On a well-known Chinese website, more than 100 'lonely hearts ad' posters have been published online since the first day of the Lunar New Year.
BEIJING: For 35-year-old Xi Anjie, a white collar worker in Shanghai, the Spring Festival holiday is a period of 'psychological torture' as he is single.
Xi remaining a bachelor is really a 'big worry' for his aging parents and relatives, who have been pressing him to find a girlfriend and to bring her home for the Spring Festival.
He chose to stay at home after a brief celebration with his parents for this week-long holiday which ended on Saturday, unwilling to visit his relatives who have been enthusiastic in matchmaking.
Xi is not alone. On the Xici.net, a well-known Chinese website, more than 100 'lonely hearts ad' posters have been published online since the first day of the Lunar New Year.
Most of the marriage seekers are ladies aged between 24 to 30. Shen Sisi, 29, a company employee in east China's Jiangsu Province, said she felt herself an 'outsider' among her friends, most of whom are married and often talk about marriage and children at Spring Festival parties.
The deep-rooted Chinese tradition of getting married 'at the right age' seems inappropriate nowadays as more and more young people choose to stay single.
Last month, a Beijing University student was offering a $125 for ten days of 'renting' a girlfriend to be taken home during the Spring Festival holiday to please his parents.
Commenting on the advertisement, a professor with the Psychology Institution of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Wang Jisheng said the student is trying to show filial piety to his parents but he is in fact only cheating them.
Media reports quoted Zhong Qing, a sociologist from Tsinghua University in Beijing, as saying that at the beginning of the 21st century, there were already more than one million single people in Shanghai. Other cities such as Guangzhou, Wuhan and Beijing are also following the 'singles' trend.
Chinese people today care more about freedom and enjoyment. The high cost of marriage is one of the reasons young adults remain single, sociologists said.
"Marriage is not a cost-efficient thing since it takes so much money to buy a large house and raise a child," said Zhou Ying, a single woman in Beijing, on her life plan.
China is also facing serious gender imbalance. China's gender ratio for newborn babies in 2005 was 118 boys for 100 girls, compared with 110:100 in 2000. In some regions, the figure has reached 130 newborn boys for every 100 girls.
Analysts say the growing gender imbalance may result in many Chinese boys remaining bachelors.
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
)
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
)
)
)
)
)
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}