I was walking to the bus stop from my office last Thursday with the director of the program I am researching, a woman in her early 50’s who I’ll call Ms. Han, when it came up again. The topic: family and marriage, the subtopic: I’m no spring chicken and ought to be thinking about finding a husband and starting a family. I hedged, as I usually do, telling her politely that I knew I should but it’s hard to meet people in Beijing and most men are frightened by lady scholars (one popular Chinese joke suggests that female PhDs constitute a third gender). Ms. Han, divorced with a grown son, and a devoted reader of the stories about true love found in cheaply printed magazines, said she understood and that she would help me. I thanked her for her concern and insisted she needn’t worry.
Cut to the next day. I show up at the office and Ms. Han ushers me into her office, broad smile on her face, to show me what she made for me: my own profile on a popular Chinese dating website! “Look” she says, pointing to a number in the hundreds, “it's working!” Horrified and rendered temporarily speechless I grunt in appreciation then, pleading time-sensitive work, run for my desk to IM with my friend Dan. Dan thinks it is all just hilarious and wants to know if I'll go out with anyone I meet. Not a chance! I insist. It would be one thing if I was looking on my own but Ms. Han had already taken it upon herself to write an introduction for me, stating that I was “an American girl who deeply loves China and believes that love does not recognize national boundaries” and that furthermore I hoped “to experience love before I conclude my studies here.” Yeech. But how was I going to get out of this without offending Ms. Han, who I respect and admire, and threatening my research relationships?
“Qiao Wei!” I was summoned to Ms. Han’s office once again. She had decided that the website she had originally chosen was too common and full of the wrong kind of people but that she had found another which used scientific methods to calculate compatibility and attracted high-quality people who had graduated from top schools. I only had to fill out a survey of a few dozen questions: was I more emotional or idealistic? Did I like to plan or go with the flow? Did I prefer billiards or bowling? Sunsets or long walks? (apparently these can only be enjoyed exclusively). The robot analyzed my responses and proclaimed me a “教师测试” or, “professor-type”, recommending I seek out other professor-types, journalists, lawyers, or adventurers.
Ms. Han took the initiative to fill out all the information on me and who I was looking for as I watched helplessly. Not only did they want my height, weight, astrological sign, nationality, and occupation, but I was asked to state my blood type, Chinese zodiac sign, income, and housing status (if you didn’t answer the form would state 以后告诉你, or "I’ll tell you later"). I also had to stipulate the marital status, education, and income level of my desired partner. Ms. Han insisted I shouldn’t bother with anyone making less than 1500元／month (about $2,250).
Next came the awkward process of choosing profile pictures. Ms. Han knew I had a cache of photos on my laptop and I told her she could make the selections. Sorting through them, politely ignoring the many in which I am dressed as a panda/eagle/frog, covered in Holi paint, or reprehensibly drunk, she looked for one which would show what she determined to be my best features, namely my high nose, long neck (?!), and pale white skin. She favored pictures of me looking chubby, saying my face looks better when I’m fat, but didn’t like ones where I was smiling with teeth. “Why not add a picture of you as a little girl so they can see how cute your children would be?” I brought this on myself, I kept thinking as I bit my tongue.
Here’s a screen shot of my profile:
The weekend came to my rescue and I tried not to think of how I was going to handle the situation; not hard to do when there are shows to see and old men crossing one’s path wearing t-shirts that read “Ape Shall Not Kill Ape”. Friends I pleaded with for help agreed that the best way out would be to slowly create a fake boyfriend, planting the seeds the next Monday by gushing about some charming foreigner I had met that weekend. But Monday came and I just didn’t have the heart to embark on such a big, long stretch of lies. Would I have to tell her about fictional dates where we walked along a lake and he opened doors for me? I just couldn’t.
I was soon to regret my weakness. Ms. Han had been monitoring my profile (I didn’t yet have the log-in information) and had selected some promising candidates. She especially liked a baby-faced guy with a Masters in management and another who went by the screen name BMW. She showed me how to use the site and how to look at all the messages that interested suitors had sent my way. There were over 70 by that time but many notes couldn’t be opened without paying a surcharge to the site. “No matter” said Ms. Han, “it’s obviously not 缘分 (fate/destiny, or colloquially, meant to be).”
As I got down, under supervision, to the business of reading the dozen or so messages that were 缘分, I came to realize how frequently the concept arose in the world of online flirtation. There was actually a painful earnestness to many of the messages, which seemed odd when juxtaposed with the pragmatic information provided in the short descriptions of the sender which accompanied their notes.
‘有你才完美’ (If I had you it would be perfect), a 30 year old artist and writer measuring in at 180cm, wrote “I hope when you see my letter, our predestined affinity can began, I’m very happy to have met you here.”
‘懂你’ (I understand you), a 36 year old man with a college education suggested that “destiny might come in the blink of an eye” and wished me “a happy life.”
A 42 year old man in Guangdong province with less than a high school education used a lofty and rather formal writing style, perhaps to demonstrate that one doesn’t need formal schooling to be a scholar: “It is fate that we meet here, I boldly extend my greeting to you, hope that it will win your attention”. I wondered whether I should tell him that his screen name, 风雨无阻 (stopped by neither wind nor rain) both attracted my attention and caused me to think about the US Postal Service.
I wondered too about 饕餮, whose screen name I had to look up in the dictionary:
Whether glutton, gourmand, or mythical animal, Mr. 饕餮, wrote more like a teenage girl. “Hello, ha ha, let’s get to know each other”, he wrote in his first email; sending a second: after Ms. Han had viewed his profile on my behalf “very happy to meet you, ha ha”.
Several notes were simple and friendly, only saying they had looked at my profile and (ugh) self-introduction, that I seemed congenial and would I be willing to get to know them by chatting a bit online? A few others were much more serious. V哥 (Uncle V), 40 years old and with a smile so friendly I wanted to buy him a puppy, told me his “heart wished to go forward” and he was “sincerely looking for someone to marry”. Another gentleman of the same age notified me that I had not yet completed the version 8 personality test offered by the website and invited me to do so in order that he might discover how compatible we were for marriage.
I felt guilty even reading the messages, worse still for not replying. Ms. Han told me to ignore the ones I wasn’t interested in but I told her I felt bad - what if they were checking back, hoping for a reply? I know what it’s like to extend your heart and have it meet only dead space. And then again I had no intention of replying to any of them. It isn’t that I’m dead set against dating a Chinese guy (though I do have doubts that I could find one with many interests or ideas in common - in this sense these fellows are far more open-minded than I, regardless of their interests in a green card), but I felt dishonest from the get go having my introduction written for me. I am from a deeply ironic culture; even if I had such earnest feelings about love I could never express them so easily.
Some messages, however, were so ridiculous or cheesy that I delighted in reading and mocking them to myself.
The ambitious yet soulful BMW, a 28 year-old professional who Ms. Han had personally recommended, wrote: “Autumn, a time of harvest, will we or will we not make our harvest together?”
大海 (Ocean), penned a lengthy note in which he referred to himself in the third person, telling me he worked “in a CCP organ, is healthy, fit, and comparatively attractive” had a “steady and cheerful personality, also scholarly and refined” with multitudinous hobbies and areas of knowledge, and also possessed “compassion and a sense of duty, tolerance and generousness in dealing with people”. He drew my attention as well to his sound economic circumstances and home ownership (I only hope he would have been more clear about whether or not he owns a BMW). I have a feeling Mr. Ocean is not fretting tonight over not having received a response from me; more likely he is sipping cognac, reading Lu Xun, and thinking “her loss”.
And perhaps it is. I shall never know. I’ve made this long enough already so I won’t burden you with the story of how, over our weekly $3.50 hour-long foot massages yesterday, I drew from both my anthropological training and fortuitously fragile emotional state to gently persuade Ms. Han that I wasn’t ready to find love online. My profile, and the disingenuous possibilities it offered, are now gone from the interwebs, and “Jeruik” will never rise again. And I’ll always be a jerk for never writing back.
