Bombarded with eager inquiries from their parents and relatives about whether or not they have a boyfriend or girlfriend, Spring Festival has become something of a nightmare for many single people of marriageable age in recent years.
A micro blog discussion about the hassles single youths endured during the Chinese New Year revealed that the blessing they are most fed up with is: you'll bring home a boyfriend or girlfriend next year. To escape from their parents' eager entreaties for them to find a partner, some young people even "hire" a stranger to act as their boyfriend or girlfriend in front of their parents.
The phenomenon is so common even celebrities can't escape it. The actress Li Bingbing has revealed that because her parents are urging her to get married, she has been on blind dates arranged by her friend Wendi Deng Murdoch several times.
"Chinese-style urged marriage", as it is called by netizens, was one of the top three hot micro blog topics for a whole week in early February, with up to 98.6 million comments on such "suffering" during Spring Festival and Valentine's Day.
But for Luo Huilan, a professor of women's studies at China Women's University in Beijing, the term is inaccurate and better interpreted as parents' anxiety about their children, daughters in particular.
Luo says this excessive pressure from parents for their children to marry can be largely attributed to Chinese people's traditional understanding of marriage. In Chinese tradition, marriage is not only an emotional and physical union, but also an expression of filial piety, responsibility and even physical and mental health. It is deeply rooted in most Chinese parents' minds that marriage means happiness while being unwed means being miserable.
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