American dudes have been practicing a routine of picking up hot girls on Facebook: add her, poke her, comment on her pictures, flirt with her using messages, get her cell number, text her out, bar or movie theater, then finally bed.
Well, most Chinese just don’t get it, which is why Match.com struggles while Jiayuan.com (NASDAQ: DATE) went public. Chinese guys need DATE, the dating site, for five reasons: 1) Fear of failure. 2) Lack of aggressiveness. 3) Consideration of “face” (Dignity if you will). 4) Inability of socialization. 5) Limited private time.
Chinese guys fear to be rejected by girls face-to-face. Americans get used to the idea that they cannot get away from the possibility of failure all the way from childhood since even kids have to do the job hunting for pocket money. In this way, Americans have been nurtured to take risk as part of life. Most Chinese, however, won’t be likely to confront job market until, say, college graduation. Chinese would often get nervous facing risk because the majority of their time is detail planed by either parents or other authorities like school and CCP. Thus Chinese guys tend to take DATE as shelter and buffer due to their fear.
Chinese guys are not as aggressive as their American counterparts. Why? As I mentioned above, then a guy grow up in a heavily authoritarian and hierarchic environment, the only way to live long and prosper is to be an obedient and slavish co-operator of the system. Let’s face it, for most Chinese youngsters except for offspring from wealthy and powerful families, they are at the lowest level of the Chinese psychological hierarchy. How can an order-taker be fundamentally confident and aggressive with the backdrop like that?
Again, infamous “face”, sort of dignity a Chinese holds. What if a voice rise during the pervading gossip of some Chinese housewives, “I heard your son is still doing marriage interview. How come? He is a post-doc of Columbia!” Well, what Chinese elders do not get is that academic nerds just don’t get laid. Need reference? Check “The Big Bang Theory”. Anyway, I believe China produces the largest amount of nerds on this planet. Those guys get into graduate schools for whatever reasons, like parents’ pride and plan, inability to get nice job or simply inability to figure out a life outside of campus. So, for these residents from the land of square heads, they depend on anonymous accounts on DATE to avoid bringing “shame” to their families and themselves. I guess it would be the same for those Chinese female doctor degree holders who are often mocked as “the third sex”.
The fact of having no idea how to socialize themselves haunts lots of Chinese guys. Well, this is NOT their fault. In America, one learns to socialize with girls with the help from families, just the same way as businessmen follow their mentors. But Chinese youngster would find it hard to get mentors. This is due to the dramatic urbanization in an extremely short period. The generation of their parents may still come from the rural agricultural area or at least adopt the mindset of agricultural society where rituals and traditions prevail. The parents themselves might have known each other through marriage interview, what do you expect from them? In a nutshell, most Chinese parents are unable to teach their kids the skills of socializing with the opposite sex. The result is these social skills are largely lost among those Chinese guys trying to start life in modern society.
As everyone knows, Chinese average working time is way more than that of Americans. This inhuman phenomenon lays ground for Huawei’s success as well as something the president of BYD is proud of. I guess there is no need to list the common karoshi of young Chinese engineers and accounting professional here. Google sees everything. Then how can someone suffering from overwork be able to come out for a dinner or movie? The only option left is a small window on computer screen together with a bunch of Excel spreadsheets.
In conclusion, do Chinese guys need DATE? Oh, yes, they do.
In the end, I have to indicate some downside risks I foresee on DATE. All five conditions above originate from the incomplete modernization which puts the material advancement way ahead of collective psyche, social structure as well as political regime in China. However, with the rise of civil awareness, these conditions will eventually get wiped out. For example, the one-child policy was widely enforced from 1980, the products is the post-80 generation in China aging from 22 to 32, among which I suppose guys from 25 to 32 are eager enough to use DATE. Then what about the majority of post-85s and the growing up post-90s? They can surely learn from the elders while spending larger portion of childhood and teenage years enjoying more benefits from modern civilization. Will those new comers still be interested in such out-of-fashion thing as DATE? Or will DATE need to turn itself into something more fashionable?
