Hot on the Web
Looking for love in unusual places
By Hu Yongqi in Beijing and Cao Li in Shanghai (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-11-11 09:07
Standing on a busy Shanghai road, a 23-year-old man wearing a cardboard box and handing out his phone number was not looking for a job.
He was looking for true love.
The words on his box explained how he was tired of being alone, and he offered contact information to young women who passed by - until he was stopped by auxiliary police.
When pictures of his escapade were posted online, netizens called him "the most daring man in the history of looking for love".
However, in an online poll at eastday.com, 42 percent thought he might be mentally unstable, 27 percent said he was just being stupid and 14 percent said he was being creative.
Whether or not that creativity leads to marriage, being single is increasingly becoming a way of life for young Chinese - despite their best intentions to marry.
In Chinese society, the number '1' symbolizes being single. Consequently, Nov 11, or 11.11, is a day for bachelors, and has inspired thousands of single young men and women to gather for mass blind dates.
Banquets will be held tonight by marriage agency www.marry5.com (which means "marry me") in Guangzhou and Shenzhen, both in Guangdong province. More than 2,500 have signed up and hope to find the significant other to spend the rest of their lives with.
Participants pay 111 yuan ($16), once again reflecting the symbol of solitude, said promoter Ding Ding.
The agency will also hold a free party for males older than 24 and females older than 22 on the east square of Lotus Pond Park in Beijing's Fengtai district on Nov 14. So far, about 10,000 individuals have decided to join up.
"Don't be surprised. People have to work on Wednesday and it's a good choice to set the party on Saturday," said market consultant Wu Qiaofei. "It's becoming a social problem that many young people are not able to find a partner."
Experts said white-collar workers and senior students at universities don't have much time and face enormous pressure, making it difficult to find a lover while fulfilling their ambitions.
Many singletons are not good at interpersonal relations and need opportunities and time to get used to dating, Wu added.
Wei Wei, a resident of Beijing's Chaoyang district, said she believes in fate, but she would go on a blind date where many young people hang out together if the atmosphere was amiable. An anonymous couple in Guangzhou said they met on a blind date last year and fell in love with each other.
But Zhong Xiaojin, a female teacher in her 20s in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, said the party is too formal and she will not go.
"I always believed that some day I will fall in love with a man at first sight," she said.
For those who do not marry young, getting hitched later in life is not necessarily easy either. In the latest national census, China had more than 10 million single people older than 35.
According to a report released by Nankai University yesterday, "leftover gentlemen" are much more common than "leftover ladies", with an average ratio of 1.8 to 1.
The ratio among the 10 surveyed cities is lowest in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen. It is higher than the national average in Xiamen in Fujian province, Qingdao in Shandong province, Nanjing in Jiangsu province and Chengdu in Sichuan province.
Ding Jieying contributed to the story.
