China Seeks Modern Man as Model Mate

As far as Ji Yongfu is concerned, a good husband’s chief qualifications are strong authority and a sense of civic duty--and he possesses both in spades.

“The husband should be the center of the household,” said Ji, 56, a senior lecturer at the Central Communist Party School who was elected by his neighborhood residence committee to compete in Beijing’s first “model husband” contest.

“Everybody gives opinions and I make the final decisions. Our family is democratic,” he said.

As the patriarch of a nine-member extended family, Ji’s views on marriage reveal a decidedly traditional slant.

According to the 2,500-year-old teachings of Confucius, China’s famous philosopher-sage, the man of the house should preside over a pyramid of hierarchical relationships. Ideally, that arrangement extends to society at large.

Are China’s Communist leaders good husbands? Ji thinks so. “They take command,” he said.

Ji may be behind the times. The female creators of Beijing’s inaugural model husband quest are looking for a man who can transcend the traditional role of provider. The ideal husband also should take out the garbage, educate the kids and even satisfy his wife in bed, they say.

“A husband should love his wife,” said Sun Lihua, a reporter for state-run Beijing Television, who is directing the show.

“A lot of Chinese households appear healthy but it’s hard to say whether a husband really loves his wife. It has to do with certain traditional concepts in Chinese culture,” she said.

Sun, herself divorced, will oversee the model husband search, to be broadcast serially from May through June.

Based on a similar contest last year in the southern Chinese city of Canton, the Beijing version will select a winner from 36 semifinalists. The lucky 36 are being chosen from hundreds of contestants in the city’s 18 districts in cooperation with local branches of the China Women’s Federation.

Beijing residents have responded enthusiastically to published announcements of the contest, Sun said. Entrance requirements cover five areas: work, husband-wife relations, family administration, education of one’s children and self-knowledge.

A “harmonious” sex life is a must. The requirement illustrates China’s growing disaffection with its prudish past, when sexuality was not publicly discussed, much less a key factor in marriage.

Would-be model husbands must fill out a self-evaluation form and have their wives sign it.

That was no problem for Qin Jie, 34, the manager of a foodstuffs company who made his decision in tandem with his wife.

“Of course, everything I wrote was positive,” Qin giggled, as he proudly showed pictures and newspaper clippings documenting his wife Li Yanhua’s renowned skill as a cake decorator.

Qin and Li share the civic-minded views of the Communist Party school professor--they see their participation in the contest as a “social activity” that will also enhance their appreciation of each other.

After three years of marriage, the couple claim to have few difficulties. Qin says he does much of the cooking and exerts a strong hand in educating the couple’s 2-year-old son, who coolly ignored his fathers pleas to “recite a Tang Dynasty poem.”

Qin obviously feels privileged to have a son in Beijing, where a strict “one child per couple” birth-control policy imposes fines on recalcitrant couples who break the rules in hope of having a male heir. Tradition dies especially hard in rural areas, where the practice of female infanticide reportedly persists.

Raising a family may have been the old measure of a successful marriage, but these days love counts as well, as Li Hongqi and his wife of 10 years can attest.

Li, 33, is a factory worker whose wife, Qu Yaling, is unable to have children or even work due to a rare and debilitating blood disease.

The sturdy, balding Li said he has saved his wife’s life many times, rushing her to the hospital in emergencies.

Seated on a bed in their spare, 135-square-foot home, Qu lamented her inability to raise a family.

“I can’t give him any children,” she said. “Once I suggested we split up and he scolded me, saying, ‘Do you think that’s the reason I’m with you?’ ”

Qu’s sense of gratitude to her husband is so great that she entered him in the contest without his knowledge, penning a three-page letter despite pain in her wrists and having to walk to the post office herself.

“If I didn’t have him, I wouldn’t be alive today,” she said, bursting into tears.

Her husband waved aside her display of affection with a look of embarrassment and said he was shocked to learn she had signed him up to vie for the title of model husband.

“I thought, what did you enter me for? I just did what I should have done,” he said. “She keeps saying I’m the one who’s so good, but its mutual. She does what she can.”