Many working men and women in China prefer to stay single. (Photo : Getty Images)
There are 130,000 single men and women nationwide who anticipate that there will be parental pressure over their marital status during the Spring Festival holiday, or the Chinese New Year.
According to the 2016 Survey Report on Chinese Views of Relationships and Marriage, 60 percent of men and 50 percent of women said they pressured by their families to get married.
The figures increased from 2014 that showed 33 percent of women and 23 percent respectively, it said.
Lin Qing, a 33-year-old bank clerk in Shanghai, said, "My mother, aunts, uncles and even my grandmother have helped to arrange four blind dates for me with men they believe might be a good match during the seven-day holiday."
"Sometimes they also show me photos of a neighbor my age who just got married or of one of their friends who has just become a grandmother, which is their way of telling me that I shouldn't waste any more time, she added.
According to an expert, parents are anxious over their children because they came from a generation that experienced great social turmoil.
Xue Yali, a researcher with the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences' Family Research Center, said: "Because of their experiences, they dislike uncertainty of the future and are afraid that their children will suffer losses and failures."
"They usually can't help with their career development, and can only help to urge them to start a family," she added.
The researcher said that the media's focus on "leftover" men and women do not help in alleviating the social pressure.
People from the Jiangxi Province feel the most pressure, according to the survey, with 63 percent of the respondents expressing concern on the issue. The statistics are also high in Henan and Anhui Provinces.
