Chinese New Year is a very stressful time for many, especially young people who are reluctantly put through matchmaking activities by parents who fear that their children will be left on the shelf.

Many young people get round this by paying other single people to act as their boyfriend or girlfriend for the duration of the holiday. One 27 year-old woman in Shenzhen who tried to do this had a happier ending than anybody had even hoped for.

Miss Yuan, who lives in Huanggang Subdistrict in Longgang District, is now preparing to return to her native Hubei with her “boyfriend for hire” to buy a house together, Chutian Metropolis reported yesterday.

In early February Mr. Zhou, 32, received a message in one of his QQ groups that a man was offering to act as a boyfriend for hire for just 38 yuan on Chinese New Year. A bachelor, Zhou jokingly forwarded this to all of his contacts and all of his groups, pretending to offer his own services.

Yuan did not see Zhou’s proposition as a joke and was in fact so keen that she offered to add an extra ’0′ to the end of the asking price.

Although not convinced that she was being serious, Zhou started to chat with Yuan on QQ and they had something of a meeting of the minds which led to the exchange of phone numbers.

On the evening of February 7, Zhou had to face his parents in Huanggang and explain that he still didn’t have a girlfriend. His father’s scolding led him to promise that he would bring a girl home the following day.

The following afternoon, Zhou, a white collar worker who is based in Wuhan but whose parents live in Huanggang, called Yuan and invited her to his home. It turned out they lived less than an hour apart. On February 9, they met and immediately liked each other. Zhou’s parents were delighted to welcome a girl to their home and his mother pulled out all of the stops to make sure Yuan enjoyed the meal of her life.

That day, Yuan, who works as a tutor, had lied to her parents and told them she was just going to town to do some shopping. But upon returning home, she told her parents everything that had happened.

She told her parents that she wanted to be with Zhou and they respect her decision, Yuan told the paper. Now she is set to move to Hubei where they intend to buy a house together.

I suppose at their respective ages they can’t afford the luxury of taking it slowly.