Shanghai is quickly becoming one of the most futuristic modern cities in the world, but some things are still done the old fashioned way. It’s a city where one visit you will see an old alley with shacks and street markets and the next year it is replaced by a gleaming 90 floor glass and steel 5 star hotel. Everything is changing, or has already changed.
In Shanghai there exists one of the strangest ways I have ever seen for unmarried Chinese to find a potential spouse. There are a lot of ways to meet someone that you plan on spending the rest of your life with and modern technology has given that process even more options. This story isn’t about technology, this is old school. The Shanghai marriage market happens every Saturday, and there are hundreds, sometimes thousands of parents trying to find a mate for their single son or daughter. The scene is so bizarre. They have information sheets like they are trying to sell a used car. All the important info, height, weight, current employment status etc. But it is a market for people! Growing old without a mate in China is seriously frowned upon and you can see the distress in the faces of these parents. It is honestly sad. Other parents are browsing, notepad in hand, looking at all of the ads and writing down the contact information of potential mates. Some of the parents have made a long trek from cities far away, hours on a sketchy Chinese rural bus to try and find their child a spouse in the big city. If they don’t, they will be back the next weekend.
After visiting the Shanghai marriage market the one thing I keep wondering is if the single sons and daughters actually want their parents help in finding someone (I can’t imagine so). I wonder how many marriages come from the marriage market and if these marriages are happy, healthy and loving? Shanghai is an amazing city, and and the marriage market is a unique strange and unique spectacle but it leaves me with more questions than answers.
