It's "Guanggun Day" in China and 1,111 lonely hearts are sitting
bashfully across from each other in the vast banquet hall of a
Beijing hotel.
The men -- the true Guanggun or single sticks, as bachelors are
called in China -- are on one side, while the women, known as
Mingming or bright, are on the other. They are all single and
today, the eleventh day of the eleventh month is their day.
The number one plays out in almost every aspect of the day. The
singles paid 111 yuan to attend the get together.
The hope for today's party is that a Guanggun and a Mingming
will meet and become a "guangming" which literally means light.
Guanggun Day or single stick day originated in the 1990s.
College students came up with November 11th with all it's single
digits to celebrate and perhaps wallow in the loneliest number.
"At 11 minutes past 11 o'clock on November 11, we started
banging washbasins and shouted,' give me a chance to love you',
only god knows who we were sending the message to", Zhang Xiaohao,
30, in recalling a Guanggun Day when he was a university
student.
Still single and still shouting, Zhang is now an engineer with a
US-based software company. He says he works late almost every night
and his "social circle is too limited, with few women around
me."
A survey of "single sticks" conducted by China Youth
Daily showed that 58.6 percent of the respondents say they are
single because they have few opportunities to make new friends.
"I know more people today, but feel close to very few," Zhang
said.
Sociologist Wu Qinghua said even in big, crowded cities like
Beijing and Shanghai people can feel isolated as human contact is
increasingly restricted to people in business circle.
Men in China are at a distinct disadvantage when it comes to
finding mates and experts warn it's going to get worse as the
population's gender imbalance grows.
Government statistics show that 117 boys are born for every 100
girls in China. If current birth ratios continue, there will 25
million more men than women in China by 2030, according to a study
issued by France's National Institute of Demographic Studies in
October last year.
But on the 11th day of the 11th month many of the singles at the
Beijing party are neither bashful nor discouraged.
"I have participated in this kind of party more than 30 times,"
said Wang Bing, 39, who runs his own business and says he's a
part-time Latin dancer with in National Chinese Opera and Dance
Drama Company.
"I haven't found my love yet, maybe my standards are too high,"
he said as he browsed more than 20 name cards or 'paper
butterflies' he had collected. Just so there's no doubt about his
intentions, his email address includes a combination of his name
and the word playboy.
"I've rejected the traditional way of finding love, through
introductions by family and friends, because I want to find a
perfect love on my own," Wang said patting his balding head.
The atmosphere in the banquet hall eventually warms up after
some lonely-heart tunes are sung and three-legged races are run,
but it's still dripping with a lot of self consciousness.
"I am a little bit ugly and often blush when I talk to women,"
said 38-year-old Liu, who didn't want to provide his given name but
told Xinhua he worked for the Chinese Academy of Sciences and had a
doctoral degree in biology.
Although his only goal in attending the party was to find a
girlfriend he claims not to be worried about it. "I'm already
overall the pressure to get married," said Liu who was a little
short, a little older but far from ugly.
The hundreds of Mingming (single women) in the crowd neatly
reflected the personality types found in the men. Some were shy,
others were looking for a good time and a few were classic gold
diggers.
Psychologist Windy Chen says women face a lot of pressure to be
married by the time they're 30 and worry they'll not find a partner
if they leave it too late.
"The fact is the more people worry about getting married the
harder it is to find a suitable partner," said Chen, "And a
marriage of convenience can damage a person's future."
In the past, some women married for financial security but
that's less a necessity nowadays. Many women now earn more than
many men and they're less willing to sacrifice their independence
for a less than ideal marriage.
Angel was another Mingming who wouldn't offer her full name but
said she is a successful career woman with a big income. She's
looking for someone who is kind, wise and considerate but above all
wealthy.
"He'd better have a big apartment in Beijing too." she said with
a smile as she described her future husband whom she has yet to
meet.
Not everyone at the Guanggun party was on the hunt for a
relationship or were upset about being single. Many were there just
to make friends adding that they may be alone, like the number one,
but they were not lonely.
(Xinhua News Agency November 12, 2006)