The May Day holiday used to be a peak wedding season in China, but this year's Wuhan was exceptionally quiet. The local wedding industry has been slumping, hit by the Sino-US trade war, China's economic downturn, and business closures. Unemployment is surging, and young people are reluctant to enter into marriage. Residents frankly lamented, "Nowadays, I can't even find temporary work, and I can't afford to have children."
On the eve of this year's May Day holiday, Wuhan's streets were a stark contrast to the usual bustle. Yangzi Street, traditionally the center of wedding festivities, was now deserted and bleak. Wuhan resident Ms. Peng described the situation in an interview with Radio Free Asia: "Yangzi Street is located on the pedestrian street of Jianghan Road in Wuhan. There's a fork in the street, and turning left and right is filled with wedding shops. It's completely deserted. No one's getting married anymore; who can afford to get married? It's hard to find even temporary jobs, and it's hard to raise children. If there's a place with a lot of people, it's the hospitals that are overcrowded with patients, and they have to go through security checks to get in."
Weddings went from being full to being interrupted, and industry insiders were helpless
A video posted on April 19th by the social media account "Teacher Li is Not Your Teacher" showed several shops closed inside the Yangzi Street Wedding Hall, with "For Rent" ads plastered across the glass doors. A man claiming to be an investor in a wedding hall resignedly, "I got scammed! I'm in the wedding business and invested 500,000 to 600,000 yuan in the hotel. Within six months, there were no customers, it went bankrupt, I dismantled it and sold it for scrap metal, but no one wanted it. No one wanted the used wedding props either. I lost a lot of money. Today I'm sharing my investment experience."
Mr. Xie, a wedding planner from Hebei, also lamented the sluggish business: "Every year in May there is a short holiday (Labor Day), and wedding planning companies are too busy to handle it. But this year, the wedding planning business is completely shut down. Last year in May, I was busy from the 1st to the 7th, with more than a dozen weddings every day, but this year there are only two or three every day." He said that nowadays newlyweds only book wedding decorations half a month in advance, reflecting the widespread uncertainty.
Young people remain single, marriage registrations hit a new low
Official data showed that the number of registered marriages in China fell to 6.106 million in 2024, the biggest drop since records began in 1978, reflecting young people's indifferent attitude towards marriage.
Mr. Gao, a Wuhan resident who works as a real estate agent, told this station, "Some young people nowadays are reluctant to get married because the pressure they face after marriage is much greater, resulting in a sluggish wedding market." Another Mr. Zhang, who works in the interior decoration industry, said, "Because life pressures are too great, it's hard for children to find jobs, and the cost of raising children is high. In the future, the birth rate will decrease, and the number of marriages will decrease. This is the development trend. Young people today have figured it out: if you want to get married, your quality of life will be lowered."
Wuhan's wedding industry isn't the only one suffering; even once-profitable state-owned enterprises are facing a crisis of survival. Resident Ma Qiang revealed in an interview with this station that his wife's Zhongbai Group supermarket has been notified of its closure in June. "My wife only receives 2,000 yuan in cash a month, and the state-owned Zhongbai Group has now announced it will close in June. They're citing high rents of 60,000 yuan a month, saying they can't afford to operate their storefronts. They're saying they're closing between 1,000 and 2,000 stores."
Wuhan residents: "My wallets are empty"
Zhongbai Group, once Wuhan's largest department store chain, has seen its chain supermarket decline, leaving residents feeling the continued decline of the real economy. Resident Ms. Zhou confirmed, "A Zhongbai warehouse supermarket near my home has closed. It closed last year. Now people are broke, their wallets are empty."
Some observers believe that the quiet May Day holiday in Wuhan, from the deserted wedding streets to the massive layoffs at established state-owned enterprises, reflects the profound impact of China's economic slowdown. Young people's avoidance of marriage is not just a personal choice, but a microcosm of the broader socioeconomic crisis.
