Marriage markets have popped up in parks across the length and breadth of China due to knock on effects of Beijing’s 1979 One Child Policy, which left women vastly outnumbered
Would you allow your mum to find your future husband of wife? That’s what’s going on in China, wherethe parents of unmarried singletons are gathering for “real-life dating apps” as the country struggles with a marriage crisis and plummeting birth rates.
On Friday and Saturday mornings, hundreds of parents longing to have grandchildren, flood a park on the top of a hill in a southwestern Chinese city for “xiangqin jiao”, which is commonly known as a marriage market in English.
The crowd mostly consists of retirees holding paper résumés, a tangible version of the online dating profile, displaying the most-attractive information about their single adult children.
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Many don’t include a photo or name, but describe their gender, age, height and job. There are other details which would likely spark fury in the West, including weight and earnings.
At the marriage market in Chongqing’s People’s Park, one woman’s profile said her prospective husband must have “no bad habits”, be shorter than 5ft8, weigh around 145lb and be under 29 years old. She simply listed her $560 (£428) monthly salary and the assets she owned.
China’s one-child policy – which came in under the rule of Deng Xiaoping in 1979 – was introduced amid fears of China’s booming population. It has continued to have lasting effects despite being repealed in 2015. Men – who now vastly outnumber women – are often not considered suitable spouses as many of the single child daughters received better education and resources than their male counterparts.
Government policy has now come full circle as child care subsidies are being offered to incentivise births as just 6.1million couples in a country of more than a billion registered marriages last year.
Zhang Jing, 34, who works in sales, was there looking for a husband herself rather than sending her parents. She’s found it hard to find a suitable mate because many don’t earn enough money or have their own home. “It isn’t that we’re picky,” Zhang said. “They aren’t good enough.”
A man who might make the cut was Huang Weiming, 36, who shared his stats with the Wall Street Journal. He is 5ft7, works in marketing for around $17,000 (£12,772) per year, and owns a house and a car. His sole requirement was “thin”, before adding “someone who shares my values”.
“There’s an expectation that men have to do this or that to meet women’s requirements,” he said. “There’s a lot of ‘toxic chicken soup[negative online content]’”. He said he will give up and become a bachelor if he doesn’t find a partner by the age of 40.
State media says the first of these self-organised markets emerged in Beijing in the early 2000s, before spreading to a number of other cities.
Success stories are few and far between, but people still continue to pour into the parks around the country with their laminated placards. Some believe they act as a third space for retirees to hang out, gossip and complain about the state of the situation.