Chapter 112: We Don’t Want the Bride Price

Chapter 112: Chapter 112: We Don’t Want the Bride Price

Zhang Zhe thought to himself, ’If this girl wasn’t just a junior in college, I would’ve already laid into her.’

’Those women in their early 30s who whine and complain, insisting that chores must be split 50/50 after marriage to be fair, are completely unsuited for matrimony.’

"Ma’am, don’t be nervous. I think you might want to pull up a stool and listen in. I have a feeling your daughter’s list of requirements is going to be exceptionally long."

"After you hear everything today, if your daughter can’t get married in the future, you probably won’t be so confused about why."

"Oh, alright then." The auntie was "system-certified"; she was a fan of Zhang Zhe’s style, so she was willing to listen to what he had to say.

She even prompted her daughter, "Come on, Jiaojiao, have a good chat with the host. Once I know what you’re looking for, I can help keep an eye out for you."

"Mm, okay."

Seeing the girl agree, Zhang Zhe continued his analysis. "What monthly salary do you think would be enough to earn the right to hand over his paycheck to you and not do any housework?"

"At least twenty thousand a month."

"Okay, so 20,000 before taxes. In Shenghai, that’s about 16,000 take-home pay. Let’s subtract 3,000 for the guy’s own living expenses. That means he’d be handing over 12,000 to you."

"So, if I didn’t work and gave you 12,000 a month, you’d be willing to take care of all the housework, is that right?"

"The price is actually a bit steep, but if you’re good at housework, some guys would probably consider it."

[You’re calculating this so clearly, aren’t you being a little too serious? In this kind of woman’s eyes, even if you made 100k a month, you’d have to hand it all over.]

[Who raised this girl? She doesn’t seem very bright.]

[Only 12k? For that price in Shenghai, you can’t even hire a decent live-in maid. And you expect to get a wife?]

[So if I’m a strong, successful woman, does that mean if I give a guy 12k, he’d be willing to be a househusband at home?]

"That’s a good line of thinking from the bullet comments."

"The woman gives the man 12,000 a month to handle all the housework."

"Believe me, with those terms, if you go to the matchmaking market and guys aren’t lining up to marry you, you come find me. I’ll get in line!"

Zhang Zhe spoke with complete conviction. He knew the men of today all too well.

The main reason guys don’t want to be kept men is that the "soft rice" is usually low quality. If it’s just about doing some housework, and as long as no steel wool balls are involved, these terms are so good they’re practically a dream come true.

But offer the same terms to a woman, and she’d complain the money isn’t enough.

This girl was a perfect example.

After hearing Zhang Zhe’s calculations, she thought for a moment and then backpedaled. "12,000 is still way too little. Forget it, forget it, I don’t want the money."

"Let’s just not do any housework at all. We can use the money to hire a maid."

"We can’t skimp on that."

"I still want to work. I need to have my own career. Otherwise, what if my husband dumps me? Wouldn’t I have to come back and mooch off my parents?"

"Hmm, now that finally sounds like something a university student would think of." Zhang Zhe nodded in agreement. "You can state your other requirements now."

"My second requirement is that we have to live separately from his parents. I know it wasn’t easy for his parents to raise him, but that has nothing to do with me."

"If he wants to be a filial son to his parents, he can’t drag me into it."

"I only have one mom. If he has both his parents, and we have to be filial to both sets of parents, I’d be short one. Wouldn’t I be getting the short end of the stick?"

"We should each take care of our own parents. During holidays, we visit our own relatives. That way, nobody holds anyone back."

[Sister, you’re so brave, but I’m afraid the guys are going to get triggered and flame you for this.]

[How could it have nothing to do with you? If his parents didn’t raise their son, you wouldn’t have a husband, would you?]

[Some guys are ridiculous. We girls have no trouble finding a husband.]

[This girl isn’t thinking straight. Her mom is all alone; she’s clearly the one who needs more care from her child.]

"You guys even calculate this stuff now?"

Zhang Zhe was genuinely surprised. He’d heard of people calculating the betrothal gift and the "three golds," but he’d rarely heard of anyone calculating the costs of caring for their parents so meticulously.

However, there was a certain logic to her calculation.

Especially when the elderly lose the ability to care for themselves, it’s true that their own children should be responsible before expecting a daughter-in-law or son-in-law, who has no blood relation, to step in.

But complete separation wasn’t exactly a good idea either.

Just like with housework, you had to analyze each situation on a case-by-case basis.

These "boxing" types always wanted to paint everything with the same brush, which came across as very strange.

"Ma’am, what do you think?" Zhang Zhe asked curiously. "I don’t have a problem with it. My parents can support each other, but can you manage on your own?"

"Of course I can’t!" the auntie said, fuming. "If we do it that way, then this son-in-law would have nothing to do with me, would he?"

"If something happened to me, I wouldn’t be able to count on him at all?"

"Mom, it’s fine. You can count on me," the girl tried to persuade her. "This is fair. This way, his parents’ affairs won’t bother me."

"Count on you? Can I really count on you?"

You have to admit, a mother knows her daughter best. With just one sentence, the auntie made the atmosphere in the stream chat cheerful again.

[You won’t even do housework, how can anyone count on you?]

[The auntie gets it. She knows a son-in-law is like half a son.]

[Auntie, stop talking! Be careful or your daughter will post about you on Xiaohongshu, saying you don’t respect her.]

"I don’t agree with that at all." The auntie made the decision for her daughter directly. "Unless you don’t want a single cent of dowry and you never come back to visit, I absolutely will not allow you to make such an outrageous demand."

"Once you’re married, you’re one family. What’s the point of drawing such clear lines?"

Zhang Zhe couldn’t help but chuckle when he heard that.

The auntie had, after all, been through the school of hard knocks. When it came to her own interests, she would absolutely not back down.

Not even for her own daughter.

"Fine, then. I’ll drop that last requirement for now," the girl said, a bit dejected. "I’ll move on to the next one."

"I want the guy to work out. He has to have abs and can’t have a gut. That’s not too much to ask, right?"

"When he’s young, that’s really not too much to ask," Zhang Zhe said with a nod.

He could see that the girl herself was not overweight. Her aesthetic preferences matched her mother’s—neither of them liked chubby guys, which was fair enough.

"But you have to allow a man to get old."

"When people get older and exercise less, they just naturally gain weight."

"We’ll talk about getting old when we get there. If I get fat when I’m old too, then I won’t have any right to make demands of others."

"At least you’re not a hypocrite."

"What else?" Zhang Zhe prompted. "Can you pick some requirements that guys would be unwilling to accept?"

"You know, the kind of topics that make all the guys around you instinctively back away and not want to discuss them with you."

"That kind...?" The girl thought for a moment. "There aren’t many. They’re all sensitive topics. Like... the caste system in India?"

"You’d better be talking about the actual India." Not wanting his stream to get banned, Zhang Zhe quickly cut her off. "How about I help you think of something?"

"Do you have any requirements for the betrothal gift? This relates to the man’s family’s financial situation. They have to have enough money to marry you, after all."

"I don’t have any requirements for that."

"Mom, what do you say?"

"We don’t do betrothal gifts around here," the auntie said from the side, her tone disdainful. "Host, don’t think of us people from the Jiangsu-Zhejiang-Shanghai region as being the same as those from other provinces. Such a high betrothal gift is like selling your daughter."

"Around here, marriage is a merging of families, two becoming one."

"Whatever the man’s side contributes, our side matches. After they get married, all that money is given to the young couple as start-up capital for their new life."

"We don’t do that whole hundreds-of-thousands-in-betrothal-gifts thing."

"If the young couple lives far away, each family can also chip in half to buy them a new house first. These things are all negotiable."

[Auntie, no, Mom!]

[I’m from Shanghai, how come I’ve never heard of such a good deal?]

[If we’re talking money, when my sister got married, the betrothal gift was in the negative.]

[I don’t know about other places, but I grew up in Shenghai and I’ve never heard of a betrothal gift.]

(Author’s Note: Chapter 113 was completely flagged and couldn’t be published. You can find the screenshots in the fan group. Group ID: 1056865805)