I was taking a stroll in a park one day after getting lunch and I noticed the above postings. These are marriage advertisements that parents have posted for their single children. The majority of these personals seem to be for single women but there are also single men postings as well. This seems kind of similar to the personals section that used to be commonly seen in different newspapers in the United States however I don’t remember having seen them for many years in the newspapers in Hawaii.
I spoke with a local perusing the personals and I also asked around at my school about this issue. Many people have difficulty locating a spouse for one reason or another. A prominent issue is there are a number of unwritten requirements that are expected to be fulfilled in order to get married. These include things commonly expected in many cultures including our culture in the USA, such as the groom having a stable job, transportation, a good educational background. However, there are also additional requirements such as already having a home and having the proper hukou. The hukou system is a type of family registration program that outlines benefits and privileges afforded to families based on the geographic location within the country. This is an extremely important factor in finding an ideal marriage partner because having a hukou in a big city like Shanghai or Beijing increases the chances of being successful in the future for any future children a couple may have. Some news reports that I have watched even stated that for many residents, the single most important factor for choosing a spouse is the location of their hukou. Everything else comes second to this.
A lot of different information is written on the personals ad including educational background, career information, whether one owns a house and/or car, age, height, weight, personality traits, horoscope, birthdate, etc. The youngest age I saw on that particular day was 23 and the oldest was 33 with the majority being between 24 and 29 yrs. old. On certain days, parents will actually meet up where the ads are posted to share even more information about their children. Matchmaking is a very traditional aspect of Chinese culture and is a very interesting topic to explore.
Last week, there was an event held at the Xianlin campus of my university where all the student organizations gathered together to disseminate information about their activities and recruit members. This particular campus is located pretty far away from where our main campus is (about an hour away by subway) but I was told that this event is only held once a year so I decided to wake up early that Saturday and make the trek there. This was a novel event for me as there were so many different and diverse clubs to choose from. There was everything from music clubs to sports clubs to video game clubs as well as debate, traditional Chinese attire, tea etc related clubs. I signed up for a number of clubs and I am very excited to make new friends and learn more about the different activities available here.
Tony in China 