“It’s a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.” Jane Austen
It’s the conceptual mantra of thousands who flock to Shanghai’s People’s Park each weekend. On Saturdays and Sundays, this bustling bit of the city center transforms into a live marriage market. Thousands of advertisements hang from canopies and cover the walls of tunnels throughout the park as parents tout their children’s eligibility for marriage: height, weight, age, economic security. For eligible bachelors and bachelorettes, enthusiastic crowds of mothers, fathers, aunts, and grandparents spring up instantaneously, offering proposals and urging the unmarried to make further plans with their families. Combined with the pop up enterprises offering to find the best matches, and draw up contracts on the spot, it’s as if an extreme version of online dating has come to life.
For visiting American student Jason Wang, this particular Sunday afternoon at People’s Park is an experiment. Armed with a sheet of paper detailing his appealing attributes (age, income, American citizenship), he set up shop with Enid Zhou and Emily Chang, his classmates who acted as interpreters. “We’re like his Chinese parents,” they said.
Within minutes, a crowd began to gather. Half an hour later, he was entirely encircled, and having received a number of serious offers, he decided it would be unfair to continue to lead them on. “Especially as an American, I’m a catch,” Wang said, laughing. “Really the only question was “Why are you so young? If I stayed too much longer I might have left with a promise I wouldn’t be able to keep.”
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