Chinese singleton buys out romantic film seats to thwart couples

Want to catch a movie tonight, but dreading the masses of couples? FIXED.

Want to catch a movie tonight, but dreading the masses of couples?

Well, you could go see Robocop, which is unlikely to attract romantic pairs, or you could do what one bitter single in China did - buy out all the odd seats in an entire cinema so that couples can't sit together.

Reported in the Shanghai Morning Post and translated by a reporter with Time magazine, the story is simple: a single "computer nerd" tried to buy all the tickets in a cinema for a screening of 'Beijing Love Story' on Valentine's Day. He was told he couldn't do that.

So he crowd-funded the cash to buy these seats online instead:

Oh, you crafty dog.

But there is a serious element to all this:, as the Time report notes:

"With a population of 1.3 billion, China naturally has hefty share of the world’s singletons. This is compounded by a dramatic gender imbalance. Thanks to the one-child policy and preference for sons, there are an estimated 34 million ‘surplus men’ in China — a whole lot of lonely hearts."

And what exactly is the film 'Beijing Love Story' like, you ask? Behold the trailer:

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Reporting in Time Magazine, with a hat-tip to Entertainment.ie