China girlfriend rental app sees surge as singles prepare to meet family on Lunar New Year

Millions of people in China are heading home to celebrate the Lunar new year with their families. As people flood in to markets to buy gifts for their loved ones on the Chinese new year, there is a remarkable surge in demand for one particular thing this year: a rental girlfriend.

There has been a significant surge in the activity of mobile applications facilitating dates or girlfriends for hire. Chinese culture gives a huge importance to marriage and continuing the blood line, therefore there is a huge pressure on singles as they meet their family and relatives at this time of the year to find a prospective mate.

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To alleviate this pressure and lectures from their family, some singles in China hire fake girlfriends and boyfriends to please their parents. Now with the ready availability and usage of smartphones, hiring a fake girlfriend is just a few clicks away.

"Over 1,000 users on our platform have signed up as dates for hire for the New Year break," Founder of date-for-hire app, Hire Me Plz, Cao Tiantian told Reuters. Reports state that the subscribers of the dating app pay can pay a nominal sum of 1 yuan to 1,999 yuan for an hour of date, a game of mah-jong, chatting and even a foot massage. The app has a user base of 700,000 and 1.7 million followers. 

There are five other major date-hiring apps in China which have seen a boost in their business. These applications make money by taking subscription fees and certain cuts from the hires. Sex, however, is not included in the services as prostitution is illegal in China. 

"Our business model is still new, though an increasing number of young people have accepted the idea of selling their time as commodity," Beijing-based Tiantian said. He believes that the date-rental will become a multi-billion dollar market in five years.