Single, chic and childless: China's 'cool aunties' defy traditional stereotypes

When your extended family gathers for festival reunions, you might find an auntie that breaks the traditional mold. She is much older than you but looks younger than her age. She wears exquisite makeup and snazzy outfits. She is single and childless.

She is one of the "stylish aunties" that have emerged as trend-setters on Chinese Internet. Like translator and Japanese-language teacher Huang Jue.

Born in late 1983, she lives alone in suburban Shanghai, but she doesn't socialize much with other relatives also living in the city, except for special occasions such as Chinese New Year. She is much beloved by children in the family.

"Maybe because of the snacks, toys and red-packet money I give them, they like to play with me," she told Shanghai Daily. "And I do have more in common with them than with their own parents because I keep up with trends, whether it's entertainment, fashion or gossip."

Another "stylish auntie," Liang Yiran hails from the city of Ma'anshan in Anhui Province and now works as a human resources manager in Shanghai. She said returning to attend home family reunions "strokes her ego" because she is the only one with a big-city career.

Liang attends family reunions with endless exciting stories to share with hometown relatives. Somehow, she has become a "go-to" person in the family.

"Whenever the children want to know something, their parents tell them, "Go ask Auntie Yiran,'" she said. "And it does feel good when young girls tell me, 'I want to be like you when I grow up.'"

"Stylish aunties" are actually a global phenomenon and hardly the spinsters of folklore.

In 2008, Canadian-American author and entrepreneur Melanie Notkin coined the term "PANK," which stands for "professional aunt, no kids." She found such women comprised a sizeable segment of younger women with disposable income, dynamic influence and a digitally connected lifestyle.

In recent years, "cool aunts" has become a standing tag on social media, and it has even become a popular trope in pop culture as more celebrities embrace the epithet.

American model Kendall Jenner once revealed how she was a "cool aunt" to all her nephews and nieces. The hashtag "thecoolaunt" now has millions of views on TikTok.

In China, the idea of such aunts started around Spring Festival two years ago, when an online video entitled "My Celibate Auntie Is Back to Hand Out Red Packets" received millions of "likes." In the video a stylish middle-aged woman sits on the sofa, holding a pile of 100-yuan notes to give to children. Probably staged, the video conveys the image of such modern aunties: single, pretty and wealthy.

With the concept going viral, bloggers on social media sniffed out new opportunities of attracting views and clicks.

Now, around the Chinese New Year, posts and videos like "dressing guide for stylish aunts," and "do's and don'ts as stylish aunts" flood the Internet. These are the work of bloggers eager to teach women how to transform themselves into "stylish aunties" and how to create a sense of high-end fashion at low cost.

Not all such aunties receive a warm family welcome, especially in relatively more conservative areas.

Tian Jiana, who is now studying landscape design in Japan, told Shanghai Daily that she hasn't been back to her father's hometown, a village in Jiangxi Province, for years.

"I was born in Changsha in Hunan Province, and my father was in Jiangxi and my mother in Shandong," said the 35-year-old. "It was a tradition that we would reunite in my father's hometown for the Chinese New Year, but I never experienced any of the considerations accorded to 'smart aunties.'"

Tian obtained her bachelor's degree in Beijing and worked for 10 years as a landscape designer before deciding to further her studies in Japan.

"My grandparents, uncles and aunts don't care about my career or anything I do," she said. "They only want me to get married and have children because I am an only child and 'duty-bound' to produce the next generation. It's not a family situation that I am eager to return to, and I don't care about what they think of me."

Tian's experiences beg the question: Is a "stylish auntie" a good auntie only when her lifestyle is widely accepted by her extended family?

Women are usually subject to harsher judgment than men for remaining single and childless. In China, where family culture is highly prized, it's not uncommon for middle-aged single women to face heavy peer pressure to knuckle down to tradition.

According to the "2024 China Population and Employment Statistics Yearbook" issued by the China Bureau of Statistics, about 28 percent of women 30 years and older are unmarried – about 50 percent more than a decade ago.

Liang from Anhui Province said although most of her family are kind to her, there are unavoidably a few busybodies who stick their noses into her affairs.

"You can always hear, 'When will you come home with a boyfriend?' or 'Your parents are not young and you should have a child while they are still young enough to help you,'" she said. "I'm fully prepared for these kinds of comments, and they don't bother me anymore."

The confidence of women like Tian and Liang shows the power and identity transformation of modern Chinese women.

Professor Zhu Xiaohui at Fudan University, an expert on women consciousness, wrote in December that Chinese women have been liberated from their traditional roles and now have more power in economic and political realms.

"For a long time, the ideology of Chinese society was controlled by Confucianism, which judged a woman's value only by their familial contributions," Zhu wrote in an essay on the changing culture of women. "But now, with the modernization of society, women have identities beyond marriage and motherhood. They have recognized their new identities, and society is gradually recognizing them, too."

Psychologists say that creating a self-identity can improve one's self-confidence.

"Positive psychological suggestions will improve one's mood and boost self-confidence," said Yang Li, a Beijing-based therapist who specializes in interpersonal relationships. "And when you're confident, you may tend to accept yourself and step out of your comfort zone to try new things and accept new challenges. It's likely that you will become the person that you dream to be."