One family, one child, many dates

You’re probably wondering what this old Chinese lady is doing. Believe it or not, she’s speed dating!

A reader led me to this website which promotes an alternate version of speed dating. If you could read Chinese (no, I can’t either), you would learn that these speed dates involve the parents of singles rather than the daters themselves. Mom (and I suppose Dad, too, but what are the chances of that?) makes up a sheet with the single child’s relevant information–photo, education, job–and then goes to a park to hunt down some future in-laws. A park works for these speed dates, I guess, because desperate would-be grandmas don’t need alcohol to lather their conversations. If they find a match at one of these events (which usually have themes like “doctors and lawyers” or “waiters,” my source said– no “hot for teacher” nights here), they exchange the kids’ contact info.

This sounds crazily foreign and antithetical to the American spirit of self-determination. Except that we have something kind of similar here, on MTV. It’s a show called “Date My Mom” and it involves a guy going on dates with three different moms and deciding, based on the experiences, which daughter he wants to date. The secret to success seems to be having a mom who dresses slutty and talks a lot about how hot and wild her daughter is.

You see where this is leading, right? I’m composing my dossier right now (a couple photos, a few blog posts) and then I’ll be putting Mama Speed Dating Girl in a tube top and on a plane. Watch out, China!

Tags: speed dating