Latest / The Front / Shopping for a wife in China’s elite singles market

Transcript

Shopping for a wife in China’s elite singles market · The Front

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: From the Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: It's Wednesday, May twenty, twenty twenty six. The government's scaling
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: back its program of refitting Australia's thirty year old submarine
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: fleet to save money, putting sub mariners at risk as
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: they try to manage with the aging Colins class boats
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: for another decade. The new Orchest class nuclear powered subs
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: won't be ready until the late twenty thirties. That's a
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: Ben Packham exclusive, Live now at the Australian dot com
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: dot au. Love in today's China can be hard to
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: find and some parents are taking matters into their own hands. Today,
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: our correspondent Joanni Bishan reports from the marriage market. John,
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: He's here in just a moment. Yannibijan is The Australian's
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: North Asia correspondent. He's been in Shanghai at a very
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: unusual market, a marriage market. Yoni, what was it all about.
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: Well, I'd heard about this Shanghai marriage market, and these
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: do exist in other cities. There's one in Beijing, there's
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: one in Changdu, and there are others probably another cities
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: in China. It's a big country, but I'd heard about
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: this live platform, this open air bazaar where people will
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: go and advertise not themselves, not their own availability, but
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: the availability of their children and sometimes even their grandchildren. Again,
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: this has been around for a long time, this Shanghai
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: marriage market, but I've only been in.
• 1:36
  Speaker 3: China since January.
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: I'm a fairly new correspondent here for the Australian and
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: I just wanted to go and see this for myself.
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: And as you know, sometimes as journalists we will talk
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: to our superiors about stories that we're working on and
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: just gauging the views of the people back home as
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: to what they thought of this. No one seemed to
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: know about it, so down I went to Shanghai over
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: the weekend and I'd heard that this marriage market opens
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: up at ten o'clock in the morning at People's Park,
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: which is a very popular, very beautiful, very lush, green,
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: gorgeous park in the middle of Shanghai. And I went
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: there at ten o'clock in the morning and right on
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: the dot people were set up and for anyone who
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: wants to try and picture this in their minds, you
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: get there, you walk through the gates. I was thinking
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: this might be hard to find it would be in
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: some corner of this sprawling park.
• 2:22
  Speaker 3: No no, no, no no. You walk through the gates and it's.
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: There, And there are just dozens and dozens of signs
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: on the ground. They're all in Chinese, of course, and
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: my Chinese proficiency is not that good. But you can
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: point your Google Translate app at any of these signs
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: and you can see that it's.
• 2:39
  Speaker 3: Young women and young men.
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: Age between twenty eight and forty. And there are no
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: photographs of these people. It's just descriptions of who they are.
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: Only daughter, doctor, multiple university degrees, one hundred and sixty
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: three centimeters tall, sikhs man with multiple degrees, at least
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: a house and a car, good values, you know, courteous,
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: sunny disposition, things like that.
• 3:06
  Speaker 3: It's just one after the other.
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: And I did happen to notice there are a lot
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: more women being advertised than men. But I guess the
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: great twist that comes with all this is that the
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: people who are being advertised are not actually there.
• 3:17
  Speaker 3: It's their parents who are doing it for them.
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: And I guess for us in Australia, we'd find the
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: concept completely mortifying to have our parents standing in a
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: park trying to advertise us to some prospective match out there.
• 3:28
  Speaker 3: But over here it's completely normal.
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: If you've ever heard your parents on the phone talking
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: about you, it's horrifying enough to hear what they say,
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: this overblown idea of who you are and how wonderful
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: you are, and if you're lucky enough to have parents
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: who think about you like that. So there was no
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: sign of any of these young people themselves, and no
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: photos of them. That's interesting. Why not?
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: I thought that was the most intriguing part, because I
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: think we're in Australia and more broadly in the West,
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: we're hyper focused on the physical appeal and the visual
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: appearance of our partners.
• 3:57
  Speaker 3: It's just so so important.
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: But over here it seemed that what was paramount were credentials, pedigree, qualifications,
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: And I noticed that all of the people being advertised
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: in the park were highly educated individuals. They were generally
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: people who had moved from the countryside into the competitive
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: city markets, and in order to get there to find
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: work and become upwardly mobile, they had to go to
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: university spend a lot of time studying, and this was
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: part of the reason why they were actually single.
• 4:27
  Speaker 3: They were people who.
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: Had overwhelmingly thrown themselves into studying and into their careers,
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: and then found themselves in these work environments where they
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: would be working twelve to fifteen hour days in reputable,
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: highly paid professions, but their social circles would be minimal.
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: I mean, we were talking to one Chinese mother who
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: just let out this side. She was so despondent about
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: her son, and she'd been coming there for such a
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: long time, and she was clearly so proud of him.
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: She had all this parental love for him, what a
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: good guy he was. But she just sighed and she
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: said he just devoted too much of his life to
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: his work and not to his social life. But that
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: was a common refrain we were hearing that time and
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: again from fathers of young women and the mothers of
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: young men.
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: Yanna, did you get the sense that the young people
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: who were featuring in these laminated sheets were one hundred
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: percent consenting to their parents kind of shopping them on
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: the marriage market in the park? Oh?
• 5:19
  Speaker 3: Absolutely not. No.
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: For the most part, they didn't even know that their
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: parents were there, and that was a big secret. I mean,
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: I was going up to these people and trying to
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: engage them in conversation and asking them if they would,
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: you know, expect me on record, go on camera, give
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: me an interview. And they were totally frightened by the
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: prospect because they didn't want their children to know that
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: this was what they were doing. But in other cases, no,
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: I mean I met the father of one particular young
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: woman who had a busy job at a state owned
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: aviation company, a very good job here in China. She's
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: too busy. She's got a really small circle of friends
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: at work, all of them are engaged and married. Her
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: dating options are pretty limited on that basis, and so
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: she's given her father her full blessing.
• 5:58
  Speaker 3: Go to the park, use the platform, see what you
• 6:00
  Speaker 3: can do.
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: But Claire, he'd been coming there for three years, every
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: weekend for three years, in.
• 6:18
  Speaker 3: Coming there.
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: How it doesn't seem like it's working out for these people.
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: And when I spoke to him, I said, you know,
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: your daughter's credentials and everything that you've written down about
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: her seems really promising and of interest to any number
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: of men around here.
• 6:46
  Speaker 3: So what's the problem.
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: And he said, well, pedigree looks great, but take a
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: look around.
• 6:52
  Speaker 3: There are others who are much better.
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: And that's what she was competing against other people with
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: better degrees, better financial income, more assets, their name, living
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: in a particular part of China, which.
• 7:03
  Speaker 3: Is more desirable.
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: I mean, these are all things that are kind of
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: culturally working against the people here, either working for you
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: or working against you.
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: Something else. I wondered about the young people whose parents
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: are in the park is and this might be a
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: very kind of western centric question to ask, but maybe
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: they're gay. Maybe they're not really interested in a heterosexual
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: relationship at all, or maybe not interested in the kind
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: of heterosexual relationship that you have in China, you know,
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: these days, maybe it's more conservative. The expectations on a
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: heterosexual marriage are more conservative than say, professional working women
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: necessarily want. Did you get any sense of those kind
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: of factors at play as well?
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: I didn't get that sense, But like, let's take it
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: a baseline that they say, you know, roughly ten percent
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: of every society is gay, lesbian, trans, non binary on
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: that spectrum. So you could walk into a park like
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: this with the general assumption that some of the people here,
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: as you would if you looked at any sporting team,
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: some of the people here are gay.
• 8:04
  Speaker 3: Not the sense that I got from.
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: Being there, and certainly I would think that it's difficult
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: to be gay or lesbian in a place like Beijing.
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: It's a conservative place. It's a very traditional place. The
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: north of China tends to be like that. The South
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: of China tends to have a slightly different cultural feel
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: and element to it. There are gay prip riades happening here,
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: for example, not that I've seen and not that I've
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: heard about. Life does seem to be a little difficult
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: for people who are on that spectrum, because it is
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: just a traditional society still. But I can't say definitively
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: I know the answer to that. I can only speculate.
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: But my assumption would be that some of the people
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: in that park maybe, but the majority, no, They're just
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: unlucky enough.
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: When China was on its very aggressive path to modernization
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: through the nineteen eighties, one of their signature policies was
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: the one child policy, which seemed from a Western perspective,
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: absolutely heartbreaking. The rule was that as a couple you
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: could have one child, and the reporting of it at
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: the time and throughout the nineteen nineties, and this policy
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: lasted until the kind of the mid twenty tens is
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: that it had resulted in a massive reduction in the
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: number of girls who would have otherwise been born because
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: families wanted a male breadwinner to keep them into their
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: old age a son. Basically, now of China's landmark decision
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: to drop its one child policy, official say the shift
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: to a two child policy will help the future.
• 9:28
  Speaker 3: Workforce and a generation ready for retirement.
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: But it's not clear if it will lead to a
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: baby born. Do you get any sense of how the
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: one child policy's legacy is affecting the kind of sexual
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: dynamics in China now? And you know whether there is
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: an imbalance between you young men and young women.
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and it plays out in really interesting ways. So basically,
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: there are more men than there are women in China.
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: For the resid you just mentioned, there was a familial
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: preference to have a son rather than a daughter. It
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: resulted in a whole range measures from the eighties through
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: it up to twenty sixteen when the policy was finally
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: phased out, And basically what it meant was demographically in China,
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: you've just got more men. And what that did was
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: it shortened the supply of women who were available, and
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: it heightened the demand for them. So if you're a
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: Mail in China right now, young mail in China, and
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: you're looking for a partner, you have to provide certain
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: things to your prospective female suitor in order to grab
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: her attention or to marry her.
• 10:25
  Speaker 3: And one of those things is a bride price. For example.
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: I mean, in many parts of China, it's completely normal
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: to pay upwards of one hundred and twenty thousand yuan
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: to the family of the bride who you intend on marrying.
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: One hundred and twenty thousand yu an divided by five.
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: Let's use some Jerno massing. So what is that It's
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: twenty to twenty five thousand dollars Australian. That may not
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: sound like a hell of a lot of money to
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: some of some of our listeners, but over here, that's
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: a tremendous amount of money. I met a young man
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: on a previous trip on a train ride, and we
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: were having a good old chat about this twenty six
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: year old guy, and he was saving up for a
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: house and a car, because that's the baseline you need
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: not just to survive around here, but to show your
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: worth to it. Perspective partner, it's kind of created this
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: two distinct cohorts of single people in China, which are
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: highly educated, financially independent women who have left the rural
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: population centers, gone.
• 11:11
  Speaker 3: To university and moved to the cities.
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: And low income rural men who have tried to do
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: the same. They've tried to get out of working in
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: the small villages in China moved to the big cities.
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: But not all of them have been able to acquire
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: a very competitive place at the universities here, and so
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: some of them are working in construction, in laboring, the
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: working in the gig economy, and the women in the cities.
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: This is a hypergama society. They tend to be looking upwards.
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: They would not entertain the prospect of dating a rural
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: farmer if they're living in Beijing. I mean, I'm sure
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: there are exceptions, but generally speaking, and anecdotally from what
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: I'm hearing, that is just not what's going on here.
• 11:48
  Speaker 3: Women are moving to.
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: The cities, they intend to marry a well established, financially
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: independent man who is earning more than them and living
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: in the same location. So these two distinct cohorts are
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: what everyone's facing here in China, And intriguingly, that's not
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: really what was on display at the People's Park that
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: I visited in Shanghai. I saw a wider variety of
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: women who were available, fewer number of men. And as
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: we were discussing earlier, it would seem that women are
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: throwing themselves into their work, doing everything they can to
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: become financially independent, but it's coming at a social cost
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: to finding a partner.
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: I mean, maybe if you've got three degrees in your
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: nuclear physicist, you don't really want to go and live
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: with your new husband's parents. That was traditionally the expectation
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: in China, in a whole lot of societies, that the
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: wife comes to live with the man's parents. Is that,
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: as far as you know, still the sort of expectation
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: in either rural communities or in the cities in China,
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: Not that.
• 12:44
  Speaker 3: I'm necessarily aware of. As I said, look, it's a
• 12:46
  Speaker 3: big country, there's a lot of people here. Statistically, I'm
• 12:48
  Speaker 3: sure it's true to some extent.
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: One of the more interesting things I've heard recently, and
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: again it's just anecdotally, is that while there used to
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: be a preference among families to have a son, I mean,
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: it seems to be skewing the other way deliberately because
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: of this point. It's because if you do have a son,
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: you need to endow him with all these assets in
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: order for him to attract the very limited pool of
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: available women. So people are swinging the other way now,
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: and they actually desperately want to have a girl because
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: it's far lower maintenance to have a girl because they're
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: in such short supply.
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: Coming up. So who's to blame for this situation? I
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: feel for the dad who's been there for three years
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: trying to find a husband for his no doubt gorgeous daughter,
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: and I'm so desperate to know why she hasn't matched
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: up with anyone yet. But did you get any sense
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: of whether this is better than Tinder or whatever wee
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: ch out or whatever the dating app of the moment
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: is in Chinese? Is it actually working?
• 13:51
  Speaker 3: I got the sense it's not working.
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: But I think you know, when you're assessing a prospective
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: partner off what is essentially a prospectus or a CV,
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: like an investor looking at a company, the brain does
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: so much filling in of the gaps. You really need
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: to see a person in front of you, you need
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: to hear the sound of their voice, you need to
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: experience whatever body chemistry is going on between you, like,
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: so much is happening unconsciously between two people when they're
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: meeting each other and courting each other. I don't want
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: to go into the specific details of dating psychology EXSC.
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: I don't know anything about it, but I think, you
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: know what I mean. I think that the brain does
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: a lot of work. People are doing the same thing
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: when they're swiping through Tinder and Bumble. They're encountering these
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: profiles and they're sort of future forecasting what life with
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: this person might look like anyway.
• 14:30
  Speaker 3: So I think there's all of that already. I think
• 14:33
  Speaker 3: when we're talking.
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: About a marriage market run by parents, the main characters
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: in this play, the children, they're already up against it
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: because they don't know physically if they're going to be
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: a compatible match. They don't know if a whole range
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: of value systems are going to a line.
• 14:47
  Speaker 3: I mean, there's just so much working against them.
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: But amazingly, I met a matchmaker who works in this
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: people's park, and she presided over an array of single
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: individuals whose parents were China have them find a partner.
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: And her answer surprised me, as I said to her,
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: how is this going? And she said, well, the biggest
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: problem here is actually the parents, Jada Yochel. Parents are
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: the ones who are dictating the terms for who their
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: children should marry, and consequently the parents are playing this
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: domineering role when the marriage is split up and they
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: get divorced. So you've got this grand irony of parents
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: desperate to have their kids settle down, but they're the
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: ones getting in the way.
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: I think it's it's one of the oldest stories of
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: all time. You could probably find the same thing happening
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: just a couple of generations back in societies like Australia
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: when we forget how fast we've moved on. I think
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: johny Bishan, thank you very much.
• 15:47
  Speaker 3: Thank you.
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: Jhan is The Australian's North Asia correspondent. You can check
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: out all his reporting and see the video right now
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: at the Australian dot Com dot a