In China, matches are being made in parks

BEIJING: Zhang Dianwei is on a mission — to find his daughter a husband. But he’s not turning to the Internet or using a traditional matchmaker.

Instead, he goes most Thursdays and Sundays to a park nestled in the shadows of Beijing’s Forbidden City, carrying a printed sheet of paper listing his daughter’s details such as her age, height, education and job prospects.

He then tries to seek out his daughter’s perfect match by wandering around a small corner of the park set aside for parents searching for spouses for their adult children. “She’s too busy to find herself a man. I only want to help her not be lonely later in life,” said Zhang, who lives in Tianjin.

“She knows I’m here. She knows I’m only trying to help.” Beijing’s outdoor marriage market — there are now four parks where impromptu — matchmaking meetings take place was started in 2004 by a group of middle aged men and women who met in a park during their morning tai chi exercises.

“It’s like a social service,” said one of the organisers, who would only give her family name of Gu. “Most people want to marry. They just don’t know the way.”

The park meetings, which organisers say can attract thousands of people at the weekends, spring from a growing trend in China in which young adults postpone marriage until later in life.

Traditionally people married young in China often in arranged marriages. Nowadays, increasingly affluent and well-educated Chinese are either choosing to delay marriage, or not marry at all, preferring to put their careers ahead of family life.

In March, the China Daily put the number of single men and women in Beijing and Shanghai at one million. “Today’s ‘singles’ wave is mainly composed of high-income, busy, professional men and women 28 to 38 years old with lots of diversions and high expectations of life,” it said.