Lunar New Year labour of love

Hundreds of millions of mainlanders make their annual pilgrimage to their parental homes every Lunar New Year, where the singles among them endure nagging about their marital status. Zhang Xiang, a 25-year-old executive at a state-owned company in Beijing, was among those who braced themselves for the annual ordeal as he prepared for the journey home. "My mother has been urging me to find a girlfriend since last year," the Shandong man grumbled. He has a few years grace, since the marriageable age for men on the mainland is usually 28 to 29. For women, it is 25 to 26. "It will be no surprise to find that my mum has arranged for me to meet several single ladies, or will force me to meet more girls through matchmaking websites," Zhang said. According to data released last year by the Ministry of Civil Affairs, 180 million of the mainland's 1.35 billion people were single men or women of marriageable age. And websites are a particularly popular way of finding a spouse. Matchmaking website Baihe.com said 68.9 per cent of the 50,741 people it surveyed across the country said they planned to find companions through such sites. About 68 per cent of those surveyed were twenty- and thirty-somethings. The number of young people turning to matchmaking services to find partners - and satisfy the insistent demands of their anxious parents during the New Year festivities - rose steeply in the second half of last year, said Xu Li, a customer service director at True Love Online, a matchmaking company in Beijing. Some were signed up by impatient parents. Xu said the number of registered members on the site had more than doubled every year since 2005 and was now in the "hundreds of thousands". Fees vary depending on a member's requirements and can range from 5,000 yuan (HK$6,200) to more than 100,000 yuan. China had a tradition of people marrying young and parents worried when their children reached a "certain age" and were still single, Xu said. But even with a huge online pool of potential candidates, finding the right match is not easy. "Now we have more outstanding women than men. The ratio is about 7 to 3. A woman who has an annual income of 500,000 yuan will look for a man who earns the same or more, but it's quite difficult to find such a match." The higher your educational qualifications or family status and income, the more difficult it became to find a matching companion, Xu said. The Baihe.com survey also indicated that the proportion of respondents who remained single after passing the marriageable age rose with income. Of the respondents with a monthly income from 10,000 to 15,000 yuan, 36.8 per cent were unmarried, and the ratio rose to 44.2 per cent for those whose monthly income was more than 30,000 yuan. Zhou Jun, a senior manager at a construction company in Beijing, is one such high-flyer. "I have been too busy at work. I really don't have time to look for a girlfriend and now I am more than 35 years old," he said. Zhou turned to a matchmaking service to find his ideal woman after receiving a promotional call from Golden Bachelor Matchmakers, a Shanghai-based company founded in 2005 targeting the super-rich. Fei Yang, the head of Golden Bachelor's Beijing office, said the demand for matchmaking services from the super-rich had been increasing as the wealth of its people had grown. Clients with personal assets of between 10 million and 50 million yuan accounted for 20 per cent of their customers, while about half of the company's clients had a fortune of 50 million to 100 million yuan, and 30 per cent had assets of more than 100 million yuan, Fei said. Some of the "golden bachelors" on her books were entrepreneurs, senior managers of state-owned enterprises and government officials, she said. "Some have annual incomes of more than 10 million yuan. They are the super-elite who have rigorous requirements for their companions." The company offers standard memberships at a minimum fee of 100,000 yuan, while its premium membership costs 300,000 yuan and prestige membership costs 1 million yuan. Services for a prestige golden bachelor start with a close examination of his background and his requirements in a companion, from height and weight and skin colour to education, occupation and character. Consultants then search for suitable candidates from thousands or even hundreds of thousands of women. A large screening event is organised for the golden bachelor. "The single lady who is finally chosen is sometimes one from a million," Fei said. The firm also caters for women seeking male partners and some were entrepreneurs from Hong Kong who do businesses on the mainland. Golden Bachelor's revenue had doubled every three years since 2006, Fei said, and revenue this year would be double that of 2011. Xu said her company's revenue last year was more than 10 times higher than its first-year revenue in 2005. According to an estimate by Tian Fanjian, a director of Committee of Matchmaking Service Industries, the mainland's matchmaking industry could be worth 10 billion yuan by 2015. Committee deputy director Li Tao said the industry's revenue was expected to grow by no less than 20 per cent every year in the coming three to five years. "Matchmakers are now more widely recognised than before," he said. As the market grew, it was more important for matchmakers to maintain good services and build up their brands to compete, Li said. "Some small companies could be eliminated if they are unable to provide qualified services, and one thing that is very important for matchmaking companies is confidentiality," he said.

Lunar New Year labour of love

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Signing up for a matchmaking service is one way for singles to head off nagging questions from parents about their unwed status

Signing up for a matchmaking service is one way for singles to head off nagging questions from parents about their unwed status