How does the idea of renting a boyfriend for the holidays sound to you? ABC News reported Friday that boyfriend renting is a booming enterprise in China.
ABC reports that business is up 884% over this time last year.
As previously reported, the story broke earlier this week in the UK's Telegraph. The Telegraph put their own spin on a story first published in Canada's Globe and Mail.
Related story: Five reasons why women rent boyfriends in China and will this concept catch on here in the west?
A Feb. 6 headline in the Telegraph reads, “Chinese girls rent boyfriends to take home for New Year: 'appropriate kisses, 50 yuan'.”
The Globe and Mail headline read, “Chinese women take 'rental boyfriends' home for the holidays.”
What’s the rent a boyfriend concept all about?
Chinese girls and young women often have difficulty finding boyfriends to take home to their parents over the Chinese New Year. Some have given up and instead opt to rent a boyfriend. The service costs about $65 US, the Globe and Mail reports.
If you want to check out the rental boyfriends available, you can on the Chinese Web site taobao.com. It is not a dating or rental boyfriend site per se but a general person-to person shopping site like Ebay.
Because the Chinese often have to migrate great distances for jobs, often the one time a year that they get to see their families is for the Chinese New Year. The rent a boyfriend concept helps Chinese young women save face with their families.
The term for single woman over 30 in China is “leftover women.”
The Globe and Mail reports that the rent a boyfriend thing seldom turns into a real romance because the renal boyfriends are generally a lower class than the woman who pay for them.
So what do you think of the rent a boyfriend concept? Do you think the idea would catch on here? What do you think it says about Chinese culture? Leave you comments below or in this previously published story.
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