Every weekend in cities like Chongqing, a hilltop park has become the country’s hottest “dating app,” not because of some slick algorithm but because retirees and parents line up with paper résumés of their unmarried children, hawking height, income and even weight like commodities. This isn’t quaint folklore — it’s a blunt portrait of what happens when decades of state meddling and cultural distortion leave families scrambling for human connection.
These printed profiles are startlingly candid: age, job, salary, whether the parents have pensions, and lists of picky physical requirements for prospective spouses. To conservatives who value plain talk and personal responsibility, the markets expose both the practical instincts of ordinary people and the cultural rot that comes from abandoning traditional marriage in favor of social experimentation.
The consequences are not just personal awkwardness — they are national. China recorded just 6.1 million registered marriages in 2024, a record low that has set off alarm bells in Beijing about a shrinking population and an economy that depends on future taxpayers. This is what happens when government policies like the one-child era, reinforced by social engineering and distorted incentives, break the natural incentives for family and childbearing.
If you walk the rows at People’s Park, you see more than matchmaking; you see seniors doing what grandparents have always done — trying to secure a future for their lineage. Volunteers like the matchmaker known as Sister Gao spend weekends consoling anxious parents and handing out profiles, a civic ritual born of worry and grit rather than any central plan. That grassroots impulse — older generations pitching in to preserve family stability — is something America should celebrate and protect, not sneer at.
Part of the problem is a social mismatch: educated single women, raised as only children and given more resources, now set higher standards, while a gender imbalance and economic expectations leave many men struggling to meet those demands. The marriage-market scene is a stark reminder that practical realities like housing, steady work and cultural expectations still drive marriage more than glossy apps or woke talking points ever will.
America should watch this with clear eyes. While we are not China, the same forces — declining birthrates, delayed marriages, and cultural contempt for traditional roles — are visible at home. Conservatives must make the case loudly: strong families, faith and local community are not quaint relics but the foundation of a free and flourishing nation. Opinion and policy should funnel resources, cultural support and common-sense incentives toward marriage and childbearing, not toward bureaucratic edicts that ignore human nature.
The image of parents taping résumés to umbrellas and whispering about pensions ought to move us, not amuse us. It is a warning shot from an authoritarian state that, after decades of social engineering, now watches its people improvise in parks to fix what the government botched. Hardworking Americans who love freedom and family should take this as proof that healthy societies are built bottom-up — by families and communities — not top-down by planners who think they can engineer love and loyalty.
