“A question of bank notes, cars, and houses!” Matchmaking and the Moral Economy of Love in Urban China

Abstract

Chinese practices of matchmaking have been controversial for over a century. Their continued transformations reveal a complex nexus of sentimental and material dimensions in the marriage-decision process at the heart of the negotiations between families and in their selections of proper candidates. This interplay between personal sentiments, concrete considerations, and the desire for success makes marriage controversial, as “love” is claimed and proclaimed at the same time. Moral debates around materialism, which have reverberated through the public sphere over the last decade, show how “love” acts as a tool of social reproduction while it also expresses sincere aspirations for an emotionally satisfying life. In comparative perspective, the complex of romantic love examined here reveals a recent, original synthesis of the tradition of parental arrangement and the political question of the place of love in modernity. The paper elucidates one of the contradictions within Chinese society today: the family remains central, but wider trends of individualization continue to unfold. A multifaceted understanding of love clarifies how it can bind families together while it also discourages others from pursuing romance.

Just Merit?

“…To reach this objective, this essay partly utilizes my ethnography of matchmaking in urban China, which extended from the study of "marriage corners" in which parents of a non-married adult child participate in order to help him or her find an appropriate spouse, to amateur and professional matchmaking services. This showcases the involvement of middle-class parents in their child's marriage, a topic on which I have published already (see Pettier 2016Pettier , 2019Pettier , 2020Pettier , 2022aPettier , 2022b. In this piece, I introduce elements of this field research demonstrating the authoritarian character of the participation of some parents.…”

“…In any case, virtually everyone will go through legal marriage if they want to have a child without paying the rather high "social compensation fee (shehui fuyang fei)" that many provinces apply to births out of wedlock. 2 As a result, the pressure youths receive to marry early and well, and reproduce in order to continue the family line, is very high (see Pettier 2020Pettier , 2022a. This collective social pressure has led to an omnipresent practice of matchmaking and family-framing of mate-search and mate-choice (Pettier 2019).…”

Parents and Unwed Daughters as an Intergenerational Alliance? – Parental Matchmaking and China’s Single Women

“…Parents cannot screen for emotional connection and romance, which Pei valued, but the two do not contradict. As Pettier noted, Chinese adult children's 'understanding of love does not rest solely on individual feelings but also considers wider social and material dimensions' (Pettier, 2022), that is, the romantic sentiments they hoped for are materialistically grounded. This explains why parental involvement is still welcomed.…”

“…Parental matchmaking, where parents assume key roles in their children’s search for a spouse, has gained increasing public visibility in China (Pettier, 2016), resulting in research on the phenomena of ‘marriage corners’ in urban parks (where parents congregate with their unwed children’s bios in search of a good match) and matchmaking television shows involving both parents and children (e.g. ‘Chinese style matchmaking’) (Pettier, 2020; 2022; Sun, 2012; Zhang & Sun, 2014). As we will show, modern Chinese parental matchmaking includes parents actively searching for and arranging for dates for their children, and is widely used in major cities.…”