Picture this: You’re scrolling through a dating app. You see the usual information — their age, their job, maybe a line or two about their hobbies.
You check out their list of dealbreakers. The demands read: No siblings. No history of living with an ex. No history of soliciting prostitutes.
What sounds like a dystopian thought experiment is the daily reality on Chinese matchmaking platforms, where marriage is increasingly treated not as a pursuit of personal romance, but as a demographic crisis to be managed.
Lynette Lu is a PhD candidate in Digital Humanities at the University of Bern. Her work revolves around a painstaking critical discourse analysis of Chinese matchmaking culture. By manually analyzing thousands of online dating profiles, Lynette is uncovering the profound linguistic and sociological biases hiding in plain sight.
Martin Ritzmann sat down with Lynette to unpack the bleak realities of this highly curated marriage market.
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Additional Voices by Jennifer Solenthaler, Heidi Mercki and Ueli Khan.
New episodes of
WBKollektion on the
first monday of each month!
What is WBKollektion?
Wer sind die Menschen hinter den Forschungsergebnissen? Der neue Podcast des Walter Benjamin Kollegs an der Uni Bern öffnet die Türen zu den Geisteswissenschaften. In rund 15 Minuten erzählen uns Forschende, was sie antreibt, wie ihr Arbeitsalltag aussieht und welche neuen Erkenntnisse sie gewinnen. Verständlich, zugänglich und spannend – für alle!
Neue Folgen jeweils am ersten Montag des Monats.
Produziert von: Lea Hagmann und Martin Ritzmann
Sprachen: CH / DE / EN