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“These people are very excellent themselves, which leads to their high standards for partners,” Xu said. “And those who can meet those standards are few.”
Xu is the founder of Golden Bachelor, an online dating site catering to an expanding class of super-wealthy Chinese singletons who have it all except for one thing: a bride.
The Web site states in Chinese the qualifications for joining: a personal or family wealth of at least 2 million yuan ($292,000); a background that is extremely superior, wealthy and aristocratic; very good personal qualities or young, talented and beautiful.
Love,” offers a service that combines the traditional business of Chinese matchmaking with the power of a search engine
“More and more Chinese people are finding love from Web sites,” said Xu, 36. “The difference between us from other dating sites is we only focus on high-level clients — those with a high social status or superior physical condition. We don’t focus on the mass general public.”
Golden Bachelor says it has 5 million registered members and employs psychologists and special matchmaking consultants to personally assist multi-millionaires in their pursuit of romance.
And then there also are the so-called “love hunters” — staff who travel around the country in search of China’s most beautiful bachelorettes to bring to the lavish matchmaking parties the company throws.
The last one was on December 20 in Beijing in a luxury hotel. The ticket price was 100,000 yuan, ($14,600); 21 single women and 22 single men attended. Ladies took part in a wedding gown show and also sang, danced, even cooked for their moneyed suitors during a talent program. Eighty percent of those who came found a date, according to the company.
In a society where 24 million Chinese men will find themselves lacking wives by 2020 because of the country’s gender imbalance, according to a recent study by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, it could get highly competitive. Continue reading “Behind Golden Bachelor’s extravagance is a telling trend of what the future of finding love in China could look like”