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Show Better Marriages Seen If Parents Help To Choose Novelist Pearl Buck said today that she envies Chinese families their "pleasure of helping to choose the people their children marry." The author contrasts the traditional tradi-tional Chinese custom with the situation in this country where, "it seems that my sons' wives and my daughters' husbands are none of my business." Writing in a magazine, the novelist nov-elist reports that "over most of China the family has a great deal to say about sons' wives and daughters' husbands." She explains that "the Chinese are wise enough to know that any individual is inescapably in-escapably part of the family and that he will be happier in love if his mate also pleases his family." On the other hand, she points out, "I am to wait in silence until one day a person whom I have perhaps never seen appears at the door of our family house. Who is this person? Perhaps my son-in-law, perhaps the wife of my son! .. Suppose he or she is someone who can never fit into our family?" The author says that "Chinese marriages last so long as the families fam-ilies had a part in making them .... I observe there are fewer1 unhappy marriages under their system than under ours." |