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The lovelorn look to dating services for help
By Guan Wenfei and Pan Zheng |
February 28, 2011, Monday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
THE Xincheng Matchmaker Society and Heart-to-Heart Society in Jiading found themselves very busy around Valentine's Day as more and more young people seek help finding dates.
Although dating services are gaining in popularity with a host of new avenues for people to meet, their success rate still remains quite low.
To promote the success rate, since the second half of 2010, Heart-to-Heart's Society put forward a program modeled on a popular TV show, which has attracted more than 600 participants. Xiao Wu, a young man who lives in the Jiading Industrial Zone, recently got to know his girlfriend introduced to him at a blind date under this program. Young people tend to like something new, and this kind of dating just meets the needs of them.
Wang Jue, secretary the Youth League Working Committee of the Jiading Industrial Zone, was one of the organizers of the activity, who believes that the idea of becoming friends before lovers is widely accepted by the young. According to the Jiading Committee of the Communist Youth League, there have been more than 18 blind date group events organized under its auspices in the past year.
Group dating services may be popular, but traditional matchmaking hasn't lost its appeal among the young.
The Xincheng Matchmaker Society was established in 2008 by over 50 volunteers from the Xincheng Road Community. According to Xu Liqin, organizer of the society, some youth are too shy to engage in group blind dates. For those people, one-on-one blind dates are best choice, she said. The society currently has about 200 single youths on its register. It claims to have successfully matched over 30 couples, three of them now married.
Still, the success rate of dating services doesn't keep up with the numbers of people joining them. Take a 29-year-old lady surnamed Ma for instance. She lives in the Xincheng Road Community, is a so called "three highs girl." She is high in height, gets a high salary and has a high education degree. Try as she might, she still hasn't found her Mr Right. She told Xu in an email that she is becoming very concerned about her marriage chances and so are her parents.
In Xu's opinion, some young people are too particular on choosing other halves, sometimes the demands they put forward are somewhat ridiculous, that's one of the reasons explaining the low rate of success.
But Xu also said he sees two positive trends in dating services. Parents are willing to pay more for the services, and they are more willing to respect their children's choices in partners.
Young people, he said, are more interested in emotional factorsthan in a potential partner's economic circumstances.
Although dating services are gaining in popularity with a host of new avenues for people to meet, their success rate still remains quite low.
To promote the success rate, since the second half of 2010, Heart-to-Heart's Society put forward a program modeled on a popular TV show, which has attracted more than 600 participants. Xiao Wu, a young man who lives in the Jiading Industrial Zone, recently got to know his girlfriend introduced to him at a blind date under this program. Young people tend to like something new, and this kind of dating just meets the needs of them.
Wang Jue, secretary the Youth League Working Committee of the Jiading Industrial Zone, was one of the organizers of the activity, who believes that the idea of becoming friends before lovers is widely accepted by the young. According to the Jiading Committee of the Communist Youth League, there have been more than 18 blind date group events organized under its auspices in the past year.
Group dating services may be popular, but traditional matchmaking hasn't lost its appeal among the young.
The Xincheng Matchmaker Society was established in 2008 by over 50 volunteers from the Xincheng Road Community. According to Xu Liqin, organizer of the society, some youth are too shy to engage in group blind dates. For those people, one-on-one blind dates are best choice, she said. The society currently has about 200 single youths on its register. It claims to have successfully matched over 30 couples, three of them now married.
Still, the success rate of dating services doesn't keep up with the numbers of people joining them. Take a 29-year-old lady surnamed Ma for instance. She lives in the Xincheng Road Community, is a so called "three highs girl." She is high in height, gets a high salary and has a high education degree. Try as she might, she still hasn't found her Mr Right. She told Xu in an email that she is becoming very concerned about her marriage chances and so are her parents.
In Xu's opinion, some young people are too particular on choosing other halves, sometimes the demands they put forward are somewhat ridiculous, that's one of the reasons explaining the low rate of success.
But Xu also said he sees two positive trends in dating services. Parents are willing to pay more for the services, and they are more willing to respect their children's choices in partners.
Young people, he said, are more interested in emotional factorsthan in a potential partner's economic circumstances.
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