Desperate future housewives
Hurry, Shanghai! It's almost time to meet the person of your dreams person of the opposite sex who happens to be standing in the closest proximity to you! UPI (via the SCMP) reports:
Shanghai will host China's biggest matchmaking event next month when 8,000 singles gather in a park to meet one another ...The event is restricted to young professionals, who will have five hours to search for true love during a dinner and games organized by the China Association of Social Workers' matchmaking service, the South China Morning Post reported.
The story later paraphrases the manager of the "Shanghai Yuan Yang Yuan Marriage Introduction Company" who blames busy work schedules and the one-child policy for the single status of many of their clients.
It costs about 100 RMB to gain entry into this overcrowded park. And if you happen to be shy, several "cupids" will be lurking around to help introduce you to a similarly shy partner with whom you can go on to have an incommunicative relationship, get married due to family pressure and have one child who grows up with no idea what a healthy relationship looks like and will likely find himself or herself in a crowded Shanghai park at the age of 27 trying to find a mate.
In an unrelated story, Shanghai's divorce rate is way, way up.