Making a Friend: Changing Patterns of Courtship in Urban China

COURTSHIP IN CHINA has recently become visible to foreigners. Tourists five years ago often returned from the People's Republic wondering about the hidden rituals of love and marriage. Today, they are more likely to comment on the hundreds of people lined up two-by-two every evening along the Bund in Shanghai, or the amorous couples hidden behind every bush in Beijing's Purple Bamboo Park. The change in courtship patterns is not entirely in the eye of the beholder. Young Chinese have become more public in their displays of affection, reflecting a general liberalization in public mores with the end of the Cultural Revolution. This liberalization has extended beyond daily street behavior to the realm of public discourse in China itself. Public discussion of courtship in China today includes a wide range of issues: the role of the matchmaker, the proper age for courtship, the emotional perils of courtship, the problem of finding a mate appropriate to one's social status, and even sex and the public parks. The China Youth News (Zhongguo qingnian bao) has been one forum for much of this discussion. There are two questions which have particularly captivated the writers and readers of that paper. How should one go about finding a mate? And what criteria should one use in deciding whether the match is a good one?' Conflicting sets of priorities-economic, emotional, and social-make these questions every bit as confusing as they are in the West, though for somewhat different reasons. Courtship, love, and marriage in China today are probably talked about more, and agreed about less, than at any time since the May Fourth Movement of 1919. Furthermore, the dis-