In 2013, the gender ratio at birth in China stood at 117.6 males for every 100 females. The disparity represents a golden business opportunity for so-called pickup artists, who are increasingly moving away from teaching seduction techniques at workshops and have started offering one-on-one relationship counseling.
A wave of loneliness among young middle-class men saw the emergence of 'pickup artists' who teach lovelorn bachelors a variety of techniques to attract women. Now, the phenomenon may be on the wane, as Xu Wei reports.
Ze Xin (not his real name) felt as though he'd been brainwashed after attending a five-day workshop held by a number of "pickup artists". At the time, Ze was trying to heal the wounds left by a failed relationship during which he "did virtually everything I could to make the girl happy", but was still ditched.
"It was about a total overhaul of your values, your understanding of love. I felt as though I had been utterly stupid in the past," Ze said, adding that the thing he disliked most about the course was the requirement to post selfies of himself with pretty girls on social media.
"It's a message to the ladies you're targeting; to show that you have no shortage of female admirers. There has to be competition," he said. "If there are no women in your life, the chances are that there are no women who like you. That's human nature."
Ze recalled being stunned as he watched his tutor trying to pick up a young woman during a shopping trip for clothes. "He seemed to approach girls simply because they looked good at a first glance. It was such a casual thing," he said.
The 7,000 yuan ($1,126) workshop opened up a new world: "I thought there would be no future without my ex-girlfriend, but I was wrong. It was really about a shortage of choices."
"Pickup artists", men who specialize in tricks and techniques to attract women, originated in the United States in the middle of the last century. Their emergence prompted a number of books, the most influential being The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists by Neil Strauss.
In a famous essay, The dating mind: Evolutionary psychology and the emerging science of human courtship, Nathan Oesch of the Department of Experimental Psychology at Oxford University, defined the PUA community as "consisting broadly of heterosexual men who market various tactics, techniques, and methods to meet, date, and ultimately seduce women".
In China the practice is generally regarded as light-hearted fun, but it's become a focus of disquiet in Western countries where PUAs, as they are known, have been accused of promoting and legitimizing violence against women.
In November, Julien Blanc, a PUA from the US, made global headlines when he was banned from entering the United Kingdom to deliver a series of seminars after more than 150,000 people signed an online petition urging the UK government to declare him persona non grata, and follow Australia in refusing to grant him a visa.
Pickup artist Wu Jiamin (right), who teaches under the name of Tango, talks with clients about his methods of wooing women in Beijing.
Dating dilemma
With the growth of China's middle class, there is no shortage of well-paid singles such as Ze, who earns more than 500,000 yuan a year, with relationship problems. In 2013, the gender ratio at birth stood at 117.6 males for every 100 females, even after years of decline, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. Last year, a report in People's Daily predicted that by 2020 men of marriageable age would outstrip their female counterparts by 24 million.
For the 100 pickup artists and dating coaches across China, the gender disparity represents a golden business opportunity.
Influenced by similar movements in the US, China's "seduction community" started to take shape in 2008 when a number of PUAs started advertising courses to teach others their "skills". Recently, though, the market potential presented by the huge number of male singletons yearning for stable, long-term relationships has seen many PUAs transition from offering pickup lessons to relationship counseling and dating tips.
"The reason is simple: PUAs are just the icing on the cake, and society has a need for them. But you can never count on people paying big money for that," said Wu Jiamin, CEO of the dating coach website puahome and one of China's first PUAs, who teaches under the name of Tango.
Wu, who started puahome and an online forum, Bad Boy Academy, in 2013, said he's trying to reduce the PUA element in his business model and retune it to the needs of the majority.
"We want to transform its role into that of an emergency room or a clinic. We want to help men with relationship difficulties. That's radically different from pickup artistry, which is essentially just for amusement," he said.
Pan Sheng, CEO of paoxue, China's first online community for pickup artists, which has more than 700,000 registered users, has also noticed the change in attitude. "There are fewer courses offering guidance on picking up girls in bars, and more that provide coaching about relationships and self-improvement," he said.
He admitted that he had doubts even when he worked as a teacher of pickup artistry. "As a PUA, the biggest problem is that you eventually begin to doubt the rationality of what you're doing. Although we provided numerous lessons about nightclub etiquette and picking up girls, they didn't change the lives of the trainees for the better," he said.
"At one time, I didn't dare tell my parents I was a pickup artist and was also teaching people how to do it. But last year, I told them and they had no problem accepting it," he added.
'Unsustainable'
The coaching credentials of pickup artists rest solely on the success of their students. Many post chats with students online, flaunting their success at lianaibashi, a commercial platform where PUAs advertise their services.
One student described how he had seduced 13 women in just one month. "It was by far the most wonderful month of my life," he wrote under the user name "Ling Du", or "Zero Degrees".
Despite the apparently positive student feedback, Yuan Rongpeng, a 28-year-old PUA in Chengdu, Sichuan province, said the business model of taking students to nightclubs is deeply flawed. "It's exhausting and unsustainable. What people really want is to establish a stable relationship rather than hang out at nightclubs regularly," he said.
"When this movement first took shape in China, the men who joined wanted lots of women, but now they just want one," he said.
That view is shared by many current and former PUAs, including Pan and Wu. "The need for nightclubs and pickup artistry will always be there, but there isn't enough demand to sustain a large number of practitioners," Pan said.
Wu said: "It's like going to a concert. Yes, there will be a lot of people going, but people can choose whether to go or not to go."
Although he has mastered the trick of picking up girls at nightclubs, Ze has never been interested in nightclubs: "I am way too busy for stuff like that. Even if I had time, I'd prefer other diversions. The biggest benefit of the workshops is that you gain a sense of community, knowing that you aren't alone in this course of self-improvement," he said.
Pan and Wu have completed the business transition from seduction workshops to related activities. Pan, who now offers one-on-one relationship counseling, charges 2,000 yuan an hour. He said more than 80 percent of his clients are women.
He has observed a difference in focus between men and women. "Men want to know how to start a relationship, while women generally need help keeping relationships alive and knowing how to select the person that's perfect for them," he said.
Filling the void
Wu believes that the PUAs' move into related fields is rooted in Chinese culture and the education system. Although he was born in Guangzhou, Guangdong province, his family moved to New York when he was in the sixth grade, giving him first-hand experience of the cultural differences between China and the United States.
"In the US, children are encouraged to socialize. There are clubs, like brotherhoods, starting from high school. In China, children are told they will be able to solve all their problems in the future by being academically successful. They are trained to be quiet; the less sociable, the better," he said, adding that the national family planning policy, which limited couples to one child, exacerbated the situation.
"That's why socializing is less of a problem for men in the US," he said.
Wu said many of his clients earned hundreds of thousands of yuan a year, yet they barely reached the level of high school students when they met young women.
"Most men are too proud to admit they have difficulty attracting women. It's close to admitting you are impotent," he said.
He recalled one client, a self-employed man from Guangdong province who earned more than 100,000 yuan a month, whose hands shook uncontrollably whenever he spoke to a woman. "We had to coach him all the way, from his dress sense to the way he behaved and spoke. We accompanied him on his blind dates, and gave him advice afterward."
"On the day he got married, he put his head on my shoulder and cried. I felt like I'd never done a more meaningful thing in my life," he said.
For Wu, another reason PUAs have become so popular in China is that the standard of psychological counseling lags far behind that in the United States. "In the US, people consult relationship counselors whenever they have difficulties, and the industry has a lot to offer. In China, people won't go to see counselors unless they are deemed to have psychological problems," he said.
He believes a quintessential element of pickup artistry is learning to know women better and becoming a better person. "Women won't fall in love with you just because you're good with words. You need to make yourself likeable, to live a better life," he said.
"The thing to do is become their Mr. Right rather than desperately trying to convince them to love you," he said.
