A Market of Résumés

In People's Park in Chengdu, love keeps an archive. Rows of pink paper strung on wires: birth year, height, income, apartment status, degree, sometimes a photo, rarely a name. Parents sit beside the sheets on folding stools like agents at a very slow trade fair, appraising passers-by with a frankness I found almost restful. Everyone knows what this market is. Nobody pretends otherwise.

I stood in the reading crowd next to two young women who commented on the ads in bursts of laughter I did not need translated, and read what I could: the recurring characters for house and car, the years, the heights.

A résumé culture applied to the heart, and, before anyone from my side of the continent gets superior about it, not one bit stranger than what we do with apps, only more honest about the spreadsheet underneath.

The historian in me kept thinking: these wires are a census of hope, updated weekly, weatherproofed in plastic sleeves. Some sheets were sun-bleached, and I did not ask what that means for the person described on them. Some questions you leave in the park.