The grounding and authenticity are the reasons why the seemingly traditional dating method of "Wang Po matchmaking" has been quickly recognized by young people.

Reporter | Wang Zhongyun

Do young people really stop loving blind dates? In the spring of 2024, people who have seen the scene of "Wang Po Saying Matchmaking" in Kaifeng, Henan, may give completely different answers.

Since March, "Wang Po Says Matchmaking" twice a day has become a phenomenon show in the scenic spot of Kaifeng Long live Mountain Martial Arts City. Every day in March, thousands of people gathered under the stage.

"It's not that If You Are the One can't afford to go, but that Kaifeng Wang Po is more cost-effective." The jokes made by netizens, to some extent, also reveal the key point of the popularity of "Wang Po talks about media" - truth.

"Compared with some of the past love and dating variety shows with their own scripts, the form of 'Wang Po talks about matchmaking' became more real at the beginning of its popularity." Liu Wenrong, a researcher of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, said in a recent interview with Xinmin Weekly.

On April 3, the Wansui Mountain Scenic Area announced that Zhao Mei, the "actress of Wang Po", had asked for a month's leave from that day for health reasons. On the 18th, the scenic spot announced that Zhao Mei would return to "matchmaking with Wang Po" during the May Day holiday. No one can predict how long "Wang Po" will be popular in the face of the changing Internet traffic. However, the attitude of this generation of young people towards blind dates, as well as some new ways of making friends, is worth paying attention to at the moment.

Above: On March 28, 2024, Wang Po of Wansui Mountain Swordsman City in Kaifeng, Henan, became popular on the Internet because she talked about matchmaking for young people on the spot, and the topic of "going to Kaifeng for something urgent" also hit a hot search.

　　 Wang Po talks about matchmaking, success or failure depends on "truth"

Since "Wang Po Says the Medium" became popular on the Internet, this program has become the main reason for tourists to visit the scenic spot of Kaifeng Longevity Mountain Martial Arts City.

Zhao Mei, the actress of Wang Po, has been playing Wang Po in the scenic spot for 6 years. Zhao Mei is 61 years old and has a square face. When playing Wang Po, she wore heavy makeup, thick eyebrows and red lips, a bun, a big red flower pinned to her ear, an ancient dress, a dark green inner coat and a jujube red blouse, and her eyes narrowed when she smiled.

In the Wansui Mountain Scenic Area, there are live performances of various martial arts themes. Most of the actors wore ancient clothes. Some stood on the roadside and played games with tourists. Others performed crosstalk and monkey tricks in the small square. At the beginning, "Wang Po Says Matchmaking" was just a small program in the scenic spot, which lasted about 10 minutes. Without a stage, Zhao Mei usually stands on the roadside and sings a song, or a tongue twister, to match another actor who plays her daughter.

In 2023, the scenic spot will set up a stage for "Wang Po's matchmaking". In order to increase interaction, Zhao Mei tries to date tourists. After one show, Zhao Mei left the male tourist on the stage and asked, "Did you talk about your girlfriend?" The male tourist said he was single. Zhao Mei then said to the audience, "The blind date was a fake, but now it's true. Did you like the boy?" Unexpectedly, someone raised his hand. Slowly, the number of programs has increased from one or two blind dates to three or four, and the duration has also increased to about one hour, one in the morning and one in the afternoon.

After the Spring Festival in 2024, a new stage was moved. "Wang Po Says Matchmaking" began to reap huge traffic on the network.

On Wang Po's business day, Zhao Mei would go on the stage with a smile at 10:30 a.m. The stage was decorated joyously. The top is covered with red cloth, which is decorated with red flowers and concentric knots, and big red lanterns are hung on both sides.

After the blind date started, Zhao Mei called herself "Ganniang" and called the tourists and fans below the stage "my darling". For those girls who came to the stage, she called them "my girls". Like her mother-in-law, she told "son-in-law to be", "Be good to her sincerely, and never hurt my girl".

"My platform, regardless of wealth or age, just wants everyone to make friends happily." Zhao Mei stood on the stage and introduced the rule of "Wang Po talks about matchmaking": I choose people at random, and those who are selected report their age, location and occupation on the stage, as well as the requirements for spouse selection. People below the stage can raise their hands if they meet the conditions and have eyes, so as to fight for opportunities for love. If both of them are interested, they will add contact information on the spot and join hands successfully.

After the program became popular, Zhao Mei raised her hand actively every time she watched the audience, always stressing: "Is it true to make friends? Only those who are serious about making friends can come up."

Throughout March, the topic of "Wang Po talks about media" has been on the hot search for many times, and the account of "Kaifeng Wang Po" has gained 6 million followers in one month. After a girl stepped onto the stage, she directly selected a male student from the crowd: "I like that!" Another girl said directly, "handsome, rich!"

In the face of young men and women coming for blind dates, Zhao Mei gave full play to her talent for acting and her talkative personality, and frequently appeared on the stage. "You can never meet the right person without going out." "You should be impulsive in love, cautious in making friends, and business in marriage."

In addition to facilitating marriage on the spot, there are now more than 70 dating groups composed of fans of Zhao Mei's short video platform, each group has 500 people, and the number is still constantly updating. "Wang Po matchmaking" is not only lively, but also has a real result of blind date. Zhao Mei was also called "the sales champion of the old man" by netizens.

However, as more and more video bloggers spread the dating clips to the Internet, Wang Po's traffic is increasing. At the same time, some netizens question that there are some wonderful interactions, which look like script design.

At first, Zhao Mei responded: "There is no childcare, no acting, no game, absolutely no fraud, to create the scene effect, all people I don't know, all people called on the scene."

But things soon went beyond Zhao Mei's control. On March 30, Zhao Mei went on a blind date for a Sichuan girl. The man Liu ran to the stage excitedly after being selected. Zhao Mei said, "I like this way. I run for love." Liu said that he would like to resign for the sake of girls and develop from Zhengzhou to Sichuan. Soon, Liu was found to be married. His wife was studying abroad. After watching the short video, she knew that her husband had gone on a blind date without telling her.

On the evening of March 31, Zhao Mei complained to netizens in the live broadcast with a worried face. "I'm tired now. I lost 20 kg in a month, and I want to cry when I talk about it." "Whether it's live delivery or we media, we must respect my stage."

After the accident at the end of March, Zhao Mei could only ask the audience repeatedly: "Are you really here to make friends? Only when you are sincere can you come up." A few days later, the scenic spot directly announced that Zhao Mei would take a month off.

The grounding and authenticity are the reasons why the seemingly traditional dating method of "Wang Po matchmaking" has been quickly recognized by young people. Once encountering a trust crisis, the interaction between offline strangers will lose its most valuable value.

When it comes to why "Wang Po talks about media" can attract young people, Liu Wenrong believes that in addition to truth, "populism" makes people feel more empathetic. "In the past, the guests of the wedding variety show were arranged in advance, and after makeup and packaging, it was inevitable that there was a sense of distance. Although 'Wang Po matchmaking' was a blind date with strangers, the lively atmosphere was different from the very rational daily state of everyone in reality, but it helped to burst out emotional sparks."

　　 Online dating, focusing on "small and beautiful"

After the popularity of "Wang Po Says Matchmaking", many netizens felt that this direct dating method can still attract young people today. After all, the way young people make friends and date has been very diverse in recent years. Douban writes dating posts, Xiaohongshu publishes dating diaries, and even the fund forum has become an online dating corner for single youth. Those young people who are eager to get married have never missed every corner of the Internet.

Data shows that at present, the number of Internet dating users in China has exceeded 30 million, and more than half of single young people know new people through dating software.

As early as 2011, Momo, which focuses on "stranger social interaction", has brought many young people a new experience of making friends. Since 2018, the "Generation Z social software" has exploded, ushering in a significant expansion in 2020. Li Fei, 30 years old this year, began to try to meet more heterosexual friends through dating software in 2020.

Li Fei told Xinmin Weekly that in 2020, due to the impact of the COVID-19 epidemic, there will be fewer opportunities to make friends offline. Young colleagues around him began to frequently mention online dating software, and he immediately tried it.

Over the past three years, Li Fei has "paired" more than 200 people of the opposite sex on different software. At first, he didn't think much about the goal of using these software. But soon he found that these software will actively guide users, creating an atmosphere of "fate can not stop". "When you first register, the platform will often push you the best looking girl, and your probability of pairing is also the highest, which makes people feel very superior."

In Li Fei's observation, dating software has become more and more popular among peers since 2020. On the one hand, people are no longer shy about showing their real photos, and are not as embarrassed about self description as before; On the other hand, we can brush more of our classmates and colleagues on the software.

As for the constantly emerging dating software, Li Fei felt that it was becoming more "small and beautiful" and paid more attention to refinement. There are software focused on making friends with single Internet youth, and most of the users are programmers and engineers from major Internet manufacturers; Also, the platform focuses on making friends with famous schools. In addition to identity authentication, you must also pass the diploma authentication. On this platform, 90% of users have bachelor's degree or above.

Not long ago, Li Fei met the current crush on a software featuring "female friendliness". He told reporters that on this software, even if they were paired with each other, male users could not actively greet women, but only women could initiate a conversation, "giving people a feeling of women 'choosing concubines'".

After "pairing" with some girls, Li Fei felt that although he often felt "fate" and that they could talk all night based on some common interests, if they really developed into a love relationship and walked into real life, they soon found it difficult to continue to deal with some trivial matters. In this regard, Liu Wenrong once pointed out in his research that "contemporary youth advocate rationality, competition and instrumental logic in the process of socialization, but lack emotion, empathy and attention to interpersonal relationships and family life".

In addition to dating software, some dating activities organized by the Internet platform have also given many young people new opportunities. In 2021, "post-95" girls Lu Zhou began to register for the "48 hour CP" activity on a platform. Different from the numerous "matches" provided by the algorithm by the dating software, the platform will only arrange one match object each time according to personal information.

After matching, the platform has a special person responsible for bringing the young people who have signed up into a WeChat group, and publishing some tasks in the group that suggest "48 hour CP" to complete, such as recommending their favorite songs and movies to the other party, or telling an interesting story that happened recently.

"Every time after matching, I will see the other party's WeChat avatar, nickname and basic information. One of the avatars I saw was a yellow haired non mainstream boy, so I didn't add it. I also met the other party I added, but the other party didn't add me." Lu Zhou told reporters.

After several attempts, Lu Zhou met a boy. After chatting on WeChat for three months, the two met offline and slowly got together. After three years together, they decided to get married in the second half of 2024. At first, Lu Zhou just thought he was "playing games" and didn't have serious expectations. She even rejected this way of making friends. In the end, she entered the marriage in this "totally unexpected" way.

Above: On October 3, 2023, in Zhengzhou City, Henan Province, an offline dating conference was held in the mall during the holiday period, and 52 young single men and 35 young single women signed up on the spot to participate in the event.

　　 There is still a market for blind dates

Even though online dating software has many patterns and pursues delicacy, offline traditional dating still has a stable demand today.

According to the data of a well-known domestic marriage platform in 2023, the average age of blind date is gradually decreasing. The average age of the first blind date of the "post-00s" is about 20 years old, while that of the "post-90s" is about 24 years old.

As a scholar who has paid long-term attention to the marriage and love situation of contemporary youth, Liu Wenrong shared her latest research with Xinmin Weekly. Since 2023, Liu Wenrong and his team members have conducted 800 questionnaires on young people's marriage difficulties in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, targeting people aged 21 to 40. The survey results show that 37.4% of all samples have experienced blind date. Among married people, the proportion is 42.1%. In addition, among the people who have experienced dating, 60% said they were neutral and about 30% said they had negative comments on dating.

In addition to the marriage websites that people were familiar with in the past, various "dating studios" have emerged offline. Xu Anyang, the "post-90s", once spent 7000 yuan in September 2023 to sign up for a "dating studio" in Shanghai. At that time, the "matchmaker" of the studio provided him with a contract, which promised to provide basic information about 15 girls. If the man is interested in the girl, he can choose three to arrange offline meeting, but the first meeting must be in the studio.

For the first time, he met and chatted with a girl who claimed to be a nurse in the room of the studio. Unexpectedly, the other party said that he had just finished the night shift and was very tired, unwilling to communicate too much. Seeing this, Xu Anyang had no choice but to end the chat ahead of time and left no contact information. Later two times, I met with different girls in the studio, and they talked happily and left contact information with each other. But later, whenever he wanted to meet a girl on the grounds of watching a movie or having dinner, he was either rejected for various reasons or did not reply. In the end, Xu Anyang ran out of three opportunities. Apart from chatting on WeChat, he did not have further contact with these girls. He told reporters frankly, "I feel I have been beaten".

"From our survey, self acquaintances are still the mainstream, accounting for 82.6% of the sample. The remaining 17.4% of the population are introduced by others." Liu Wenrong told reporters that among these 17.4% of the population, there is another phenomenon that is particularly noteworthy - the proportion of "parents and relatives introduced" is rising.

"On the one hand, contemporary young people are more and more frequently putting forward the idea of 'breaking off relatives'; on the other hand, we find that they show more trust in their parents and relatives in the face of major life events. To understand this phenomenon, we must return to the growth environment of young people. Many of this generation are only children, who pursue independence and self in modern society, feel the pressure brought by their parents' binding on the spiritual level, and are eager to break free from the bondage; However, in the competitive social environment, they are difficult to be truly independent, especially in the material level, such as buying a house to marry and bringing children, they cannot do without the support of their parents and relatives, that is, they are highly dependent on their parents as tools. So we see this tangled state. " Liu Wenrong said.

(Li Fei, Lu Zhou and Xu Anyang are pseudonyms)

Editor in charge: Zhang Di