By mid -morning on Saturday, the People’s Park in Shanghai is heading with people from all parts of the city wandering through the main gates to search for the temporary market that emerges here at the end of each week.
But this is not an ordinary market. There are no suspended owners who sell home appliances or fresh fruits and vegetables. In fact, there is nothing technically for sale here. Although hundreds of parents of unmarried adult children, many are at stake.
This is the marriage market. The pedestrian corridor, which rises across the park with stools and folding chairs, is operated by the increasing unmarried mothers and fathers.
For hours every week, they sit with the A4 paper marks to announce the main features of their children – age, height, weight, jobs and salary – hoping to secure a lifelong partner for their offspring, which enhances their own opportunities to obtain the descendants and safety of the family with net care when they enter old age.
“Most of the parents here feel distress from their children, so they do not usually accept media interviews,” says Zhao, 62, who was coming to the park of people at the end of each week. The old son.
He regrets that buying a successful marriage for children these days is more difficult than it was to generate his parents.
“Today, young people are appreciated by freedom and have high standards for what they are looking for in a partner. They will not give up just to fulfill all surface conditions.”
In this sea of advertising, which was placed on the other on the sidewalk, an invitation to expresses interest in interviewing a 26 -year -old woman, an area of 52 kilograms and is 163 cm long. She is a single child, a teacher at Shanghai Intermediate School, and a member of the Communist Party of China.
At the end of each week, unmarried adult parents come to the marriage market in Shanghai in the hope of finding a good match for their children.credit: Sanghi Liu
Another AD connects the 37 -year -old male store manager who owns a car, and has already bought a 200 square meter marital home, and has a “good moral figure, not addicted to tobacco, alcohol, or gambling.”
“Looking for a girlfriend born between 1985 and 1995 with a good personality. Hoko [China’s residency permit system] It does not matter as long as she is ready to live a peaceful life! “Read the mark, tell the connection details to Li, the man’s father.
Not every mark is presented by parents. Some of the bad luck in love took things in their hands.
Parents consult a numbers maker in the marriage market in the Shabani Youth Park. credit: Sanghi Liu
In one of the corners of the market, someone offered a wrapped paper on behalf of a 43 -year -old Shanghai man who lives in Melbourne. He works as a heating engineer, who gets an annual salary of 600,000 yuan ($ 132,000), and according to the uninhabited advertisement, he is looking for a 35 -year -old “emotional” partner or less than studying experience abroad.
The marriage market is a window to an old tradition in China, where parents have long had a hand in finding appropriate matches for their children. But it is a tradition that is renewed by transforming the positions between young generations towards marriage and having their children, especially in a climate of economic uncertainty.
China’s policy makers have left a demographic crisis, similar to those whose neighbors disturb Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, because they face the hanging workforce and prosperous costs in caring for the elderly.
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The population of China decreased by 1.39 million in 2024 – a third year in a row, the data issued by the government this month revealed – even with a sudden rise in births. Demographic expects the child’s mutation to be temporary, as a result of catching up with the knees after the end of the Chinese Chinese policy that prompted some people to delay marriage and childbearing.
Instead, they point to a 17 percent decrease in marriage rates in the first three quarters of 2024, indicating that the number of births this year will also decrease.
“Out of marriage, births are not very common, and in many traditional rural areas are not considered acceptable,” says Dr. Xijian Bing, who is looking for a Chinese population composition at the University of Victoria’s Political Studies Center.
“In many provinces, if you do not have a marriage certificate, it may be very difficult to register newborns.”
Many of the main causes of the corrosion agreement in China are not unique, and are common in advanced economies. The growing financial independence of women and its functional aspirations is compatible with an economic slowdown, as the narrow labor market remains characterized by the expectations of hard working hours and the unsuccessful arrangements for working mothers, while the costs of raising children increased.
Even the national calls led by Chinese leader Xi Jinping for women, more children had no significant impact, such as a set of measures such as cash incentives for women who have a second or third child, and support children’s care.
A woman is trying to find out information about a paper post that a man occupies in the marriage market in Shanghai. credit: Sanghi Liu
A little chat passes in the marriage market, where crowds are enlarged with potential parents and wives and husbands, as well as local residents and curious tourists.
Parents present each other with the opening lines of transactions about what they are looking for (a girl or a boy, educated from the university or not), while men and women younger in the twenties are trying to maintain the low level of the family.
Also, the inauguration fighter makers are, respectively, and are eager to obtain fees by working as a mediator between the parties concerned. A middle-aged woman, scouting to work, is trying to attract a possible customer to a conversation by withdrawing a list of candidates on her phone and requesting his year 1984.
“Oh, don’t look good for you,” she says she passes through the list. It is not a great tactic, and let her scream with more menus walking away.
Others reach the market with clear intentions and lists of desires.
John Chang, a 36 -year -old food seller, wants to embrace his traditional wife in the north of the east, especially his Buddhist religious practices.
He says, “I meditate for at least three hours a day, without moving at all,” which is a ritual that admits that it will not be a cup of tea for everyone.
People are looking for the ranks of signs that announce wives and husbands in the marriage market in the Shanghai People’s Garden, while exchanged some details of contact in the hope of lining a meeting between the two parties. credit: Sanghi Liu
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“The most efficient part of the arrival [to the market] Can you see who your father and father can be clear. “You can say their physical and spiritual conditions at a glimpse,” he says.
For parents like 62 -year -old Zhao, the market also works as a scale for expectations. At the present time, his son, a financial graduate with a “sunny, sunny person”, is looking for “a girl who does not communicate at least a Bachelor’s degree, with an area of 160 cm or longer and about 55 kg.”
A year after the market, Zhao found only two games for his son, and in both cases, the horizons faded quickly. He recognizes his influence on the result is limited.
“I only play the role of the fancy maker, and to redirect information and images to him. He says:” It is not up to me, but it is up to him. “
But it is not exhausted.
Zhao will continue to return at the end of each week, “until my son finds a suitable partner.”
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