Chinese Teenager Commits Suicide After Forced Engagement, Indifferent Fiancé Wants Dowry Refunded

She and her mother ran a small clothing store in their hometown.

Tongtong felt reluctant when the man proposed to her, but her mother and a matchmaker persuaded her to accept.

The man's family gave Tongtong's mother a dowry of 270,000 yuan ($40,000) during the engagement ceremony. The matchmaker received a fee of 4,800 yuan (700 US dollars).

She later told the Beijing Youth Daily newspaper that her daughter did not like the man, who was rude and demanding.

Tongtong wanted to break off the engagement, but the matchmaker dissuaded her, saying her mother, a single mother of six, needed the money.

Always a caring older daughter, Tongtong dropped out of school to work and help her family financially, and cared for her younger siblings.

The desperate young woman threw herself into the river near her home, 17 days after the engagement.

After Tongtong's death, her fiancé asked her mother to return the dowry.

She gave him 180,000 yuan, but refused to return the rest because the man lied about his age – he said he was four years older than Tongtong but was actually eight years her elder.

The man's family insisted on payment, blocking his storefront with a car and blasting messages over and over over a loudspeaker, demanding money. They also asked a local television station to report the story.

The mother, the matchmaker, and the man all blamed each other for Tongtong's death.

“It’s a horror story. The girl is a daughter, a future wife, a good financial resource, but never herself,” one online observer wrote on Weibo.

Forced marriages are not uncommon in China, especially in underdeveloped regions.

In 2020, a 17-year-old girl was forced to marry a man she had only met six times.

She reported it to the local government, who ordered her parents to cancel the engagement and send her back to school.

In urban areas, single women over the age of 30 are generally stigmatized as “leftover women.” They also face pressure from their parents.

In 2021, a doctor in eastern China's Zhejiang province spoke of a patient, a woman in her thirties, who suffered from severe depression because her father said her “price fell” the longer she remained single.

China saw a persistent decline in marriage rates until last year.

The number of newlywed couples increased from 13.47 million in 2013 for nine consecutive years to 6.83 million in 2022. It increased to 7.68 million in 2023.