Some time ago, the issue of marriage and love of rural youth was once again hotly debated because of an article "Solving the Problem of Older Men Marrying Wives in Rural Areas". In people's discussions, the problem of marriage and love of contemporary young people is often interpreted as a simple opposition between rural young men and urban older women.

Huayang, a professor of sociology at Wuhan University, has been investigating the marital status of marriageable young people in rural areas all over the country since 2007. According to his research, it is really difficult for rural young men born in 1980s to get married after they enter marriageable age.

However, after the gender imbalance is superimposed on the population flow caused by economic differences, the situation of this phenomenon in different regions and different periods is far more complicated than people think, including the phenomenon of "sky-high bride price" in rural areas in the central and western regions and the structural marriage dilemma of women in rural areas and counties in the east.

In Professor Huayang's view, "if we simply call for measures such as changing customs and changing the' sky-high bride price', we have not touched the root of the problem, or even failed to cure the symptoms. In some places,' encouraging young women to stay in their hometown' is not the way. The population moves freely. "