Chinese ‘hire’ girlfriends to fob off pushy parents

SINGLE people in China have come up with an innovative way of pleasing their pushy parents during the annual Lunar New Year holiday — they are renting fake dates.

Advertisements posted by people seeking to pay young men or women to come home with them for Spring Festival — China’s most important family holiday that kicks off this weekend — are scattered all over popular web portals.

“500 yuan (€53) a day, you don’t have to sleep with me, I can sleep on the floor in the same room, but you have to be a good actress,” one man said yesterday on baidu.com, under the heading “Looking to rent a girlfriend”.