A Chinese language term – shengnü – used to describe the country’s cohort of unmarried women aged over 30, who are Single, born in the Seventies, and Stuck.

The number of leftover ladies in Beijing has surpassed 500,000, Li Shuang reported for The Global Times: These women choose career and single life over marriage and family, which reveals an individualistic trend over family values, experts say. “Leftover ladies,” or shengnü in Chinese, has become a buzzword in the Chinese language. They are well-educated, well-paid and independent. They are also referred to as “3S women: single, seventies (most were born in the 70s) and stuck.”

In a September 2009 article for The China Daily, Xu Xiaomin explained that although shengnü used to have derogatory associations, China’s leftover ladies have recently become “a social force to be reckoned with” – the super shengnü. China Economic Net suggested in February 2009 that the increased number of single people may in part be driven by “traditional perceptions about marriage”:

The stereotype of a strong man with a weak woman still dominates many people’s minds. A successful woman wants to find a more successful man. While a successful man’s ideal wife is not necessarily successful but gentle and virtuous. Modern society provides Chinese women with more opportunities than their mothers’ generation to realize their individual value. While they are working hard and pursuing lives that their mothers could only dream of, they suddenly realize that they have become part of a group that men may not want to marry.

Would you like to learn Chinese popular words more? I recommend you to take some Chinese lessons online to learn about Chinese language. That is why many foreigners think that successfully studying Chinese characters is the most challenging part in learning Chinese.