Senior Looks for Love in Shenzhen Marriage Market

By Bailey Hu, June 2, 2017

Zhou Dehua has been making the two-hour trip to Shenzhen's Lianhuashan Park marriage market every week for a year now. As in similar places across China, his personal ad 'looking for a wife' is posted up among many others, each one representing a single person searching for a match. Zhou's stands apart for multiple reasons, though. For one thing, at 67, he's by far the oldest marriage-seeker in the market.

He's also looking for more than just companionship in his old age. In an interview, Zhou said he wants to find a special someone with whom he can start a business, and travel around China and the world. He even got a drivers license in 2015 so he could be travel-ready.

'When I went to take the test for my drivers license, everyone stared at me like I was a giant panda," he recalled.

He's preparing to study English as well.

Zhou fields a call from a potential partner

Zhou, a divorcee, has two children, one of whom lives near Lianhuashan Park. He first stumbled across the marriage market near the South Gate of the park by accident while visiting his daughter. He was very excited at first, seeing it as a great "chance." That same night he prepared a marriage-seeking sign and brought it to a print shop.

But a year and a dozen or so meetups later, he's no closer to finding his perfect match.

Zhou acknowledges his requirements may be very specific, but says he wants to keep working as a senior in order to have a more "fulfilling" life.

“Although finding an older person who wants to start a business is very hard, I still want to try.”

Zhou has lived in Shenzhen for 30 years now, holding a variety of jobs during that time. He's currently a plumber and electrician, and owns property in the city.

'I have a house, shop and car; all of them will be left to my woman,' his sign reads.

Signs at the Lianhuashan marriage market

Zhou says he gets about two to three phone calls a week asking about his ad. The women he's talked to have ranged in age from 40 to 70, but for one reason or another, things never worked out.

He still visits Lianhuashan each week to make sure his sign hasn't been taken down or rained on. He hopes to find a match before he turns 70, he told reporters; otherwise, he'll just hire a maid.

[Images via Guangzhou Daily, Sohu]