Chinese New Year Nagging — In Song

Do you think your parents nag? Try being a young person going home for Spring Festival (Chinese New Year). The questions come fast and furious, and no matter what you are doing or achieving it seems never to be enough.

Singles have it particularly rough. “What? STILL no boyfriend (or girlfriend)??”

This is a big enough problem that some young women “rent” boyfriends to take home with them for the holidays so that their parents will think they are attached. Here’s how the China Daily reports on this phenomenon:

The price of renting a boyfriend to take home with you is surging to as high as 1,500 yuan ($219) a day as Spring Festival approaches, chinanews.com reported on Wednesday.

Some single women, who are pressured by their parents to marry, choose to rent a boyfriend for home to soften or dispel parents’ dissatisfaction with their singledom. Catering to the market, men are advertising their availability at higher prices on social networking platforms.

In a 1,000-people group chat on Tencent’s QQ, many advertisements give personal data about the “boyfriends” for rent, including height, weight and educational background, as well as services the “boyfriends’ can provide, such as “coping with questions concerning marriage from parents and relatives”.

The starting price to rent a “boyfriend” is 1,000 yuan. The manager of the chat group said that the daily price ranges from 1,000 yuan to 1,500 yuan during Spring Festival season, compared to a regular fee of 600 yuan to 1,000 yuan.

Besides the rental fee, the woman renting a boyfriend has to pay for his round-trip tickets if travel is involved and other costs, such as dining out and outings.

A choral group in Shanghai called the Shanghai Rainbow Chamber Singers has come up with a song about the travails of going home for the holidays. It’s called “What Did I Do is For Your Own Good.” The video of their performance of the song has gone viral in China.

(email readers, please go here to view)

Very funny and very impressive!!

Happy New Year!