Pressure is on young mainlanders to marry
Career-minded young mainland singles are in less of a hurry to get married these days, but many are under pressure to do so
Your 30th birthday isn't far off and you're still single? "Well, hurry up and get hitched, or you might be left on the shelf permanently." That's how most parents think on the mainland. Don't you just love their scare tactics?
Today, November 11, marks the unofficial Singles Day or "Bare Branches Day" in China. To most singletons on the mainland, the occasion is simply an excuse to indulge in the online shopping blitz being promoted by e-commerce giant Alibaba (and a reminder that they are still unmarried, of course).
Quite a few are caught in the same predicament as 28-year-old Yu Jian, who is feeling the heat from his parents. A recently qualified doctor, he soon found himself a job at a public hospital in Hebei province in July and seems to have a promising career. However, his parents think that marriage is a far more pressing issue.
"My parents keep urging me to find a partner since I'm not that young and they are getting old," he says.
And everyone around Yu - his relatives, colleagues and even his supervisors at work - have been setting him up on blind dates to help him find the right girl. Yu loathes the idea and, for now, would rather enjoy his freedom. "I decline all the dates that I can, and turn up only for those I can't refuse." Even so, he has had to attend two blind dates every month since he began work in July.
Being in his late 20s, Yu considers himself a "leftover man", although the label doesn't bother him: "It's a personal issue. It's an individual's choice to be a 'leftover' man or woman."
"Leftover" is the rather derogatory term popularised by state media to describe men and women who are still single after a certain age.