Festive demand for rent-a-partner soars
BIAN Yong had made himself available for rent all Spring Festival.
Tired of being pestered by relatives for still being single, he had placed an online ad offering to pose as a fake boyfriend for a low fee, mainly out of curiosity and in the hope of helping someone else in the same situation.
“I’m a victim of my parents’ dissatisfaction,” said the 32-year-old, who worked in Shanghai and usually returned to his hometown in Anhui province for the holiday.
“Instead of enduring more nagging, I’d rather pretend to be a woman’s boyfriend to ease the pressure on her.”
Bian had uploaded his ad to 20py.com, one of about five websites that have popped up in recent years to cater to the growing trend of people taking fake partners – often total strangers – to family reunions.
Business for such websites had boomed ahead of Spring Festival.
“For the month leading up to Chinese New Year, we handled more than 1,200 connections. Normally, it’s about 100 a month,” said Wang Jianhua, a spokesman
Zunvyou for (which means “rent a girlfriend”), a website based in Shenzhen, Guangdong province. Prices soared at this time, too. “It costs about 1,000 yuan (RM645.90) a day during the festive season, compared with about 600 yuan (RM387.40) on average,” Wang said, and that didn’t include transportation and meals.
Demand was so high that such websites, which first began to emerge in 2014, made as much at Spring Festival as they did during the rest of the year combined.
To post an ad, users had to register with their personal information, including age, occupation and height, and upload a headshot.
Clients could list special requirements. They were required to pay a deposit – usually half the rental price – and must submit proof of identity and employment. Platforms charged a service fee of 10 to 20%.
Zunvyou’s
Wang said most of clients worked in large cities but came from smaller cities or rural areas, where people are generally expected to be married by their mid-20s.
20py.com, based in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, has more than three million registered members. The ratio of men to women is 10:1.
Such a gender imbalance is common, which Wang put down to women having more safety con
Zunvyou
cerns. He said and other sites have introduced measures to prevent potential threats to personal safety and property.
“We make clients meet first in a public venue and send their location to our employees when they take a ‘partner’ to their hometown,” he said.
“We also encourage them to keep their cellphones switched on at all times in case of an emergency.”