It's already wooed and won thousands of lonely hearts in Hong Kong. Now speed dating is about to try to seduce the millions of single people on the mainland searching for love.
The first mainland franchises for speed dating - a system where up to 50 single people are brought together in a club and have three minutes to meet each member of the opposite sex - are expected to be sold soon in Shenzhen, Shanghai and Beijing.
The deals are being brokered by WhirlWindDate, which has staged three speed dating evenings a month in Hong Kong since launching last August and has already sold a franchise for a Singapore operation.
General manager Cynthia Chan Kar-man said: 'We think there is a huge potential market.'
Speed dating, which began in the US and Britain, claims to take the embarrassment out of singles evenings by creating a succession of brief encounters, after which participants secretly nominate the people they want to see again.
If the forms match, the organisers send e-mail addresses to the participants the following day so they can contact each other. Companies like WhirlWindDate say speed dating increases single people's chances of a match, although critics call it superficial and faddish.
