Sending signals for dating is a crucial part of every up-and-coming 20something’s life and finding tactful methods to demonstrate intelligence, health, wealth and interests occupies a considerable portion of our time and attention. Why else would so many young men carry around cameras and post the over-edited results online but to demonstrate their uniquely-like-everyone-else creative personalities. These and other trends are simply increasingly Byzantine ways to demonstrate SWPL cred and find the ideal SWPL partner. Rather than get caught up in the game, though, I personally try to determine how many yoga positions a young woman knows (really, the only piece of relevant information for long term relationship happiness).

This approach may not work for everyone, and in the West, it’s rather crass to simply display mate-worthy information early on in an interaction, even though there are now very cost effective ways to do so. One might imagine a dating/mating equilibrium where men and women simply exchange credit reports, a health evaluation, and personal summary. Though it certainly wouldn’t be 100% effective, it might save some time. Instead of finding more efficient ways to simplify the process, however, people seem to find increasingly obscure characteristics to focus on. As we become wealthier and have more opportunities, dating kabuki becomes even more complex. This seems to be because health and wealth become easier to provide on one’s own, and relative scarcities are then present in things like an “entertain me with conversation and impress my friends” quotient.

The Shanghainese, however, have found a way to get around some of these hoops. Every weekend in People’s Square, hundreds of people gather for China’s most famous marriage market (相亲角). Inspired by Ak47’s foray to this event, I was curious to learn of a more deterministic method to finding marital bliss, so I grabbed an equally appealing Caucasian specimen of the female variety, and we went to explore. As Z-San explains in his post, old grandchildrenless Chinese parents, with little to do with their free time (only so much majiang one can play), will search for other grandchildrenless Chinese parents, and send their children out on dates. This has become particularly important in larger cities as young people delay marriage for careers, or to save up enough to buy a house and a car (in most cases, de facto prerequisites for the ideal marriage).

This arrangement isn’t that unusual: dating here generally does seem more forward. The practice is also somewhat similar in spirit to dating websites, though the explicit focus is on basic compatibilities: height, education, and assets. As I understand it, most dating websites at least try to provide a modicum of dignity to their users, while attempting to implicitly communicate these traits. Conversely, Chinese dating websites do seem to be much more direct as well (a topic for a later post).

It seemed a more social environment for the parents; like a substitute for Church or other civil society type activities that Westerners engage in. The explicit focus on marrying-off-kid provides a mean to this end. To some extent, Church and other types of civil society activities in the West do provide forums for people to meet others with similar values. Again, not as direct:

These are fairly representative posts. The one in the middle reads: Looking for Marriage. Male. Born 1978. 1.75m, technical college graduate. 4 years of working experience in the mechanics industry, Shanghai Auto Group. Monthly salary Rmb5,000 (USD 730). Have an independent marriage house, car, no mortgage debt. Telephone no…

Most of the posts follow this format. Judging from the women’s posts with requirements, a man who doesn’t have a house and is not above 1.8m in height is janked (ie: no love for Tony). The main portion of the market itself seemed rather like a dude heavy, with 2/3 of the posts belonging to men. Regulars, however, indicated that there were in fact more women overall, and that an ideal man (Shanghai registry, owns house, tall, non-wet-paper-bag personality) is very hard to find. The salary information provided suggested that those represented at the market were above average in terms of income.

The blue sheet appears to be a harem – the marriage market, like real estate – has brokers who arrange matches. This above is one matchmaker’s stable of dozens of lonely women.

The man here has indicated requirements for his ideal mate, and was one of the few references we saw to anything other than money, assets or beauty: [looking for a woman] born after 1983. Between 1.65-1.7m in height. Graduate of a normal, full-time college. Good moral character, good health. Traditional domestic style household woman.

This was interesting also: the “especially recommended section” of the “overseas board.” Parents who are in China with children overseas will try to find other parents with children also overseas to set them up. This is an important method by which the Chinese diaspora maintains its genetic integrity, against an ever encroaching tide of yellow-fevered Caucasian sausage.

Very few of the posts have photographs, with the few exceptions being absurd cowboy hat glamour photos. Regulars indicated that most participants wouldn’t consider a prospective date who didn’t have a Shanghai or Beijing household registry (hukou). Parents complained about high house prices, since it “would take several generations contributing to paying in order to buy a wedding house for our son.” When asked about the effectiveness of the marriage market in actually finding marital matches, one man reported “about 1%.” Another indicated that it is “50% effective.”

Longitudinal panel data required to determine comparative divorce rates between match-made and non match-made couples. That, or send me your information and I’ll find you a Chinese mate… For a matchmaking fee.

A friend sent me a link to a Tianya forum post about plans for Shanghai’s 2020 metro system:

Shanghai already has a very nice metro system (it’s supposed to handle 3 million daily); and is the third largest in the world in terms of length of track. Anyone who rides it in the morning will tell you that the major lines are far from ideal, though sardine style people packing probably provides a measure of safety [I cheat and live absurdly close to work.]

The map uses Shanghainese romanizations for several place names (Lohkatsy, Zaanhai, Phuton) rather than a standard Mandarin Pinyin. Linguistic regionalism is supported by design firms? Some might respond that an expanded metro system is wishful thinking. Nonsense – more stimulus!

Having visited home after my research grant, and arriving back in Shanghai on a Friday night, scheduled to start work on Monday, I had only 36 hours to find an apartment. I decided to take the first place that met a very broad set of requirements, rather than live in a hotel for a week. This time around I had more time to conduct a proper search. Having become familiar with the process of apartment hunting in China (in Wuhan and Shanghai at this point), I thought I’d document the steps for future reference.

90% of the time, if you’re looking on your own for an apartment (or property) in China, you will do so through a real estate agent (中介, zhongjie) company. They have lists of properties they manage, acting as middlemen. For residential rental, their normal fee is 30% of one month’s rent. It’s a good idea to check out online property listings first, Google Lifestyle (谷歌生活搜素) or Soufun (搜房). Most of the listings on these sites are also from agents, so it’s an easy way to get contact information (call, tell them where you’re looking/what price range, and they can arrange to show you a several properties).

Personally, I’ve had good luck just wandering around neighborhoods until I found a real estate company (usually something-something-房地产). Indicate that you’re looking in the neighborhood, price range, and when you want to move in. No one has really tried to take advantage of me, and white-person-premium seems to be 100-200Y per month at most. Going through a real estate agent also has the benefit that they provide contracts for you, and keep copies of them. Again, never had any problems in this regard but it seems wise to have another layer of involvement should something go wrong with the landlord.

Always get the landlord/agent to write out receipts anytime you pay for anything (handwritten notes, if signed, are legally enforceable in China) and any agreements you have about ‘if something breaks, party X is responsible.’

Timeframes: one of the major differences between apartment hunting in the US and in China are the timeframes involved. It’s normal to look for a place, and be moving in within 48 hours (this often seems to happen). There is little advantage of trying to plan a month in advance, unless you have the luxury of waiting over the entire period to find something that is ideal. Using simultaneous real estate agents is a good strategy, at least to be sure that you get a good range of prices.

In general, most apartments will come ‘furnished.’ Don’t expect heating, aside from a reverse air conditioner (it’s possible to find central heating, though it will be more expensive). Insulation is universally bad. In general, there’s a strong correlation with appearance and price, not necessarily quality and price. If the place is in a tall building, expect it to be even more expensive (not quite sure why, as the newer properties tend to have terrible sound insulation). It’s always possible to find international standards, though you’re likely to pay even a slight international premium. In Shanghai, 1 bedroom 1 bathroom 1 living room apartments seem to run 1500-3000, with the lower end being extremely far away from transport. In cities like Wuhan, 2000 will nab you a many-room palace.

My personal preference is for 2nd/3rd story places in older (1980s/90s), decaying, Blade Runner-ish buildings that are located near pedestrian markets. Since most properties here don’t have fire escapes/alarms/sprinklers, being located near the ground seems ideal from a jumping standpoint. Ground floors often have rodent problems. If you’re high up you also less safe from petty thievery (the professional lockpicks I’ve spoken with here say they always go for places on upper floors since there’s less foot traffic. I don’t really think this is a big problem, so it’s probably not very relevant).

This is a very interesting visualization, which comes from the European Commission’s Joint Research Center, which captures information about travel times for any given area. These sorts of exercises are very interesting, when realizing that it’s easier (faster anyway) to travel from Shanghai to Chicago than it is to travel from Shanghai to certain parts of rural Anhui. The remotest place in the world is in the PRC: the Tibetan Plateau. Note that the scale is non-linear, so the differences between remote and non-remote are even more considerable than appears at first glance. It would be interesting to use the same methodology and restrict travel options to income levels, to examine economic determinants of geographic access.

The blue lines are shipping routes; apparently Shanghai is the third most central port in the world (after the Suez and Panama Canals).

China mobile has recently begun censoring text messages with ‘yellow content’ (sexting, basically). People were upset by the invasion of privacy, so the compromise with customers was to simply block messages that don’t meet the filter requirements, rather than prosecute individuals sending lurid packets of binary filth. It’s taken as a given that technology controls will eventually run into problems with commerce.

Bearing this important narrative mind, I asked a Shanghainese pro-d0mme friend over noodles how she felt about the new rules. Surely her scheduling methodology would be affected. She replied: “since most of my clients are from the US and Europe, I don’t care. I can still use English” [the filters not being calibrated to reign in worldly, cosmopolitan smut, as it were.]

There was a collision between two trains this morning on Shanghai m3tro l|ne |. No official news yet,  some discussion / picture here (http://club.pchome.net/thread_1_15_4900600__.html). Will be interesting to see if the thread is deleted, some posts already were. Given how packed these things are; hoping no one was hurt.

Anna Greenspan of NYU gave a seminar on research she’s been doing about conceptions of new futurism in Shanghai. She discussed various modernist visions of the future (from ~70 years ago), such as Hugh Ferriss’ Metropolis of Tommorrow:

Professor Greenspan noted how striking the resemblance is between Shanghai and these various imaginings of the past-future (Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, Hugh Ferris, World of Tommorrow); the Wikipedia article on retro-futurism even features some Shanghai architecture.

There were a wide variety of interesting topics brought up throughout the discussion; including: the notion of ‘eschatological faith in the future’ in Shanghai (and China right now) [from a commercial perspective, it seems easy to have faith in myriad future schemes when interest rates are super low.] Optimism is palpable – among a certain class – throughout China. Someone also brought up the idea that modernism has, up until now, largely succeeded in China. Residential complexes that are identical to housing projects in England and the U.S. are essentially gated communities here; and have (up until now) been very profitable. Despite repeated attempts by planners, American style suburbia hasn’t quite caught on yet. It will eventually – the scale involved guarantees that – but a variety of solutions will be required to accommodate an urbanized billion.

The venue, Xindanwei (新单位) is worth exploring if you live in Shanghai.