I met Lufang Chen, a 30-year-old bank clerk based in the Fujian province of China, in 2016, after she had married a man she initially turned down years earlier. Although she preferred to remain single, and he was not her type anyway, she gave in to avoid the label “leftover woman.”
The derogatory and stigmatizing term “leftover woman” — or Sheng nü in Chinese — is used to describe one’s social status and refers to women in their late 20s and beyond who have never married. The label suggests these women have failed to “sell” themselves on the marriage market at the “best” time and have therefore become leftover products that are depreciating rapidly.
At the time I was conducting interviews for my book on the lived experiences of these women — Leftover Women in China: Understanding Legal Consciousness through Intergenerational Relationships — released last August, Chen told me she married out of an obligation to live up to parental expectations:
