Shanghai Marriage Market, when you give up on Tinder and dating sites

© Matjaz Tancic

Every weekend parents and grandparents gather at the People’s Park and exchange information on their single children

Brilio.net/en - Is Tinder not working out for you? Given up on dating sites? Maybe its high time you fly yourself to Shanghai and attend the Marriage Market held every Saturday and Sunday.

You wont be meeting your potential new partner but you will meet their mothers, fathers and grandfathers. Every weekend parents and grandparents gather at the Peoples Park and exchange information on their single children, hoping that one match will end in matrimony for their single children. Since 2004, parents of single 20-somethings started posting the basic statistics of their children height, weight, job, zodiac and accomplishments, on flyers around the square and gather on a weekly basis to check on the prospects. More often than not, the parents dont have the permission of their children to be participating in the marriage market.

While it may seem strange to some cultures, parental involvement in marriage is an integral part of Chinese culture, where marriage extends far past the romantic notions portrayed in Hollywood plots. As mom and dads are aging, theres a certain anxiety that comes with a culture that is build upon a close familial unit, where grandparents live with their children. With the one-child policy put in place in 1980, it means that the parents have only one shot at securing their futures.

Adding to the pressure of the families to find their offspring a right match is the huge disproportion of boys and girls in the country, an issue also rooted in the one-child policy but exacerbated by gender selective abortion in a culture that historically favours males. According to date projections, more than 25% of Chinese men in their late 30s will never have been married by 2030. Pepper into this mixture the changing attitudes of well-educated Chinese women who are in a far less hurry to get married than their predecessors and youve got a recipe for quite a lot of single people in China.

The success rate of this so called match.com meets farmers market may not be quite where the concerned parents want it, but at least it provides a space of anxious elders to discuss their children and bemoan their situations. And maybe find some comfort in knowing that its not all that bad if your child isnt married by the age of 30.

(Reported by: Ivana Lucic)

(brl/tis)