BUSINESSWEEK - June 1 - 38,000 singles and parents attended the Shanghai’s largest matchmaking event last weekend as the city seeks to revive a birth rate that has collapsed to half the level in Japan. The number of children the average woman in the city will bear over her lifetime was 0.79 in 2010, about half the national level. That compares with the 1.42 rate for Japan and 2.08 in the U.S. In Shanghai the number of couples tying the knot in the first four months of the year fell 10% to 41,282. ~2K couples were successfully matched at last year’s event. This year, parents studied profiles of single men and women in dozens of matchmaking booths around the park. A typical poster read: 1.67 meter female working in a research field, born in 1983, looking for 1.77 meter male born after 1977.
The full article was originally published at Business Week, but is no longer available.
China loves real connections through real matchmakers and events. The USA has liked speed dating events in the past, and has a handful of national footprint matchmakers. But Asia is still feet deep in mom-and-pop-matchmakers.
Posted by: Mark Brooks | Jun 06, 2012 at 05:44 PM