Spring Festival: A marriage of mirth and misery

"I don't want to change my way of life right now," she says. "When I am thinking of having a baby is the time I will marry."

Her boyfriend apparently accepts this and like her is happy with the way things are.

"I always wonder why my mother is so keen on me marrying," my friend says. "I don't think she herself has a good marriage."

Her parents live apart, and her mother spends most of her time taking care of her own father.

"On my father's birthday all he and my mother did was have lunch together."

She then jokes: "I think grandpa needs to have a talk with his daughter first, to get her to devote more time to her husband."

Turning serious again, she says: "My mother said she will have a serious talk with my boyfriend during the Spring Festival, telling him to either marry me or to break up with me. I'm really frustrated."

Other friends of mine talk of similar experiences.

"My father texted me last night at 2 am saying he was so worried about having an unmarried daughter in her 30s that he couldn't sleep," a young woman says.

Another friend, in her early 30s, says: "I cannot sacrifice myself to please anyone."

Her advice to anyone in this predicament: "Let them say whatever they like, and you do whatever you like."

These three young women are all independent and have a good education and good jobs.

"I reckon I'm now living through the best period of my life," the woman from Guangzhou says.