beyondbrics

Young urban Chinese are profligate at the best of times, often spending beyond their means in a way that challenges traditional notions of Asian frugality. But when it comes to Valentine’s Day – perhaps the mainland’s most popular Western holiday – they take extravagance to heights worthy of the most debt-laden Westerner.

Chinese newspapers published on Tuesday are full of stories of young white collar workers spending as much as an entire month’s salary to reward their lover with a gift she can flash around. One young doctoral student says he spent his whole monthly budget on a one-way ticket to fly home to Chongqing, in south-west China, to visit his girlfriend. A young lover in Beijing said he plans to spend Rmb1,000 on 99 red roses for his girlfriend – though she might prefer 999.

A young man in Nanjing, eastern China, who plans to spend one fifth his monthly pay on a bottle of perfume for his girl, makes clear that he feels he has no choice:

“If I fail to give her a gift that compares, either in price or brand, with what other girls around her receive on Valentine’s Day, she will definitely be upset, even without saying it out loud,” he says, adding: “it’s worth saving up to make her happy”.

China is, after all, a country with a shortage of marriageable women: on days like this, girl power rules. Public opinion surveys repeatedly show that women in China make romantic decisions based heavily on practicalities – like whether the man in their life has a flat and a car.

“I’d rather be crying in a BMW than laughing on the back of a bicycle,” is an oft-repeated sentiment. One online survey this week showed 15 per cent of women would not marry a man unless he already owned an apartment and a car.

But there may be hope yet: the same survey showed that 61 per cent of women would be willing to wed, so long as their mate could promise to buy his own flat within five years – a concept known as “half-naked marriage”.

Some women apparently eschew the trappings of marriage altogether, and prefer to rent a boyfriend for Valentine’s Day – at least according to an article last week in the Dalian Peninsula Morning post (reproduced in China Daily) which found Valentine lovers for rent online for Rmb5,000 per day.

Meanwhile some cities jumped on the Valentine bandwagon to encourage lovers to look beyond the day, and its extravagant presents, to focus on the eternal bond of matrimony.

Banner reads: Don't derail on Valentine's Day, bring your love home

A department store in Changsha, in China’s Hunan province, encouraged lovers to eschew their paramours on this special day – and give that present to the wife.

And two long-married middle aged migrant construction workers in Shanghai decided to mark the day by dressing up in wedding clothes and posing under a crane near Shanghai’s Bund – to get the wedding photo they could not afford at the time.

Even in the Chinese animal kingdom, love is in the air: at a Kunming animal park, a ram and a deer were wed across the species line in a special Valentine’s ceremony – watched by anyone willing to pay Rmb66 for the privilege. If they get a move on, maybe the happy new cross-chromosomed couple can have a “dragon baby” – a child born in the auspicious lunar year of the dragon. And they may not be the only ones trying to do that: nine months from now, check back to find out whether all that investment in chocolate and red roses really paid off.

With additional reporting by Shirley Chen in Shanghai

Related reading:
Apple fans consumer flames in China, FT
Year of Dragon lifts China gold demand, FT
China: new year, more travel, beyondbrics
Can quirkiness sell in China? beyondbrics