"Hello! Do you want a girlfriend?" a Chinese man asked me. He was around 60, not that many teeth left in his lower jaw, wore a jacket and an honest smile. The Marriage Market, or Wedding Market, happens for a few hours every weekend in the park close to the Peoples square station (exit 5, around 12 to 15 or 17). Here worried parents meet to advertise their children. Grown up children, and single that is. With or without their consent, and perhaps knowledge, they display small ads that tries to sell in the kid. 99% of them are A4-size, written with plain black text on white background. Some of it I can figure out. Born 1975. 167 cm tall. 55 kilos. Earns 3300 RMB per month. Has a parent that worries he or she won't become married. Pictures are rare, but the occasional one doesn't really try to sell them. Imagine a passportphoto, not very seductive.
I see hundreds if not a thousand ads in this 14-million inhabitants city. Some ads are clearly written by the same person and co-located; in the land with a single-child-policy, this must be matchmaking-companies making a dime. Other ads are displayed by a single parent who put the note on a small box on the ground, sitting and waiting, hoping that someone that passes and reads will be interested and strike up a conversation. If both find the other persons child to be a potentially worthy spouse for their child, either a date is set up, or just contact information exchanged.
"Thank you, but I have a great one at home." We talk for a while. He says he has been coming here almost every weekend for the past two years, looking for a spouse for his daughter. I ask why they don't come here themselves, he suggests that maybe they are too shy, or are working too hard.
Apparently, marriage is a primary success factor in Chinese society. There are considerable differences between how people meet in Western (here: Swedish) society and Chinese. In China, it's fairly common to have been introduced by someone. Sometimes it works out.
Chinese women are (were?) afraid to become a 3S-woman: single, seventies (ie born then, around 30yo) and stuck. But they are also becoming a force to count on, they don't like being looked down upon, or patronized, by those already married. So I wonder how many of those with parents at the Marriage Market actually want them to be there.
I left the parents in the rain while I took a walk and found a neighborhood with old, abandoned buildings. They had made a parking lot right next to it, maybe that's how it had survived the in-Shanghai-ever-so-present bulldozers. As I love that kind of stuff, I walked around, discovering moldy wood, piles of bricks that used to be a wall and lots of rubbish, at the same time taking a lot of pictures, thinking that this is sooo cool! And in the middle of Shanghai! Suddenly a window opened, it wasn't so abandoned after all. Guess it's all about location, location, location. Or survival, or something.
Some scammers tried their game with me, fail. But their compliments (as they try to do that, flatter you or sth) are interesting as they reflect what they think is beautiful (or think I think I want to be complimented for). They like my nose?? It's big?? (and ofc tall, blond etc). What about my dashing intellect? My thinking out of the box? Leadership abilities? Why didn't they consider that?! Or perhaps that's what they did. Don't know what I would be most offended by.
"I've got to be going, I wish you and your daughter the best of luck! Sze-sze, bye bye!"