We’ve previously covered China’s mistress culture. Junheng Li, Bethany Allen, and Ana Swanson provided more details:

• On a weekend night one can find lines of limos waiting outside of universities to whisk young women away.
• Having a mistress has become a type of social status within China and just one of many luxury accessories that the rich frequently purchase.
• The biggest difference between China’s mistress culture and prostitution is that prostitutes are usually paid in cash. Mistresses in China are paid in expensive gifts.
• This is because cash encourages freedom while gifts such as apartments create dependency.
• It is difficult for women to find work in urban areas. They earn on average a third of their male counterparts, and jobs often have a maximum age cutoff of 26 for women.
• All this has consequences for the typical Chinese man. By 2030 more than a quarter of Chinese men in their late 30s are projected to be unmarried.

Read more about the material culture that drives this phenomenon, why mistresses must have a college education and social skills, and how one of the mistresses feels about the trend over here.

Source: The Daily Beast