Sometimes the most rewarding stories to tell are the ones you don’t set out to find.
That’s how I felt about my recent article on lonely seniors in Shanghai looking for love.
As the Shanghai bureau chief for The New York Times, I often write about how many young people in China are skipping marriage — a trend that has sent parents and the government into a panic. It is still uncommon for unmarried people to have children in China, which means fewer grandchildren for the anxious and aging, and a demographic crisis for the government.
I wanted to hear from wannabe grandparents who visit People’s Park in Shanghai every weekend. Like Central Park in New York, the leafy public space is a hub of social activity. It is also home to China’s best known “marriage market,” a place where parents come with résumés of their unmarried adult children, hoping to find them a match.
The parents broadcast the personal details of their kids’ height and weight. They boast of attributes such as high I.Q. levels and test scores. Occasionally, they let slip a gripe, such as how their kid “doesn’t call home enough.”
On a Sunday in March, I visited People’s Park with Li You, a news researcher for The Times. Li and I spent hours talking to parents. Some had clearly not told their children about the visits to the marriage market. Others seemed to admit, on some level, that their efforts were futile.
But as with a lot of reporting that involves sensitive matters of family and the heart, many people were reluctant to give us their names for our article. (It seemed as if some parents really didn’t want their children to find out about their matchmaking efforts.) We eventually gave up and headed toward the gates of the park.
For every idea that eventually turns into an article, there are dozens that don’t work out. This was beginning to feel like one of those.
But then, on our way out, we met a 60-year-old woman with short hair dyed orange who gave us only her surname, Yan. She was also a mother. But she wasn’t playing matchmaker for her adult child — she was looking for love herself. Specifically, for a man 20 or 30 years her junior. Or, as she put it, “someone young and fresh.”
Yan told us that many older people were searching for love. They gathered just around the corner of the younger marriage market, every Saturday and Sunday. Excited about the prospect of a new story, Li and I headed in the direction of the older singles.
Some older men and women were gathering as the midafternoon sun shone through the trees. We introduced ourselves to a man who we learned was a 59-year-old migrant worker from southern China. He complained about how hard it was to find a date. “We migrant workers are not good enough for those who are demanding,” he told us.
Before we knew it, we were surrounded by a group of curious seniors in their 60s and 70s who also wanted to share the challenges of finding love.
We learned from two women, Ma Guoying, 64, and her friend Zhang Xiaolan, 66, that most men preferred younger women. We also talked to Liu Qiyu, dressed in a velvet corduroy sweatsuit, who warned us about younger women on the prowl for local men.
And we talked to Chen Lanlan, a younger woman and widow from the city of Lanzhou in the southern Gansu province. She expressed little hope of finding someone.
We asked many of the romantic hopefuls where else they looked for love. One answer came up more than once: the canteen of an Ikea in a well-heeled part of town. “Why Ikea?” we asked. No one seemed to know. All anyone knew was to show up at Ikea on Tuesday around 2 p.m.
When we arrived at Ikea later that week, we were surprised to find the canteen had been taken over by men and women in their 60s, 70s and 80s. The place felt more like a social club. Several people even pulled up chairs and invited us to join their conversations.
We met one grumpy man who accused us of being American spies. But for the most part, the seniors shared with us their hopes and dreams of finding true love in old age — something that is referred to as “twilight love” in China.
In a country that has become harder for journalists to report on and easier for Americans to misunderstand, this article about the love lives of the retired and lonely gave me the opportunity to tell a simple story that everyone could relate to.
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