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No 3,332

Leftovers: unmarried Chinese women over 25

China has a rather unpleasant term for women who are still single in their mid- to late-20s. Why don't men suffer the same fate?
Women over 25 are considered to be past their marriagable peak.
Women over 25 are considered to be past their marriageable peak. Photograph: Getty Images/Imagemore

Age: Variable

Appearance: Not at their best

Ooh, leftovers! Best meal of the day! Roast beef sandwiches! Whizzed up into soups! Jammed indiscriminately on a plate and warmed up in the microwave, bacterial risk be damned! You're right, but I'm talking about a different kind of leftover.

Really? What kind. The woman kind.

I already don't like where this is going. Nor should you, painfully liberal sir, nor should you. "Leftovers" is apparently how the state refers to refer to women in China who remain unmarried after the age of 25.

Yikes! That's – well, yikes! I know. And they're not alone in their deployment of base terminology for the phenomenon of women deemed by their sociocultural milieu to be past their marriageable peak.

How so? The people of the Philippines refer to women of 30-plus as "over the calendar" – ie exceeding the number of days in a month.

Basically, denoting a number and age so vast as to be unrecordable and virtually inconceivable?

Quite so. For those moments when "past it" doesn't seem quite enough. And in Japan, the term in use is "Christmas cakes".

Don't tell me – unsold after 25? Correct. What a way you have with the derogatory pun, sir.

It's just a gift. Now, I feel I must ask the obvious question – do any of these cultures have similarly objectionable words for unmarried men of a certain age? Unmarried Chinese men over are known as "bare branches". Which is quite nice. But they are in surplus because of the preference for sons under the one-child policy and high abortion rate of female foetuses.

So the cavalcade of damning proof of the intractable nature of patriarchal prejudice and misogyny never really falters then? No. Of course, I feel I must point out that we, the British, are hardly blameless in this regard. "Spinster" and "old maid" are unlovely words for unlovely attitudes, while the equivalent, "bachelor", has always connoted life of fun and freedom.

They're still better than a state-sanctioned comparison to discarded food, though, aren't they? I'll give you that, yes. I'll give you that.

Do say: Up yours. I'm a magnificent main course.

Don't say: Marry me! Whoever you are, just marry me, please!

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