Wanted: Someone with Whom to Simply Pass the Days
“I’m twenty—too young to get married!” I said in Mandarin to a Chinese mother at the grassy People’s Park in Shanghai. “But,” I playfully nodded at my roommate, Xiao Feng, “she is twenty-four, a graduate student and she’s single!”
The mother’s eyes jumped from me—an outspoken, petite, blonde, blue-eyed American in a pink floral sundress—to Xiao Feng—my sweet and very shy friend who had yet to kiss anyone on the lips.
“Oh, no, no, no,” Xiao Feng laughed and shook her head before the woman could speak.
On a wooden table in front of the woman, a piece of paper listed all that her son’s statistics, like a baseball trading card. Male, Age: 33, Height: 1.80 meters (5’9), Education: Master of Finance, Work: International Banker, Housing: Apartment in Pudong, Income: ¥450000 (about $63,000). Wanted: Simply someone with whom to pass the days. The man’s phone number was scribbled in blue marker on the bottom.
Similar ads were taped to polka-dot and plaid umbrellas. Ads were placed on park benches and in rows on the edges of the brick pathways. Aged parents paced, hands clasped behind their backs, or sat on little plastic stools, yawning and fanning their wrinkled faces as they waited to broker a match. Others held up their phones to show pictures of their adult kids in professional attire. The animated parents were framed by trees, bushes and fountains. And sleek skyscrapers, like the Shanghai World Financial Center, loomed in the distance. I imagined the adult kids on the umbrella ads typing away in a tenth-floor office.
As part of an intensive summer language program at Shanghai University, our assignment was to attend this weekly marriage market, take notes and interview at least one parent. The markets began in the early 2000s as an attempt to promote marriage among the increasingly single young population. According to the Chinese Ministry of Civil Affairs, Shanghai has the lowest marriage rate in the country. Single people in their twenties and thirties, often referred to as “leftover” in Chinese, are waiting for or abstaining from marriage because they want to pursue professional careers and women no longer rely on husbands financially. Such apathetic attitudes toward marriage are a source of resentment among parents who want their children to find lifelong companionship and to continue the family line. Many single young people have even begun to “rent” boyfriends or girlfriends from escort services to bring home during Chinese New Year, which, to me, sounds like the plot of a romantic comedy.
The director of my program had “hand-selected” roommates for us according to mutual interests, and I think she really got it right by pairing Xiao Feng and me. Xiao Feng was just as much of an obsessive overachiever as I was. The two of us often stayed up well past 1 a.m.—she, making PowerPoints for the kindergarten English-language class she taught, and me, writing articles about my experiences in Shanghai for the school paper back home. One night, my laptop crashed, so we tag-teamed with her laptop—one of us lying half-asleep in bed while the other furiously typed. She joked that the laptop was our relay baton.
Roommates were also required to assist us American students in our language-learning. So, Xiao Feng joined our field trip to People’s Park to help me, and we made plans to grab lunch afterwards. On the crowded Saturday morning subway ride to the park, we chatted about my boyfriend back home. Drew and I had only been together for a few months and wanted to keep things “casual.” I tried to explain the concept of an open relationship to Xiao Feng, but she didn’t see the point of being with someone unless it would lead to marriage. “Love is like . . . a bottle of water,” she said and held up her pink thermos, “if we empty out all the water on someone we don’t really care about, then there will be no love left for our soulmate!” I shook my head but wondered if maybe she had a point. Was I dumping all of my love-water too quickly? Drew and I hadn’t really been doing well keeping things “casual” . . . a few weeks before I left for China, we had driven twelve hours to my hometown, he met my parents, and before I knew it, he was playing chess with my grandpa and being featured on my grandma’s Facebook page. On the last day of Drew’s visit, we cuddled under the duvet in the guest bed and said we loved each other.
Xiao Feng and I emerged from the subway onto crowded Nanjing Road, linked arms and walked through the park entrance. Many parents snubbed us at first. I had expected them to welcome my curiosity, but Xiao Feng said they took their matchmaking role very seriously and only wanted to talk to people with legitimate offers. Also, she said, they were probably sick of foreigners and journalists questioning their practices. Eventually, though, the mother of the 33- year-old banker, who had a gentle face, agreed to speak with us. I asked her why she was helping her son find a partner and she said because he was too busy working.
“He leaves early in the morning and works overtime, so he doesn’t get home until 9,” she said. “He has no free time to go out and find a girlfriend!”
I nodded and wondered if the guy had ever used Tantan, a Chinese app similar to Tinder, or had ever drunk-texted acquaintances to come meet him at bars, which was what I had done to first get Drew’s attention and spark our relationship. I asked the mother what she was looking for in her son’s potential mate and she said she just wanted an “ordinary” wife. Her desires were very different from what my parents wanted for me—unforgettable happiness. Later, when I brought this cultural difference up to Xiao Feng, she said an ordinary wife was probably preferable because a unique wife may be unpredictable.
The mother added that it would also be nice if the wife was pretty—perhaps, she could look something like me. I smiled, understanding—not only was I pale, which was extremely sought-after in China because tan skin signifies farm work, but I also offered a pathway to U.S.citizenship. Then I asked the mother how she would react if her son rejected the match she found for him.
“I’ll find another,” she said. “This is my responsibility as a parent.”
I admired her dedication but wondered if her son would agree. My Chinese teacher told me that many parents go to this blind date corner without their children’s permission and that many people are embarrassed to be advertised at the market.
I smiled and told the woman Xiao Feng was very pretty and smart and finishing up the last year of her master’s degree in Teaching Mandarin as a Foreign Language.
Xiao Feng abruptly thanked the woman for her time and whisked me under a tunnel. Advertisements hung from string on the walls. Female, Birth Year: 85, Height: 1.65 meters, Education: Professional College, Major: Business, Income: ¥300000 (about $42,000). Which papers would Cupid’s arrow pierce? Which couple would someday paste these ads into their scrapbook, like my mom did with her wedding invitation?
“Jacqueline, please don’t try to set me up again like that,” Xiao Feng said. Her voice was somehow raspy and squeaky. “I’m still young, I’m not trying to get married anytime soon.” Xiao Feng told me she thought marriage markets were odd because parents essentially commodify their children. But I was having too much fun pretending to be her matchmaker. Even though I thought the marriage market concept was absurd, I figured I would humor the parents and get bashful Xiao Feng to laugh. Also, I thought Xiao Feng was a really great person who didn’t give herself enough credit. Bragging about her accomplishments to the parents was my weird way of showing I cared.
In a discussion in Chinese class, my American peers and I had ranted about how marriage shouldn’t revolve around the Chinese expression of Méndānghùduì, which means that couples of the same socioeconomic status make the best marriages. One should marry for true love and nothing else, we thought. Arranged marriage was originally a cruel method of female imprisonment and so, even in its current form, it is ultimately unfulfilling. How can someone be too busy with work to put themselves out there and let chance take its course? I wondered. What happened to fate? Now that I look back on it, maybe we were unconsciously subscribing to Orientalism, Edward Said’s term for an imperialism whereby the West creates a sense of its own‘civilization’ in opposition to a presumably backward, mysterious, and exotic East. My classmates and I had automatically assumed our Western “free love” superior to Eastern collectivist marriage.
Even though I didn’t think the marriage market really worked, I was still infatuated. The endless possibility was like Tinder, but for lifetime compatibility, not just sex. The hundreds of papers that lined the stone pathways could represent someone’s future wife or husband. Oh, all the love in the air, I romanticized. Maybe Orientalism and the fact that arranged marriage seemed so “wrong” to my Western mind made it all the more exotic and sexy. Or maybe, my infatuation had nothing to do with global power dynamics and I was just in a boy-crazy stage. On the average weeknight in Shanghai, I would flirt with my classmate crush over some beers, then, facetime Drew, then, call my ex and finally, stay up past 2am comparing the three guys in my journal—who was the most intelligent? The funniest? The kindest?
Xiao Feng and I strolled past decaying green leaves floating on glassy pond water. The tired leaves seemed to push their lotus buds to reach for the sun. Lotus flowers are sacred in Eastern culture because every night they submerge into muddy water and then miraculously rebloom in the morning with clean, pink petals. It was a warm July afternoon and parents pushed babies in strollers, young children ran around, and some teens played frisbee, which reminded me of Drew because he loved ultimate frisbee and disc golf. The leisurely scene also reminded me of the times Drew and I had rolled down grassy hills at the park near our campus. One time he picked some tiny white star-like flowers, which were actually chickweed, put them in my hair and kissed me. Ah, I wish he was here right now, I thought and texted him saying I missed him.
On a corner near the exit, I was surprised to see rows of advertisements in English.
Wanted: Foreign woman.
Chinese fathers beckoned me to their laminated ads. I was intrigued and flattered so I pulled Xiao Feng to the corner. A sea of men encircled us and yelled over each other.
“Where are you from?”
“You are very beautiful!
“Do you live in China?”
“Are you looking to get married?”
I laughed and basked in the attention. But skittish Xiao Feng wasn’t pleased. She grabbed my arm and told the men to back up.
“She’s not marrying anyone anytime soon!” she said loudly and turned to me. “Are you okay? Maybe we should go?”
“I’m okay, but yeah, let’s go,” I said. We moved out of the center of the ring that had formed. A few determined fathers trailed behind us and continued to talk up their sons. One man announced that his son was a doctoral candidate in computer science at Columbia and I perked up. Those credentials were pretty impressive, I thought. Plus, the fact that he lived in the U.S. made a relationship more feasible.
“You know AI?” the father asked. “That’s what my son studies and develops—he’s going to earn a lot of money.”
“I know AI,” I nodded and thought about how I will probably end up with very little money if I become a writer.
I appreciated the man’s approach. My relationships in the U.S. seemed random. The two guys I’ve seriously dated just felt “right” in my gut and I hadn’t really cared that they had poorer grades than I and little ambition—my ex was in ROTC and dreamt of living on Mars, while Drew seemed to have no plan besides “becoming rich.” As the cliché goes, I just “followed my heart.” And now that I think about it, my heart led me to goofy and immature white guys with muscular bodies . . .
“Look, this is my son!” the father held up his touchscreen. The son wore blocky glasses and a plaid polo. His smile was kind and he looked broad-shouldered.
“Oh, he’s very nice-looking!” I said.
“Can I get your WeChat?” the father asked.
“Sure!” I typed my ID into his phone. Xiao Feng laughed and shook her head.
“Thank you,” the father said. “I’ll tell my son to send you a text!”
Other fathers noticed that I had given out my contact information and started to get their phones out, too.
“Okay, let’s go now,” Xiao Feng said.
We walked to the exit. Xiao Feng asked me if I was really going to text that man’s son.
“Eh, probably not—at least, not anytime soon,” I said. “Maybe one day. Who knows?”
Online sources report that marriage markets rarely lead to any real matches. Most people do not want to marry someone just because their parents found a one-page ad taped on the sidewalk. Unlike traditional arranged marriages, such as those often practiced in India, there is no obligation to pursue a date that was arranged for them at the market. “The ultimate decision is, of course, up to my daughter,” a father I interviewed said. “I do not control her.”
Parents are simply providing more opportunities for their children. The Diplomat magazine even compares Chinese dating corners to online dating apps. The real difference between online and offline, though, is who is doing the swiping, the article reports. But while traditional Chinese culture might be more collective and conducive to arranged marriages, globalization has caused individualistic Western culture to spread into Chinese cities, thus increasing the popularity of romantic self-chosen love, especially among young people.
The markets are less about finding an actual marriage, a Hutong blog post argues, and more about providing parents with a space to socialize and do what parents love most: talk about their kids. I think the act of searching for matches also makes the parents feel like they’re playing an active and vital role in their child’s life. Advertising their kid is an act of love, not a business transaction. I feel for the parents because when I was rattling off Xiao Feng’s accomplishments, I wasn’t trying to commodify her, I was just proud of her.
Lunchtime was approaching and Xiao Feng and I were sweaty and hungry, so we headed back to the subway and said goodbye to the marriage market. Since then, over two years have passed and Drew and I have been on-again-off-again. In the off periods, I “dated,” or maybe more accurately, “hung out” with a lot of romantic interests in the U.S., and nothing stuck. There was the guy who I thought was in the Army but who had lied to me about his entire identity. The guitarist who got sloppy drunk and insulted my friend. The accountant who invited me on his family vacation after only two dates. The online gamer who, during our first date, serenaded me with a Jason Mraz song in the car. Sister, you’ve got it all, he sang and held my hand.
Dating in the U.S. felt forced and only made me miss Drew more. I missed his carefree smile, and how, if I was having a stressful day, he would pick me up at a moment’s notice and take me to the lake. I missed our Monday night yoga and Smoothie King routine, our two-scoop Tuesday ice cream dates, and I missed jamming out to The Mamas and Papas in his apartment while I wrote memoir and he painted a mural. I missed how he always held my hand and rested his head on my chest, even when we were around his friends. I missed his disdain for social media, how he referred to it as “The” Snapchat. I missed how he lived fully in every moment— when he studied abroad in Kunming, China, he explored the city on the first day, befriended a group of hacky-sackers and joined their daily afternoon hacky-group. He balanced my type A personality and reminded me that it was okay to be human, it was okay to slow down and enjoy the sweetness of life.
When I missed him, I’d usually end up calling him and we’d get back together, but then, whenever we hung out, a little voice in my head would compare him to other imaginary guys— he’s not eloquent, his sense of humor is unsophisticated, he wears the same paint-splattered lacrosse sweatpants almost every day, The little voice told me that there were millions of other options and I could do better. That I should be with someone who “challenged” me. That I should break it off because there was a more “perfect” soulmate somewhere out there just waiting to be found—perhaps, an older man with 5 o’clock shadow, a briefcase and witty cocktail-party banter.
Research shows that we tend to fall in love with someone who is similar to ourselves: someone of the same ethnic, social, religious, educational and economic background. Someone of similar attractiveness, attitudes, expectations, values, interests, communication skills, and of comparable intelligence. Someone who lives near us. Someone who, say, your parents might try to set you up with at Shanghai’s marriage market . . .
If we tend to fall in love with someone who our parents would set us up with anyway, maybe arranged marriage isn’t such a bad idea? Proponents argue that arranged marriages start cold and heat up over time as the couple grows, and that they remove the anxious questioning of‘is this the right person?’ But critics point out that the passionate, all-consuming poetry of love is lost in the pragmatic transaction.
The family I babysat for in high school was the product of an arranged marriage in southern India. In her early twenties, Prisha’s parents and grandparents selected four potential matches from their social caste and she was responsible for choosing the one she wanted to marry. Prisha has always been very spiritual, so she asked her guru which man would lead to a spiritual partnership. The guru said Kabir, who enjoyed drinking beer and watching cricket. Prisha was surprised because she didn’t think Kabir even meditated, but the guru told her that was the point—Prisha would patiently guide Kabir on his path to enlightenment.
We have kept in touch over the years and recently, during a summer visit, I ate homemade chickpea soup and chatted with Prisha and her 15-year-old daughter, Myra, in their kitchen. Myra was telling us about her first crush. “It was so weird!” she said. “I just couldn’t control this feeling, but eventually, thankfully, it faded away.” Myra went to the bathroom and Prisha told me she didn’t know how to offer “dating advice” to her daughter because she had never dated. “To me, the matter is entirely spiritual,” Prisha said. “Kabir and I have been married for over fifteen years and we’re just entering into the infant stage of compatibility.”
While I liked the idea of starting cold and warming up, I didn’t think I was patient enough to wait fifteen years for compatibility to emerge. Then again, Prisha, Kabir and their children seem to live in blissful harmony.
In the past thirty years, there have been four main studies conducted in China, Turkey, the U.S. and India, two of which found self-made marriage more fulfilling and two of which showed no difference between arranged and self-made. So, I guess that means the heart wins and rationality loses? I was sort of disappointed. I wanted to believe in arranged marriage because the idea of diving into a life with an almost-stranger is not only intriguing, but shows that love is not a story of fairytale soulmates, but rather, a skill that can be fine-tuned over the years, which is what German psychologist Erich Fromm argues in his classic 1956 book *The Art of Loving. *
One of my Chinese professors in the U.S. had recommended I read The Art of Loving, because it made her completely rethink love. Fromm criticizes the Western ideal of “finding the right person” and instead focuses on developing the act of giving, not receiving, love. “Love isn’t something natural,” Fromm writes. “Rather it requires discipline, concentration, patience, faith, and the overcoming of narcissism. It isn’t a feeling, it is a practice.” Ironically, taking away the mystical elements of love made The Art of Loving even more beautiful to me because it meant that loving someone was a decision. “If love were only a feeling, there would be no basis for the promise to love each other forever,” Fromm writes. The book also made me think of Prisha and Kabir. They grew into love because they decided to give themselves fully to each other and their relationship. Meanwhile, with the façade of endless options on Tinder, Bumble and Grindr, my generation is vetting and tossing away less-than-ideal candidates.
In the words of biological anthropologist Helen Fisher, my generation often conducts the“sex interview” to decide if someone is worth spending the time, energy and money on a first date. Apparently, sex is one area in which millennials want to make sure they’re compatible. And we’re getting married later, Fisher argues, because we take love more seriously and are willing to take our time to get it right. She calls this phenomenon “slow love.” So, instead of uncovering the layers during an arranged marriage, millennials gather as much information as possible before making an educated decision. But the two courtship practices may be blurring together more than we think: The New York Times writes that millennials are prioritizing financial matters more than previous generations, which reminds me of the marriage market. The article quotes a twenty-four-year-old woman who said that when she first met her fiancé, she asked “what’s your credit score?”
This past summer, Drew and I got back together after a long break and things feel different now because I finally let go of the internalized pressure to “upgrade.” I realized that I never even wanted to be with some charismatic, satchel-toting intellectual in the first place, I just thought that’s what I should want. I realized that if I wanted to make things work with Drew, in the words of Xiao Feng, I had to stop sprinkling my love on all these random guys and decide to focus instead on developing gratitude in the relationship I wanted to grow. I realized Drew’s supposed lacking qualities are charming—his monosyllabic expressions are funny and counter my endless rants, his sense of humor is ridiculously immature, but it always makes me laugh, and it’s cool that he wears ratty old sweatpants because that means he’s not superficial.
This summer I embraced the attitudes of Prisha and Kabir, Erich Fromm and The Art of Loving. Instead of dwelling in the future and the fantasy of what could be, I decided to give my all to the person I loved standing right in front of me. And instead of measuring Drew’s credentials on an ad taped to an umbrella—credit score, career, respectability—I became aware of how I felt around him, which, even after two years, was always giddy and giggly. I know all the dating apps and the marriage markets would tell me that there’s someone better out there for me, but all I’m looking for is someone with whom to simply pass my days, and currently, I’m happy to cook homemade guacamole, play scrabble and watch America’s Next Top Model with Drew.
I also texted Xiao Feng for the first time in months and I discovered that she has a boyfriend. “He’s a silly boy,” she texted me with a tear-streamed laughing emoji. In the photo she sent me, her arm is woven through his and they stand in front of a huge pink plastic heart at the Wanda Plaza mall. She smiles softy. And no, they didn’t meet through the marriage market.