I just want to be alone, or perhaps not

However, small home appliances are a breed apart in the home appliances market, and a report by All View Cloud, a big data integrated solution service provider, says the value of domestic retail sales of these appliances was 11.5 billion yuan in the three months of the year, online sales accounting for 9.2 billion yuan of that.

The China Household Electrical Appliances Association, says that retail sales of rice cookers, induction cookers and soy milk machines in February all rose, and the following month sales of food processors doubled compared with the previous February.

With the continuous growth in the number of those living alone, the trend of eating for one has prompted a plethora of new multifunctional mini home appliances. Among the Chinese companies selling them, Little Bears Electric Appliances, stands out for its marketing.

It has been a leader in continuously expanding and updating its singles-friendly product line and introducing more options targeted at the solo market.

For example, the smallest electric cookers used to be able to hold 4 liters, but now Little Bears Electric Appliances has a cooker with half the capacity and with a clean-cut design that appeals not just to individual needs but to needs of the individual.

The company has developed electric lunch boxes, breakfast machines, health pots, electric stew cups for different needs and has expanded beyond the kitchen to sell mini-humidifiers, steamers and other beauty gadgets.

In an interview with the current affairs website The Paper, Deng Caike, director of Little Bears' research and development center, said half of the company's 40 product categories are singles-friendly, and a typical customer is aged 19-35 and more likely to be a woman. So its appliances tend to come in warm colors and with looks that sometimes veer toward the cute and whose delicate aesthetic clearly suggest that they are meant for a smaller kitchen.

A New York University sociology professor, Eric Klinenberg, said in his 2013 book Going Solo: The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone that the single society is becoming hugely powerful and a harbinger of social change.

Marriage rates in East Asia, represented by Japan and South Korea, have plunged in recent years, and China seems to be following suit. Last year there were nearly 9.5 million marriage registrations in the country, according to the Ministry of Civil Affairs, 630,000, or 6 percent, less than in the previous year. Last year the total number of divorce registrations was 4.1 million, 350,000, or 9 percent, more than in the previous year. And last year, for the first time in 10 years, there were fewer than 10 million marriages.