Hooked on Dating Apps: Where is China’s Gen Z Swiping Right?

Hooked on Dating Apps: Where is China’s Gen Z Swiping Right?
Since coming back to China over a year ago, more and more of my peers have started talking about dating apps. A few years before when I left for college in the US, the hype wasn’t that obvious. Perhaps I only had a vague idea then of how things worked in Chinese schools, but for all I knew, the need to find suitable partners wasn’t frequently put on the table compared to my experience at an American institution where Tinder stories were often discussed among friends, and where events with fancy names like “Datamatch” and “Marriage Pact” are prevalent.
During my time at school, I was a frequent participant in such events. Of course, I wasn’t expecting the matches that came out from them to be anything more than random pairings (despite the alleged compatibilities), but they did help me meet new people outside of the group I usually interacted with – the bit of randomness that we all needed in our seemingly unchanging routines of everyday life. I always wondered if I would find the same thing back home.
My attempt originated out of boredom and curiosity, but, after familiarizing myself with the available platforms and talking to people about them, the experience ended in surprise. Continue Reading