The Men at the Marriage Market Never Read the Back of My Paper

She sat on a plastic chair in the marriage market at People’s Park. The chair had a crack down the middle, taped with packing tape. In front of her lay an A4 sheet. Her mother had printed it. The third line read: “Requirement: no cohabitation history.” A man in a polo shirt stopped, scanned the page, and said, “This condition is good. Girls these days are too casual.” She said nothing. She turned the paper over. On the back was her résumé: born 1996, master’s from a 985 university, investment bank in Lujiazui, annual salary 800,000 RMB. The man did not look at the back. He walked on to the next umbrella.

This scene happens every weekend. Umbrellas bloom along the paths, each with a sheet clipped to it. Parents stand beside them, holding thermoses, eyeing strangers. A woman with a megaphone announces hukou requirements. A man asks a mother, “Does your daughter have a mortgage?” Another man writes “no brothers” in red ink. A woman in a beige coat holds a photo of her son, a 1988 baby with a master’s in engineering. A retired teacher asks every young woman the same question: “Are you a virgin?” Some answer. Some walk away. The paper is a market stall. The body is the product. The product’s most valuable parts are often printed on the back, and the buyers rarely flip the page.

If you think “no cohabitation history” is hard currency in this market, you have misread the exchange rate. Hard currency is the back of the sheet. Men with a virginity complex exist. Most of them are not in Lujiazui offices. They are not in Tsinghua labs. They are not in the circles that produce upward marriages. They are in Hupu comment sections, typing “you can’t find a virgin, so you call men who like virgins sick.” They are at dinner tables, bragging that their wife was a virgin. They are in marriage corners, holding their mother’s thermos. Their bargaining power and their demands tend to run in opposite directions. The louder the demand, the thinner the wallet.

Zhang Zetian married Liu Qiangdong. Nobody asked whether she was a virgin. They asked whether she could stand beside him at Columbia, whether she could post the right WeChat moment when JD went public, whether she could stay silent after Minnesota. Wendi Deng married Rupert Murdoch. Nobody asked whether she was a virgin. They asked whether she could charm a News Corp executive with a glass of red wine in first class, whether she could stand up in a parliamentary hearing and defend her husband, whether she could walk away with a courtyard house in Beijing. The chips for upward marriage are these. A hymen cannot buy a single one.

The market sees a membrane and calls it a lock. A receipt would be closer. A receipt for a transaction that already happened, or did not. A man who wants a virgin is shopping for a guarantee. Guarantees expire. Partners do not. Some men say it is in their genes. Paternity certainty. They want to know the child is theirs. DNA tests exist. A swab costs two hundred yuan. If a man’s main concern is paternity, he can solve it with a test. If his main concern is control, no test will satisfy him.

So why do women accept premarital sex on a large scale? Because marriage happens late. In the past, a girl married at fifteen. Staying a virgin until the wedding was easy. Now the average age of first marriage is near thirty. Asking her to spend fifteen years, from puberty to thirty, with an adult toy and a locked drawer is not fair. She earns twenty thousand a month. She pays her own rent. She flies to Japan in cherry blossom season without asking permission. She has had three relationships. She knows which man slams the door after an argument and which man leaves stomach medicine in her bag without a note. She has a health report, a box of condoms, and the right to say no. These things weigh more than a membrane.

I knew a girl who used her first time as a chip. She was twenty-six. She kept it. At a matchmaking dinner, she stated her price: “I am a virgin. Bride price: 880,000.” A man paid. They married. In the first year, he came home drunk and asked, “Did you lie to me? Did you have surgery?” She cried. She went to the kitchen, boiled water, and drank it. She looked at the 880,000 in the bank. It bought a car. It did not buy a night of sleep. She traded her first time for 880,000 yuan, but she could not trade it for trust. A transaction has no respect in it.

Choice is the advantage. You can choose to marry. You can choose not to marry. You can choose to keep your first time. You can choose to spend it. You can choose a person. You can leave a person. No one can take these from you.

Her mother married at twenty-three. Her mother was a virgin on her wedding night. Her mother divorced at forty-five. Her mother now sits in the living room, folding laundry, and says, “Keep your first time. It is your best card.” The daughter does not argue. She folds a towel. She puts it in the closet. She goes to work. At the office, a male colleague leans over her cubicle and says, “You’re a catch. Why are you still single?” She saves the spreadsheet. She says, “I’m not a prize.” He laughs. He thinks she is joking.

She has a friend who divorced last year. The friend married a man who demanded a virgin. The man had slept with twelve women before marriage. The friend found out from his old roommate. She packed her bags. She left. She now lives in a one-bedroom apartment with a cat and a rice cooker. She sends the daughter a message: “Don’t let anyone price you.” The daughter replies with a photo of her dinner: salmon, broccoli, a glass of white wine.

The marriage market does not know what to do with her. She is thirty. A man in a leather jacket asks her age. She tells him. He says, “Too old.” She asks his salary. He says, “That’s private.” She turns the page. On the back, her salary is printed in bold. He does not look. He walks to a girl who is twenty-four and has a photo of herself in a nurse’s uniform. The nurse’s sheet says: “No cohabitation history. Willing to have two children.” The man in the polo shirt comes back. He asks the mother, “Is your daughter a virgin?” The mother says, “She is a good girl.” The man says, “That’s not what I asked.”

She stands up. The plastic chair scrapes the concrete. She folds the A4 sheet once, then twice, then crushes it into a ball. She walks past the umbrella with the megaphone, past the man in the polo shirt, past a mother holding a photo of her son. She drops the paper into a trash bin. Her phone rings. Her mother. “How was the matchmaking?” “Not suitable.” “Why not suitable?” “He didn’t look at the back.” She hangs up. She walks into the subway station. The train arrives. She gets on, finds a seat, opens her phone, and starts answering work emails.