Jiang Hui hasn’t dated a girl since graduating from college four years ago, but the 26-year-old Beijing office worker hopes the Internet will make this Valentine’s Day different.

Beijing office worker Jiang Hui surfs the internet looking for love.

Jiang joined an online dating site and began a cybersearch for a sweetheart three months ago — along with millions of other young Chinese taking advantage of technology and a newfound freedom to control their own love lives.

In years past, Jiang might have had his future decided by match-making relatives in his rural hometown. But now he logs on each day to jiayuan.com — a site that boasts 22 million members — to browse through dozens of new computer-suggested matches. He hasn’t found his dream girl yet, but says he remains hopeful. “In Beijing, there are maybe two million members, so about one million are girls. There is no way I could have met that many girls in my three years here,” said Jiang.

Such sites — typically free but with charges for enhanced features — are revolutionising how Chinese interact with the opposite sex, say experts. “People born in the 1980s are approaching 30 and there is pressure for them to marry,” said Xie Qingqing, an expert on the match-making industry at the China Association of Social Workers.

Source: AFP

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