" 'Boy or girl', 'How old' is the beginning of a conversation here, which makes you feel it like a slogan", the 70 years old Wang said. Since his daughter aged over 30, he begins to concern about her marriage and tries to seek a spouse for her at Beijing 's matchmaking corner. "As growing older you will find that it becomes more difficult to find the right person to marry, so if I don't even come here, then it will be hopeless ", Wang said, He has visited Beijing 's matchmaking corner almost seven years now.
In the early Spring's chilly days' morning, alongside the corridor of the Seven Star Stones (which was a place used for symbolizing the unification of China since Ming dynasty), there are flocked with hundreds of people; while they are not tourists, although you can see many group visitors in the Temple of the Heaven park often, whereas they are all parents. And here is one of Beijing's marriage markets. Those retired parents gathered here every other day in the morning to meet the future partner for their child. Even like the period of Spring festival, those parents still are present here on time, some are even in and out of few markets in the whole week.
According to China's Ministry of Civil Affairs, As the world most populous country china's single population has reached 200 million in 2015, which amount to the total population of Russia and Britain combined and accounts for 14.6% of the country's total population, and the percentage has skyrocketed from 6% in 1990. Experts predict that the China's fourth wave of singledom is coming. China has the world most imbalanced gender ratio, the range between 102 to 107 is identified reasonable by the UN. According to the data released by China's National Bureau of Statistics, the proportion of unmarried men and women in the post-80s generation is 136 to 100, and in the "70s" is 206 to 100. It is estimated that there will be 30 million more male than female seeking for the partner by 2020. As the marriage shortage looming in China,the parental matchmaking is a mirror of China's current marital problems of those so-called "leftover people".
Why is Matchmaking corner?
"Marriage is a must, in what life stage, you should do what kind of things"
Most parents here are with the size of A4 hand-written waterproofed resume of their single children with details such as age, income, education background, house ownership and personality, meanwhile, the favored characteristics of future partner also on the list. In 2004, the first matchmaking corner appeared in Beijing's Longtan park, its initiators are the residents nearby, who often go to the park for morning exercise and with becoming familiar with each other, their children's marriage issues naturally become their concerned topics. And now, the matchmaking corner has widely spread among China's cities, especially in the first and second-tier cities like Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu and etc.
China's marriage law stipulated that the marriageable age for male and female are 22 and 20 separately. Over half of children here are post-80s, aged between 30 to 40 years old, most of them are the only child of the family. According to Xinhua news agency, in 2017, China's eastern coastal city of Hangzhou, the male marriage registration on average aged 33.1 years old, female 33.1, rose 1.3 years since the year before, and the data of Nanjing, Guangdong and Shanghai are also likewise Hangzhou. According to the ministry of civil affairs, in 2016, China's registered marriages are 11,428 million , down 6.7% from the previous year. In addition, China's marriage rate dropped from 9.92 per thousand in 2013 to 8.3 per thousand in 2016. The trend of late marriage is looming among the country.
However, in both China's Confucian tradition as well as in its laws and regulations, Chinese society typically favors married couples. “Marriage is a must, in what life stage, you should do what things ”, Zhang said, who also seeks the spouse for his only daughter. For Many of matchmaked children, they actually unaware of that their parents are seeking the spouse for them in the matchmaking corner. Exploring of the reasons, some parents are out of the protection of the youngster's self-esteem and others because their children don't allow them seeking spouse in the matchmaking corner. Zhang mentioned, nowadays, young people are exhausted by the work and they usually with limited social circles, and don't have enough time and energy to build and cultivate a relationship. " Like our before, if you are single, the labor union will worry about for you first, they will talk with you and introduce girl to meet with. However, now these kind of things are totally market-oriented, the party, the government, the communist youth league and the women's federation all keep hands off, and those young people also seem don't worry about their marriage whereas as parents we can't keep hands off," he continues. For those parents, being the gatekeeper of child partner's choosing, they take that for granted as they believe they are with experience in this aspects.
Considering why the Chinese parents are so involved in child's marriage, Jie aihua,the professor of sociology at Zhejiang University, thinks that the relationship between Chinese parents and kids are without boundary, for parents, the commitment and love of their kid is lifelong, which also includes the involvement and interference of the marriage and family of their kids. The Chinese parents actually always in the presence or even as the dominant power in their child's marriage. On the other hand, besides family affection, Chinese parents have high-interest correlation with kids, they are trying through the marriage to keep their original social ranks or upward the social ranks, like if parents possess few houses, especially in big cities, which are theirs lifelong treasure accumulation, so they need make sure that they hand over it to the trustworthy person. However, she also thinks now more and more Chinese parents become sensible and keep hands off from their child and begin to just enjoy one's own life.
After more than ten years of development, the online dating market is maturing in China, and with the booming of China's single economy, in 2015, the online dating market was 2.7 billion yuan, up 21.1% year on year. In 2018, the online dating market is expected to reach 3.91 billion yuan. However, for those matchmaking corner's parents, they reject and distrust of online dating and prefer this kind of face to face blind date. Zhang thinks, China's tinder-like online dating website like Zhenai, Baihe, there are successful cases though, but too many scams.
The scholar Sun Peidong who once conduct a research book named " parental matchmaking: who can marry with my daughter?" . In the book, she analyzed that for those parents choose matchmaking corner to seek spouse for the kid is more likely a path dependence, the marriage of many of them mainly make match by parents' order and match-maker's word; so for them, it seems like a habit. For Zhang, matchmaking corner is a relatively trustworthy platform, because he thinks, after all, parents here are out of good intentions to find the spouse for the kid. "The most of kids here are the single child, and they are picky. Marriage is much easier when we were young; we just saw each other few times after matchmaker's introduction, we just got to marry" Zhang said, "however, now marriage is really a tricky issue, because unlike before we are in the acquaintance society knowing each other even from few generations before, now especially in Beijing, all people are strangers, so building trust and relations from scratch are not easy and we must be cautious ".
Alienated matchmaking
"Following the market logic, the properly matched marriage is valued here"
In China, the population distribution among single male and female are with big gap, those highly educated left girls usually more distributed in the cities ,whereas the left boys usually are gathered in the rural areas and with relatively low education qualifications. "There is much more girls than boys, almost 8 girls in 10, which is just opposite of the real gender ratio of our country ", Wang said.The gender ratio here in matchmaking also skewed.
Matchmaking corner as the marriage market, there are full of market logic, there is potential contrast and competition lurked among parents. Parents as the main character here, their manners and personalities represent their child, some of the parents here even dress up carefully for boast the image of the child . Besides, In the matchmaking corner, the steps of parental matchmaking follows the conventionalized procedures. " The first step is both sides of parents knowing each other and evaluate the child's information, if they feel that potentially matches with their children, and then will further conversations or even show the child's pictures if necessary, and after that if both sides believe that the boy or girl is the potential ideal partner for their child, they will exchange telephone number or Wechat account mutually to facilitate the girl and the boy's online meeting, and finally meet offline " , Zhang said, "proceeding through all these steps eventually to the marriage is actually not a easy thing",Zhang continues.
Following the market logic, the properly matched marriage is valued here in the matchmaking corner, and there is also the gender difference between male and female about preferred traits. For the male's part, the social resources are more preferred, those parents with son usually show the education background and house ownership, incomes or Hukou(the household registration card that permits them to reside in a certain part of the country) first; and about female's part, the natural resources are more emphasized, like age, appearance and then their educational background, incomes or house ownership are considered. " The boys here mainly pursue the girl's appearance and age whereas the girls are relevantly more reality because they need making the living in the future and hope to have a good development in the future, so they more value the boy's houses ownership, cars or Hukou", Wang said. For those outnumbered girls here in matchmaking corner, they are usually with high educational background and decent jobs, however they are actually in the unfavorable conditions here, as the entrenched gender stereotypes still under the play in the matchmaking corner. For those parents with son, they do not wish that their daughter-in-law more outstanding than there sons, even the body height.
At the same time, the contempt chain potentially lurked in around the matchmaking corner, inside between Beijingers and outside with outsiders. He, aged 66, is from Xinjiang. She has been searched the partner for her 40 years old daughter, "when you move around the park, there is a kind of uncomfortable you can feel, Beijingers have a sense of superiority over our outsiders, once I met a Beijinger here, the first question she asked me is that if I am the native Beijinger, for those people, people with Beijing Hukou even are not in their considerations", He said. He reckoned that the matchmaking corner has spread over the china whereas there are rare places you can find so overestimated outsiders like Beijing.
From Professor Jie's perspective, she thinks that under the circumstance of marriage market like matchmaking corner, the emotional interaction among the youth absent here, what those parents can bring out is the marriage resources with superiority or scarcity, naturally, material related resources are easily brought out as they are more measurable. She thinks, actually, the individual marriage resources have always existed in the marriage field, there is gender difference though. No matter in the young's relationships or from parents perspectives, the individual resources need be taken into account, as marriage need the material kinds of stuff support.
And on the other hand, the phenomenon of requests first at the matchmaking corner is also one of the preconditions of the low efficiency of the matching rate here; according to the study, the success rate at matchmaking corner is less than 1 percent. Considering the matching steps took by here, the final shortlist presented to the child is already carefully sifted by their parents at the initial choosing process based on the tangible traits of what they preferred . Jie believes, for those young people, so long as get rid of basic material shortages, the mutual acceptance and mutual appreciation are valued. Without this dimension, any requirements actually are not so important.
"we can whine about ours worries together here, and there also keep me a glimmer of hope"
Nowadays, China's aging population swells up, the park plays a big role among the Chinese elderly's daily life, the origin of the matchmaking corner was incubated from those elderly's morning exercises, they exercise in the park, they also socialize in the park. For Wang, heading to the Seven Star stones in the Temple of Heaven every other day just like a daily routine, being here they gossip away the time each other and ease the anxiety over child's marriage. " Everyday come to here like to the work, because staying at home makes me feel unease; after all, we can whine about ours worries together here, and there also keep me a glimmer of hope, if matched successfully finally that obviously much better".
