Tell me about my understanding of "bride price"

Speaking of bride price, first of all, I reported home, and the interests are related. After three years of marriage, I decided to get married and received a bride price from the sky. As for the amount, if someone steals it, it should be recognized as "a huge amount" by the criminal law. Why is it said to be "heaven"? Because I didn't expect it at all, a large sum of money fell, which made me lost in thought after being trapped.

I grew up in an environment close to the mixture of grassland civilization and modern industrial civilization, belonging to a relatively marginal and niche civilization type. Therefore, the bride price, like quantum mechanics, is a distant legend. Everyone knows the word, but they don't know what it means. Later, I went to college and went to graduate school. Everyone was a student and few of them got married. Moreover, at that time, my interest was irrelevant, and I didn't have much chance to get in touch with this concept. It was not until I decided to marry my boyfriend that I was suddenly hit by a "sky-high" bride price that I really felt the texture of its existence. That feeling, how to describe it? It's like you only know the word "quantum mechanics", but suddenly you receive an admission notice for the major of quantum mechanics. You are at a loss and confused, but it's not a pleasant experience anyway.

I am not a flower in a greenhouse, I am not weather-beaten and naive, I am not full of love and water. I fully accept that the essence of marriage is to take risks and save the cost of living. Only in the more than 20 years before marriage, I missed the marriage transaction with the participation of "bride price" perfectly. I never expected that this transaction would be settled directly in cash. Obviously, "buyers and sellers" lack basic mutual understanding. In the following three years, I found that the popularity of the topic of "bride price" in society far exceeded my expectations, because I paid attention to this topic deliberately.

The bride price obviously exists for only one purpose, that is, as a tool to promote the conclusion of a marriage contract. The first thing that reminds me is Alipay many years ago, the deposit paid when buying expensive goods. It exists to reduce uncertainty and provide psychological protection for buyers and sellers. So where does this uncertainty come from? Why do you need such a huge amount of cash as a guarantee? I didn't know much about it a few years ago, but now I don't know how to taste it.

First of all, there is a default assumption that one party in marriage suffers from loss of interest, or the risk of loss of interest is greater. Offensive statements such as "heartless", "gave up at the beginning" and "changed a person after marriage" are generally aimed at men, so it is obviously generally believed that women are the more vulnerable party. Actually? It seems that this is the case in most cases. At least, this is an important variable. Looking back carefully at all kinds of marriages encountered in life, whether the bride price exists and whether the amount is huge is positively related to how many risks women can bear. For example, in my hometown of central and eastern Inner Mongolia, most of the three northeastern provinces, and the coastal industrial town of Shandong, there is either no bride price at all or only a symbolic one. In the relatively developed eastern coastal areas and the Pearl River Delta region, people are probably as unfamiliar with this concept as I am. The less the historical burden, the more developed the economy, the higher the overall education level, the more perfect the degree of industrialization, and the closer the ability of men and women to resist risks. At this time, there is no need to ask for a huge bride price to compensate for the slightly higher risk.

Secondly, with the advancement of industrialization and urbanization, many of us have quickly entered the stranger society, which makes the uncertainty of the relationship between people increase rapidly. Between people, there is both the most basic trust and the least trust, and the distance between relatives and friends is different. A happy marriage requires both parties to know each other well. However, the amount of information needed to understand a person is enormous. Every bit of reliable information is expensive. At the very least, you need to pay a lot of time and money, and you need to refine your judgment cultivated for many years. How can such a difficult thing be realized for the contemporary youth who are tired of running around? A, it cannot be realized. But people can't bear to lie down and do nothing and admit to planting it. They must do something to become confident. Therefore, I want to save myself some energy, time and money, and I don't have time to brush my experience. I might as well turn to something that seems to represent my personal credit, such as education, property, family and social relations. However, these things don't seem so reliable, because it is almost a stubborn attribute of a person, and it is not so easy to share. For people living in relative poverty, these things are also rare. In this way, it is better to let the male party who is usually considered unlikely to suffer losses pay the sunk cost, which is more binding than the so-called "one heart". In this way, complicated problems are simplified, and all complicated processes are simplified into several currency symbols, and everyone is relieved. But is it really saved? Simplifying complexity can reduce people's cognitive burden and effectively treat anxiety caused by uncertainty. However, the compression process will also cause information loss and one-sided cognition. After marriage, everyone lives in a very specific daily necessities. Will the information that was ignored at the beginning come back and let people pay their debts with interest?

The above is my core understanding of bride price. Of course, I also know that after so many years of development, the bride price in many places has long changed. In some areas, the bride price is dying out, but people's pursuit of certainty is even worse. Instead of the bride price, it is even more expensive. In some areas, bride price has evolved into a reliable tool for matchmakers to manipulate the marriage market. In other fields, the proportion of men and women is seriously unbalanced, and men are at an absolute disadvantage in the marriage market. The bride price is not so much to compensate the other party, but rather to pay the transaction costs of quickly reaching a contract and landing on the beach (the bride price I received should have this purpose in it).

Finally, the end of the bride price was revealed: my mother was a little surprised by the bride price and gave me the same amount of "marriage life start-up fee" on the principle of equality and mutual benefit. And the share I got is still the property in my husband's account, which does not affect our basic policy of sharing living expenses equally. Later, I studied financial management, and my husband's money was also in my charge. It seems that I became his fund manager.

Add one more emotional point of view. For the bride price, my personal attitude is no, but I don't resolutely refuse it, because for parents who care about their sons, the anxiety of "I don't know what big tricks the prospective daughter-in-law will come up with" is actually unbearable. As for other bride price, I am neutral. After all, everyone lives in a very specific environment, and the villagers in the same village may not be able to feel the same. For the real proletariat who lacks any guarantee, it is the thing that can provide the certainty of life and the thing that can guarantee its own security. Moreover, both parties to the transaction are willing to fight and suffer losses, which is reasonable and legal. Why not?