Chinese university professor’s love advice videos telling young people to hold out for true love a social media hit
- The professor’s most popular advice video deals with pushy parents pressuring children to marry quickly
- He says a high proportion of single people in society is a sign of success and prosperity
Liang Yongan, a 67-year-old Chinese literature academic at Fudan University, has 470,000 followers on social media platform Bilibili. Most of his 65 videos offer straightforward, down-to-earth love and relationship advice to young people.
One of his most popular videos from February addressed single people’s stress and anxiety about being pushed by their parents and relatives to date or to marry.
He said finding true love was more important than marrying someone for the sake of pleasing others.
“Love is the only thing in history that will not occur through pushing,” said Liang. “In the meantime we should be grateful to our parents for their care about us. We should understand their anxiety, but we must stick to the importance of love in marriage.”
China’s 2018 Statistical Yearbook showed the country had 240 million single residents aged above 15, including 215 million people who had never married and 23 million divorcees.
The scholar said a growing singles population is a symbol of social progress.
He said when hearing an official from Shanghai’s Jinshan district say that the local average marriage registry age was 35 years, he felt happy.
“A young person in a first-tier city can live happily by himself or herself. He or she can travel or go to a concert. The cost of giving up your single life is high. Therefore you should find a person who is really worthy of your love, then you can live a better life than your single life,” said Liang.
He said the difficulties for people to find a partner ranged from having no spare time to date to high living costs such as buying a house and raising a child.
He also called out the sexist attitudes that commonly place women under significant pressure in Chinese society to marry before the age of 30 or be seen as “leftover”, while men don’t have the same constraints, said Liang.
He said there is much “calculation and checking” in love, regarding family background, looks, income and education.
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“Our biggest problem is that we think too much and check too much,” said Liang. “I always believe love is a thing happens at first sight. You like that person and that’s it. But sometimes some of us have spent years pondering about whether we should love or marry a person.”
He said that “it’s more and more difficult to have two people fall in love partly because men are not used to modern women who are strong and independent”.
“I desperately need this kind of guidance,” wrote one person at bilbili.com. “What Teacher Liang said is more useful than psychology theories.”
“The professor is romantic and his comments are insightful!” another user said.
