Inside Shanghai’s marriage market - where parents seek a match for their unwed child

By mid-morning on a Saturday, the People’s Park in Shanghai is abuzz with people from across the city wandering through the main gates to peruse the makeshift market that pops up here every weekend.

But this is no ordinary market. There are no stallholders selling homewares or fresh fruit and vegetables. Indeed, nothing is technically for sale here. Though for hundreds of parents of unmarried adult children, plenty is on the line.

This is a marriage market. The footpath winding through the park is flanked with fold-out stools and chairs, occupied by the forlorn mothers and fathers of the chronically unwed.

For hours every weekend, they sit with A4 paper signs advertising their children’s key attributes – age, height, weight, job and salary – in the hope of securing a life partner for their offspring, boosting their own chances of having grandchildren and a family safety net of care as they enter old age.

“Most parents here are upset with their children so they normally don’t accept media interviews,” says Zhao, 62, who has been coming to the People’s Park every weekend for one year, hoping to find a match for his 36-year-old son.

He laments that procuring a successful marriage for children these days is harder than it was for his parents’ generation.

“Young people today value freedom and have high standards for what they are looking for in a partner. They won’t compromise just because all superficial conditions are met.”

In this sea of advertisements, laid out one after the other on the pavement, is a call for expressions of interest in meeting a 26-year-old woman, who weighs 52 kilograms and stands 163 centimetres tall. She is an only child, a teacher at a Shanghai middle school, and a member of the Chinese Communist Party.

Every weekend, parents of unmarried adults come to the marriage market in Shanghai in hope of finding a good match for their children.Credit: Sanghee Liu

Another ad spruiks a 37-year-old male department store manager who owns a car, has already purchased a marital home of 200 square metres, has “good moral character, and is not addicted to tobacco and alcohol, or gambling”.

“Looking for a girlfriend born between 1985 and 1995 with a good personality. Hukou [China’s residency permit system] doesn’t matter as long as she is willing to live a peaceful life!” the sign reads, listing contact details for Li, the man’s father.

Not every sign is presented by parents. Some of the unlucky-in-love have taken matters into their own hands.

Parents consult a matchmaker at the marriage market in Shanghai’s People’s Park. Credit: Sanghee Liu

In one corner of the market, someone has displayed a laminated piece of paper on behalf of a 43-year-old Shanghai man living in Melbourne. He works as a heating engineer, earns a yearly salary of 600,000 yuan ($132,000) and, according to the unmanned advert, is looking for an “emotionally stable” partner aged 35 years or younger with overseas study experience.

The marriage market is a window into an age-old tradition in China, where parents long have had a hand in finding suitable matches for their children. But it is a tradition being buffeted by shifting attitudes among younger generations towards getting married and having their own children, particularly in a climate of economic uncertainty.

It’s left China’s policymakers facing a demographic crisis, similar to the one troubling its neighbours Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, as they confront a shrinking workforce and burgeoning costs in aged care.

China’s population declined by 1.39 million in 2024 – a third consecutive year of backsliding, data released by the government this month revealed – even with a surprising spike in births. Demographers expect this baby boom to be temporary, the result of a catch-up after the end of China’s Zero-COVID policy that led some people to delay marriage and childbearing.

Instead, they point to the 17 per cent plunge in marriage rates in the first three quarters of 2024, signalling that the number of births this year will also plummet.

“Outside of marriage, births are not very common and in a lot of traditional rural areas it is not considered acceptable,” says Dr Xiujian Peng, who researches Chinese demographics at Victoria University’s Centre of Policy Studies.

“In many provinces, if you do not have a marriage certificate, it can be very difficult to register a newborn.”

Many of the key reasons for China’s eroding fertility rate are not unique, and are common across advanced economies. Women’s increasing financial independence and career ambitions have dovetailed with an economic slowdown, where the tight job market remains characterised by expectations of gruelling work hours and inflexible arrangements for working mothers, while the costs of child-raising have skyrocketed.

Even nationalistic appeals led by Chinese leader Xi Jinping for women to have more babies have so far had little impact, as have a range of measures such as cash incentives for women having a second or third child, and childcare subsidies.

A woman tries to figure out information on a paper post held by a man at the marriage market in Shanghai. Credit: Sanghee Liu

Little passes for chit-chat in the marriage market as the crowds swell with hopeful parents, would-be wives and husbands, as well as curious locals and tourists.

Parents broach one another with transactional opening lines about what they are searching for (girl or boy, university-educated or not), while younger men and women in their 20s try to keep a low profile as they surreptitiously eyeball the ads.

For-hire matchmakers are also on the prowl, eager to snap up a fee by acting as a broker between interested parties. One middle-aged woman, scouting for business, tries to draw a potential client into conversation by pulling up a list of candidates on her phone and asking for his year of birth – 1984, he says.

“Oh, it’s not looking good for you,” she says scrolling through the list. It is not a great tactic, and she is left yelling out promises of more lists as he walks away.

Others arrive at the market with clear intentions and wish lists.

John Zhang, a 36-year-old food salesman, is in want of a wife who will embrace his family’s traditional north-eastern Chinese customs, and in particular his Buddhist religious practices.

“I do meditation for at least three hours a day, without moving at all,” he says, a ritual he acknowledges won’t be everyone’s cup of tea.

People peruse the rows of signs advertising would-be wives and husbands at the marriage market in Shanghai’s People’s Park, while some exchange contact details in hope of lining up a meeting between the two parties. Credit: Sanghee Liu

“The most efficient part of coming [to the market] is that you can see clearly who your father-in-law and mother-in-law could be. You can tell their physical and spiritual conditions at a glance,” he says.

For parents such as 62-year-old Zhao, the market also serves as a gauge for managing expectations. For now, his son, a finance graduate with a “positive, sunny character” is looking for a “never-married girl who has at least a bachelor’s degree, is 160cm or taller and around 55kg in weight”.

After a year of attending the market, Zhao has only found two matches for his son, and on both occasions the prospects quickly fizzled out. He concedes his influence over the outcome is limited.

“I only play the role of a matchmaker, forwarding information and photos to him. It’s not up to me, but up to him,” he says.

But he is undeterred.

Zhao will keep returning each weekend, he says, “until my son finds a proper partner”.

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