User:Lautb/Shanghai marriage market

Overview

Seniors born between the 1950 and 1960s tend to be the vendors at the marriage market. These seniors advertise their unmarried children born anywhere from the 1970s to 1990s in the market. Advertisements in the form of A4 sheets of paper are attached to paper bags, clipped to trees, taped on umbrellas, or laid on the ground across People's Park. Most vendors sit around and interact with other parents asking about their child. They also browse the marriage market to take down details of candidates for their children.

There are two main zones in the marriage market: the free zone and the amateur matchmaking zone. The free zone is where concerned parents look for potential partners for their only sons or daughters. There are also some seniors looking for their own partners. Within the free zone, there are many sub-zones where parents can post their children’s posters. Some sub-zones are divided by birth year, such as the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s zones. Others include the overseas zone, “New Shanghainese” zone, divorcee zone, Muslim zone, and regional zones. In the amateur matchmaker zone, professional or voluntary matchmakers share lists of potential candidates to parents attending the market. There are professional matchmakers in the market who charge a consultation fee of RMB 100-200 for females and no fee for males. This discrepancy is said to be due to the surplus of females in the marriage market. According to local media reports, these professional matchmakers are often tricksters that disappear after receiving fees from parents.

Marriage markets in China

History

The first organized marriage market appeared in 2004 in Longtan Park, Beijing. Retirees who frequented the park for morning exercise found in conversation that many of them had unmarried children in their mid-to-late twenties. Anxious to marry off their children, the seniors began to hold matchmaking events where they presented information about their children and looked for potential matches. Since then, parks in major cities like Shenzhen, Wuhan, Shanghai, Hangzhou, and Tianjin have become unofficial matchmaking venues.

Patterns in Marriage Markets

These marriage markets do not have a formal organizer; typically, seniors living in the area gather voluntarily. Nonetheless, marriage markets tend to share similar characteristics. Firstly, sex ratios generally favor men, despite demographically having a surplus of men in China. In Beijing’s Zhongshan Park, 80% of parents are looking for husbands for their single daughters. The majority of participants in market are young, college-educated women who work professional jobs and grew up in Shanghai. These urban daughters represent China's new middle class but are often categorized as "leftover women" in these marriage markets. Parents adopt a range of strategies to market their children, such as having good customer service and negotiation skills, designing posters carefully, and dressing well to signify good upbringing.

While there are no formal requirements for one to be advertised in the market, certain traits are deemed more desirable. For women, younger age, attractive physical appearance, good education, and docile temperament are sought after. For men, it is important to have a higher educational level, good career, and high income. Men are also expected to own an apartment and a car. Having Shanghai household registration record (hukou) is immensely important for all participants.

Scholarship on Shanghai Marriage Market

Ethnographic research has been conducted to study parent’s motivations for attending the Shanghai Marriage Market. Paradoxically, Shanghai Marriage Market has a low success rate and most parents concede that it is unlikely to find a match, yet parents regularly return to the market to continue advertising their children. One study explained that the market responds to the collective anxieties of Chinese society, especially those born in the 1950s and 1960s. This generation of seniors are parents of the only-child generation who grew up as sent-down youth. In order to keep their urban household registrations, many of them remained single into their thirties, when they returned to their home cities. The state had to intervene in the dating scene to solve this problem of “overaged youth”. Another source of parental anxiety is an overarching sense of volatility and insecurity since market era economic reforms in China. Parents worry for their children’s financial stability in a fast-paced, expensive urban center like Shanghai, especially without a robust social welfare system that provides housing and security. As such, these parents are worried that their only children will grow up leading difficult lives and having unhappy marriages. The marriage market is an outlet for parents to share their private worries in a public space, something that traditional Chinese culture deems inappropriate in other settings. Therefore, the market’s primary function is to create social gatherings for seniors to share their collective worries in the changing environment of urban Shanghai.

The Shanghai Marriage Market is also a response to the rapid individualization in China since the market reform era. The opening of markets and state’s withdrawal from many social services creates a need for greater socialization, particularly for seniors from that generation. Therefore, the market counters social anxieties arising from marketization and commodification.

Other motivations for going to marriage markets include an emphasis on homogamy, as many parents only consider candidates from similar socioeconomic backgrounds as themselves, and skepticism about their child's ability to find a suitable partner.

Changes in Marriage Patterns

Baifaxiangqin

The term baifaxiangqin (白发相亲) describes the phenomenon of parental involvement in matchmaking for their unmarried children for the object of marriage. In addition to attending marriage markets, other types of matchmaking activities in China include matchmaking fairs, clubs, TV shows, and online dating platforms. Scholars argue that the rise of the matchmaking economy is due to the discourse on sheng nu, or "leftover women". The idea that women in their late twenties are considered “leftover” not only underscores the centrality of marriage in women’s lives, but also deepens the anxieties of parents eager to marry off their urban daughters.

Continuity of Traditional Ideas

Contemporary marriage practices in China reflect the resurgence of the traditional gender role ideology. Parents’ filtering of potential matches for their children in marriage markets aligns with the sociological concept of a “marriage gradient” , where men occupy a superior status and marry women below them in age, educational attainment, and occupation. The traditional Chinese concept of 男尊女卑 values the innate superiority of men over women. In marriage markets, women are evaluated based on their youthfulness, physical appearance, and temperament while education and income level are key characteristics in male participants. This reflects the traditional mate selection pattern of exchanging a man’s wealth and social status for a woman’s attractiveness and youth.

Traditional family values also shape parental involvement in marriages in China. Parents tend to prioritize the procreative and social support functions of marriage rather than the emotional component, reflecting traditional Confucian values. Furthermore, marriage is understood as an obligation that a child must fulfill, so not doing so would be unfilial. Because of filial piety, getting parental approval of one's significant other is essential before getting married.