Much ado about shengnu

Batches of bachelors

Leftover women or an unappreciated feast?

The 2011 Chinese Marriage Situation Survey found nearly 45 percent of interviewees were apprehensive about marrying at all, since one in five couples divorce.

Another 42 percent worried about losing their freedom. And 37.5 percent dreaded family responsibilities. An additional 31 percent were anxious about housing.

Some expressed domestic violence fears.

Lake cites Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg. Sandberg's first marriage began when she was 25, in accordance with her parents' desire. She divorced after a year. Sandberg remarried nearly a decade later, and she and her husband are now one of the tech world's most celebrated couples.

"Why did this marriage work better than the first? I would venture it has something to do with the fact that she went into it on her own terms and at her own time," Lake says.

Another advocate of choosing life partners slowly and wisely is Los Angeles' former deputy mayor Joy Chen. The Chinese-American wrote the book Do Not Marry Before Age 30.

"We should not just try to find a 'Mr Right Now', but a 'Mr Right Forever'," she said in an earlier interview with China Daily.

That's Oh's plan. She'll settle down - but only with Mr Right.

"I hope to meet the one destiny brings to me," she says. "It'd be even lonelier if I have to spend the rest of my life with someone who's not my match."

But Yang, the marketing executive, says she's succumbing to pressure. Her New Year's resolution is to get married.

"I fall into the group of people who'll get married for the sake of getting married," she explains. "And, to please my parents, I'll settle for someone 'good enough' by their standards."

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