NEARLY a hundred women and a handful of men gather at a department store's book section. The women are mostly in their 20s and 30s, nicely dressed and looking confident - they are modern Chinese career women.

They are waiting for Chinese American Joy Chen to launch her first book, especially written for Chinese women, "Do Not Marry Before 30."

"It's awesome that someone finally has written and published this statement," one woman says.

"Too bad I already got married before 30," another says.

"It's great but don't men only love young women?" wonders a third. (Chen's answer: Those are not the men intelligent women should be looking for.)

The place is abuzz and women are engaged in lively discussions and debates, often with complete strangers. The topic is riveting.

Getting Chinese people talking and thinking about the marriage age and the traditional value it implies is exactly what Chinese American author Chen intends. She wants to inspire discussion among women (men, too).

"In China, the hardest part of being a woman and going through all kinds of issues is that we never talk about it with other women, which is very important," the 42-year-old author, blogger, headhunter and former deputy mayor of Los Angeles told Shanghai Daily in an interview.

"That's really my goal for this book. I hope women will use it as a conversation starter and have discussions with other women, especially their mothers."

Chen enters the bookstore exuding confidence, independence and contentment - the ultimate version of the women waiting for her. Her American (Caucasian) husband and two daughters, aged three and two, join her to complete the picture of a woman who is successful in both career and family life.

The traditional and also the modern measure of a Chinese woman's success today is still rearing a successful (good school, good grades, good job) family, watching over children, overseeing a household and keeping a husband happy. It is not having a successful career - that's secondary and often sacrificed.

Only five years ago, Chen would have been considered anything but successful in the eyes of most Chinese because she wasn't married. She was a leftover woman (shengnu).

She was born in the small town of Potomac, in the US state of Maryland. Her engineer father is from Nanchang in Jiangxi Province; her mother is from Ningbo, Zhejiang Province. They are first-generation immigrants and Chen was reared speaking Chinese and learning all the traditional values for Chinese women.

At the heart of those values is getting married and having children early: it's considered a duty.

Chen broke the rules. Four years ago, when she was 38, she married Dave, an American businessman, and they live in Los Angeles.

Growing up with an engineer father and Chinese scientists who were family friends, she entered Duke University in North Carolina as a marine-biology major because she loves science and animals, but soon discovered that the human animal was more interesting. She studied anthropology, literature, religion, sociology, political science, and switched majors to East Asia Studies.

After graduation, Chen moved to Los Angeles and started in real estate development. When she was just 31, she was appointed a deputy mayor in charge of education and economic development.

After her four-year term, she became an employment recruiter at age 35 and later opened her own company, mainly helping global companies find executives for their China operations.

"As a headhunter, I've been working with lots of global companies and helped bring a lot of foreigners and 'returning turtles' (overseas Chinese) to senior posts in China. I often asked why they don't just promote their local Chinese employees," Chen recalled.

"Sometimes they say local Chinese are unpromotable, because they lack the soft skills required for these executive positions," she said.

This reminded Chen of her engineer father, who worked very hard but lacked the skills that would have enabled him to blend into American society. He turned from a bookworm to a worker bee without getting recognized for his talent and efforts.

It also reminded her of her own childhood, when she tried hard to fit in and gain recognition.

"I see Chinese young people working very hard in these global companies, but they are not aware of what they are not bringing to the table as future executives, and they have no mentors," Chen explained.

"I want to help them by telling them the unwritten rules of getting to the top."

She started a bilingual blog (www.globalrencai.com) in early 2010 with the entry titled "From bookworm to worker bee then onward and upward." "Ren cai" means talented person. She explored her own and her family's experience to explain the "rules" that many young Chinese still don't know.

For example, she explained how work performance is not the only thing that matters and how one's image and exposure are equally, if not more significant. In another posting, she advised young people to focus and strengthen their A+ skills rather than trying to be a very well-rounded person with no particularly strong skill.

Her posts were popular with people working in international companies and trying to figure out how to climb the ladder.

Then a publisher asked whether she would write a book for Chinese women.

She first approached the topic with her blog entry "Do not marry before 30" in May 2011, saying that women should play, learn and mature in their 20s rather than rush to get married just because everyone rushes and pushes them to marry. The post caught fire, receiving so many visits and comments that her blog site crashed.

The entry was retweeted on popular Chinese social media sites, attracting even more visits and comments.

She gradually made the blog more women-focused and eventually wrote "Do Not Marry Before 30." She based it on blog entries, her own experience, readers' feedback and extensive research about marriage and women's roles in modern China. She wrote it in English and it was translated into Chinese.

Some readers thank her for having the courage to say what many people are thinking.

Others call her idealistic, saying she should be pragmatic and consider the real situation in China, reminding her that men "always" go for young women. Some readers are angry and feel threatened by her ideas, accusing her of trying to "brainwash" people with "absurd ideas."

Chen understands both the traditional ideas and the current situation. She has opened accounts on all popular Chinese social media to stay connected and learn what young people are into. Her weibo account has attracted more than 26,000 followers.

"I share a common history and original culture with all the women of China, but because of the unusual circumstances in my life, my parents moving to the USA and my moving to LA, I was able to step aside and develop a different perspective to view China," Chen said. "American women also face these pressures, but they are totally not as deep."

She cited the ubiquitous and highly popular dating reality shows on Chinese television, which show all the women's ages and frequently criticize women over 25 for being too old and impossible to match.

"We think we are so modern now that we live with boyfriends, which once was impossible. But ultimately, it's the same. These shows are just a modern manifestation of ancient tradition," Chen said.

That tradition is encapsulated in the idea of "marrying young and jumping back into your traditional role of wife and mother, lest you become a shengnu (leftover woman), the worst possible thing in the world," she said.

She herself was under pressure to marry early. Even while she was a deputy mayor of Los Angeles, her parents asked what she was doing with her life. But the pressure wasn't unbearable and Chen knows her own mind. She also has a younger brother her parents could focus on.

Chen said that dating was easy at first, got difficult as she got older but then got much better as she was attracting and was attracted to more interesting men. She'd rather stay home and read a book, she said, than go out on a date just to be dating.

"To say that married women are normal and unmarried are abnormal belittles all women. Each of us has dignity because we are people and we are women. It is completely random, unfair and ridiculous to segregate the world into normal married people and abnormal unmarried people."

"'Do Not Marry Before 30' challenges this idea and thousands of years of training that we are used to."

Many divorced Chinese women are miserable and there are many unhappy marriages of couples who wed too young, Chen has observed, saying it's very important to make a good decision and not to be rushed into wedlock with the wrong life partner.

Chen plans to go on tour for the book and visit friends and relatives in Shanghai for about two months. If other opportunities arise as a result of the book, she might stay longer.

The publisher is Citic Press Corp. The book is available in online and offline bookstores around China.

Excerpts from book

Society tells us that since nobody's perfect, we should lower our standards and settle for what we can get. We are to hurry and get married as insurance that we'll never find anyone better. But marriage should be more than just an insurance plan. Nothing could be more depressing, or more insidious to our lives, than a society of loveless marriages and extramarital affairs. And as we lower our standards, we enforce this lovelessness on our children all over again.



Build a life all on your own, and don't dump it anytime you have a new boyfriend. Good men won't appreciate it, and bad men will just manipulate you into giving up more and more.



Finding your soul mate requires that you first commit to loving yourself enough to make choices that make you happy. To measure how well you're doing in loving yourself, simply stop running, and quiet the noise long enough to ask, "Am I really happy?" If you avoid this question, you'll never create a good life for yourself.



In your 20s, have fun, learn and grow. In your 20s, learn to become independent. In your 20s, explore life's possibilities.



Experience everything you want to experience. Your 20s and 30s should be an exciting period of big dreams. Give yourself permission to spend a few years wandering about and figuring out what it is that interests you.



Don't live by anyone else's ideals but your own, and you'll start to relate to men very differently. Anytime you're too worried about someone else's approval, that person will lose respect for you.