Marrying the perfect child — Middle class norms and intergenerational arrangements in the marriage corners of urban China

Abstract

Caught in the context of a highly competitive development process, within the framework of a policy which limited their reproductive capacity to a single child, PRC urban families have, in recent decades, attached growing importance to their child's education, aiming to lead them to professional and personal success. This, however, also had an impact on the capacities of many young adults to marry early. In this context, the phenomenon of “marriage corners” mushroomed in large cities all over China beginning in the mid-2000s. Within China, this new practice generated criticism. These markets are seen as displaying conservative forms of marriage arrangement, the disregarding of romantic love, and forms of intergenerational power organization that may be considered backwards. However, by the criticisms it generates but as well the forms of relationships that it displays, the phenomenon can allow for a better understanding of the transformation of inter-generational relationships amongst urban middle-class, and on the norms framing the lives of the new generation.

Throughout the previous two decades, the phenomenon of “marriage corners” (xiangqin jiao 相亲角) has multiplied in urban parks of cities all over China. In sociological and economic theory, marriage markets are generally conceived as a metaphorical expression, used to assess an individual’s chances of marrying a certain type of partner within a given society. The expression itself was initially coined by the economist Gary Becker as an economic abstraction signifying the competition for a marital partner (1974). However, these Chinese marriage markets have a physical existence. Though they have received widespread international media coverage and generated a lot of curiosity, they have until now received little attention in international academic research. The gatherings explicitly allude to a national state of discomfort regarding the situation of today's urban youth, and cast a spotlight on the relationships they have with their parents. Subjecting these gatherings to study can help us garner a better understanding of the transformation of intergenerational relationships in a society usually understood as privileging families over individuals. To understand how this process unfolds, I have conducted research on six different marriage corners in the two mega-cities of Beijing and Chengdu in 2009 and 2010, visiting both repeatedly over the course of several months, while carrying out fieldwork with young unmarried people more generally. I interviewed participants of these marriage corners independently as the situation allowed for it. Since then, the phenomenon has continued to grow all over the country. By delving into marriage corners, this research provides a lens for understanding changing economic, political and interpersonal relationships amongst the urban middle class. Beyond all, it offers a particular vantage point from which to observe the production and enforcement of family norms within Chinese society. In the context of the PRC, where a strict policy of birth control is in place even if the so-called “one child policy” has been terminated, birth outside of marriage is strongly ostracized, and a very rare occurrence. The continuation of the family line is therefore the main purpose of these marriage markets.

Previously, I have examined the emotionality of this research site as methodologically important to understand the current state of Chinese society (Pettier 2016), I also worked on the debates concerning the place of romantic love within them (Pettier 2018), and on the reinvention of the role of the matchmaker (Pettier, 2017, 2019). In this article, I examine the social institution of these marriage corners itself. Though it has now become so completely normalized that it is often understood, even within China, as an ancient social institution, the phenomenon of marriage markets is actually fairly recent, dating back only to the early 21st century. Emphasizing the importance of the invention of this new social institution, I give an account of its history, describe the practices of the participants, and examine what marriage corners reveal about negotiation of partner-selection criteria between the two generations and the enforcement of norms within urban middle class families. This research adds a new layer to the previous scholarship on the transformation of intergenerational relationships and the role of the individual in the context of contemporary China.Yunxiang Yan‘s scholarship, in particular, examined the transformation of individual morality (2009, 2010, 2012, 2014) and recently emphasized the rise of a “neo-familism” “characterized by revitalized traditional family values” (2018: 192), as well as the transformation of intergenerational intimate relationships, and a new ethics of material success. A number of previous research studies also examined the education of the new Chinese generations at an early age (Chicharro, 2010; Fong, 2004; Xu, 2017) and the pressures experienced in early adulthood by elite students (Bregnbæk, 2016; Fong, 2011). One other strand of research examined the ethical, psychological and moral consequences of the economic transformations of the Chinese social world since the end of the Mao era, (see Kleinman et al., 2011; Stafford, 2013; Yang, 2015) as well as the impact of these transformations on the organization of networks and relationality within Chinese circles (Kipnis, 1997; Steinmüller, 2013; Yan, 1996; Yang, 1994) and in the context of business networks (Liu, 2002; Osburg, 2013).

In marriage markets, the larger societal questions studied in these previously cited scholarships converge in a single site: the respective roles of individuals and families, the role played by social networking and social trust, and the moral issues and socio-economic transformation individuals deal with —both within their own families, and with the strangers among whom they search for a mate. This makes the invention of contemporary marriage markets highly original, as their success and continuation do not fit neatly within the dominant understanding of modernization. Under this conception of what modernization entails, individuals who choose their marriage partners solely based on individual sentiments would be expected to progressively replace those who assent to family-arranged matchmaking practices (Giddens, 1992; Luhmann, 1986). Yet, as I will show, these markets also do not reflect a simple continuation of ancient traditions. Rather, their role is to be found in their prescriptive dimensions, and they have to be understood from the perspective of the middle and upper-middle urban class parents who participate in these gatherings, in the context of a rapidly changing society. I maintain that while on the surface, matchmaking markets appear as inefficient in providing spouses to the new generations, they have a normative effect by emphasizing the importance of marriage in the first place. To demonstrate this, I first introduce the marriage corners and their organization, and also examine the search criteria used by the parents in finding a spouse for their child. Then, I examine the ways in which these criteria are discussed and negotiated between generations, the difficulties encountered in the process, and the perspective of the concerned children. Throughout this research, marriage corners reveal themselves as a site where both the transformation of intergenerational relations and reproduction of middle-class norms can be observed. In conclusion, I emphasize the affective character of the marriage corners as being their most important dimension. As such, I argue that the emotional involvement of the participants can explain the existence of these markets and their normative role in present-day society.

Marriage corners

The “marriage corners” of China are a relatively recent phenomenon. ¹ Shanghai's People’s park is currently the most famous one (Sun, 2012; Zhang and Sun, 2014), but the phenomenon actually emerged in 2003 or 2004 in the Black Bamboo Park of Beijing. ² From there, it rapidly spread throughout the nation, popping up in city parks all over the country. Numerous Chinese newspapers or television news have dedicated exclusive reports to the phenomenon from 2005 onward, and helped to spread the word. ³ In the following years, these sorts of gatherings spontaneously emerged in virtually every big city of the country and later spread to smaller ones as well. In the 1980s, they had been preceded by more informal meetings where more youth were involved, but these did not gain a similar visibility on a national scale. ⁴ In contrast to their predecessors, today’s reunions assemble cohorts of parents who come on a more or less consistent basis. Although some Chinese historians argue that today's xiāngqīn (matrimonial presentation) practices are simply an extension of ancient Chinese societal traditions (Hao, 2010), the old sayings they quote do not explain the observable aspects of the exchanges occurring in these parks (Pettier, 2017, 2019). I infer instead that the parental gatherings in the urban parks of present day China are in fact a new phenomenon of the early 21st century. Through observing them, one can observe a normative framing of intergenerational relationships among the urban middle-class.

Although not officially organized nor endorsed by anyone in particular, and thus still informal in nature, these markets appear to be remarkably well “organized.” The participants often bring with them a little board assembling data concerning the child they represent: age, physical size, educational background, professional position, monthly wage. In addition, this board can also include a basic description of the child’s passions and temperament, and may also feature a picture. They may have also assembled a collection of carefully selected photographs of the child, that they take out of their pocket to show to interested passer-by. The gatherings occur several times a week, and their location and schedules circulate by word-of-mouth from participants as well as on the internet. Each marriage market may also have a particular reputation linked to the type of social group they attract. Consequently, some of these markets may disappear as spontaneously as they appeared, simply because a more successful one developed in parallel to it, and that parents chose the alternative in order to improve their chances, thus following a market logic. The whole phenomenon and its sheer magnitude reveal how importantly the question of the younger generations’ marriage is regarded.

Mostly, and at least in the case of the most famous ones, these gatherings are considered to be places for middle to semi-upper class people (while such is not necessarily the case of the park activities around them, where social mixing is much more the norm). This is observed in articles and blogs dedicated to the issue, and fits with my observation, as many of the parents I spoke with had received academic education and/or had management responsibilities. The participation in the meeting in itself implies as well, that participants have spare time to dedicate to it and are willing to introduce one’s family in this semi-public context, which may not prove to be so easy for everyone in the same way. “The kids represented here, they are all very good kids..,” told me a father in a Beijing gathering, emphasizing how they had received the best educations and were making their way in the best careers. In addition, most of these meetings, at least initially, were concentrated at the centers of capital cities, which implies that the participating parents live in these privileged places. All this explains why the young adults who are represented in these gatherings are sometimes described as being “three highs” (san gao 三高): “high education, high wage, high age” (Hu, 2007: 59; Luo and Xu, 2009: 15). Within this saying, only the two first parts are seen as positive, while the last one is perceived as a negative consequence of the over-investment of these youth in their professional careers. This is also the justification given by the participants for the existence of the gatherings, as they explain the bachelorhood of their child by the intense professional schedule of the new generation, which allegedly does not allow them to find a partner by themselves. The participating parents are prone to denounce this dimension of the phenomenon, emphasizing that their children only have time to make the commute back and forth between their workplace and their home. Observing the extent of the problem, an outraged mother complained to me: “Their bosses do not care that they have no time to find a spouse!” This critical statement is heard often in the context of these gatherings. It justifies the participation of the parents in the markets and presents a positive image of their hard-working children. Beyond these critiques, at least some of the parents perceive the phenomenon as positive and representing progress, since it demonstrates the opening up of their society. Marriage difficulties encountered by the young generation are not really new, but the families now dare to overcome their shame by going to a public space in an attempt to resolve the issue, rather than guarding it within the intimacy of their families, as some of the participants explained to me.

Indeed, based on the sheer number of participants, which number usually several hundred, the meetings are undoubtedly successful. The success rates of the actual search are, however, far less evident, at least if one is to take the narratives of disappointment expressed by many of the participants at face value. When this field research was carried out, the participants often quoted with disillusionment, a televised report on the phenomenon in which it was stated that barely “two percent” of participants succeeded in finding a suitable match for their child. Taking into consideration these very unconvincing results, the reason they spend so much time and energy in these marriage corners seems opaque. One interpretation is that these gatherings are a kind of recreational activity for relatively well-off, yet-to-be grandparents, who occupy their leisure time by helping their allegedly overwhelmed child to find the mate while concurrently meeting new people. Indeed, the sociologist Sun Peidong sees the need of a socialization platform of the participants as the real purpose of these gatherings, and links it to the nostalgia of their generation, which was sent down to the countryside during the campaigns of Mao’s Cultural Revolution (Sun, 2012: 255). However, while true, this characteristic is not specific to these meetings. As many authors have noted, large numbers of people in this age bracket take part in leisure activities—like singing or dancing—in the same parks or in other ones (see Farquhar and Zhang, 2005, 2012; Graezer Bideau, 2012; Qian, 2014; Rochot, 2017; Zito, 2014). It hardly explains why these older people elect to do this instead of simply going out to exercise and sing, as other Chinese people of similar age are apt to do. Out of the numerous activities that older generations take part in, the marriage corners stand out in terms of significance for their participants: the future of their family is at play.

In search of social compatibility

How are the contacts developed in the specific context of the parks? Often, the participating parents question each other casually, while discussing other issues. In the middle of a group gathering, participants lightly sharing their impression about the market itself, may suddenly question each other very directly about their respective children. If the number of participants is particularly high, even the background context of a light conversation is not necessary. While circulating through the walkways and crossing each other's paths, they simply call out to each other: “son or daughter?” And then, “how old?” Then, they just continue on their way while mumbling a “Mhmmm..” as a method of ending the conversation if the answer given did not fit their search criteria. If it does, they may continue with very straightforward questions, as “which university? ⁵ ” or “is your daughter pretty?” In Beijing's Sun Yatsen park, I observed a mother repetitively calling out to parents passing by, that her 34 years old son is sweet-tempered, in a seemingly desperate attempt to attract their attention. Occasionally, participating parents are manifestly uncomfortable and uncertain of the attitude to adopt, showing hesitation or reluctance before engaging in interactions. However, when the first answers they receive seem satisfying, they appear smiley and comforted. Hastily, they take each other aside, away from the crowd in order to engage in a more private conversation. For a few seconds or a few minutes, they will discuss more detailed questions, show each other pictures of their respective children, and finally exchange a telephone number or any other means of contact necessary to meet again or to arrange a meeting between their children.

The aim of the participating parents is to find a family compatible with their own. The evaluation of this compatibility will be deepened later, through other meetings between the families, and in particular between the concerned children, who need to appreciate and see potential in each other. The compatibility these families search for is simultaneously economic, social and affective. A marriage is considered a social contract both parties should benefit from. The homogamic dimensions of marriage is a well-documented phenomenon (see Kalmijn, 1998). Here, the economic and social importance of reaching this aim are accentuated by the context in which the market takes shape. As long as a reliable social welfare system remains absent in China, parents will depend on the support of their adult children in their old age. Consequently, the parties to the marriage cannot be limited to the two people who exchange vows, since so much of the parents' future depends on the success of their only child's marriage. Mr Zhen (a pseudonym, as are all other names cited in the article), a father I met on several occasions at Chengdu's gatherings, mentions it explicitly: “As for our generation, everyone had only one child, so the question of their marriage has become particularly important.”

Certainly, many participating parents’ concern about their child's marriage choice is an attempt to guarantee the quality of their own futures. As much as a child remaining unwed, a dysfunctional marriage, or a marriage with an economically weak party, would arguably present a liability and potentially negatively impact the parents’ well-being in their old age. However, the participants also assume the help they give to be an expression of their parental love (fu’ai mu’ai 父爱母爱). Emotional solidarity is also reflected in the fact that they present this research as a burden. Helping their children find the proper mate is assumed to be the final stage in their role of parenthood, by which they propel their child into the role of parent, and themselves into the role of grandparents. Many parents interviewed present their participation as an expression of their “responsibility” towards their children. And while many participants render explicit the expectation that this love will have to be returned in the form of filial care (kaojin fumu 靠近父母), some also mention that they do not want to become dependent on their child, whose life is complicated enough. The worry and love they express are however part of a form of exchange and solidarity, simultaneously emotional and economic, which work in a reciprocal way. Even when parents would prefer to remain autonomous, the concern they express and the help they provide is the mark of a strongly normalized familial solidarity; it is the foundation of an exchange that is less optional than it is a regulatory norm.

As long as the whole operation of mate-searching is seen as a collective step towards unifying two families, the people interacting in the marriage corners try first to evaluate their mutual compatibility as a family before evaluating the feasibility of a relationship between their respective children. They mention this explicitly, by often indicating that they search for people with whom they could themselves “get along”. This is especially important as it is highly possible that the two couples of to-be grandparents may have to live together in older age, in order to use a lesser share of their children's income. Many of the participants are thus satisfied with the opportunity the gatherings offer them to first meet each other. When asked how they can see if the absent kids would get along, they often answer that: “when you see the parents, you know immediately.” Some mention as well that “the good or bad temper of the parents necessarily had an impact on their child.” The qualities of the represented children are thus simply deduced from the behavior and appearance of their parents. It takes the form of a seemingly “spontaneous sociology,” in the form of preconceptions (Bourdieu et al., 1991[1968]: 21) that often lead to very definitive judgements. In the complicated task of constructing the future of their family, not only should this potential relationship be harmless to both sides, but it should be reciprocally beneficial. It should improve life as much as possible, not worsen it.

The manifest anxiousness expressed by the participating parents allude to many preoccupations they face, particularly within a society in which their future appears to be not guaranteed. Exemplifying this phenomenon, a retired mathematics professor I met at a Beijing gathering, visibly anxious and disappointed with the partner chosen by his artist son, explained to me how he was secretly looking for an alternative girlfriend to introduce his son to. According to him, “young people do not check so attentively the material background [of their partner], but later, they [will] have an heavy burden to bear. Apartments are too expensive in Beijing. My retirement pension does not allow me to buy one. That’s why, here, parents help their child by searching for someone with appropriate [material] conditions.” The uncertainty conveyed by the absence of any secure welfare system appears as a clear challenge, one having direct bearing on the choice of a marriage partner for their child. The question at stake here is the sustainability of the future bond if the other party's family happens to encounter economic difficulties, which might require solidarity from both sides, and endanger the economic situation of one’s own family. Marriage is a dashi 大事, a “big affair,” according to an oft-stated Chinese expression. This is no euphemism here. The responsibility for the quality of their old age falling on their children and their future union, parents must ensure that marriage will guarantee them a secure future rather than a precarious one. For all of these different reasons, parents consider the meetings as an opportunity to see if they would be able to cooperate, or even to live together in their old age. “The fact that the parents meet each other here is very positive. It allows them to see if they could get along,” some parents mentioned explicitly to me.

Intergenerational arrangements

As I converse with Mrs Zhou, an old mother that I met at a Beijing Park in January 2010, who gives me an account of the difficulties of the search for her already 37-year-old son, a woman observing us from the side suddenly interrupts us. Visibly eager to share with me her perception of the practice, she says with a mischievous smile “I will tell you. Our children do not know that we are here. My daughter does not know.” Mrs Zhou, who she interrupted, retorts in a curtly and angry way, “If your daughter does not know, what could this [participation] be useful for?” By this, the latter means that the agreement of the concerned person is an unavoidable condition in discussions about marriage. However, many people around us disagree on the issue and thus begin to argue all together on the importance of obtaining the consent of the concerned child before participating in the marriage corner. While some insist on the inefficacy of a participation without consent, others say that they will not mention to their child of the context in which they met the person they would like to introduce to them. This is due to the fact that, ideally, many bachelors would prefer to find a partner by themselves, and may find it embarrassing when their parents take part in the search. Thus, they may reject the help offered (more on this below). Participation of the parents without previous agreement of their children is, however, rendered possible by the widespread norm in Chinese society where families try to introduce prospective potential partners to the non-married youth of their family.

This vignette relates a notion of the involved discussions, both within families and amongst gathering participants. In most cases, the criteria of the on-going mate search imply a collective intergenerational discussion. For the young people that I was able to interview after meeting their parents in this context, ⁶ —who were necessarily informed of what their parents were doing there as those needed to explain to them what my research was about and how they had met me— a common pattern was revealed. The concerned young adults regularly told me that they had initially rejected their parents’ offer to take part in the marriage markets in order to introduce them potential partners. They insisted that they would find someone by themselves, through the introduction of friends or through an internet dating website. However, the parents usually did not take this rejection seriously. They simply strolled casually to the park gatherings in order to have a look at it and to try their luck. This is easy to do, as the marriage corners take place in public spaces and do not require any registration. During this research, in Chengdu, the access to these parks was free. This was not so in Beijing, but retired people benefitting from a local city hukou ⁷ usually had the entrance fee either waived or discounted (see Farquhar, 2009: 561). People can thus simply go for a walk, pass by the marriage corner, discuss with a few participants, and continue their walk. This is the most informal operational mode, the dabbler level, so to say. Following this first experience, the parents brought the issue to the table again by discussing with their child their imagined ideal partner, thus adjusting their search criteria. Acting in this way usually leaves the children without further recourse against their parents' participation, and they simply let them go ahead with it. Feng Li, a 29-year-old woman with a master's degree working for a north-American company, whom I interviewed after meeting her mother in a Beijing gathering, mentioned to me how she adapted to the situation by just letting her mother do as she pleased, after first having rejected the offer. Later, she and her mother informally discussed the criteria of the search that the latter should apply. “I am not too small” (1.62 m), she said, so it was important to her that her future husband reaches 1.75 m. The reason for this was that “smaller men may look small if side by side with a woman in high-heels.” While her own, unusually high, salary was of 9500 yuan per month, she would have accepted a husband with only half of this. However, with a lower salary than this, she was afraid that their lifestyles and friend circles would be too disparate. She would have liked as well for him to be physically appealing to her, even if he did not need to be “a model.” And regarding education, he should—for her mother even more than for herself, she insisted—at least have an applied bachelor degree [dazhuan 大专]. What we can observe here is that the criteria of choice for Feng Li's future husband is the object of a collective family discussion in which each member adds the criteria important to them. Throughout our exchange, Feng Li complained that her mother was not paying enough attention to the men’s height, and wanted to introduce her to smaller candidates than she was willing to accept. Conversely, the bachelor degree criteria was less important to her than to her mother, she told me.

Another case demonstrates further how this discussion is held within families. Mr Zhang, a father I met in another Beijing marriage corner, had a son who was a PhD candidate in engineering at a local university in which many students come from other Chinese provinces. His wife and he told their son that they would prefer him to choose a wife originating from Beijing, and told him to avoid proceeding too far with someone from a different area. “It is too complicated, otherwise,” he stated to me. “It takes several hours by car to go to see the parents …” By taking part in these gatherings, he hoped to have “a lucky break” (pengpeng yunqi 碰碰运气), and to be able to find an ideal spouse for his son. With his promising career and future PhD degree and his 1.75 m size, the latter wanted a wife of 1.65 m, preferably between 23 and 25 years of age, in any case, no older than himself. For Mr Zhang, “we obviously need to examine the conditions (tiaojian 条件) but the most important is the person herself.” And thus “a bachelor degree may be enough,” he explained, to show that they were not overly picky. Since he began to search, he had already introduced seven or eight women to his son. But, “it did not work out; there was no yuanfen 缘分,” he said. Symbolically, this mention of yuanfen—a notion according to which the union of souls is predetermined—implies that the material conditions of the relationship are not considered as the main and sole determinant in the search of a mate. However, this second case also reveals how decisive and deliberative the family arbitration and negotiations are. Rather than being the result of chance, this search for yuanfen is organized strategically. Here, the parents dissuade their son from certain relationships that are “too complicated.” In return, they actively engage themselves in the search for an “ideal” wife who will satisfy their requirements as much as their son's. They understand it all as a form of help offered to him and do not meddle in his subsequent decisions, letting him do with it as he pleases. Though both generations have their word, none of them can act fully independently from the other. Even the parents who argue that they can search without the consent of their child demonstrate it: they do not inform their children precisely because their children have the power to resist the help offered. By participating without their consent, the parents mainly try to accelerate the process by finding new candidates to introduce them, but they alone cannot determine the final outcome.

Blaming the perfect child

All this means that the visions of the parental generation and those of the bachelors’ are not necessarily in line with one another. The mate choice process is before all, one of multiple, and complicated negotiations. This issue is actually one of the most discussed among the participating parents. They often express anger and anxiety concerning their child's apparent lack of interest in finding a partner, or their rejection of the help they offer. According to many of them, the young bachelors would not worry enough about the marriage issue. Some are described as simply too shy or withdrawn. Their attitude disturbs their parents who see them getting older and are afraid they may soon be perceived as not “marriageable” any longer. The shy behavior of the children is not the only criticism directed at them. They are, in fact, often characterized as egotistical and self-centered. The fact that they often do not want their parents to take part in these gatherings and insist on finding a partner by themselves —even if that does not seem to happen— is very frustrating to their parents, who accuse them of disregarding their efforts. “Our children are like you … We can spend as long as we want trying to find the one for them. If when we come back with the picture of a potential candidate, they don’t like it [immediately], they will just throw it away [without further consideration]!” exclaims a visibly frustrated father I met at a Beijing gathering.

If we take the complaints of this father at face value, it seems that the new generation does not respect or appreciate their parents' efforts to help them find their future spouse. In his discourse, I understand the “like you” that he uses to speak to me, a young European ethnologist, as significant in two ways. It conveys a sense of the representation of the West that he holds, as well as indicating the notion that the new generation was educated in order to reach so-called Western standards of life (Fong, 2004: 17). This inter-generational misunderstanding is seen as a major issue in these gatherings, where worried participants tend to search for who is to blame for the situation illustrated above. The represented children are not present, after all. As we saw earlier, some of them are not even aware that their parents take part in such gatherings on their behalf. Very few young participants attend the gatherings by themselves. While participating actively, it is thus noticeable that several parents I meet indicate their weak conviction that such an operation could work without their child’s consent. While they may justify taking part in the gatherings by saying that they will not mention to their child where they first heard of the person they would like to introduce to them, they worry about the feasibility of finding a person fulfilling both generations’ expectations. The requirements of post-1980s generation generate criticism and frustration from parents who perceive that their children refuse to engage in a collective endeavour by insisting on finding a solution by themselves or through the internet.

This ‘westernized’ character attributed to the new generations, which would allegedly explain their rejection of their parents’ help, is perceived here as a sign of their independent mind. However, the discourses which describe the new generations seem to portray a generation excessively shy and uncompromising at the same time. Commonly praised for being “very good children” “busy” and “overworked”, they are also described as “juxian 局限 [limited],” “haixiu 害羞 [shy],” “zibi 自闭 [autistic]” and “ziwo 自我 [egoistic].” While their parents appear distressed by the persistent rejection of their help and advice, they also describe the younger generation as lacking social relationships and experience, which explain the need for such meeting places. Timidity has often been mentioned as an explanation in research carried out on the topic of marriage since the 1950s in order to explain the perseverance of matrimonial intermediation in China. In their book on the lives of Chinese women during the 1980s, historians Emily Honig and Gail Hershatter were already observing the persistence of recourse to the matchmaker, more than thirty years after the promulgation of the 1950 law, which supposedly forbade the meddling of any third-party into decisions regarding spousal selection. The authors underlined the ambivalence of public authorities towards young people, who are regarded as hooligans when they seem too young or too easily involved in a relationship, even a friendly one, with a person of the opposite sex. This while later lamenting their lack of relational skills and their inexplicable shyness when the young generation approaches the age considered appropriate to marry (Honig and Hershatter, 1988: 82–83). Jean-Luc Domenach and Hua Chang-Ming also mentioned “timidity” and “psychological difficulties” as an explanation to the opening of “Marriage Bureaus” in the 1980s, whose effectiveness remained, according to them, rather low (Domenach and Hua, 1987: 32–37). The development of marriage bureaus marked in fact, one further step in the contradictory marriage politics of the CCP, which forbade the intervention of any third party in marriage decisions as soon as it assumed power, but whose local branches very often were involved in marriage (and divorce) decisions (Diamant, 2000). If the intimate politics of maoist China can be seen as explaining why young Chinese people have continued to rely on their parents or other institutions in their choice of partners, even while maintaining their belief in free marriage (Parish and Whyte, 1984: 119) until the 1980s, the contemporary middle class’s acceptance of their parents’ involvement cannot be accounted for on the same grounds. Yet, their accepting attitude demonstrates that at least a significant part of them are still deprived of either the capacity or the opportunities to meet a partner by themselves. This is particularly true for the most highly educated among the new generations, as they are trained to follow norms and tend, according to my observation, to be more conformist in their behaviours. This is due to the extreme level of educational and professional competition that these only children went through. Although they ultimately emerged on top, it left them little time for anything else. They are, precisely, the children of the middle class participants of these gatherings.

The conformism of Chinese middle-class youths, and particularly of those with the best educational backgrounds, can be seen as paradoxical. In many cases, people from equivalent social milieus are actually regarded as the avant garde of change (e.g. Spronk, 2014). In the case of China, it may be tempting to attribute their seemingly conformist behaviors to a confucian education emphasizing filial piety. However, a century after the revolution of 1919, which was led by the elite youths of the times and which opposed such traditional conformity, and after decades of the Mao era during which all forms of traditions were systematically opposed, the cultural argument has limited explanatory power. Why does this generation of youths who attended China’s top universities and are extremely invested in their careers accept the intervention of their parents in their private lives more than their lower-class counterparts, or even the previous generation? This has to do with a number of reasons, including their only child status, which makes them the subject of high familial expectations (see Bregnbæk, 2016; Xu, 2017), their success to-date in the educational and professional competition, which encourages them to remain focused on their career, the intensity of the said competition, which leaves little leisure time and opportunities to socialize, or simply the economic progress of the last decades, which may convince them to trust and follow leadership. In any case, this is a very notable trend, even for the parents. One father I met at a Chengdu gathering commented to me, comparing with his generation coming of age during the 1980s, that “before, it was like you.. [i.e., we were choosing our partners by ourselves.] But now the younger generations has no time.” My meetings with youths of lower social-class backgrounds, particularly workers, whose individual situations and experience vary significantly one from another, often left me with the impression that they had more autonomy, and in many cases more sexual and sentimental experiences, than their highly-educated counterparts. This was due to the fact that they lived far away from their parents and were not subject to such tight control.

Young participants’ perspective

What could be the grounds explaining the difficulties of highly-educated, very competitive Chinese urban young persons in meeting each other without the help of a third-party? Meeting with them directly can help to resolve this question. Though rare, unmarried youth are not completely absent in the marriage markets. Mingling amongst several hundred participants are always a handful or two of young bachelors. However, these bachelors are far from representative of their peer group. They need to feel self-confident enough to immerse themselves directly in these gatherings where their absent peers are the invisible epicentre. As a result, establishing contact with them was generally fairly easy, and virtually all of them said that they regretted that so few of their peers were here. They hoped to see the situation gradually change in the future.

One such young participant was Li Yu, a woman born in 1980. She attended the Sun Yatsen Park meeting in Beijing on January 30, 2010, where she told me that she too was initially afraid to take part in these gatherings. After finally trying, she however realized that “there was nothing shameful.” “It would be better if the young people came themselves, rather than sending their parents,” she added, thus explaining the absence of the first concerned in a way far removed from the justifications of the participating parents. As if to demonstrate this gap, a mother who was listening by our side immediately exclaimed in response that her daughter “did not have the time.” But “you have to find time! Because then it will take time to have a relationship!,” Li Yu retorted. “The problem is that the girls are too traditional to dare to come,” she insisted to me. She too, however, considered herself “traditional,” but after experiencing it, she did not find it embarrassing in the least. Then, another nearby mother, interested and apparently won over by her assertive character, asked Li Yu about the university where she had completed her studies, her job, and finally her hukou. Apparently satisfied, she took her aside to deepen the conversation and exchange contact information. Indeed, these few young participants were often very successful with parents. The same is true of Lü Tiangou, a young man I met on another occasion in the same park. When we first crossed ways, he had a large smile on his face as he had just obtained a series of promising contacts with several parents. Riding on the wave of this success, he was about to leave and told me, with a very significant touch of humor, that he was “leaving the work (xiaban le 下班了).” Like others, Lü Tiangou had long heard about these park meetings, through the press and on the Internet, before he decided to go in person. For him, it was just another way to find a partner. “There or on the Internet, it does not matter …,” he told me. He did not understand why young people did not come in person, nor did he believe in the common excuse of their busy schedules. “Who works on weekends?” he asked sarcastically as if to indicate the absurdity of such an explanation. This self-assured comment was also indicative of the social milieu that he expected the participants to belong to, as few employees in China are actually lucky enough to enjoy free weekends.

The fact that these two younger participants disregard the explanations given by the parents means that we need to have a closer look at the justifications they themselves give to explain this activity. Certainly, the younger participants’ characters and situations may not reflect fully their absent peers, as they dare and choose directly to endorse a task most others seem to delegate for reasons we ignore. It is also important to observe that both younger participants I just mentioned were coming from provincial cities, had benefitted from upward social mobility through their studies and careers, and had no family in Beijing. As they mentioned to me later during private, one-on-one interviews, they were also not engaging in this participation entirely on their own initiative. They were under pressure to do so from their distant families, who worried about their matrimonial situation and needed reassurance about the future. Li Yu also mentioned to me that her parents had already arranged several meetings for her with sons of families from her birth-place who were working, like her, in the capital city.

Throughout the years, I encountered similar cases repeatedly, particularly in testimonies from young women. In one case, a friend of mine from Beijing in her early thirties, who was the owner of a small company and living from the benefits she collected from savings and stocks, discontinued her tradition of spending new years holidays at her parents' place until they refrained from pressuring her to marry. She had several relationships through the years but refused to fall in line with the marriage system. One other young woman, in Chengdu, a flight attendant for a European company who received a very high salary by local standards, mentioned the pressures she was receiving from her parents in this way: “My mother would not say hello. The first thing she asks is if I met any potential partner the previous day.” In a figurative way, she added “It's similar to flies constantly turning around your face in summer. It's annoying, but after a while, you get used to it.” One other young woman from Chengdu, the daughter of business owners from another Chinese province, who was working at a part-time job, but received a very large amount of monthly support from her parents—corresponding to several times the median wage at the time, and more than three times her own part-time wage—also mentioned the unrelenting pressure she was subjected to, and recounted to me a recent and very directive call she had received from her grandmother concerning the issue. She clearly felt under pressure to find a husband soon and demonstrated anxiousness concerning her ability to marry before reaching the age of twenty-five. The high level of complementary economic support her parents were giving her monthly was meant to allow her to live a more comfortable lifestyle until her future husband could support her. However, and although she admitted clearly being unable to restrict her very high-spending habits, she also indicated to me that the material possessions of a husband appeared to be of no importance to her in contrast to the fact that he should be a good person and treat her well. In any case, these women who all had unusually high incomes and had received higher education were under pressure to marry nearly everyday, sometimes spanning over a period of several years. To the younger generation, prolonged celibacy is clearly a pressing issue that they are constantly reminded of. Marriage, however, is not the real question. It is reproduction—in both its biological and social dimensions—which is the main issue at stake.

The irony of family success

“If you believe it to be fun to be freezing here with my old legs …”: this is the sarcastic answer a mother who had just mentioned to me the amusing character of the marriage corners gave me when I asked her to clarify it, in a cold and snowy meeting in the midst of Beijing's winter. This ironic comment pointed to the contradictions within the phenomenon of marriage markets. The assertion that these meetings are “amusing” or “fun” (haowan’r 好玩儿) is in fact, one of the most common comments I heard from participating parents in attempting to describe them. Initially, I could simply not make sense of this repeated statement: the anxiety of some of the parents I was meeting seemed anything but pleasant. But, as one mother explained to me, it was the contrast between the private frustrations and anxiousness that brought them here in the first place and the sudden realization of the ubiquity of this situation that made these marriage corners amusing. The amusement she and others were speaking of consisted in the shock that attending these gatherings awakened in their participants. It was to be found in the eye-opening discrepancy between their feelings of despondency and solitary despair concerning their family situation and the sudden realization of the social nature of their trouble. Arriving there at first with their own individual worries as the only point of reference, many parents remembered being taken aback when the number of participants suddenly forced them to realize the collective character of the experience they were enduring – one that they had up until then, considered as a personal and rare misfortune. Abruptly, they were exposed to the fact that the fear which drove them to participate was shared by so many others. It led the participants to reinterpret their private anxiousness as a public issue.

Irony and cynicism are important questions in the context of China (see Steinmüller and Brandtstädter, 2016), in which political discourses are muffled. This point is decisive in understanding the perspective of the participating families, and their reflexive awareness of what they are participating in. To them, taking part in the gatherings represents the physical confrontation between hopes they previously held and the reality they are confronted with. Paradoxically, they find themselves in this situation precisely because they were very successful in the upbringing of their children. The “ideal age” for marriage poses many problems for young people who are pursuing very time-consuming studies or careers, as is the case for most children represented by their parents at these meetings. “It's at 25 years of age that they should obviously get married!” said a participant from Beijing. The age of 28 is also often cited as the upper limit. The social bonus granted to the pursuit of studies and the seriousness with which young people devote themselves to launching their professional careers, paradoxically turns against them. This is the case when I am told, for example, that children who have gone abroad to study have “fallen behind.” “It is very complicated when they come back. They let the best time to get married pass,” I am told in the Temple of Heaven Park in February 2010. Parents of children who are not in China but work or study abroad are commonly found in these parks. Their parents are therefore looking for a potential partner being either based abroad as well, ready to leave the country, or available to meet them by internet or telephone in hopes of a face-to-face meeting when they finally return to China.

These parents pushed their children to fully dedicate themselves to winning the social and economic competition by taking the best places at the best universities and the best positions in the job market. It seems however, questionable, to reduce the collective choices of these families to the preservation of their own narrow interests, as if one could ignore the fact that they were taking part in a much larger movement of social and economic competition they seem to be winning and being failed by at the same time. The marriage corners render visible the dilemmas of the time, and the insecurity of the better-off (see as well Bregnbæk, 2016; Osburg, 2013). The past investment they made in the educational and professional achievements of their child in order to reach their dreams of success suddenly risks falling apart. The “amusing” dimension of their participation hints at the irony of their situation. It is a private, and cynical joke about the trap which they suddenly realize they have fallen into.

In this respect, the fact that parents seemingly take material conditions as only criteria for the choice of a partner for their child does not mean that those have to be taken at face value. Some of the participating parents denounce the criteria of the search used in these gatherings as clearly too “picky (tiaoti 挑剔)” and “demanding (keke 苛刻).” “If the new generations meet by themselves, it is easier. The parents are too severe,” several participants mentioned to me. The absence of questions regarding feelings and personal qualities during these preliminary encounters, which are mainly concerned with materialistic aspects, is a contentious dimension of these gatherings. Though these arguments are often oriented to a general social critique of the circumstances explaining the phenomena, most of the criticism I have heard remains psychological in nature, and places the blame squarely on the participants themselves. They claim that some parents are “going too far,” are “excessive (guofen 过分),” and “losing sense of scope (guodu 过度),” thus losing perspective and dignity in the process. Quarrelsome behaviors generate a number of disapproving gazes as well. Beyond the criteria of the search and the visible materialism or exaggerated pickiness of some participants, the fact of overly engaging oneself in this parental search in the name of the new generations is often criticized.

Through these criticisms voiced by gathering participants, a clear critique of the moral characteristics of the contemporary Chinese social world is thus explicitly manifest. These moral judgements and the self-awareness and self-distinction they reveal are also imperative in understanding the situation. The realization of the banality and collective character of their personal anxiousness through the participation in these parks can act as a trigger of reflexivity. Shared in the conversations occurring amongst participants, this means that these often higher educated people participate with an deep awareness of both the downsides of using the selection criteria they insist on, and of the structural reasons they find themselves in such a collective situation. It is thus noteworthy that they still participate, as if there was no other choice, either for them or for their child.

Conclusion: Marriage markets and the enforcement of middle-class norms

The self-awareness of the participating parents, their criticism of their children, and the negotiations between the two generations, reveal that the effect and purpose of these matchmaking activities are separate from their degree of direct efficacy in providing a spouse to the new generations. The high level of personal investment, in time and energy, from these parents, has clear consequences. Two are directly observable. First, they maintain the idea that marriage is unavoidable. The fact that statistics given by journalists and circulating among participants prove these markets to be rather inefficient in providing spouses says little about the consequences of the fact that the parents repeatedly bring the issue to the table. Since the topic keeps coming up again and again, in all family gatherings, common meals, phone calls between relatives, and so on, remaining unmarried turns into a failure that the new generations have no choice but to address in their lives, unless they are willing to cut off contact with their families. Second, the intense engagement of the parents makes clear that the choice of a partner does not concern only the younger generation. By taking the issue into their own hands and asking their children to take their perspective and efforts into serious consideration, the participating parents emphasize the collective importance of this choice, even if the happiness of the future couple is acknowledged by them as central. The choice of a partner is not separable from the assumed responsibility of the future couple towards the collective and larger entity of the family. The social institution of the family is here, I maintain, stronger than the will of its individual members. Although parents are aware of the limitations of their search, they cannot resist it. Nor can the will expressed by the children to find a partner on their own prevent their parents from doing it.

In sum, the performative dimensions of the marriage market phenomenon are central. As a social institution, they frame the intergenerational debate by normalizing the pressures on the younger generations and also render it a normal part of the role of parents to involve themselves in the process of spousal selection. The message conveyed by the practices of these middle-class parents is that marrying is neither optional nor solely a personal decision. Simply said, these matchmaking activities reinscribe dominant social norms. The tensions and anxiety demonstrated in these markets are affectively prescriptive. By implying that the issue is important and pressing, they shape the attitudes of both middle-class parents and children in a specific way. As such, they are part of a larger discourse and a number of practices consistently reaffirming the same message. I infer that these collective and normative pressures maintain and prescribe the centrality of the social institution of the family amongst the middle classes because they divert individuals from choosing alternative forms of organization of their lives. Thus, their most important effects lie in their prescriptive and normative dimensions, which fall upon parents and children alike. Ultimately, whether or not xiangqin gatherings successfully produce a spouse for the participants’ child is secondary to the fact that the new generation will, for the most part, acknowledge the issue as being important, marry, and ask their parents to confirm their choice of a partner. Parental matchmaking practices make it impossible for them to consider marriage as an only personal and intimate question. It makes any such thinking “egotistical” in nature. Similarly, the common character of such search in Chinese society make it a responsibility of the parents to involve themselves in resolving the issue. These practices and their accepted normality emphasize that a collective search for a mate is necessary, with common criteria discussed and agreed upon by both generations.