Single? Rent a Date!

Given the stigma and stereotypes faced by singles around the world, is it any wonder that people in China are buying fake boyfriends and girlfriends? Singlehood is often viewed as an inherently inferior and transient state on the way to marriage and "adulthood," and lately China has been particularly harsh on unmarried people. Dozens of headlines bemoan the millions of Chinese men without marriage prospects, as if this is the worst ramification of the one-child policy (which tends to result in abortion and infanticide of female babies).

Chinese single women get a particularly bad rap. They have a special word in Mandarin describing them: Sheng-Nu, or "leftover women." Some unmarried women are reclaiming this term as a badge of honor, but many still feel the sting of being labelled as old maids, even in their twenties. Listen to university night watchman Jiang Wenjun describing any particular single woman in her late twenties, as quoted in the New York Times: “people will think she’s abnormal and gossip that she might have some disease and can’t get married.” In the face of this singlism, more and more single Chinese women and men are posting want-ads soliciting people to pretend to be their significant others, for a fee.

I can see the appeal. On many occasions in the past I could have put a fake boyfriend to good use, deflecting comments like these from near-strangers: "Oh, your friend told me she's getting married. When are you getting married?" Or, "Oh, you're a writer? Well, it's ok that you're a spinster then." Or, "What, you're single? Let me introduce you to my nephew because we need to get you started on your life." At these moments I would have loved to be able to summon my on-call super-alpha-George-Clooney-stand-in boyfriend-for-hire: "Bob? Get over here and unshame me. Then go away again."

This pragmatic approach also suits Sue Fei, a twenty-something doctoral student. She advertised for a fake boyfriend to bring home for the holidays so that she could calm her parents in their quest for grandchildren and "buy time to develop her career," according to the same NYT article cited above.

Is Feng catering to the marriage mania or subverting it? Zhao Xudong at China Agriculture University comes down on the side of subversion. He says that date-buying "shows that our young generation is smart, using capitalism to solve major problems facing our society and culture.” Well, yes and no. Yes, because I can imagine legions of single people paying amateur actors and actresses to play the parts of their significant others, until no one knows which couples are legit and which are purchased for show, eventually diluting the overromanticized culture of couplehood. No, because these singles shouldn't have to buy their way out of prejudice.

Photo credit: Ringo Ichigo