How I Became a Fake Boyfriend in China
Last weekend, I was on an awkward first date, the girl barely spoke English, and I didn’t feel like using the translation app for the rest of the evening, so, I told her, “Wǒ de shǒujī kuàiyào sǐle” (My phone is going to die soon.) Then I took a cab to meet my friends at a new Turkish restaurant for dinner.
“How’s the dating life going?” My friend asked. I wanted to brag about meeting so many beautiful girls since I wrote the blog post What if I’m Single Forever, but the truth was there were no second dates.
I even registered on CoffeeMeetsBagel, which is a bit different from swiping right on Tinder or Bumble. They actually ask you to write something next to your dumb face, like, “This is why you should f**k me.” It’s like I’m a real estate agent on a bench, “best in town". I wrote about my hobbies and interests and then every day at noon, I received quality matches curated just for me by their ever-evolving algorithm. One day I got a message, “She loves traveling and cats too!” Cats? WTF? I had to look at my profile again to see if I accidently wrote something like, “Meow, I’m single.” But there wasn’t a cat theme. I’m a dog person. 100%. Then I figured out where they got the cats from, they really stretched it. While I set up the account, there was a question about which pets would you be cool with, I went with all, and didn’t uncheck cats. So, they probably thought let’s send him all the pussies in town.
“To be honest, I’m already tired of this,” I told my friends. “I know the perfect girl for you,” my friend picked up her phone and called someone to join us. I wanted to see her photo, I wasn’t ready for two blind dates in one evening. “Don’t block your blessings,” she said, “and it’s not a date, so just relax.”
You couldn’t imagine the look on my face when she walked in. Have you ever been introduced to somebody you already dated? It’s not something that happens every day. We dated during the summer of 2016, when I first moved to Shenzhen, then she went back to Beijing. “I thought you were stuck in Colombia due to the pandemic,” she said. I didn’t realize I hadn’t updated my WeChat Moments (it’s like the Chinese version of the Facebook wall). “I knew you guys would be perfect for each other,” my friend said. There was an awkward silence. “Still drinking gin and tonic?” I asked her. She shook her head and ordered a whiskey sour. When my friends told her about my blog, she was disappointed that I didn’t write anything about our summer fling. “Not yet,” I said, and everyone laughed.
We asked her what she was doing for the Chinese New Year, given that she couldn’t travel home during this holiday season. “Well,” she reached for her drink and took a long swig, “my dad is in town,” she glanced at me. I knew something was wrong.
“That’s great,” one of my friends said.
“Not really,” she took another long swig, “he’s here to meet my boyfriend.”
“WHAT?” My friend raised her eyebrows, “I thought you were single.”
“I am. But I told my parents I was in a relationship” she chugged her whiskey sour, “now all I need is a boyfriend.”
Everyone turned to look at me.
“Hell no!” I said, “why would you do that?”
She told us that her family had been pressuring her to get married, now that she was turning 28, so she lied, to get them off her back. She said, she’s been looking online for a fake boyfriend for the last few weeks, but it was hard finding someone her parents would approve. And now she was running out of time, Chinese New Year’s eve was in five days.
“You can hire a fake boyfriend in China?” One of my friends asked. She nodded, “look it up, even Al Jazeera featured a story a few years ago. She was right. Last year, I wrote a story about how Chinese women face stigma for remaining unmarried passed their late 20s. It’s common for Chinese people in their late 20s/early 30s to hire fake boyfriends/girlfriends during the holiday season, to keep their parents off their backs.
And now I was being recruited to be one. “You’ll only have to do it for a day,” she laughed, “and then at least you’ll have something to write about.”
The next morning, I met her for brunch, and then we went shopping to buy gifts for her family. I couldn’t keep track of how much she spent, and just when I thought she was done, we went into Louis Vuitton, where she bought a men’s leather belt for 5,000 RMB. She must LOVE her dad, I thought.
When she dropped me off to my place, she passed the Louis Vuitton bag to me, “remember to bring this with you on Thursday, this is your gift to my dad,” she winked. “Who buys an $800 belt as a gift,” I raised my eyebrows. “Don’t forget, my boyfriend is a plastic surgeon,” she said, and drove away.
P.S. You see he loved his gift.
