The formation of Matchmaking Corner in China emerged in a complex context that combines Chinese pragmatism, Chinese traditional ethic, and the loneliness of the old. In this essay, the reasons behind the formation of the Corner will be explored, and the issues that it raises about current Chinese society will be set out, largely through the author’s field research and a short related literature review. After briefly outlining how the process works, I will highlight the arrangement of the xiangqin the resultant meeting of prospective spouses. I then examine the criterion for marriage in the context of traditional views on marriage and an examination of the idea of marriage perceived as a social contract between two families, not as matters for the individual. I then look at how Chinese pragmatism is related to traditional Confucian ethics largely drawing on the theoretical perspective of Li & Wu (2016). I argue that Matchmaking Corner is the outcome of the combination of Chinese pragmatism and traditional ethics: a mixture of filial duty and parental interference in their children’s marriage stemming from loneliness.
Matchmaking Corner
In China, Matchmaking Corner is full of elderly parents and organized by elderly parents themselves. It always takes place in the part with the most pedestrian volume in parks, which provides them a free platform to seeking a suitable spouse for their children. The Matchmaking Corner has been appearing in some main cities such as Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen, Nanjing and so on since 2004. Every parent has a piece of paper that lists the main information of her/his children and the lowest requirements for a future spouse. The Matchmaking Corner is full of the papers hung to attract attention. The parents walk about the Corner, looking the papers or standing by their paper, and chatting, always seeking the suitable spouse for their children. After the parents find the potential suitable spouses, they will arrange a相亲(xiangqin) for their children. The相亲 (xiangqin) can be defined as meeting or dating between two individuals (usually of the opposite sex) at the recommendation of someone else, such as parents, neighbors, co-workers or matchmakers, the goal being marriage (Zhou, 2009).
Take the matchmaking corner in Nanjing for example, the information provided on the papers here normally includes gender, age, height, appearance, personality, hobbies, education background, job, income, ownership of property, census register, even the job of their parents before. Some information can be general, like appearance or personality. More details will be communicated simply by chatting. If the parents find the potential couple suitable, they will arrange the first dating for their children. While the requirements of future spouse are a little different between male and female, they are both required about the education background, census register, personality and height. Besides, the females are normally required to provide information about their age and appearance, and the males are normally required to provide information about income and ownership of property. Besides, the popularity of Matchmaking Corner the interest has encouraged the appearance of professional Marriage Agents, which help the parents to find suitable spouses for their children.
The scene looks really strange— it is full of white haired parents engaged in human trafficking seemingly advocating marriage on the basis of free love. In ancient China a parent’s command and a matchmaker’s word (父母之命媒妁之言) was the criterion for marriage, even without the matchmaker the marriage would not be legal. Traditionally parents’ advice played the decisive role in their children’s marriage and it looks a little similar with current Matchmaking Corner.
Since the May 4th Movement in 1919, Confucian values were criticized and the ideological trend of anti-feudalism had a far-reaching influence. New Women, as one of the most famous periodicals of that period, actively propagated the idea of women’s liberation, vigorously attacked the feudal marriage system, and advocated that the women’s movement should combine with the labor movement. In addition, Wong (2016) illustrated that the Communist Party in 1949 advocated greater freedom of marital choice that drove out the Matchmakers. Propaganda efforts, cultural reform and Westernization, meant that the idea that marrying for love was the ‘right way’ to get married among young people.
However, the Matchmaking Corner events go against this ideal. The parents who are there were mostly born in the 1950s or 1960s, so they should have been influenced by the thought of marriage on the basis of free love of those days. It goes against current mainstream thought as well, that it not objectify women, or also objectify men. Chinese female photographer, Guo Yingguang, who was 34 years old, went to the Matchmaking Corner in Shanghai, and took a group pictures, named ‘The Bliss of Conformity’ and won the Jimei Arles-Madame Figaro female photographer award. When she was in the Matchmaking Corner she was compared to a suburban house by an elderly father, meaning that she is beautiful but a little old, similar to a house of a good type but located in suburban area (suburban houses are cheaper than urban houses in China). This father also compared a man to a credit card.
It seems like human trafficking. But there must be reasonable causes behind this strange phenomenon. According to author’s conversations with those parents in Matchmaking Corner, firstly, this behavior is based on the parents’ understanding about the essence of marriage after their decades of marriage life. They think they know how to find suitable spouses for their children because they have more experience about marriage and know the essence of marriage better in comparison to their children. Secondly, they said that they have retired and had more leisure time, while their children are busy at work or through introversion their narrow social circles, made it difficult for them to find suitable spouses. Thirdly, they think people should get married when reaching a certain age. For females, they are worried that late motherhood will be dangerous and more harmful to females—having children without getting married is illegal in China. According to those reasons Matchmaking Corner seems has been a reasonable and effective way for parents to help their children finding suitable spouse.
The parents I interviewed think the most important factor to marriage is ‘properly matched’ (门当户对), which is an ancient Chinese idiom. It means a marriage between families of equal social rank, and couples of equal status. As Queen and Habenstein (1974) pointed out that marriage is a social contract between two families, and thus the marriages of children are not regarded as matters for the individual. They also mentioned the Chinese proverb ‘Nothing goes well to a destitute couple’ (贫贱夫妻百事哀). While they do not only care about material basis, they also care about psychological basis. They know that emotional satisfaction is also important in marriage life. After the elderly parents confirmed their children’s material conditions with each other, they will communicate with more details about their children, such as appearance, hobbies, personality, major, education background and so on. They attempted to insure the largest possibility of this couple’s mental compatibility by checking this information. They try to find the most suitable marital partner for their Children before arranging xiangqin（相亲). The search for ‘properly matched’ whether in the material level or at the psychological level, is the search for marriage stability in essence, ignoring the mainstream ideology, such as the advocacy of marrying for love, the idea of the anti-feudal and anti-objectification of a person. As Wang (2016) pointed out that the combination of popular, inherent cultural practices which have been passed down for centuries in China is still ingrained in the older Chinese generation. Wang describes how the archaic matchmaking cultures combined with the tradition whereby parents decided their children’s partners, have made marriage markets and this behavior very accessible to the parents who participate in them: matchmaking still seems sensible to China’s older generation.
In addition, the existing situation in Matchmaking Corner is the outcome based on pragmatic thinking as well. At the same time, Chinese pragmatism is related to Chinese traditional ethics. Pragmatism had been introduced into China in the period of the May 4th Movement in 1919 as an advanced western philosophy. It has been highly popularized since it met the needs with ideological emancipation, economic development and education reform of the times.
Pragmatism
Li & Wu (2016) argue that pragmatism can be understood as an instrumentalism ‘taking effectiveness as purpose and experiment as method’. So practical experience should put in first place with any theory and logic secondary. The results are the standard to test all the theories. For Li & Wu the purpose is to directly solve the problems in real life and as a method to solve the problems of metaphysics. It stresses “life” “action” and “effect”. The pragmatic method would interpret by tracing practical consequences because for pragmatism, truth is a kind of explanation to experience. If the explanation makes sense, it is truth and it is useful, which means usefulness is truth, ignore so-called objective truth. If something helped people achieve the purpose, they would be truth.
Another part of Li & Wu’s understanding of Pragmatism is that because of their different social formation and state systems, western pragmatism can hardly survive under the socialist values outlook after the establishment of the new China. The pragmatism mentioned previously has nothing to do with western pragmatism. However, how did it set down roots and grow in China? It is because it has been growing silently in daily life: “once people neglect thought and go away from philosophy, with the thought of quick benefits, it will naturally emerge and flourish” (Li & Wu, 2016). With the tide of reform and opening in 1979, Deng Xiaoping made his famous economic analogy for future directions that: “It doesn’t matter whether a cat is white or black, as long as it catches mice.” Deng Xiaoping subtly advocated pragmatic thoughts that happened to have some similarity with the ‘pragmatic’ thought under Chinese traditional thinking. For example, Confucius said that we should first figure out how to serve human beings (未能事人，焉能事鬼？). When he was asked how we should serve the ghosts and spirits he said it could be a kind of wisdom that focusing on the acts for serving the public, respect the ghosts and spirits but keeps away from them (务民之义，敬鬼神而远之，可谓知矣。). Chinese people have been atheists for thousands of years, and pragmatism is very congenial with the deeply secular Confucian ethic.
Other issues about matchmaking corner, such as the parents’ excessive interference to their children’ marriage and the anxiety of age, are based on these Chinese traditional ethics as can be seen in Confucius’ words:
吾十有五，而志于学。三十而立。四十而不惑。五十而知天命。六十而耳顺。七十而从心所欲，不逾矩。
I decided to study about knowledge since I was fifteen, have the ability for independent living and have a career since 30 years old, can not be confused by things since 40 years old, know there are something can not be controlled by human since 50 years old, can accept different opinions since 60 years old, that can do the things following with heart and do not offend the rule.
This life planning has been taken for the model for thousands years. As a result, 30 year-olds have been described with an idiom “the age of independent living and career” (而立之年), there are another idioms such as “start a family and have a career” (成家立业). That getting married is closely related to having a career under traditional thought, is still having effects especially in those elderly parent’s mind. For females, the anxiety of age has an additional reason, that their competitive power in traditional marriage market, like Matchmaking Corner, will decline by increasing age.
In addition the advocation of filial duty in Chinese traditional ethic could also explain why the children will acquiesce to their parents’s behavior, that posts their personal information on Matchmaking Corner. Even here there is an ancient proverb that filial piety is the most important of all virtues (百善孝为先) . When Confucius was asked what filial piety is, he answered that it means do not contradict what their parents say, and do not disobey what their parents want（无违). The advocation of filial duty has never been oppressed even in the May 4th Movement. It can explain why the children will accept their parents’ advice, or even interference in their marriage.
According to the conversations between authors and those parents, there are other reasons for the popularity of Matchmaking Corner. Those parents who were mostly born in the 1950s or 1960s do not know how to use the internet, since the popularity of the internet began after the 2000s in China. Many of them do not know how to use mobile phones. Many of them mentioned that they have retired and have boundless free time, but they do not know what to do at home. They like walking and chatting because it makes them have things to do and have things to chat about. The Matchmaking Corner not only provides a free platform to seeking suitable spouses for their children, it also meets their needs for social contact at the same time. Helping their children to seeking spouses also makes them feel they are still producing value.
Conclusion
The existence of Matchmaking Corner is in a complex context. It is the centralized reflection of the issues in current China, such as the anxiety of not get married at a certain age, the parents’ interference in their children’s marriage stemming from loneliness , the objectification of people, the understanding of marriage that it is not for the individual. The survival traditional ethics like the filial duty and life planning result in the anxiety of age and the interference from parents, and it makes them accepted pragmatic thinking easily since Chinese traditional ethic and pragmatism have something in common and assimilation. The pragmatic thinking makes them tend to treat marriage from an practical or economic point of view and objectify people. It can not be judged as good or bad easily. In essence, Matchmaking Corner is the outcome of the combination of Chinese pragmatism and traditional ethics.
References
Li,T. and Wu,Y. (2016) Pragmatism in China – Chinese pragmatism. International Conference on Humanity, Education and Social Science(ICHESS 2016), pp.40-43.[online] Available at: https://download.atlantis-press.com/article/25857243.pdf
Queen, S.A. and Habenstein, R.W. (1974) The family in various cultures. New York: J.B. Lippincott Co.
Wong, W. (2016) Past matchmaking norms and their influence on contemporary marriage markets in China. Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford, 8(3), pp.371-383.[Online] Available at: https://www.anthro.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/anthro/documents/media/jaso8_3_2016_372_384.pdf
Zhou, D-D. (2009) Research regarding the flourish of dating fairs. Legal and Economy (China),194, pp. 137-9 (in Chinese).
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