On a bustling weekend in Shanghai, right beneath the soaring glass towers surrounding People’s Square (人民广场) and drifting into the leafy refuge of the adjacent People’s Park (人民公园), a remarkable tradition plays out every Saturday and Sunday around midday. Known to locals as the Shanghai Marriage Market (上海相亲角), it’s a vivid, analogue-era counterpoint to swipe-culture dating apps—a sprawling outdoor “market” of match-making where parents roam, umbrellas in hand, showcasing résumés of their unmarried children: age, height, income, property, education, even house square footage. It’s part cultural time-capsule, part social pressure cooker—and amid China’s marriage-and-birth-rate anxieties, it remains one of the most photographed and pondered rituals in modern urban life.
Walking into the scene, you’re greeted by rows of umbrellas (雨伞 yǔsǎn) each anchored with a printed A4 sheet or plastic sleeve listing the stats of a “candidate”—“男，32岁，身高178cm，北京户口，月薪2万” (“male, 32 yrs, 178 cm tall, Beijing hukou, monthly income 20 k RMB”). The listings are ambitious: “女，28岁，硕士，身高165cm，无房” (“female, 28 yrs, master’s, height 165 cm, no property”) and the implicit wish-list of the parent: “希望男方年收入30万以上，有房” (“hopes the male’s annual income >300 k RMB, has property”). It’s less about love at first sight and more about socioeconomic matching—the Chinese term 相亲 (xiāngqīn)—matchmaking, especially parental-led—still very much alive. The market fills a social niche: for many parents, the hours spent leafing through others’ yellowing stacks of profiles is as much about networking and voicing anxieties as it is about finding a partner for their child. According to one ethnographic study, while few “matches” result directly, the market serves as an outlet for the parental generation’s anxieties in a rapidly changing urban society.
A recent first-person experience published in the South China Morning Post (SCMP) saw the author describe the People’s Park phenomenon as a “ruthlessly efficient analogue of Tinder, run by elderly Chinese parents.” She noted the unrelenting metrics: height, salary, property ownership—“In that order,” she writes—and how the adult children, ironically, are mostly absent, leaving their concerned parents to barter, negotiate and network.
Yet this ritual doesn’t exist in isolation. It reflects wider demographic and policy triggers. The Chinese government’s recent push to reverse the slide in marriage and birth rates has led to unexpected adjustments: in 2025, for instance, couples were allowed to register their marriages anywhere in China—not just in their hometown hukou (户口) district—and authorities even opened registration desks in nightclubs, scenic resorts and mountain peaks to make tethering to matrimony “fun” again. At the same time, a feature in the Wall Street Journal noted that the weekend matchmaking stalls such as the Shanghai market have become “real-life dating apps” for parents who don’t trust—or whose children don’t use—digital platforms.
Culturally the scene taps into deep currents of family obligation (孝, xiào) and “left-over” single status (剩女 shèngnǚ for women, 剩男 shèngnán for men) that still resonate in China despite shifting attitudes toward independence and marriage. While these gatherings may look quirky to outsiders, for many locals they embody a mix of tradition and urgency: the ideal of a balanced, stable marriage remains a pillar of social respectability, especially in mega-cities like Shanghai where housing, income and “good matches” carry high stakes.
And yet: the mismatch between what parents want and what younger urban singles accept is widening. With increasing emphasis on personal fulfilment, career, and autonomy, many singles or newly launched professionals in Shanghai decline to be advertised by their parents. As one Reddit commenter put it: “It’s kind of fun to wander through this market once, though it’s more about the parents chatting. The children don’t give a toss!”
Walking among the stalls you’ll observe hand-written sticky notes slung over tree branches, dotted umbrellas planted next to pigeons cooing under shaded netting, overheard discussions of annual bonuses, apartment locations, and zodiac-sign compatibility. It is at once social theatre and economic calculus. If your child lacks property in Shanghai or doesn’t earn enough to meet the “house+car+hukou” standard, they might never appear on a parent’s résumé poster here—but the ritual persists because the parents themselves are still showing up.
And for an urban writer or curious traveller? The Shanghai Marriage Market remains a compelling snapshot of a China in flux: where modernity collides with tradition, parents grasp for control amid uncertainty, and the pathways to partnership get judged not just by love, but by ledger lines.
Ah, the Shanghai Marriage Market—my beloved weekend circus of laminated résumés, umbrella-tents, and parents who negotiate dowries with the precision of seasoned diplomats. Sweethearts, if anthropology ever needed a theme park, People’s Park would be it. I mean, who needs Netflix when you have Aunties and Uncles shouting about their son’s gaokao score? This “market” is harmless… well, harmless until it isn’t, but let’s not spoil the vibe just yet.
Look, I adore these parents. Let them dream. Let them bargain like they’re buying a secondhand scooter. Let them describe you as “kind-hearted, stable job, good kidneys.” They’re doing their best with the tools they inherited from 1980, before dating apps, social mobility, and emotional intelligence entered the chat. For them, this market is therapy: a place to vent, gossip, compare bridal expectations, and reassure themselves that their offspring will not die alone eating cold noodles in a rented subdivided apartment. Bless their anxious hearts.
But my dears—while Aunties and Uncles are swapping your vital statistics like Pokémon cards—you, YOU, hold the ultimate veto power. No one is going to drag you down the aisle because someone waved your height and income on an umbrella pole. The final say, the ultimate swipe left, belongs entirely to you. That is the beauty of modernity: parents can hustle, but you can ghost.
So keep calm. Let them print those A4 résumé sheets. Let them boast about your master’s degree even though you’re secretly planning to quit your job and become a pastry influencer. Let them insist that property ownership is the cornerstone of marital bliss while you quietly prioritize shared values, humor, and emotional compatibility.
And meanwhile, my darlings, do yourselves a favor: stick to your digital apps—or even better, meet people in your daily life. Talk to humans in cafés, gyms, workplaces, escalators, Metro platforms. Actual sparks happen in random encounters, not on umbrella-tops with long lists of “must be 1.78m or higher” written in bold.
Because here’s the spicy truth Auntie wants framed on your bedroom wall: the key word, now and always, is Love. Not square meters. Not salary brackets. Not zodiac signs or blood types. Love—the wild, inconvenient, irrational, delicious force that makes all these markets and metrics feel adorably outdated.
Let the parents play matchmaker. Let the kids live their lives. And may all your matches—digital, parental, accidental—lead you somewhere joyful, consensual, and wonderfully surprising.