Job ads with a difference: seeking husbands, wives

MEANDERING through the paths and plazas of People’s Park, spots of sun dapple the concrete as it breaks through gaps in the foliage above. However, once you reach the park’s alcove around exit nine of the Metro, the scene opens up from one of tranquillity to commercial chaos.

Clusters of umbrellas and notice boards line the pathway, boasting dog-eared posters and sheets of paper scrawled from edge-to-edge with curlicues of Chinese.

A brief index of information reads similar to a job application form, with age, income, education and hometown all advertised. Behind these makeshift stalls stand, sit and gossip an array of hopefuls: the parents or grandparents of the candidates catalogued before them.

Since its appearance the Shanghai “marriage corner” has become an institution in the city. Each weekend afternoon, hopefuls flock here with the intention of securing a spouse for their offspring.

They chat amongst themselves, trading statistical snippets of information about their respective children in an attempt to discern whether or not they could be in-laws. Others prowl the avenue, squinting at the various lists of details and occasionally scribbling contact information in small notebooks held open in their palms.

The modern day matchmaking website is brought to life in this bazaar.

In the face of children with values increasingly distinct from their own, these determined parents have taken up their children’s search for a spouse and have decided to quite literally go to “market.”

While on the surface this seems to be harmless parental meddling, there is possibly an underbelly of ageist judgement and pressured expectations. The most overt aspect of this is the label of educated, single, cosmopolitan women in their late twenties or older as “leftover women.”

While many Western women similarly have the ominous ticking of the biological clock to reckon with, these women seem to have a looming expiry date, after which they might be looked upon with a mixture of pity and aversion.

The tale of single men is somewhat removed from this form of stigmatizing. Despite the statistical scarcity of women, men, “successful” men in particular, could afford to be more selective. Conversely, for certain educated and financially independent single women, their worth sometimes seems to be more dependent on their age than their accomplishments.

This ageism is in turn playing into the disagreement between some parents and their children in terms of the purpose of marriage, and the selection of suitable spouses. The listings at the matchmaking corner epitomize what such parents consider to be a desirable match: a good job and a good family.

This is often more important than attraction and romance.

However, consideration of the extended family and the maintenance of the family line are giving way to more personal consideration that values education and career.

One of Shanghai’s recent statistics, from 2014, shows the average age of marriage was 30.11 for men and 28.14 for women. This shows an increase in age from 2005 statistics which were 26.68 for men and 24.37 for women. While shifting social trends are indicative of a changing approach to marriage, it is still generally considered a social norm, and is thus accompanied with a hefty dose of parental pressure.

A 2016 national survey carried out by the Caring for the Next Generation Working Committee reported that 86 percent of people aged 25 to 35 stated they had been pressured by their parents to get married.

The issue is compounded by the dominance of families comprised of only one child, on whom parents fix all their ambitions and expectations. This focused pressure sometimes places young people in a difficult position with their parents.

The generational gap between more traditional parents and their forward-thinking offspring will not narrow if either side of the debate fails to see the argument of the other.

Parents like those who frequent People’s Park with personal advertisements of their children claim to be acting in their interests, but if they do not fully comprehend what these interests are, or make assumptions based on the manner in which they were married, they are at risk of straining their relationship with their offspring.

Becky Cook is an intern at Shanghai Daily.