Holiday Blind Dates
Matchmaking in China has moved on from the traditional ritual of introduction, meeting and dining to the less formal approach of a holiday tour group composed of hopeful singles.
Tours that combine travel in the great outdoors with potential romance are in demand among single professionals, according to Li Wenjunn, Manager of the 17u scenic zone marketing department.
Other travel agencies offering blind-date tours include hongniang.com, which has this year laid on five or six, and xxyuan.com, which organizes weekly tour groups for 60 or more trippers aged from 18 to in their 50s .
As Huang Weijian found love on his first blind date travel tour he is a strong advocate of this matchmaking mode. "Meetings through a traditional matchmaker are to-the-point and formal. Both parties generally feel awkward and often embarrassed. Meeting on a tour is better because it gives you the chance to interact with people of the opposite sex against a backdrop of natural scenery. The relaxed feeling this creates makes for greater openness and ease of communication. Not everyone meets the love of their lives on these trips, but they do make new friends," Huang said.
Ms Chen works in real estate. She was single until six months ago, when she went on a blind-date tour and met her recently-wedded husband. Happy at having made woman friends on her last tour as well as meeting her life partner, Chen also highly recommends tours for singles.
Matchmaking is a main aspect of China's courtship and marriage culture, and the blind date tour concept is a refreshing innovation on a traditional practice. "I never feel relaxed on dates that my parents have arranged, but I enjoyed my matchmaking tour because it was my own decision, so I felt under no pressure," blind-date tripper Ms. Wang said.
She is one of many urban singles of marriageable age who find that a more rapid pace of life and pressure at work hampers social interaction and consequently the chance to meet suitable marriage partners. That the bulk of matchmaking tour participants are well-educated white-collars on relatively good incomes is hence unsurprising.
Certain sociologists say that although the Internet has made society far more open and connected, today's steel and concrete-enclosed living space inhibits social interaction and feelings of community warmth and belonging. Matchmaking tours present opportunities for people to meet in a common space and time and interact face-to-face.
Love and Money
Matchmaking tours, on a scale from a few hundred to thousands of blind-date travelers paying from 100 yuan (US$15.02) to several thousand yuan, depending on the tour, generate revenue as well as wedding bells.
The Tour163.com ten-thousand person blind date tour that began in Zhengzhou, Henan Province and included a date in the Grand Counselor's Mansion in the Forbidden City, and the Find Love with the Help of God who Unites People in Marriage trip to Yu Mountain, enriched interest groups on the industry chain as well as the travel companies that organized them. Such tours promote tourism to scenic spots, and the singles taking these mammoth tours benefit from their relatively low cost. The revenue they generate overflows into marriage industry sectors such as wedding photography companies.
"The young singles taking these tours are comfortable with the fresh, informal approach they bring to matchmaking, and also with their reasonable prices," general manager Su of Tour163.com said. "The tours constitute a contemporary mode of time-honored courtship rituals, and also a new platform for tour services and scenic spot marketing" Su concluded.
