Two single males to every single female. Increasingly picky middle-class women.
How does the average man find a wife in materialistic Shanghai?

The effects of the one-child policy, combined with a rapid revolution in
China's values and lifestyles, have created an increasingly selective society
of middle class Shanghai women. For working class men, finding a wife is
a quest that requires money, time, and the strength to withstand countless
disappointments.

Wu is an electrician, earning 1,000 yuan ($125 U.S.) a month. His ex-wife left
him to find a wealthier man, and he has spent a good percentage of his
income on dating agencies and newspaper classifieds in the hope of finding
a nice woman to grow old with. He must face the challenge of finding a wife
in a town where one's economic "hardware" defines one's marriage prospects.

On the other hand, Aileen is part of a growing number of professional,
independent Shanghai women who no longer feel the traditional pressures of
marrying early. Like many Shanghai women, Aileen prefers foreign
boyfriends, thereby completely skipping over local men like Wu in favour of finding
a mate from "a higher standard."

Shanghai Bride is a rare portrait of ordinary people in an extraordinary
social predicament, a window on the materialistic and cut-throat nature
of Shanghai's marriage market.

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