◀ anchor ▶
The video you see now is of a ‘marriage market’ held in a park in Beijing, China.
They write their children’s profiles on paper, and the parents are looking for a mate.
Correspondent Jo Hee-hyeong from Beijing delivers this unusual scenery.
◀ Report ▶
Tentan Park, a tourist attraction in Beijing.
It is crowded with people going out on the weekend.
However, in one corner of the park, hundreds of men and women over middle age are gathered.
Sitting in a chair looks like a flea market, but instead of items, there are papers with something written in front of them.
If you look closely, what is written on the paper is the profile of the children, which says that they are looking for a mate.
A man who was born in 1992 in Beijing and earned 160 million a year while working for a company finds a wife It was written that a woman born in 1990, graduating from graduate school, works for a state-owned company.
The conditions for a spouse are also presented in detail, but men born in their 70s who are in the trading business are looking for those born in 1978 who are over 163 centimeters in height.
There was a matchmaking market in the park looking for someone to marry.
Parents often come out looking for a mate for their children.
Others find their mate directly by looking at the profiles of women on the floor.
[중매시장 참가자 A씨]
“(Why are you looking here?)
“Coming here, you have a lot of choices.”
(What are the conditions for seeing women?)
“A woman with not high standards. It’s good if it’s an ordinary person. I think it’d be good if it was someone like you.”
This scenery, which can be seen not only in Beijing but also in large city parks such as Shanghai and Chengdu, is related to the one-child policy, with males preferring boys, the age of marriage is increasing, and above all, young people are not interested in marriage.
Last year, the number of marriages in China reached 7.64 million, a decrease of 6% from the previous year, a record low.
[중매시장 참가자 B씨]
(Doesn’t your son have time to find a girlfriend?)
“The parents are in a hurry. The kids aren’t in a hurry. They don’t want their parents to come to the park to find them, but they can’t help it.”
A low marriage rate leads to a fall in the fertility rate, and China, the world’s most populous country, is expected to give way to India next year.
This is Jo Hee-hyeong from MBC News in Beijing.
Video coverage: Farewell (Beijing) / Video editing: Jo Ki-beom
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