BEIJING — The middle-aged men and women gather in small clumps around the pavilion in Zhongshan Park like molecules in motion, drawn together by the magnetic force of their placards and photos, the odd smile, a flirtatious nod that hints at fading charms.
"Graduate degree, 5 feet, 2 inches tall with a Beijing residency permit," says a fiftysomething woman. "I'm sorry, I'm looking for someone who's 5 feet, 6 inches," a man about the same age responds before walking off.
These earnest hunters aren't in search of soul mates for themselves. They're looking for husbands and wives for their grown children, most of whom have no idea they're here. In fact, many would blanch at meeting anyone their parents recommended.
The parents say they're aware this is a low-percentage game. It's hard enough out here under the tall cypress trees finding compatible future in-laws, let alone hoping that the offspring will hit it off.
Still, they return week after week to parks across China, driven by the anxiety of watching the younger urban generation marry later, devote more time to careers and give little apparent thought to starting a family -- at least on their parents' schedule.
Depending on the weather and people's schedules, attendance can range from a few dozen to the upward of 6,000 that showed up late last month at a park in Nanjing.
Known in slang as "bare sticks," more than 500,000 singles between 30 and 50 live in each of China's two main cities, Beijing and Shanghai, according to government figures. That is a fivefold increase from 1990. In China, the average marrying age in 2001 was 24 for men and 23 for women, although experts say it's closer to 30 in big cities such as Beijing.
It's the fate of Chinese parents, the park-goers say with a weary sigh, to do whatever they can for their children and future grandchildren, in a culture centered on clans, generational continuity and ancestor worship.
"China has 1.3 billion people," says Bai Qianling, a woman in her early 60s out looking for a suitable match for her very tall 27-year-old daughter, a former volleyball player now doing brand marketing. "Why is it so hard to find one reasonable person?"
It's a question many of the parents ask themselves as they come together along the Forbidden City's Tongzi Moat to kibitz, lament and indulge in a bit of bragging in the midst of this mass matchmaking. "It's a big auction," says Fu, a woman in her 50s who gave only her surname.
