Chinese Web site proves there is a place like home
(The Asahi Shimbun)
Updated: 2006-01-19 16:50

What with real estate prices the way they are, who wouldn't want their apartment to be a little more virtual? And with free love thrown in to boot?

Almost half a million Chinese seem to feel the same way, if the success of iPartment is any indication.

The Chinese-language site is an online world in which you can find a boyfriend or girlfriend and live together in an apartment.

A kind of cheap, commitment-free practice for domestic life, iPartment is a hit here among university students and young white-collar workers, the two groups perhaps most likely to live in dorms.

The idea is being able to find someone to live with--and fall in love with--without having to get up from the computer.

Since it launched in July, iPartment has attracted 400,000 members. Most are between 18 and 25, the site administrators say.

"Young people who feel lonely and would like to have a sense of connection with someone, but cannot find ideal partners in the real world, are more likely to get into the iPartment world," said Wu Yan, an iPartment public relations manager.

Shanghai university senior Gao Yi, 23, is hooked.

"In the real world, I cannot find an ideal boyfriend," she said.

But in the fictitious one, Gao has been living with her beau for two months.

Together, the couple selects furniture for their hip apartment, takes care of their Labrador retriever and Husky, and nurtures their love. Every time the couple buys something or say, feeds their dogs, they are charged a small fee.

Gao spends at least four hours online a day. She wants a real dog, she said, but her mother forbids it.

"If the relationship with my boyfriend (on iPartment) deepens, I might go out and see him someday," she says wistfully.

Wang Minwei, 23, also a senior college student, lives with a friend on iPartment--even though the two girls also live in the same dorm. Online, she can gossip or tell secrets to her friend she would otherwise keep to herself.

"In the dorm, it is difficult for us to give away our true feelings because we are usually surrounded by other friends," said Wang.