Modern City, Old Ways

This past weekend, we were in Shanghai to meet up with a friend. While there, it was the opening weekend of the Shanghai World's Fair Expo. It is a big deal for China and Shanghai, as another opportunity to showcase their modernity by hosting an international venue. We didn't make it to the Expo, but we did spend the day wandering around the city. It is a very modern city--much moreso than Beijing, in fact. But on this day, we ran upon a very funny, old custom right in the middle of People's Square Park downtown...

One of the most charming things about China is all the markets. Every city has a bird market, fake market, night market, technology market, wedding markets, flower markets, fish markets and countless fruit and veggie markets. And apparently, every Saturday in Shanghai is the marriage market. The pathways at the park are lined with homemade classified ads looking for marriage--not dates, marriage. (The ads are very specific about this.) And the ads are very bare-bones--often listing only age, height, salary and a cell phone number. The most bizarre thing is that the people being advertised have little to do with the whole thing. This is the market where moms, dads, grandmas and grandpas converge to trade their children in marriage. I know it sounds harsh, but even our Chinese friends have said that to the older generation, children are like possessions. It certainly seemed that way on Saturday, as we watched grandmas negotiate over the details of these matches.

The pictures speak for themselves:
This lady was hard-core. She had a list of phone numbers that she'd written down and was just going down the list making phone calls.

Negotiations.



One of the few ads we saw including a photo.