Strange conjugal idea, disoriented TV show

Host Jin Xing (left) talks with a female guest and her family members during the show. [Photo/Weibo.com]

The site had been open from Nov 1, 2016 and to Jan 10, and all women were welcome to send their resumes. On Feb 2, the woman that passes the final selection test by the male suitor and his parents, if any, will sign a pre-drafted contract. The woman and the man will then officially start their "love affair". On Oct 8, they will get married. On Feb 19, 2018, they will hold a wedding ceremony.

This is not a plan of a pair of normal lovers; it is a schedule prepared by Zhou Zhiqiang, a 30-year-old man from Chengdu, Southwest China's Sichuan province, which he believes will help him select the "right" woman as life partner. So far less than 10 women are said to have sent their resumes.

By the way, the schedule is one of the 30 chapters of his yet to be published book, A General Guide to Love Affairs.

And Zhou neither has a girlfriend, nor has got a publisher for his book.

A glimpse into Zhou's "guide" shows he considers a woman a cog in a machine called "family". He has taken 18 full chapters, or 79,441 words, to draft a detailed family discipline regime for his future wife, which describe how many hours she can rest every day and what percentage of her salary she can keep as personal expense. Using a sword as the symbol of the family's authority, he says he will faithfully record the "good" and "bad" deeds of his wife and gives her points according to the records.

This should explain why Zhou is still single despite having tried hard to find a wife. The idea of a robot-like wife and antediluvian family values is hardly acceptable to any woman today.

His "book" is almost like the bible of a cult - full of instructions, such as "the woman must follow the guidance of this book" or "under the evaluation system of the book, she should do the following".

Zhou seems to have yet to realize that it is against the basic value of equality on which modern society is based.

If Zhou believes in everything he has written in the "book", he will encounter more failures in life. Despite all this, he and his "book" were invited to Chinese Dating, a new dating program on TV hosted by popular dancer Jin Xing.

As its name suggests, the program invites not only single men and women who are introduced to each other, but also their parents or relatives to "supervise". And the parents have a bigger say on whether or not their sons or daughters should interact further with even the counterparts they like.

The reason Zhou has been invited to the program is obvious: speculation. The host introduced Zhou's "book" to the audience with a humorous undertone, and the organizers made fun of Zhou by adding exaggerated subtitles or voice-overs to the voices of other speakers to make the program more humorous. They just tried to show how ridiculous Zhou's ideas were.

Yet the speculation proved successful in drawing attention. Minutes after it was broadcast, the TV program, the "book", and Zhou became hot topics on domestic social media.

The success came at a price, though. The female invitees to the program lost one possible suitor because they obviously could not accept Zhou's idea. However, host Jin prepared a bowl of "chicken soup for the soul" for him and encouraged him to "stay as he is", even though she made it clear that his ideas were ridiculous. That cheap applause gave Zhou a false impression of support for his outrageous ideas.

As a public figure, if TV hosts do not believe something is good, at least they should not encourage it because that could lead others astray. Cheap applause and encouragement do not help, they make things worse.

The author is a writer with China Daily. zhangzhouxiang@chinadaily.com.cn