Just as there are opportunistic foreign men who take advantage of vulnerable, lonely, and hopeless Chinese women, there are also desperate China females who take advantage of kind-hearted and sincere foreign men on online Chinese dating sites. Unlike the opportunistic men who are only prowling dating sites to get laid with as many women as they can, these desperate women of China are not inherently bad and are actually very serious about finding a lifetime partner.

These women are on a dating site because they need to find a husband in a hurry; this does not mean, however, that they will not be loving and devoted wives. Their hurried need to get married is caused by the immense pressure they are under, from parents and friends, to do so; they endure this pressure for years, from the time they reach marriageable age until they finally settle down. The longer they stay single, the heavier they are leaned on to find a life partner fast. Being unmarried for a long time is considered a source of shame for families and becomes a stigma for the single daughter; other people, or society as a whole, often take this to mean that the daughter is undesirable or unworthy of a husband.

Although less common, part of the pressure to get married may also come from pressing financial obligations that a woman and her family need help with. In modern day China, even in the big cities, many marriages still entail the “passing on” of a woman and her family’s financial obligations to her husband. This may seem unfair, and even absurd, to foreign cultures, but it is an accepted practice in the Middle Kingdom. These women’s source of desperation does not automatically make them gold diggers because, again, the expectation that the husband will shoulder the financial obligations is an acceptable one in Chinese society.

These desperate women, however, are not always upfront about the real reasons why they are looking for a husband, especially when they are interacting with foreign men on Chinese dating sites. The dishonesty, or lack of honesty to be more accurate, is the product of their desperation and, at the same time, is what makes their behavior deceitful and their intentions seem malicious. And then there is also the duplicitous means some of them employ to reach their “justifiable” ends.

To increase their chances of finding a man who would want to come to China to meet them and eventually propose marriage, they usually engage in multiple online relationships. Until somebody proposes, they would spend time with these foreign men when they visit, even sleep with them if they thought it would count against them if they didn’t. They immediately accept the first offer of marriage they receive after which they end all other ongoing relationships.

As they say, the ends justify the means. While these Chinese women act out of desperation and their desire to please their families and society, they do end up causing pain to the foreign men they string along. Even though they have every intention of being the devoted and faithful wife to the man they end up with, he could have just as easily been one of those other men these desperate women made promises to and then cast off if he weren’t the one to offer marriage first. That saying really only serves the purpose of the person engaging in the questionable means and pursuing their end; and when it concerns only personal circumstances, the behavior becomes even more inexcusable.

This is not to say, of course, that these women of China who find themselves in desperate situations do not care at all that their behavior is wrong. Do not forget that all women of China are raised to be honorable so that they will make a worthy wife. The fact that they still engage in such dishonest behaviors, in itself, points to their desperation. Yes, they are not inherently bad women, and no, their desperate circumstances are not an excuse to mislead foreign men. The fact remains, however, that they need help and they do still want to find love and a husband.

The important question one should be asking is, “Do these women know that foreign men are far more open-minded than the people they have around them and, if they are honest about their situation, it’s very possible that they will find among the many men, who have great admiration for Chinese women, a few who would understand them and give them comfort?” It is even possible that love can blossom from these honest interactions.