Love Markets in China

A man goes for an evening stroll in a suburb of Shanghai.
Life in China’s megacities can be very lonely. The apartments are small and the cities massive. Everything is mediated by a cellphone screen. Talking to your friends, ordering food or paying for groceries, all is done on a smartphone.

Many women resort to classes to educate themselves about men and romance. The Weime Club classes divide themselves in Theoretical and Practical. “The truth is that I’m very shy and it is hard for me to talk to guys. That is why I came here today, to learn” explains Dream. The objective is to get as many phone numbers as possible, using every means necessary.

“One of the tricks is to tell men that you have run out of battery. So you ask him to take a picture of you and to send it yo your phone.” says Eric, the teacher.

“The cost of one month of classes is 6.000 yuan (about 750 euros), so we noticed that the men who could afford that didn’t need any help finding a wife” says Eric with a smile before one of the classes. Weime club now teaches exclusively to women.

Women chose a dress at a Mall in Beijing.

The One Child Policy, created a gender imbalance in the Chinese Society. Experts say that by 2020, more than 30 million men won’t be able to find wives.

The reception at Diamond Love, a matchmaking agency based in Shanghai that specializes in finding partners for multimillionaires who don’t have the time to look for love.

A worker at Diamond Love’s callcenter.

One of Diamond Love’s hunter’s takes a picture of a young girl who is looking for love. After this first contact on the streets, women have to go through a 6 step program before they get into the company’s archives.

“At first it was very strange when she told me that” says Sun Min Jien, a 24 year old Business Graduate “But I thought this would be an easy way to find someone who wants a serious relationship, or even marriage”. Although she may be considered young from Western perspective, in China she has already passed the ideal age for marriage.

On weekends in People’s Park in Shanghai, hundreds of eager parents meet at the “Marriage Market” as it know among locals, holding paper ads or pasting them to umbrellas, trading contact information, hoping to find a match for their children.

“I have been coming here for the last few months, but I haven’t had any luck” confesses Flora, a 40 year old accountant.“My situation brings great shame to my parents, who would be at peace if I got married”.

Flora on her way home after spending 6 hours at the Marriage Market. During the week, she works long hours and doesn’t have a lot of free time. She spends the weekends sitting on a bench, hoping that someone special finally enters her life.

An ad for a bridal dress shop in a mall in Bejijing

A newly wed couple poses for a photo in Thames Town, a replica of an English city near Shanghai. The wedding photography business has taken off in recent years.

Published in the Washington Post, El País Semanal, Le Temps, among others

China, 2017

In China, women are often still seen as a commodity, a product that begins to lose its value after they turn 24, the average age to get married. “Whenever I talk to my mother, she gets mad at me because I still don’t have a boyfriend “, says Dream, a 28-year-old girl from Hubei. Women her age are known by the term “Sheng Nu”, literally “leftover women”. Victims of social pressures, some turn to educational services, such as the classes on “How to find a boyfriend” given by the Weime Club. Out of this social climate, a multimillion-dollar industry has emerged that exploits the fears and loneliness of a generation.

Diamond Love, a matchmaking agency in Shanghai, specializes in the extremely rich clients. “Each search can cost between 10,000 yuan (1,500 dollars) and 1 million yuan (157 thousand dollars), the price depends on the duration and the number of cities where we search,” says Xu Tian Li, the CEO of the company. The search begins with a team of “love hunters” that scour the streets for suitable candidates. “Out of one hundred women, we select 10 and our client chooses one,” he says.

Although there is a big gender imbalance in Chinese society, with experts estimating that 30 million men will never find a wife, in the big cities, women are the ones who face the most pressure for being single. At weekends in People’s Park in Shanghai, hundreds of eager parents meet at the “Marriage Market” as it is known among locals, pasting ads to umbrellas, trading contact information, hoping to find a match for their children. For some older single women, this market is their last resort for finding that special someone.