Millions of Chinese go online every day in hopes of finding their Mr. In China, online dating is serious business for many. It has not just changed entire villages and family constructions; it has also reshaped the landscape of dating and marriage. Millions of Chinese women and men go online every day in hopes of finding their Mr. In China, online dating is serious business for many. In a country of 1. In the past few years, dating websites like or have acquired millions of subscribers, the first claiming to have a membership of 85 million, the latter approximately 100 million registered users. Iphone and Android dating apps such as or comparable to have become increasingly popular. This makes it possible for members to look for a partner who lives in the same neighbourhood, or goes to the same karaoke bar. These apps, that generate revenue through paid membership or advertising, are not only serious business for their creators. Innocent flirting aside, many users are seriously looking to get settled. Especially for women, the pressure to get married is very real. These meetings are generally arranged by the parents themselves, who attend public matchmaking events where they search for suitable partners for their single sons or daughters. Parents looking for a suitable partner for their single sons and daughter. Not all daughters give in to the. Others are less confrontational: they to join them on family occasions. This way, their parents can stop worrying, and they will not have to go through the process of being asked nagging questions. Well-educated young men with good looks charge high fees to play the ideal boyfriend for a day. Ironically, China has more single men than women. Since the implementation of the one-child policy in 1978, China has been dealing with a disparity in girls and boys, due to traditional preferences for sons and the widespread occurrence of illegal sex-selective abortions. This gender ratio imbalance has drastic consequences for Chinese society. Currently, there are around 20 million more men under the age of thirty than women in the same age category, which could lead to 30-something-million eligible men not being able to find a bride in 2020. Statistically, this would suggest that women have no problem in finding a partner. This can partly be explained by traditional ideas about. Owning a car and a house are often mentioned as requirements. They can search for their Mr. Perfect based on location, age, looks, education and financial standing. Members have to provide their real names, and are encouraged to add information about their educational background and economic situation. They even offer the option for third-party agencies to confirm their. This makes it easier for Chinese women to control their partner search according to their requirements. Baihe recently celebrated its with a mass wedding of thirty couples. Throughout the years, Baihe has brought together thousands of people. According to CEO Tian Fanjiang, the dating platform will keep on growing together with its member base, offering wedding services, marriage counseling and trainings in the future. Unfortunately, online dating is not all moonlight and roses. There are also companies taking advantage of the fact that so many single men and women are desperate to find a partner. Although online dating offers many possibilities, it also comes with risks, turning love-wanting netizens into easy victims. This article will also appear in — by Featured image: Baihe bride, by. Although its popularity is obvious, the reasons why K-Pop became so big, from China to the US and beyond, are less evident. On coming Saturday, October 13, the South-Korean boy band BTS will perform in an Amsterdam area in front of thousands of fans who have been looking forward to this event for months. It is not just the success of the BTS European tour that is making headlines; the record-breaking views on YouTube on their videos — the latest being the , that had more than 200 million views in little over a month — is also attracting the attention of the media. And BTS is not alone. Other Korean pop K-Pop groups such as EXO, BIGBANG, TWICE, Shinee, or Got7, have also broken records when it comes to online video views or Spotify plays. Although the English-language media attention for the K-pop phenomenon is more recent, the Korean entertainment industry has since long been extremely popular in China and on Chinese social media. The band consists of multi-talented young men. Singer-songwriter Kim Seokjin Jin 1992 was studying film at Konkuk University when he was invited to audition by Big Hit; rapper Min Yoongi Suga 1993 was an underground rapper before he was signed; dancer and rapper Jung Hoseok J-Hope 1994 was part of a dance team in his pre-BTS life. Lead rapper Kim Namjoon RM aka Rap Monster, 1994 was already active in the music scene as rapper and producer; dancer and vocalist Park Jimin Jimin 1995 was a top student as Busan School of Arts before joining; vocalist Kim Taehyung V 1995 is known to have one of the most expressing voices of the group; and main vocalist Jeon Jungguk Jungkook 1997 was only 12 years old when he auditioned for BTS, followed by three years of intense training. The band has more than 16 million followers , 3. Although BTS is the band that is currently dominating the headlines, there are many more K-Pop bands that are extremely popular on Weibo and beyond. The nine-member South Korean—Chinese boy band EXO, for example, has dozens of fanclubs on Chinese social media. Band member Oh Se-hun alone already has almost 9,5 million fans on his. CREATING SUCCESS A Short History of K-Pop: Finding a Sublime Entertainment Formula Besides media attention, there has been ample scholarly attention for the Korean pop culture phenomenon over the past decade. But before K-Pop became a global force to reckon with — that seemingly rose out of nowhere -, it had already made its first international successes in neighboring countries China and Japan since the early 2000s. Hallyu encompasses far more than idol bands; it includes the boom of South-Korean dramas, films, celebrity idols, and entertainment programs. The former Exo formation has now altered : a Chinese-South Korean band formed by SM Entertainment in 2011, consisting of twelve members separated into two subgroups, EXO-K and EXO-M, performing music in Korean and Mandarin. It was followed by the second wave from the mid-2000s to 2010, when the K-Pop music genre popularized in China. The third period, after 2010, marks the moment when K-Pop was further incorporated into mainstream Chinese popular culture, with a ubiquity of K-Pop idols in everyday Chinese pop culture, and the launch of Chinese versions of Korean entertainment programs Ahn 2014, 47. Formed in 2012, that band incorporates both Korean and Chinese members, performing in both languages. SM Entertainment, JYP, and YG Entertainment are the first major and leading entertainment houses of the 1990s. Big Hit Entertainment, home to BTS, followed later; founder Bang Si-Hyuk 1972 used to collaborate with JYP Entertainment founder Park Jin-Young 1971 before going his own way in 2005. Different from many international big players in the entertainment world, K-Pop entertainment companies integrate processes of artist selection, songwriting, management, signing advertisement deals, etc. Significant about the founders of these entertainment powerhouses is that they all had ample experience in the music industry themselves before starting their studios. Lee Soo Man, image via AllKpop. Lee was inspired by the transforming American music market after spending time there in the 1980s, and decided to replicate US entertainment in a new way. In 1996, eight years after Lee Soo Man started his entertainment company, and going through years of changing, refining, and improving his strategies, the first success was there. The boy band H. With frequently held auditions and training programmes that can last for years, some trainees start as young as 5 or 6 so that they are fully equipped for the entertainment industry by the time they reach adolescence ibid. More than being teachers, producers, songwriters, marketers, etc. Companies such as SM place an emphasis on the export of music, and focus on appealing to global audiences, making use of hundreds of composers and experts from around the world in doing so. The Korean government contributed to the initial success of K-Pop by developing a world-leading internet infrastructure although the goal of developing that infrastructure, obviously, was not to promote K-Pop , which helped the rapid rise of the genre through online strategies. According to some studies e. Online strategies were particularly relevant in the context of the early K-Pop industry because 1 it was dominated by relatively small businesses that did not have the means to invest in other major publishing platforms than that of efficient online distribution and 2 they did not have costly plants where they could produce CDs, DVDs, or vinyl. More so than focusing on traditional album releases, the release of digital singles that come with visually attractive online videos, for example, is one important K-Pop production characteristic. By now, six years after its release, the world-famous song by Psy, who was signed by YG Entertainment, has over 3,2 billion plays. The revenue of concert tickets for K-pop performances, its merchandise industry, the digital singles, advertisement income, the many brands wanting to associate themselves with the star industry that K-pop has generated, etc. Different from the initial spread of K-Pop in China or other Asian countries — where K-Pop has become common in everyday pop culture -, is that many consumers of the genre in the US, Europe, or elsewhere, fully depend on the internet and social media to access K-Pop, as it is not a genre that is prevalent in the mainstream popular culture of their own countries. They have become part of enormous online subcultures in various countries across Europe and America. TWICE What further strengthens this fandom is that the successful K-Pop bands are anything but one-dimensional. More than just building on their synced choreography, flawless singing, fashionable looks, and visually attractive videos, the band members of groups such as BTS, EXO, or TWICE, have their own identities, voices, and goals that go beyond music; their various characters and roles within the group resonate with their different fans. Heechul from boy band Super Junior. And that is a sound, from a local Korean product to a global force, we can expect to grow much louder in the future. New Korean Wave: Transnational Culture in the Age of Social Media. Jin, Dal Yong, and Kyong Yoon. Spotted a mistake or want to add something? Please let us know in comments below or. Do not reproduce our content without permission — you can contact us at First published October 9th 2018 A new by IKEA has found that, increasingly, the feeling of home is no longer restricted to the four walls of residential buildings. How can we translate these findings into present-day China? The on international living trends found that 35% of people feel more at home elsewhere than the place where they live, with a staggering 29% of people not feeling at home where they live at all. China is part of this trend. The report, undertaken by London-based agency C Space, is based on studies that were conducted from March to August of 2018. Besides China, a large-scale survey was undertaken in 21 other countries among 22,854 respondents 11,325 from urban areas , and qualitative research was conducted in China, US, Germany, Denmark, Italy, and the UK. The results of the study might resonate with what many experience in Europe and the US, but also with the societal changes they have seen in China over the past decade — although the reasons for these developments are different between these places. These are transformations that do not only become clear from the trends on Chinese social media, but, for me personally, also from the lives of friends and social circles in Beijing and Shanghai, and the rapid pace in which I have seen them moving from residence to residence, from neighborhood to neighborhood, and sometimes even from city to city, often with seemingly little emotional attachment to the houses where they have lived for years as urban dwellers. For many people, the Spring Festival is the only time of the year they can return to their hometowns to celebrate the new year with their family and friends. In 2020, it is expected that 60 percent of the Chinese population will be permanent urban residents Xinhua 2018. According to data provided by Chinese state media, that number of people is expected to hit 291 million in 2020 Xinhua 2015. In cities such as Beijing, underground nuclear bunkers from the Cold War era still serve as a residence to many urban dwellers. According to some , there are still one million people living in this underground world in Beijing alone, often dealing with poor air circulation and tiny living spaces with no daylight. Although the nuclear bunkers are an extreme example, the living conditions of many people in Chinese cities, whether they are migrant workers, students, or those who have restricted access to urban housing, are far from ideal; think of overcrowdedness and a lack of what many would consider basic conditions for comfortable housing. Earlier this year, the huge success of the mobile in China became a media hype. The game revolves around the travels of a little frog who lives in a stone cave and goes on frequent trips. Although perhaps far-fetched, some Chinese media tied the success of this game to a need for belonging and family, saying that higher house prices, intensive jobs, and the collapse of the pyramid family structure had led to a decline in young people starting their own family and homes; and started looking to these type of games or digital communities to fill the gap. The Traveling Frog at home. Besides the rise of various online communities, the rapid digitalization of China has also made it easier for families and friends to stay in touch through social media and messaging apps. This also brought about that physical proximity to relatives has become less of a priority now than in earlier nondigital times Tao et al 2014, 197. The hit home for many exchange students. Despite the fact that the dwellings of many people in present-day China lack space, privacy, or comfort, it does not necessarily mean that those living in these houses are dissatisfied. An interesting study by Li Tao et al 2014 on residential satisfaction of migrant workers in China found that kinship, family, friendship, and mobility, all play a significant role in how people feel about how they live. Additionally, instead of a focus on the sizes of their houses or the privacy they have, there is also a heightened focus on the low costs and transportation convenience of where one lives. As said, food is a recurring topic in these posts. If I was hungry, I would just order something, and I hardly touched my stove at all. But then I started feeling that although I rent my home, it is still my life. Home should be a place with character. And then I started to enjoy cooking, especially when other people enjoy the food with me, is when I feel happy. So feel welcome to come to my home. It is the warmth one feels with every dish at the dining table after returning home. If the people I love are there, then even a tent on the beach could be my home. Beyond Four Walls: Life at Home Report 2018. Tao, Li, Francis K. Yang, Shangguan, Chunlan Wang and Mark Y. Wang, Pookong Kee, and Jia Gao eds.
