The moving way these women got their parents to meet them halfway on marriage.

Annie Reneau
03.08.19

What do you do when your family expects you to get married but you just aren’t ready?

Women around the world continue to face this question as gender roles and expectations morph from generation to generation. In China, marriage expectation runs deep, which in turn often creates a divide between millennials and their parents. According to their parents, women are supposed to find a husband while they are young.  Meanwhile, the independence and ambition of modern young women are often criticized rather than praised.

All photos via SK-II.

But the world is changing fast. Many young Chinese women either aren’t ready for marriage or don’t feel the need to conform to the cultural expectations attached to it.  Marriage rates in China have plummeted. The average age for women in China to marry has increased from age 20 in the 1950s to approximately age 27 today—and that reality is causing a rift between generations. Women who love and respect their parents find themselves struggling to communicate their desire to hold off on marriage without being outright defiant thereby damaging their family relationships.

SK-II is helping young Chinese women and their parents bridge this gap with their #ChangeDestiny campaign.

The global prestige skincare brand wants to help women take their destiny into their own hands while also preserving and protecting their relationship with their parents. One way their doing that is by showcasing the story of three single Chinese women in their new documentary film, "Meet Me Halfway."

These women have spent years avoiding going home for Chinese New Year due to marriage pressure they'd experience from their families. In the film, each one takes the first daunting step to reach out to her parents so they can break down the barriers that have kept them apart and start building a bridge of understanding.

These women and their parents in the film aren’t actors. We see their struggles and real emotions as they begin the hard conversations they’ve been avoiding for years. The three women’s circumstances may be unique, but the gap they feel between them and their parents is the same. And with 8 out of 10 single Chinese women saying they hesitate to go home for Chinese New Year due to similar marriage pressure, they're far from alone.

“We want to tell women worldwide—destiny can change, when you have the courage to take the first step to meet halfway,” shares Sandeep Seth, Vice President of Global SK-II. “We hope the stories of these three brave women can inspire other women to take the first step, start a conversation with their families about marriage pressure and in the process, empower them to live life on their own terms and shape their own destinies.”

It takes effort and courage to change tradition, but these women’s stories show us that it doesn’t have to ruin relationships. In fact, it can strengthen them tenfold.

Duan Yu Li was excited to introduce her parents to her boyfriend last Chinese New Year, and had planned to bring him home for Chinese New Year last year. Unfortunately, her parents couldn’t accept that she was dating someone who wasn’t Chinese, and the whole trip got cancelled. Duan Yu Li wants her parents to be proud of her and her successful career, but she feels like they can’t connect because of their expectations for her to marry someone within her culture.

Yang Yang lives in Shanghai, but her parents keep pressuring her to come back to her hometown of Wengzhou to get married and settle down. "Women shouldn't work so hard," says Yang Yang’s father. Her mother adds, "It’s exhausting for a girl." Yang Yang says she feels indebted to her parents, but wants them to see her as an adult who can make her own decisions.

Lin Yan’s was raised by a strong, independent mother, and she has taken after her. A radio DJ, Lin Yan wants to focus on her career, but her mother is constantly trying to set her up with a man. She doesn’t always answer her mother’s phone calls because she feels so much pressure from her, which makes her feel guilty and widens the emotional gap between them.

Each woman wrote a handwritten letter to her parents inviting them to meet her in a neutral location, and we get to witness their moving reunions in the film. Through tearful hugs and hopeful words, these daughters and parents are beginning the process of mending their relationships and coming to a place of mutual understanding.

Hopefully, these real-life reconnections will inspire more families to take those fateful first steps to bridging this generational gap and find the middle ground together.

Watch these poignant stories unfold here:

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He was a homeless veteran. Karis Village offered him not just a home, but a community.

"To me, this building was just a gift."

Capital One

Brian Olesen never imagined he would end up homeless.

The former U.S. Air Force medic had led a full and active life, complete with a long career in the medical field, a 20-year marriage, and a love of anything aquatic. But after hip surgery and chronic back pain left him disabled in 2013, he lost his ability to work. Due to changes in eligibility requirements, he couldn't qualify for federal veteran housing programs. His back issues were difficult to prove medically, so he didn't qualify for disability. Though he'd worked his whole life, having no income for five years took its toll. He got evicted from a couple of apartments and found himself living on the streets.

But in 2018, two things completely turned Olesen's life around. He was able to both qualify for disability and to move into an affordable housing community in Miami's Goulds neighborhood called Karis Village.

When people think of affordable housing, they don't usually picture a place like Karis Village. The 88-unit development is brand new, and built with an attention to design that is not always expected for developments that serve as home to people on limited incomes. The apartments have tile floors, marble countertops, and all new appliances and furniture, and the grounds are beautiful and well-kept, with a playground and common areas for residents to gather.

Brian Olesen in his kitchen at Karis VillageCapital One

Karis Village isn't just a housing development; it's a home and a community. Half of the units are set aside for veterans who have experienced homelessness, like Olesen. The other half are largely occupied by single-parent families.

"To me, this building was just a gift," says Olesen. "All of the different parties that got together to put this building together… making half the building available to veterans. We've got no place to go."

Addressing veteran homelessness was one of the goals of Karis Village, which was built through a partnership that included Carrfour Supportive Housing — a mission-driven, not-for-profit affordable housing organization in southern Florida — and Capital One's Community Finance team. More than just an affordable place to live, the community has full-time staff on hand to help coordinate services—from addiction recovery programs to transportation options to job search and placement. Also included are peer counselors who provide emotional and psychological support for residents.

Karis Village, an affordable housing community in Miami, Florida.Capital One

Carrfour President and CEO Stephanie Berman says the core function of the services team on site is to build a supportive community.

"Often when you think of folks leaving homelessness and coming into housing, you think of shelters or some kind of traditional housing," she says. "You don't really think about a community, and that's really what we build and what we operate. What we're really striving to create is community. We find that our families thrive when you create a sense of community."

The intention to create a supportive community at Karis Village was a priority from the get go. Fabian Ramirez, a Capital Officer on Capital One's Community Finance team, says the bank did a listening tour in southern Florida to explore community development and affordable housing options in the area and to hear what was most needed. After deciding to partner with Carrfour, the bank provided not only an $8 million construction loan and a $25 million low income housing tax credit (LIHTC) investment to help build Karis Village, but it also kicked in a $250,000 social purpose grant to help fund the social support services that would be put in place for residents.

"It's not just all about providing the brick and mortar," says Ramirez. "It's about being able to contribute to the sustainability of the development and of the lives of the people who move into the building."


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Olesen says he and his fellow residents benefit greatly from the network of support services offered in the building. He says a counselor comes to meet with him once a month, sometimes right in his apartment. He also gets help maintaining a connection with the Veteran Affairs office. Other services include social workers and counselors for drug addiction and alcoholism.

Olesen loves being around other veterans, and he says hearing the sound of children playing keeps the community lively. He says anywhere else he could afford to live on disability wouldn't be nearly as nice and would likely involve shared kitchens and bathrooms and neighborhoods you wouldn't want to go out in at night.

If it weren't for Karis Village, Olesen says he doesn't know where he would be today: "I had nowhere to go and this is a safe, beautiful place to spend my retirement."

"I don't think they could have done a much better job of putting this place together and supplying us with what we need," he says. "I have so much appreciation for the ability to have a place to live. And then you add to that that it's beautiful and completely furnished and you didn't need to bring anything—I don't know what more you could ask for."

Karis Village and another development for veterans built the same year enabled the neighborhood of Goulds to meet the requirements set forth by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to declare an end to veteran homelessness in the area.

Ending veteran homelessness altogether is a complex task, but communities like Karis Village show how it can be done—and done well. When government agencies, non-profit organizations, and corporate funding programs come together to solve big problems, big solutions can be built and maintained.

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