NEW YORK - When Ms Qu Tongzhou, a photography assistant in Shanghai, set out on a long-awaited trip to western China in June, she found the cities she visited to be unwelcoming. As an aftereffect of the country's 'zero-Covid' policies, locals were leery of travellers, and some hotels refused Ms Qu, fearing she could introduce the virus. Read more at straitstimes.com.
NEW YORK - When Ms Qu Tongzhou, a photography assistant in Shanghai, set out on a long-awaited trip to western China in June, she found the cities she visited to be unwelcoming. As an aftereffect of the country's"zero-Covid" policies, locals were leery of travellers, and some hotels refused Ms Qu, fearing she could introduce the virus.
Investors have also poured more than US$5.3 billion into dating and social networking companies in the country last year, up from US$300 million in 2019, according to PitchBook. For many people, the apps have become virtual sanctuaries - a 21st-century twist on what urbanists called the"third place," a community between work and the home - to explore hobbies, discuss popular topics and meet new friends.
But unlike online tutoring and cryptocurrency trading, areas that China's regulators have unambiguously quashed, dating and other services centred on social encounters have remained relatively unscathed as the apps have explicitly framed their goals as helping Chinese society to thrive.Zhang Lu, the founder of Soul, a dating app backed by Tencent, has said that"loneliness is the core problem we want to solve.
When internet dating arrived in China in the early 2000s, the power to form relationships - once disproportionately in the hands of village matchmakers, parents and factory bosses - increasingly fell on to the individual. Many were eager for the shift, gravitating to features on WeChat, the popular messaging app, which enabled chatting with strangers.
The apps themselves have changed. Tantan and Momo had long matched users based on their physical appearance, leading to accusations that the platforms cultivated a hookup culture. More recently, these apps have started using people's interests, hobbies and personalities as the basis for new social encounters.