An interested party checks out profiles of single men and women at a temple fair in Beijing. Photo: CFP

"If you do not find yourself a girlfriend, I will not die peacefully!" cried the mother of Wang Qiang (pseudonym).

Although firecrackers celebrating Spring Festival were going off outside, the room felt deathly silent to Wang, who nodded and promised to find a perfect wife as his family demanded.

How could Wang, a 28-year-old engineer from Hankou, Hubei Province, deny his mother's dying wish? Thus, as was the case with thousands of singletons across the country, he embarked on a series of blind dates in order to please his family.

That was over a year ago. This year, he succeeded in bringing home a girlfriend, which delighted his mother, who is recovering from heart surgery.

"This is more like a holiday with family now," Wang said.

However, countless Chinese bachelors have not been so fortunate. Across the nation during Spring Festival, young men and women were besieged by parents and grandparents who insisted they show evidence they are on the path to settling down.

Holiday phobia

As the festive atmosphere gradually subsided, reports emerged highlighting the pressure put on young people. Media reports indicated that around 90 percent of the bachelors in Kunming, Yunnan Province, were affected and a 20-year-old girl from Henan Province was scheduled to have five blind dates in one day during Spring Festival.

Lan Lan (pseudonym), a 28-year-old woman from Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, has been busy with blind dates every Spring Festival for the past three years. This year, she finally found someone she was willing to go on further dates with.

"You meet the man on the first day. If you think he is fine, you go and meet his family; otherwise, you just go on meeting new men. It is the top priority during my holidays," Lan told the Global Times.

While Lan acceded to her parents' requests, many steadfastly refused to cave in to family pressure. One 32-year-old woman in Qingdao, Shandong Province, submitted a request to work overtime during the festival so as to avoid the scheduled eight matchmaking events, the Qingdao Morning News reported.

In another case of dating-phobia, a parent posted an advertisement on the front page of a Chinese newspaper in Melbourne in January to ask her son, who works in Australia, to come home. It said that she would promise not to force him to get married.

The son has refused to communicate with his parents for years as they kept asking him to go on dates and get married, according to a report in the Modern Express.

Family tug-of-war

According to a report co-authored by dating website Baihe and the China Welfare Population Foundation, more than 60 percent out of 95,731 surveyed people, whose average age stood at 29, have experienced pressure to get married. More than 18 percent of the surveyed people gave up and accepted the arranged blind dates against their own will.

Parents usually nagged their children with incessant requests and repeated pressure from other family members. Some also dropped not-so-subtle hints by acts such as putting out an extra pair of chopsticks at dinner. One particular family member even openly complained about how they would love to doze on their grandchild instead of a pet dog, read the report.

Sometimes, parents even trick their children into unwanted dates. Liu Yaojing, a fourth year college student from Wuhan in Hubei Province, said she was initially asked to visit her aunt, ostensibly to "help take care of a young kid."

Instead of any toddlers, Liu met an adult male stranger, who was introduced as "just a new friend" to her. "I know they were setting up blind dates for me. But I couldn't just walk away, which would embarrass my relatives. So I just used it as a way to meet new people," Liu told the Global Times.

Generation gap

Although a few bachelors reached by the Global Times had actually resisted the dates set up by family members, most merely expressed annoyance about the practice. In fact, only seven out of 100 bachelors said they would be delighted to go on a blind date, China Central Television reported.

"I don't want to get married like my parents did. I can't meet with girls selected by my family and just settle down with one," said Wang Hongzhen, a 27-year-old man from Beijing.

But Wang's aunt told the Global Times that all she and his parents wanted is to was speed up the marriage process.

She explained that the family could physically help with baby-sitting if Wang could get married sooner "before they get too old," adding that it would be humiliating if he kept on postponing marriage, because "only abnormal people" stay single.

Amid the public discussion, an advertisement by Baihe added fuel to the fire. It portrayed a grandmother asking her granddaughter about whether she was single, and ended with the happily married granddaughter visiting her in a hospital ward.

The advertisement raised the ire of many Net users. Chai Jinning, the initiator of a protest, who is also a bachelor, told the Global Times that the advertisement reflected Chinese attitudes toward marriage, but it felt like emotional blackmail with excessive emphasis on filial piety.

"The phenomenon of pressing children to get married carries a strong Chinese characteristic. Chinese people value family bonds, which is also the core of our culture," Peng Xiaohui, a sexologist with the Central China Normal University in Wuhan, told the Global Times.

However, Confucianism, which is a key element of traditional Chinese culture, may have shown less respect to individuals, while one-sidedly focusing on obedience to authorities, Peng noted.

Wu Di, a relationship consultant and psychologist based in Shanghai, told the Global Times that the conflicts between parents and children are due to the dramatic transformations in modern Chinese society.

"The younger generation can no longer accept the traditional marriage outlook. Older people were more willing to settle down, but economically independent young people today don't have to make do with unsatisfactory dates. That is why they pursue partners who reflect their own values and sexual desires, and who can provide emotional or psychological support," Wu said.