have a correct view of marriage.”
- Translated by Nonye Nancy
据中国慈善家杂志消息，对现在的年轻一代来说，“逼婚的父母”大概可算得上是“新三座大山”之一。
这些为了让自己子女早日结婚的父母，可谓是绞尽脑汁。甚至百度百科上都出现一个新的词——‘’中国式逼婚”，被定义为“父母用威胁和暴力手段强迫自己的儿女成婚”。
据中国关心下一代工作委员会健康体育发展中心的逼婚现状调查报告显示：逾七成人曾被父母逼婚，25至35岁的“单身汪”压力最大，被逼婚率高达86%。
这个人群中，不乏单身基督徒，纪录片导演耿海洋弟兄就是其中一员，他无意间开始，之后持续10年用手中的镜头记录了一年年衰老的父母每年春节的必有节目——催婚。2021年春节结束不久，他在网上公开分享了他的一部以逼婚为主题的自传体纪录片《蜂拥而至》。
日前，基督时报邀请耿海洋弟兄分享了他在制作这部作品过程中所沉淀下来的对于时下中国特有的春节逼婚现象的一种观察和剖析。
逼婚为何成为这个时代的热点、难点和痛点？
谈到遭遇逼婚的大龄未婚青年，耿弟兄认为，不管是基督徒还是非基督徒都普遍会遭遇这种压力，是很广泛的一种现象。
“我觉得这些人群分为来自城市和农村这两种。因为在城市的有些家长相对还是比较开明一些，城市的大龄未婚青年受到家里逼婚的压力大部分可能会小一点。但是农村的大龄未婚青年面对逼婚的压力会更大一些，”耿弟兄说，”父母对婚姻的看法和见识比较传统，通常父母会跟他身边或者老家的这些同龄人去比较，比如说之前的同学、玩伴都结婚了，你怎么还单着。另外一方面，就是他们确实也觉得结婚生子是每个人都应该要经历的、要完成这样的一个任务，他们觉得到什么年龄就该做什么样的事儿。”
与此同时，他也发现在教会中，大龄单身青年越来越多，包括三四十的，有的甚至五十岁的还没有结过婚，而这样的群体并不在少数。
对此，他分析说，主要原因有2个方面：“第一，大家的标准上升了，在世俗的标准上又增加了属灵生命上的一个标准，而且教会的男女比例失衡。很多姊妹不仅学历高，经济又独立；而弟兄本身人数就少，再加上一些弟兄学历普遍相对偏低，比如说上过初中、高中的、送外卖的、跑滴滴的、在食堂做大师傅的、做理发的等等，在这样的情况下也导致了无法门当户对，没有办法进行心灵的沟通。”
“第二，现在大家都沉浸广撒网的时期，包括线上、线下，特别线上很多的网站、微信群等等，但是没有真正的去更深入的了解一个人，大多数人都是走马观花的状态，甚至有的人就享受这种感觉。真正认真的去考虑走进婚姻还是两个人比较需要多接触，需要合得来。但是现在的人缺少接触的机会，很多人都比较宅，还有很多人有社交恐惧症，缺少交汇在一起并彼此发现各自优点的机会。”
遭遇逼婚最难的是与父母很难沟通只能倾听
耿弟兄在过去十年，遭遇了来自父母持之以恒的逼婚压力，这让他多次陷入到痛苦之中。面对逼婚，相信很多人都是非常有痛苦的。海洋弟兄坦然地分享了自己面对逼婚时的感受：“有一年春节回家，我刚进门，父母就开始聊这事儿了。没聊几句我就觉得很不舒服，那种咄咄逼人的感觉真的很想让我转脸就走，就不想在这个家呆着。”
“即便和父母沟通说自己一定会把婚姻的事情放在心上，他们也不会觉得这样就可以了。他们会提到所有他们认识的我的同学、玩伴都结婚了，就我还单着。可是，我觉得这些人并没有参考价值，因为每个人的处境、人生方向是不一样的。婚姻是从众的，但是每个人都是一个特殊的案例。”耿弟兄分享说和父母沟通时的艰难，“我尝试和他们沟通，劝他们说‘你不要关注其他的那些人，关注我就好了。因为你都不了解我在现在在做什么，也不能了解我心里到底是怎么想的。在城市里，我的工作、生活遇到了什么。’但是他们依然也听不懂，也不理解。”
他无奈地说：“面对父母，我大多数的时间都倾听，没有去做过多反驳等，即便这样就已经全身发麻了。我想从心里面放下逼婚这件事情，为此画一个句号，因此结束了拍摄，剪辑了《蜂拥而至》这部片子。”
春节逼婚现象背后深刻的原因：城市化进程太快了
耿弟兄在《蜂拥而至》这部纪录片中，除了逼婚，他把镜头对焦在了自己出生和成长的故乡，也记录了很多农村社会的风土人情，试图以自己的视角展示这个时代真实的“乡土中国”。
“我从老家出来已经有二十年了。很多农村的观念已经没有办法去接受，或者说至少没办法去融入了，只能是作为一个旁观者。”他说，“现在随着社会的发展，越来越多的人从农村来到城市。极大多数人都有‘回不去的故乡’和‘留不下的城市’的这两种交错的心情。因为绝大多数人从农村进入城市，生活过得相对有点苟且。可能经过几十年的打拼，都不一定出人头地。”
他分享说，春节逼婚现象背后，是他现在更加关注的“乡土中国”、“城市化的进程”、“城市与乡村社会的变迁”这些话题，尤其是“留守老人”和“留守儿童”这些在城市化进程中真实凸现的社会问题。
“城市化的进程太快了，给乡村带来的弊大于利。”耿弟兄列举了两点：一是让农村人的心态变得过于浮躁，想要迅速地去进行财富积累，这样人变得越来越功利。二是造成了很多留守儿童、留守老人，离婚率也是居高不下。
“城市化进程也造成严重的农村彩礼的问题。我看了一个新闻，有的地方结婚，在城里必须买房子，必须买车，还要加上另外的彩礼，至少有百八十万。这些钱对于农村人来说，是一个很大的数字。”他继续补充说到，“城市的工厂搬到农村也造成污染。堵车的现象在农村也变得非常严重的。户籍制度、攀比心、家族之间的一些矛盾等好多问题，没办法一一罗列。”
从乡土中国和城市化进程再度谈到逼婚中和父母一代人的对话，耿弟兄说到：“很多人对故乡是有一定感情的，但是仅仅停留在童年。而对父母的感情也需要跨越自己的界限，才能更好的和他们对话。”
对大龄单身基督徒如何面对婚姻的思考
在遭遇逼婚的数年过程中，耿弟兄一边痛苦着一边思考着对于婚姻的认识。他建议说，大龄单身未婚的基督徒在面对婚姻的问题，要对自己有一个正确的自我认识，“认清自己，同时找到什么是适合自己的。要么就是两个性格、兴趣爱好等等都相当，而这是一类，确实是能聊得来。另一类是互补型的，就是互相弥补缺陷，能够成就彼此。”
他接着分享了对于婚姻的一个看法：“对于婚姻，我的理解是两个人在婚姻中能够共同成长，一起往前走。从一个角度上看，一个人在很多方面的确不如二个人一起可以更好地在神里面去成长，因为一个人是很难发现自己的问题。两个人结婚的目的是完成神让你的人格逐渐完全这样的一个计划，就是为人子、为人夫、为人父，或者为人女、为人妻、为人母，这样他/她才能够更完全，像爱我们的天父一样完全。婚姻中的两个人会彼此磨合、互相提醒、彼此帮扶着往前走，这样婚姻才是神喜悦的婚姻。”
对教会如何帮助大龄未婚基督徒的建议
耿弟兄提到，多年来看到教会中的不少牧者只是给出了：“你要忍耐等候神”这样的忠告，顺从听话的姐妹竟然等到了四十多岁还没有进入婚姻，有些教会的弟兄姐妹们因为没有找到合适的基督徒结婚甚至离开了教会。
他承认弟兄有些教会的牧者很关心弟兄姐妹的婚姻，但是效果不大。“有些教会的牧者对弟兄姐妹的婚姻很关心，有的会组织跨教会的联谊活动。可是，大家并没有觉得有太多的收获。”
他认为教会需要在帮助单身基督徒上需要更主动和积极，“我觉得教会的牧者不能太过保守的处理婚姻问题，应该要特别关心这些人群，真正看到这些人的需要，让他们能够进入婚姻。”他建议说：“教会可以多组织一些活动，制造一些机会，在牧者监督的情况下，让大家彼此了解和认识。在这样的事情上，教会牧者需要更加上心，因为牧者可以帮助大家、引导大家有一个正确的婚姻观。”
https://www.christiantimes.cn/news/34381/%E4%B8%93%E8%AE%BF-%7C-%E5%9F%BA%E7%9D%A3%E5%BE%92%E5%AF%BC%E6%BC%94%E5%8D%81%E5%B9%B4%E6%B7%AC%E5%89%91-%E8%97%89%E8%87%AA%E4%BC%A0%E4%BD%93%E7%BA%AA%E5%BD%95%E7%89%87%E6%B7%B1%E5%BA%A6%E5%89%96%E6%9E%90%E6%98%A5%E8%8A%82%E9%80%BC%E5%A9%9A%E7%8E%B0%E8%B1%A1%E4%B8%8E%E4%B9%A1%E5%9C%9F%E4%B8%AD%E5%9B%BD
专访 | 基督徒导演十年淬剑 藉自传体纪录片深度剖析春节逼婚现象与乡土中国
According to the magazine China Philanthropist, "forced marriage" is probably a new challenge added to the "three new big mountains" (housing, medicine and education pressure) of today's younger generation.
These parents have racked their brains to get their children married as soon as possible. A new term called "Chinese forced marriage" appeared on Baidu Encyclopedia, defined as "the use of threats and violence by parents to force their children into marriage".
More than 70 percent of adults have been forced to get married by their parents, and 86 percent of those between 25 and 35 years old who are single are under the greatest pressure, according to a survey by the Health and Sports Developmental Center of the Working Committee for the Care of the Next Generation.
Among these people, there are many single Christians, one of whom is a documentary director, Geng Haiyang. He started inadvertently and then spent 10 years recording his aging parents' compulsory annual Spring Festival program - marriage pressure. Shortly after the end of the 2021 Spring Festival, he publicly shared his autobiographical documentary "Flight of the Honeybees", which focuses on forced marriage.
Recently, Christian Times, a Chinese Christian newspaper, invited Geng to share his observations and analysis on the phenomenon of forced marriage during the Spring Festival, which is unique to China.
When it comes to forced marriage that has become a hot spot, a point of difficulty and pain in this era, Brother Geng believed that this kind of pressure was common to both Christians and non-Christians, and it is a very widespread phenomenon.
"I think these people are divided into urban and rural categories. Because some urban parents are relatively liberal, older urban unmarried young people are likely to face less pressure from their families to get married. But older unmarried young people in rural areas face greater pressure to get married", Geng said. "Parents tend to have traditional views and knowledge about marriage. They often compare their views with peers around them or in their hometowns. On the other hand, they do believe that getting married and having children is a task that everyone should experience and accomplish. They believe that certain things have to be done as soon as one clocks a certain age.
At the same time, he found that there are a growing number of older single people in the church, including those in their 30s and 40s and even those in their 50s who have never been married.
In this regard, he analyzed two main reasons, "First, people's standards have risen, and a spiritual standard has been added to the secular standard; also, the ratio of men and women in the church is unbalanced. Most of the sisters are highly educated and financially independent, and the number of brothers is relatively small. Some brothers are generally lowly educated, such as junior high school, senior high school, delivery men, Didi drivers, senior cooks at canteens, hairdressers, etc. Under such circumstances, it is difficult to match, spiritual communication cannot be carried out ."
"Secondly, everyone is immersed in the widespread nature of the Internet, including online, offline platforms, especially the ones online, WeChat groups and so on; without really having a deeper understanding of a person, many people are in the state of fleeting observation, and some people enjoy this feeling. Two people who are seriously considering marriage need more contact and need to get along. However, people today lack the opportunity to contact each other, many people are indoors, many people have social phobia, lack opportunities to meet and discover each other's strengths.
He claimed that the hardest thing about forced marriage was that it was hard to talk to your parents, you could only listen.
Over the past decade, Geng had faced constant pressure from his parents to get married, which caused him to suffer anguish many times. In the face of forced marriage, he conceived many people were miserable.
"When I came home for the Spring Festival one year, my parents started talking about it as soon as I walked in. After a few words, I felt very uncomfortable. That kind of aggressive feeling made me want to turn away. I didn't want to stay in the house," he shared.
"Even if you tell your parents that you will take marriage to heart, they will still not feel okay about it. They would mention that all my classmates and playmates they knew were married, while I am still single. However, I think these people have no reference value because everyone's situation and life direction are different. Marriage is conformity, but each individual is a special case." Geng shared the difficulty of communicating with his parents. "I tried to communicate with them and tell them, 'Don't pay attention to other people, just pay attention to me. Because you don't know what I'm doing now, and you can't know what's going on in my heart. You don't know what I have encountered in the city, my work, and my life.' But they still don't understand, they don't understand."
"In front of my parents, I listened most of the time without many refutations", he said helplessly. "Even then, my whole body became numb. I wanted to put the forced marriage thing behind me and put an end to it, so I ended shooting and edited the film ‘Flight of the Honeybees’."
The profound reason behind forced marriage during the Spring Festival was rapid urbanization, he added.
In the documentary, Geng, in addition to forced marriage, focused on the hometown where he was born and grew up. He also recorded the local conditions and customs of many rural societies, trying to show the real "rural China" in this era, from his perspective.
"It has been twenty years since I left my hometown. A lot of rural ideas cannot be accepted, or at least integrated, but can only serve as a bystander." He said “Currently, with the development of society, more and more people come from the countryside to the cities. Most of us have an interlaced feeling of ‘the hometown we can't go back to’ and ‘the city we can't stay in’. Because the vast majority of people have moved from the countryside to the cities, they live a relatively modest life. After decades of struggle, one may not be able to get ahead.”
He shared that behind the phenomenon of forced marriage during the Spring Festival, he now pays more attention to the topics of "rural China", "the process of urbanization", "the changes of urban and rural society", especially the societal problems of "left-behind old people" and "left-behind children", which are prominent societal problems in the process of urbanization.
He added, "Urbanization is happening too fast and is doing more harm than good to the rural areas." Brother Geng listed two points: Firstly, the mentality of the rural people becomes too impetuous and they want to accumulate wealth quickly, which makes them more and more utilitarian. Secondly, there are many left-behind children and elderly people, and the divorce rate is also high."
"The process of urbanization has also created a serious problem of betrothal gifts in rural areas. I read a news report that some people who get married in some places have to buy a house and a car in the city, plus an additional bride price of at least 1.8 million yuan, which is a lot of money for people in the rural areas." He went on to add, “The move of factories from cities to rural areas also causes pollution. Traffic jams have also become very serious in rural areas. The household registration system, the Joneses (peer pressure), some contradictions between families and so on. The issues cannot be listed one by one.”
From rural China and urbanization to a conversation about forced marriage and the generation of our parents, Geng said: "Many people have affection for their hometown, but it only lasts during childhood. Feelings for parents need to cross one another’s personal boundaries to have a better conversation with them."
During the years of forced marriage, Geng agonized over his understanding of marriage. He advised older, single Christians to have a proper understanding of who they are when it came to marriage.
"Figure out who you are and what's right for you. If both personalities, interests, hobbies, etc., are similar, and of the same category, they can get talking. The other category is complementary, to make up for each other's defects, and achieve success together.”
He went on to share his thoughts on marriage, "My understanding of marriage is that two people grow and move forward together. From one point of view, one person is in many ways not as good as two people growing together in God because it is difficult for one person to discover his problems. The purpose of marriage is to fulfil God's plan for you to become complete as a son, husband, or father, or daughter, wife, or mother, so that he or she will be more complete, just like the heavenly Father who loves us. Two people in a marriage will be in harmony, remind each other, and help each other to move forward, only then can it be God's definition of a happy marriage."
Brother Geng mentioned that over the years, he had seen many pastors in the church give advice like, "Wait for God patiently." Some of the obedient sisters did not get married until they were over 40 years old. Some of the brothers and sisters in the church even left the church because they could not find a suitable Christian to marry.
He acknowledged that some pastors of the church were concerned about the marriage of brothers and sisters, but that was of little effect. "There are pastors in some churches who are concerned about brothers and sisters getting married, and there are pastors who organize fellowship activities across churches. However, we do not think that there is so much to gain."
He urged the church to be more proactive in helping single Christians. "I think the pastors of the church should not be too conservative in their approach to marriage but should pay special attention to these people and see to their needs so that they can get married," he said. "The church can organize more activities and create opportunities for people to get to know each other under the supervision of the pastor", he suggested. “In such matters, the church pastors need to pay more attention, because the pastors can help and guide people to have a correct view of marriage.”
- Translated by Nonye Nancy
Exclusive Interview: Christian Director Analyzes Phonemenon of Forced Marriage During Spring Festival
