Residents’ Intermarriage behavior in Guangzhou, China in Last 60 Years

Abstract

The authors attempt to explore residents’ intermarriage behavior and its temporal-spatial pattern in Guangzhou, a southern coastal metropolis in China in last 6 decades. The metropolis has experienced large influx of migrants since the reform and opening to outside world policy was introduced. Questionnaire survey was done in December 2008. Results indicate : a) marriage frequency over distance follows the rule of distance decay ; b) average marriage distance of each decade undergoes wide V-shape trend from 1950s to 2000s ; c) strong sense of city hierarchy in intermarriage ; d) Internet increasingly becomes one of the important agents and shows the longest effective distance compared to other marriage agents ; e) county boundary and provincial boundary are the most important geographical boundaries in mating. Whether the findings demonstrate a common picture of love map of metropolis or just a unique local practice, case studies from other places in China are expected for comparison analysis.

Keywords

• China
• intermarriage
• Guangzhou
• marriage distance
• internet
• urban hierarchy