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Chinese Spring Festival Lover Leasing a Booming Business

Feb 10, 2010 eChinacities.com

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It's Spring Festival again, the most important holiday of the year for many Chinese, and single guys and gals are again faced with having to answer to parents about when they can be expected to marry. There’s the additional issue of having to save face in front of friends and relatives who are wondering the same thing. For many, lover leasing – paying someone to pose as your significant other – seems to be the best way to kill both birds with one stone, and has become a popular and booming business.

In 2007, a Chinese film called Contract Lovers told the story of a young man renting a girlfriend to take home to his family for the Chinese New Year. In an instance of life imitating art, the practice of leasing a lover for the holiday has taken off in real life, and this year in China is no exception. There are numerous posts and threads on forums and BBS discussions about the subject online; some are renting and others are looking to rent themselves out as contract lovers for the holiday.

There are over 15,000 search results for the phrase “renting a boyfriend/girlfriend for Chinese New Year” on Baidu and over 28,000 on Google. Those looking to rent a partner this year appear to be very specific about what they're looking for in a rented lover. One of the ads reads:

Willing to pay 300 RMB a day for a girlfriend to take home with me for the Spring Festival
Time: February 11th to February 15th
Age: 25 to 30 years old
She gets to keep any lucky money relatives might give her, but she'll have to cooperate fully and not arouse suspicion...

Ms. Cai, another single young person looking to hire someone to play her boyfriend during the holiday, says that her contract lover must be “mature, stable, handsome, persuasive with words, educated, and with refined manners...And if he can match my standards for an ideal boyfriend, all the better.”

In a college campus in Zhengzhou, “For Rent” personals can seen throughout the school. Female college students are particularly sought after. An ad posted by a female Shenzhen college student had 400 or more potential clients answer her personal within just two days.

In southern Chinese cities, contract lovers have truly become a profitable business. Even third party middlemen have entered into the booming market – a website in the city of Dongwan offers “professional” services, renting girlfriends for prices ranging from 300 to 2,000 RMB per day this holiday.

Public opinions of the matter are rather conflicted. Some people think that contract lovers are harmless white lies that will keep all parties happy, while others warn about lying to appease parents, putting a price tag on love, and going all out making it a commercial trade. What do you think? Sound off in the comment section below.

Source: gcpnews.com

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