上海式相睇

Young Chinese singles and parents look at a wall showing information of unmarried young people during a matchmaking event at the Expo Park in Shanghai.

Dating Shanghai-Style Draws 38,000 Hopefuls as Weddings Fall

Zhang Peijuan, 58, scans the thousands of young men and women gathered in Shanghai’s Expo Park, looking for an eligible bachelor.

“He should have a college degree, be about 1.75 meters tall, and property is a must,” says the curly-haired, retired researcher, who is shopping for a husband for her daughter and carries three photos of the 28-year-old in her handbag. “Young people these days work too hard. When I see someone I think my daughter may like, I approach him for his contact.”

Zhang was among 38,000 singles and concerned parents at Shanghai’s largest matchmaking event last weekend, as the city seeks to revive a birth rate that has collapsed to almost half the level in Japan. China’s richest city, leading financial center and largest port will see marriage registrations fall 17 percent this year, according to official estimates.

“Shanghai is at the frontier of these broad social changes and this is what is happening across urban China,” said Wang Feng, Beijing-based director for the Brookings-Tsinghua Center for Public Policy. “We will see it spread.”