Sometimes the most rewarding stories to tell are the ones you didn’t set out to find.
That’s how I felt about it My recent article on single seniors Looking for love in Shanghai.
As the Shanghai bureau chief of The New York Times, I often write about how many young people in China are dropping out of marriage—a trend that has sent parents and the government in panic. It is still unusual for unmarried people to have children in China, which means fewer grandchildren for the restless and elderly, and Demographic crisis for the government.
I wanted to hear from the grandparents who visit People’s Park in Shanghai every week. Like New York’s Central Park, the leafy public space is a hub of social activity. It is also home to China’s best-known “marriage market,” where parents come with the resumes of their unmarried adult children, hoping to find them a match.
Parents transmit personal details of their children’s height and weight. They boast traits such as high IQ levels and test scores. Often, they let things slip, like how their child “doesn’t call home enough.”
On a Sunday in March, I visited People’s Park with The Times news researcher Li Yu. Lee and I talked to the parents for hours. Some did not explicitly tell their children about the visit to the marriage market. Others admitted at some level that their efforts were futile.
But as with so much reporting involving family and sensitive matters of the heart, many people were reluctant to give their names for our article. (It seemed that some parents indeed Their children didn’t want to know about their matchmaking efforts.) We finally gave up and headed for the park gates.
For every idea that eventually turns into an article, there are dozens that don’t work. This was starting to feel like one of them.
But then, on our way out, we met a 60-year-old woman with short hair dyed orange who only gave us her surname, Yan. She was also a mother. But she wasn’t playing matchmaker for her grown child—she was looking for love herself. Especially, for a man 20 or 30 years his junior. Or, as she put it, “someone young and fresh.”
Yan told us that many older people were looking for love. They used to gather around the corner of the small marriage market every Saturday and Sunday. Excited about the prospect of a new story, Lee and I headed in the direction of the old singles.
A few old men and women were gathering as the mid-afternoon sun shone through the trees. We introduced ourselves to a man who we found out was a 59-year-old migrant worker from southern China. He complained about how hard it was to find a date. “We are not good enough for the migrant workers who are demanding,” he told us.
Before we knew it, we were surrounded by a group of eccentric seniors in their 60s and 70s who also wanted to share the challenges of finding love.
We learned from two women, Ma Guoying, 64, and her friend Zhang Xiaolan, 66, that most men prefer younger women. We also spoke to Liu Qiu, dressed in a velvet corduroy sweatsuit, who warned us about young women for local men.
And we spoke to Chen Lenlan, a young woman and widow from Lanzhou City in southern Gansu Province. She held out little hope of finding anyone.
We asked several romantic hopefuls where else they look for love. More than once came the answer: an Ikea canteen in a well-heeled part of town. “Why Ikea?” we asked. No one knew. Everyone knew it was supposed to show up at Ikea around 2pm on Tuesday
When we arrived at Ikea later that week, we were surprised to find that the canteen was occupied by men and women in their 60s, 70s and 80s. The place felt more like a social club. Some people even pulled out chairs and invited us to join their conversation.
We met a bad man who accused us of being American spies. But mostly, the seniors shared with us their hopes and dreams of finding true love in old age – known as “twilight love” in China.
In the country that has become Difficult for journalists In order to inform and make it easier for Americans to misunderstand, this article about retired and single loving life gave me the opportunity to tell a simple story that everyone can relate to.
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