I have been living and working in China for the last three years. During that time I have been teaching Chinese University students, psychology and in particular taking the therapy courses. Here the students learn about the different forms of therapy over an 18 week period followed by a further 18 weeks of training in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and 18 weeks of Transactional Analysis. So hopefully by the end of two years they have considerable knowledge and lots of practical patient time completed. However this is not what I want to discuss but rather the research I have conducted here over the three year period.

My research started off by accident as much enquiry does. A few remarks here and there by Chinese women, the experience of suicides on campus, the attitude of the men in China and my own experience with meeting and living in Chinese homes. These chance remarks and conversations led to a question (hypothesis), why are Chinese women so unhappy?

The first things you have to understand about China are a few hard facts, one they have no culture of therapy, and in fact most Chinese completely mistrust each other. Two, the suicide rate in China, amongst young women, is the highest in the World, 54% compared to 46% which is the rest of the World put together! Third the women do not discuss their emotional turmoil with anyone – you will lose face. To understand this you have to understand a culture and tradition of being judgemental. Just as therapists we learn the basic lesson, never be judgemental to your client – but here in China that is a way of life, everyone is constantly self-monitoring themselves against criticism. This may come from recent history in particular where during the Cultural Revolution many innocent people were publicly denounced and humiliated by the Red Guard.

So why did so many women talk to me? It is simple – I am a Westerner. They instinctively knew I would not judge them but listen carefully and explore the options they had in life. At first my insight was rather poor but as I understood the culture I began to be able to help many of these women face their lives with new hope. Often through the technique of reframing. Helping them to re-look at their lives and make some positive moves for change. I do not have room here to give you, in-depth examples, but instead give you the compositive woman’s life problems.

Case Study (compositive)

Tracy met her boyfriend at University, they were together for four years, in the final year they had sex for the first time in a dirty backstreet hotel. Tracy did not really enjoy it. They married a year after leaving University. Now married five years Tracy is extremely unhappy. She approached the therapist to discuss her worries. Tracy is now 28 years old and the first thing she told me was – “I do not love my husband and never have”. She had been unhappy for sometime and often frequented night clubs with her girlfriends to dance out her frustrations. She had recently started to learn the Spanish language and at a club had met a Spanish man. After a few months she started have an affair and said she has discovered her sexuality and thinks she is in love.

Background Comments

Tracy is only different from many Chinese girls in that she found a way to alleviate her pain. However many Chinese wives do not – and rather than face the shame of divorce and the loss of face in the family, see death as an attractive alternative. Many in the countryside take their lives with industrial fertilizer, easy to obtain on farms.

Also Tracy reported something I had heard over and over again, that once married her husband lost interest in sex. The average seems to be about once a month after the second or third year, for about ten minutes. The sexual experience is very basic, missionary position and no foreplay or romance. The husbands also see the wife in ownership terms and believe their first loyalty is to his family and particularly his mother. Therefore many wives feel marginalised in the marriage by the husband’s family. Tracy did not want children, in a country with a history of a one child policy from the government; this is frowned upon by all in the husband’s family. Enormous pressure is put on young wives to have a baby and preferably a boy. A girl born into the family is seen as a failure by her. (Infanticide of girls is still common in parts of China).

Why Does It Happen?

There are many reasons you can look to for the state of unhappiness in marriage in China. I have selected just a few but as in all psychological thinking things are always more complex than simple.

1. Almost a complete lack of sexual education amongst young people.

2. A highly judgemental society.

3. Lack of social skills training.

4. First boyfriend often is the husband to be. (No ability for comparisons).

5. Culture of male ownership and control (of the money and wife).

6. Mother in Law rejection of new wife (rival for son’s affections).

7. Girls seen as not important in long term family economics.

8. Often girls marry for material considerations and not for love.

9. Love is seen as not important (until after the marriage).

10. Very few role models for young women to follow.

What can we do?

In all relationship therapy – it takes two – however it is highly unlikely that the husband would come to a meeting let alone discuss his personal feelings. Women in China however given the opportunity to talk to a Western therapist will open up and share their experience. The most important factor for them is non-judgemental attitude and confidentiality. One of my tasks here in China has been to train a new generation of young therapists with a Western perspective on client treatment. It sometimes takes a long time to get the student to let go of their cultural prejudice and allow a person to be themselves and not a preconceived idea of the Chinese social norm. It is a start!

The future

It is my hope that mental health services can expand in China and different forms of psychotherapy and counselling can be accepted as normal for ordinary people to access with confidence. There is still to date only one suicide centre in China based in Beijing. I am however a rarity in China, most teachers here are English instructors or short term visiting professors. What therapy organisations there are in China are not training on a wide scale.

Thanks to the following participants in the research model:

ZheJiang Normal University – Institute of Psychology
Hubei University – School of Psychology
Shanghai Pinghe International School
Over 200 women in China who told me their stories.
The numerous families that invited me to stay for a week at time to observe family life both those who were from wealthy homes to the peasants in the countryside who could ill afford to share their food with me but did.