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SCMP Reporter

During the Cultural Revolution a generation ago, Chinese people spied on one another to see who met whom in case someone was colluding with counter-revolutionaries. The government meanwhile severed contact between its people and foreigners.

Today, millions of strangers in China say anything they want to one another and shoot messages to foreigners anywhere in the world.

They have no idea who they are talking to but casually spend hours doing it, then, without hesitation, meet these strangers for drinks or dates.

They talk through Internet-based instant messengers, usually ICQ, a service invented in Israel with 78 million users worldwide, or OICQ, which belongs to Shenzhen-based Tencent.com and has 25 million Chinese users.

These instant message services have jumped into China's social life in the past year, now topping e-mail and phones as the cheapest, most private and convenient form of communication.

'Before the Internet got popular in China, we did not have many chances to meet people,' said 'Bluesky', a 24-year-old from Chengdu who has used ICQ since June.

'Most of us are familiar with locals around us,' she said. 'In the real world it is impossible to meet so many people from diverse backgrounds.'

Except for the mobile phone, none of China's recent advances in communications have penetrated social life quite like ICQ and OICQ.

Chat rooms are big, but not necessarily private. E-mail is common, too, but it is not live.

'They, myself included, can't find a better way to cure their loneliness, to balance their ever-wanting souls,' said 28-year-old Beijing ICQ user Tang Han, who says he is unemployed and living with his parents. 'Truly a 'spirit opium'. Takes a victim to know the truth. ICQ, I seek U? Noooo, I seek myself, and I can't quit! I really should not exalt this toy to such a religious height.'

People liked instant messaging because China's narrow bandwidth supported it, because it was more direct than e-mail and because some people preferred to type than talk on the phone, said Hu Yanping, chief editor of the Beijing magazine Internet Weekly.

These services are free to anyone who downloads the programmes from the Net - although OICQ told the Shenzhen Evening News last December it would begin charging 120 yuan per year (about HK$112) for 'value-added' services such as faster conversation speeds.

ICQ has not revealed how many of its users live in China, but OICQ sources say 420,000 of its users were online at any given time, making it the largest instant message service in Asia.

OICQ's Beijing office manager said 40 per cent of the users were students and 20 per cent white-collar workers. Most were aged between 18 and 35.

Although some mainlanders use instant messaging for business transactions - to spread information among clients or partners and save a record of the whole transaction - most people just chat.

They search for kindred spirits by entering location, gender and age preferences, putting any friendly matches on a contact list.

Han Sheng, a 22-year-old from Hangzhou, said just about every young person in this relatively prosperous city near Shanghai was making friends via instant message.

'There are many, many Internet bars in Hangzhou,' he said. 'Everybody in them all use OICQ. Young people use it to find friends on the Internet. Now it has become a new way to make friends.'

Many friendships endure. But some just come from cyberspace and go right back.

'Some ladies sent me their pictures,' said Tang Han. 'They are pretty. But they are all married. In my opinion, if a man uses ICQ too frequently, he must be a loser.'

Or maybe just an adventurer: 'It was Friday afternoon. I was waiting to leave the office for a dinner with my friend,' said Bluesky. 'It was not busy at that time, so I downloaded ICQ. I did not know how to use it the first time.'

Then along came her first ICQ contact. 'I didn't talk too much, because I had not used my English for a long time,' she recalled. 'He told me his adventure story in the USA. He is very good at English because he used to study and work in the USA.'

The story? 'He lost his way in a valley and spent one day to find a way out.' The moral: 'I do meet some good friends on ICQ, but I don't have hundreds of friends on my ICQ list.'



OICQ a 'spirit opium' for lonely mainlanders