Shanghai Marriage Market

How the market works

Parents and grandparents arrive in People's Park at midday on a Saturday or Sunday and stay until five in the afternoon. Each brings a written summary of an unmarried son or daughter: age, height, work, pay, schooling, family outlook, zodiac sign, character. Some pin the sheet to a line strung between poles. Others clip it to a tree, tape it to an umbrella, hang it on a bag or lay it on the pavement. Then they walk, chat and compare, hoping to find a family whose expectations match their own. Nothing proceeds unless the child's own standards are met first.

Where it began

The first of these gatherings took shape in 2004 in Longtan Park, Beijing. Retirees who came there each morning to exercise talked among themselves and found they had something in common: grown children, some nearing thirty, who were not yet married. Wanting them settled, the older people started to hold matchmaking events, bringing their children's details and looking for possible partners. Parks in large cities including Hangzhou, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Tianjin and Wuhan later became informal meeting places of the same kind. In Shanghai the market has stood at People's Square since 2004.

What parents look for

Parents weigh age, height, employment, salary, schooling, family values, zodiac sign and character. What is prized differs by sex: a young, good-looking, well educated and gentle daughter is seen as a catch, while a son is expected to hold a degree, a good job and a high income, and to own a flat and a car. A Shanghai hukou, the household registration, counts enormously for everyone. The numbers run oddly: although China has more men than women overall, parents at Beijing's Zhongshan Park were seeking husbands for their daughters in eight cases out of ten. Parents also present themselves well, dressing neatly and speaking persuasively, to show a child was raised properly.

Fees and matchmakers

Two areas make up the market. In the free zone, parents hunt for partners for a son, a daughter or sometimes themselves, and posters are grouped by theme: the decade a child was born, overseas Chinese, people new to the city, divorcees, Muslims, and home region. The other zone belongs to amateur matchmakers, some charging and some giving their time free, who hand parents lists of possible candidates. A paid matchmaker asks RMB 100 to 200 of women and nothing of men, a difference blamed on the number of women seeking matches. Local media reports describe some of these matchmakers as tricksters who vanish once paid. In April 2013 an advertisement cost about US$3.20 and stayed up for five months; brokers charged $16 for access to phone numbers.

Why parents keep coming

Parents know the odds are poor. Most accept that a match is unlikely, yet they come back weekend after weekend with the same sheet of paper. Researchers who study the market link this to wider worries in Chinese society, especially among people born in the 1950s and 1960s. That generation raised only children and had themselves been sent to the countryside as young people; many stayed single into their thirties to keep a city household registration, and the state later stepped in to help them find partners. Today's parents fear for their children's money and housing in an expensive city with thin welfare, and the park gives them somewhere to say such things aloud, which Chinese custom otherwise discourages.

How Shanghai Marriage Market is kept

Parents arrive at People's Park on a Saturday or Sunday around noon and leave by five. Each brings a written profile of an unmarried child. The sheets go up on strings, trees, umbrellas, bags or the ground. Parents then walk the paths and talk to one another, comparing age, work, pay, education, zodiac sign and family background. Where both sets of expectations seem to fit, details are exchanged and the two young people are put in touch later. No one organises the market: people simply turn up, and some older participants look for partners of their own.

When and where

It is held each Saturday and Sunday, from noon to five in the afternoon, and has stood at People's Square since 2004. Nothing about it belongs to a particular season or month. A paid advertisement stays on show for roughly five months, so a parent's search can stretch across much of a year.

The main site is People's Park in Shanghai, at People's Square, in the middle of the city. The same kind of gathering has taken root in parks elsewhere in China, among them Longtan Park and Zhongshan Park in Beijing, and parks in Hangzhou, Shenzhen, Tianjin and Wuhan. It is strongest in large cities with many graduates and professional jobs.

What Shanghai Marriage Market means

For the parents who take part, the market keeps alive an older way of bringing two families together, at a time when young people usually meet on their own. Continuing the family line matters greatly in Chinese culture, and many parents see this park as the one place where they can still help. It is also a public outlet for private worry: a space where one generation can name its fears about money, housing and the future without being thought out of place.

Who takes part

• Parents: write and display a profile of an unmarried son or daughter and talk with other families
• Retired volunteers: keep the weekend gathering going without any formal organiser
• Paid matchmakers: sell consultations and share lists of possible candidates
• The unmarried adult: is advertised in the park and decides whether to meet anyone, sometimes without knowing the poster exists
• Older participants: search for partners of their own in the free zone

Then and now

Since the first gathering in 2004, the practice has spread to parks in several large cities, and the posters have multiplied into overseas, New Shanghainese, divorcee, Muslim and regional sections. As the children of the One Child Policy reach marriage age, opportunities have grown less steady, and the University of Kent projected that by 2020 twenty-four million men in China would be without a wife.

Questions people ask about Shanghai Marriage Market

See also

Marriage marketPublic spaces where families gather to find spouses for their children through listings and brokers.Bride priceWealth paid by the groom or his family to the bride or her kin to formalize a union.Naked marriageA wedding without a house, car, or ring, chosen by couples in China for love and financial necessity.Bride buyingThe exchange of money or goods for a woman to become a wife.

Good reading and sources

• Finding a spouse in a Chinese marriage marketAl Jazeera, Article
• BBC NewsBBC, Article
• Finding a spouse in a Chinese marriage marketAl Jazeera, Article
• BBC NewsBBC, Article

• Shanghai Marriage Market on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• More photos on Wikimedia CommonsPhotos and video
• Wikidata recordOpen data

It may contain mistakes. Wedding customs differ from one family, village and community to the next, and the people who keep them know them best. If something is wrong, tell us. Last refreshed 2026-10-05.