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Alfresco marriage market In China, parents are clinging to low-tech matchmaking methods

Date: 2006-09-04

Shanghai -- "Male, 26, 1980, Associate's Degree, 1.7 meters, realtor-manager, 2 homes (3-bedroom and 2-bedroom), 5,500 RMB.

"Wanted: Female, 1.6-meters, Associate's Degree, steady workplace in Pudong, kind-hearted, diligent at livelihood, 3,000 RMB."

The above is not an item in the personals classifieds, an online service, or some dating bulletin board. Instead, the message is handwritten in a faded felt-tip pen on a 9-by-11 white sheet of paper, protected by clear plastic and cradled in the lap of a middle-aged man.

It is an early Sunday morning at People's Park in Shanghai and a man (he refuses to give his name) is prepared for a long day of perching on the wall alongside a flower bed. He says he's the father of the 26-year-old described on his homemade poster.

He's one of some 50 brokers who congregate at the centrally located park for an informal marriage mart that materializes every fair-weather weekend. Clipped to shopping bags, taped to purses, laid on a low bush, pinned to a tree trunk, or just sitting in a lap, the signs are the springboard for the sign carriers to screen and negotiate potential partners for their subjects.

Despite the mix of modern and Confucian values, family is still the organizing principal and foundation of security in China, and marriage is its bedrock. To encourage marriage, or to get better prospects, the family (read, parents) itself becomes the search engine.

This kind of personals-info swapping via parents goes on in parks all over China, despite the fact that the young generation is computer savvy and dating-meeting services online are plenty busy. Called "xiang xing" -- literally, "reciprocal relations" or "mutual marriage" -- it is the arranged marriage of traditional China writ for the 21st century.

According to the China Census Bureau, the number of single adults in the country has exploded, from 1.7 million in 1982 to 16 million in 2002. Many of these are female white-collar workers and professionals, whose high education level means that their marriage choices are restricted -- traditionally, they cannot marry below their educational level, income and job placement or position.

By some testaments, the in-the-park method works.

"It's my first time," says the father at People's Park. "My neighbor told me about it. He came and was successful. It took him six times coming here. His son had about 20 meetings with 20 girls before it worked," he said. The neighbor's son is going out with a girl and is headed toward marriage.

The first-timer's son knows what his father is doing, and supposedly is giving tacit consent to this activity. Besides, the son works seven days a week and is shy, the father says, adding, "We're desperate.'' (None of the people interviewed wanted their names used for this story.)

As he speaks, a 5-foot-tall, stoop-shouldered woman interrupts the conversation, jabbing with her elbow, grabbing the photograph of the son and peering at it closely. She asks one question, drops the photo back on the first-timer's lap and walks away.

Next to the first-timer, a second man wearing a baseball cap pushes his sign forward. He brings out another, then another. He has six prospects, he says.

Someone in the crowd whispers that he is not reliable.

A little later, by 9:30 a.m., the signs are everywhere: one clipped with a clothespin to a shirt pocket, one weighed down by a Pepsi bottle.

A few advertise services: "A bridge to someone else," reads one.

Ningbo, a city of 5.4 million people about 80 miles south of Shanghai in Zhejiang province, held a mega-matchmaking event in March called the Liang-Zhu Xiang Xing Hui (Liang-Zhu Mutual Marriage Fair). The event was named after the mythical star-crossed lovers, Liang Shanbuo and Zhu Yingtai, whose parents prevented them from marrying. The pair died of grief, only to release themselves from their tomb as two butterflies. The Ningbo event's name would amount to calling a marriage mart the Romeo and Juliet Marriage Fair.

Call it tragic, or certainly ironic. Yet 80,000 participants went to that fair.

No thoughts of tragedy or irony entered the mind of one 69-year-old man this Sunday in People's Park. Sitting on a bench with his sign resting on his half-bared chest, shirt unbuttoned in the sweltering heat, he says the son he is trying to marry off is his last -- "1976, Year of the Dragon, 1.74 meters," a computer engineer, 3,000 RMB ($375 monthly salary), seeking a female 2 to 3 years younger with an associate degree." From 3,000 RMB to 6,000 RMB is considered in the range of acceptable white-collar salaries.

"He's working. He only knows to go online to play games after work. What are you going to do with a kid like that?" he says to the other parents sitting around him.

Many of the parent brokers know each other from previous matchmaking marts. "Oh, that's a good system," says one middle-aged woman to another, about the way her compatriot has attached the sign to her purse.

The first round of poster reading often leads to a brief exchange of information. Then photographs might be shared. Then telephone numbers.

The game involves scoping out the parent and the remainder of the claims on the ad.

The most critical piece of information is education. An associate's degree (three years of college or university) or a bachelor's degree and above is always a point to advertise.

Equally important is the monthly salary requirement; usually the male salary is placed above the female salary. The firm for which a candidate works, if it is a foreign firm, is also usually placed high in an ad. If it is a female subject, the amount of mortgage left on a home is of critical importance.

It's all in a day's work for the parents, and they bring along an umbrella for shade, or a fan to keep cool, and perhaps a snack to fortify themselves in the middle of the day.

Some plan a full day's work, and sit until 6 p.m. The first-timer man has come in from the outskirts of Shanghai and will take a train back.

Some are less serious. The 69-year-old will give it a half day. "I'll sit till about 1 or 2 p.m., go to some restaurant to eat lunch, then go home after that."

What do the subjects, the bulk of whom are between 28 and 35, think of this? Absent from the milling, public swarm of warm bodies in the park, they share their views online.

"It makes me feel like I'm being sold the way they used to sell sons and daughters," a 28-year-old woman who calls herself Xiao V ("Little V") says on the Chinese language site, xinhuanet.com. "But I sympathize with my parents. What they do is pitiful, but I feel sorry for them. I don't want them to go; it's as if I have no ability to make my own friends. There is no trust."

Another young woman, Xiao Wei, answers on xinhuanet.com: "They won't say it to me, but they go out to do it. It's hard work; there's no face for them. It's more pressure than if they told me I should get married. I'd prefer it to be lighter, more natural. It will happen."

Another woman, 25, authors a blog she calls "Blind Date.'' She writes in Chinese, "My mother and father help match-make, but I find it very tiring when they find someone. We're two strangers. After we meet, we speak nonsense. Males are just looking for pretty face. And females are looking for money and position. It's too fake feeling."

Despite the fact that a park is the most public of all places, it's a type of black market and certain underground rules apply. Trust is not the basis of the encounter. This reporter and accompanying photographer eventually were shown they were not welcome. Some parents did not want their children's or their own faces and names to go beyond the local crowd. Children might not know their parents are pushing their prospects; the parents carry the shame of having non-marriageable kids. And, there is no guarantee of truth in advertising.

According to reports published by some wedding consulting companies that pay for marriage research, young Chinese are meeting and marrying through a mixture of traditional and some contemporary means: 20 percent through friends, 20 percent through matchmaking via family and friends, 15 percent at random, 10 percent on the Internet. The remainder meet through work, travel and professional matchmaking services.

The old ways are still relied upon. As singles search through electronic networks, their parents will use news from friends, relatives, neighbors and their own lively networks. The city park strategy may rank low or high, depending on experience.

Writes one unnamed single on the Web, "When I see my mother happy as I come home from work, I know she has found someone for me. I say to her, 'Last time it didn't work.' My mother then looks hurt and answers, 'Last time. Last time I found him in the park.' "

You can e-mail Olivia Wu at owu@sfchronicle.com.





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