As millions of people head home to celebrate the Chinese Lunar New Year holiday, desperate men looking to hire an instant girlfriend to present to their parents are keeping 24-year-old Luoluo busy on a mobile dating app.
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When visiting home during the Chinese Lunar New Year holiday, single people are often faced with tough lectures and questions from their relatives hell-bent on reinforcing the importance of the marriage institution and securing the family blood line.
To appease their inquisitive parents, single men often resort to paying girls to go home with them and act as their partners.
An increase in the use of smartphones has made that process much easier as one can now pay for such a date through several apps.
\u00ab\u00a0Over 1,000 users on our platform have signed up as dates for hire for the New Year break,\u00a0\u00bb said Cao Tiantian, founder of date-for-hire app Hire Me Plz.
The subscribers of these apps pay from as little as 1 Yuan ($0.15) to 1,999 Yuan ($299) for a dinner date, chat, a game of mah-jong or a foot massage. However, prices rocket up around the time of the Lunar New Year. During this period, thousands of attractive young people like Luoluo command fees of 3,000 Yuan ($450) to 10,000 Yuan ($1500) a day.
\u00ab\u00a0I’m still seeking people to fill my time slots,\u00a0\u00bb says Luoluo, a native of China’s southwestern province of Sichuan.
She added that she only meets people who stay in the same province as her.
Hire Me Plz shares the fake spouse market with other five other dating apps in China.
The apps make their money by taking a cut from the hires, and also from the subscription fees.
Hire Me Plz was launched in 2015. The mobile app has garnered a user base of 700,000 as well as 1.7 million followers on China’s biggest social media network, WeChat.
Despite its success, some netizens on social media platforms and legal experts have questioned the morality and legality of the dating sites.
\u00ab\u00a0There are no clear prohibitions in Chinese law regarding date rentals. But risks exist among such deals, which may also violate the law to a certain extent,\u00a0\u00bb Li Hongzhao, an official of the Beijing Lawyers Association Criminal Committee, is quoted as saying by China’s state media.
Prostitution is illegal in China, and sex is not offered by any of the mobile dating apps.<\/p>\n