In the span of just over thirty years, all of that has changed. For women especially, marriage has become less of an imperative, largely because of the unprecedented educational and professional opportunities that accompanied China’s reforms, beginning in 1979. Elements of this evolution will surely sound familiar in the Western world, where women were once meant to be seen (in the kitchen) and not heard (in the workplace), though there are a few salient factors that make the situation in China especially alarming. Of greatest significance are the more than 30 million female abortions and infanticides which occurred during the peak years of the one-child policy and have resulted in a surplus of poor, uneducated, rural males who are doomed to remain without a bride because there are simply not enough women in China to marry. On the other side of that looming demographic disaster are urban only daughters: women whose parents chose to allow a daughter into the world during a time when everyone else wanted a son. These are women who for lack of competing XY chromosomes in the family were given unprecedented opportunities and resources that may have previously been reserved for male offspring. Such women came into the world at a point when China was aggressively expanding its number of institutions of higher learning, and were pushed to study, succeed, achieve, and bring honour to their families as if they were sons. Yet contrary to what Mao and his modern-day disciples might have us believe, women have not been able to seamlessly slip in alongside the men and work as equal comrades.