Match-making frustrates little empresses
Parents are notorious for spoiling an only child; less well known is their tendency to involve themselves heavily in selecting a spouse for their little emperors and empresses.
'I've met a dozen boys introduced by my parents since my university graduation in 2000,' said Lily Li, a 26-year-old from Jiangsu province. 'They are sons of their friends: doctors, businessmen, policemen or soldiers.
'I'm tortured by the experience.'
She said that when she tried to stop her parents arranging such dates, her father became very annoyed. 'He said: 'What kind of man do you want? Okay, do whatever you want but don't call me your father any more'.
'He doesn't care what I think. He just wants to arrange my wedding, the same way he has organised every other part of my life for the past 26 years.'
Ms Li said she once fell in love with a poor boy from Zhejiang province, but she broke it off because she knew her father would not approve.
'I don't understand why, [but] I gauge men the same way my father does now. I must be so used to obeying him. Now whoever I meet, I'll ask myself the same question. What kind of stock is he? Blue chip or rubbish stock?'
The pressure from Ding Wukong's parents is more subtle, but still very powerful. 'They would not say 'yes' or 'no' to some girl I wanted to marry,' said the 26-year-old civil servant from Shanghai. 'But if they did not approve, of course I wouldn't marry the person.'
He said that he would follow his parents' wishes because he was their only son. 'They have poured all their love into me and I must pay it back,' he said.
Timing can also be an issue. Wang Xiaorui, 23, said although she had no intention of marrying for another five years or so, her parents were always 'chattering' about finding the right person now.
'They say I will be a 'senior girl' if I don't get married soon. They got married at about this age so they want me to do the same.'
Xi Ye, 16, has a rebellious streak and is unlikely to heed her mother's advice when it comes to matters of the heart. Her father divorced her mother for another woman and she 'is always crying and waiting for him to come back', said Ms Xi.
'If it were me, I'd find a new husband as soon as possible. I don't agree with her views about marriage at all. Her generation is totally out of date.'