Date doctors: How Hong Kong women find love

Valentine’s Day and Chinese New Year fall on the same day this year, which has more single ladies cursing than usual here in Hong Kong. Doomed to singledom, according to statistics, attending this year’s celebratory Chinese New Year banquet solo will be especially dreadful with nosy relatives asking whether you will ever get married. 

But it’s not all that discouraging. Veteran Hong Kong dater Sandra Lee has seen it all. She said the dating agency industry is expanding in Hong Kong and their clients are against all stereotypes: they are young, successful, attractive, and female.

Here are three types of dating services typically sought by Hong Kong's women seeking love.

Speed-dating is Hong Kong-friendly 

Young professional Hong Kong women have such tight schedules that speed-dating is actually appealing to them. 

“This is a fun and casual way for twenty to thirty-somethings to expand their social networks without the rigorous background checks and prescreening,” says Lee. 

Meet as many singles as possible in a short amount of time, starting with a simple online registration process. All events screen people for age and professional background, but you could easily lie and attend the business executive happy hour even though you're a fresh graduate. But that also means others there may be doing something similar. “Five minutes into our conversation, my date mentioned that he was a taxi driver,” says Lee. 

The activities are diverse -- dinner, happy hour, art jamming and live performances -- facilitating natural interactions among people of various backgrounds such as musicians, carpenters, businessmen and doctors. 

Dinner is not recommended, as one of Lee’s dates found out the hard way.

“I can’t say I have fantastic table manners, but he plunged his head toward his plate of spaghetti and what looked like roast duck. I don’t know if he was nervous or in a rush, but he forked up oodles of spaghetti at once. It was dripping with sauce and his mouth was covered with it. It was so disgusting and he didn’t seem at all embarrassed. Instead, he went on to introducing himself like nothing had happened, ‘Hi, my name is so-and-so. My job is...’ For the entire time, I was trying to hold in my laughter. I really wanted to die. Wouldn’t you?” she says.

So even if you don’t meet the love of your life, it seems you could come away with some amusing stories.

“I remember one date I had where both of us knew instantly that we weren’t for each other. In those seven minutes of alloted time, we ended up guessing each other’s jobs and why we were there,” recalls Lee. 

Recommended speed dating agencies: 

214 Dating: For non-degree to mid-level professional singles in their twenties to mid-thirties looking for some fun.
Room 2912 Shell Tower, Times Square, 1 Matheson Street, Causeway Bay, tel +852 8101 0214 www.214dating.com

Coffee Matching Club: For mid-level professionals in their mid-twenties to late-thirties who are not in a big rush, but are looking.
Tel +852 8208 5152 www.coffeematching.com

 

Ladies, don't despair -- matchmaking agencies say all the good ones aren't all taken.

Dinner for six or one-on-one

A certified matchmaker helps you increase the chance of meeting Mr Right through consultations, image styling, and pre-matching techniques.

“This is the modern way of finding a marriage partner,” notes Lee.

The host will only be there at the beginning and the end of the meal. She will provide guests with ice breaking questions, which they ask each other.

“It’s a bit awkward at first,” says Lee, “But those questions help everyone get comfortable.” Good ice-breaker moves might be asking about people’s pets or jobs, topics most are ready to talk about.

Like speed-dating, you register online. The crowd is different though. Attendees are generally in their thirties to forties, established in their professions (managerial to directorial), seriously looking, but just too busy to meet people outside the office.

No need to worry about running into acquaintances. Dating agencies reserve private rooms at restaurants so you can simply focus on the three candidates in front of you. The most nerve-wracking part of the meal is at the end when you fill out a survey and check who you were most interested in.

Founder of matchmaking agency Dateday, Faye Wong notes, “Most of the time, guests hesitate ticking the name of their favorite candidate that same night. What happens is the next day or so, they’ll call or email to tell me that they were actually interested in so-and-so. My Blackberry goes off at around 10am with emails and calls from girls asking about their dates.”

If you’re not one for competition, matchmaking agencies also provide one-on-one lunch or dinner dates for HK$3,000-10,000 per package.

Recommended agencies:

Dateday: A Hong Kong matchmaking agency specializing in dinner for six and one-on-one dates. The agency is strict when it comes to target clients, who are all professionals in mid- to high-level executive positions.
17/F Mirage Tower, No 13-15 Thomson Road, Wan Chai, tel +852 9680 6631 www.dateday.hk

Lunch Actually: A matchmaking agency specializing in one-on-one lunch dates in Singapore, Hong Kong and Malaysia. Prescreening is extremely rigorous, so you always get qualified individuals like CEOs and directors.
15/F, No. 1 Lan Kwai Fong, Central, tel +852 2524 3010 www.lunchactually.com

Wonderful Life's Shenzhen party.

More fish up north

Last November, Hong Kongers were captivated by a potential marriage between a 26-year old “Hong Kong beauty” and a 39-year old multimillionaire.The pair met during a two-day yacht tour in Shenzhen.

"The trip was organized by an agency and attended by fifteen self-claimed multi-millionaires and eighteen women from Hong Kong and the mainland. Nine other couples were paired successfully," The Standard said. 

Statistics reveal that Hong Kong has about 275,000 more women than men in the twenty to forty age range. That is probably why there has been an increase in women crossing the border for more than just a spa treatment and some shopping. 

Wonderful Life dating agency consultant Mei Chan comments, “Shenzhen has a growing pool of rich, accomplished men in their thirties to forties who are successful entrepreneurs or civil servants.” Plus, the image of mainlanders as inferior to Hong Kongers is changing. “Immigration Department figures show 2,409 marriages registered in Hong Kong last year between mainlanders and local women -- a more than six-fold jump from 10 years ago, when there were 390 such marriages.” ("Northern Charms”, City6, Life, South China Morning Post, 8/27/2009, by Elaine Yau).

“There has been a two to three time increase in female clients inquiring or participating in Shenzhen day trips since we started our business in September of 2007," says Chan. 

Recommended agency:

Wonderful Life: Although Wonderful Life mainly focuses on Hong Kong, it is also reputable for organizing one-day Shenzhen tours where clients try their chance at love over dinner or karaoke.
Tel +852 2319 2317 www.wonderful-lifestyle.com