Sheng nu (‘leftover ladies’) is a derogatory Chinese term for women who remain unmarried in their late twenties and beyond. Most prominently used in China, the term has also been used colloquially to refer to women in India, North America, and other parts of Asia. The term compares unmarried women to leftover food and has gone on to become widely used in the mainstream media focusing on the negative connotations and positive reclamation of the term.
While initially backed and disseminated by pro-government media in 2007, the term eventually came under criticism from government-published newspapers two years later. The equivalent term for men, ‘guang gun’ meaning ‘bare branches,’ is used to refer to men who do not marry and thus do not add ‘branches’ to the family tree. Similarly, ‘shengnan’ (‘leftover men’) has also been used, though this term is not as commonly used as ‘leftover women’ in Chinese society and single males reaching a certain age will often be labeled as either ‘golden bachelors’ or ‘diamond single man.’
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The Daily Omnivore 