By Liu Chang
What if your parents were in charge of your Tinder profiles? That’s pretty much what’s happening at Shanghai’s ‘marriage market,’ a weekly gathering in the centrally located People’s Park. Each week, the park becomes a sea of color, as parents open umbrellas bearing personal ads for eligible singles and their ideal partners.
Most of the ads are for lonely hearts intheir 20s or 30s –– but you’d be hard-pressed to spot one in the crowd. Instead, the ads have been written by their middle-aged parents, who also man their umbrellas, eager to talk to any passerby who shows interest in their adult child’s description. Other corners of the park are reserved for people living overseas and for middle-aged people who are divorced or widowed and looking for another chance at love.
Over the course of two months, Sixth Tone collected 874 such ads.
Click 'Read Orignial' below to find out what data analysis of hundreds of personal ads says about Chinese views on relationships.
Try our Shanghai 'marriage market' dating game.
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